WEBVTT - Ep. 179: The Weed Warden 0:00:08.960 --> 0:00:13.320 This is me eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely 0:00:13.440 --> 0:00:17.680 bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening un podcast. 0:00:18.239 --> 0:00:22.440 You can't predict anything presented by on X Hunt creators 0:00:22.480 --> 0:00:26.120 are the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download 0:00:26.120 --> 0:00:28.960 the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google play store, 0:00:29.320 --> 0:00:35.760 nor where you stand with on x. Okay, we're joined 0:00:35.760 --> 0:00:41.680 by Lieutenant John Norris like Chuck Norris like Chuck Norris. 0:00:41.680 --> 0:00:44.199 You got it. It's a different spelling, right, and r 0:00:44.280 --> 0:00:51.879 e s a little different author of Hidden War um 0:00:51.880 --> 0:00:53.479 reading that book, man. I was reading the book over 0:00:53.520 --> 0:00:56.560 the weekend. People are gonna figure out what the book 0:00:56.600 --> 0:00:58.040 is box when we're talking about a bunch, but it's 0:00:58.080 --> 0:01:02.840 about like the Hidden War is is the war against 0:01:04.240 --> 0:01:13.640 illegal pot growers, public lands and otherwise just around reading it, 0:01:13.640 --> 0:01:15.319 I had like a hundred questions come up, and we'll 0:01:15.319 --> 0:01:16.880 get I want to get into some background on you 0:01:16.920 --> 0:01:18.720 and stuff. But the main question I think that needs 0:01:18.760 --> 0:01:23.160 to be dispassed right away is like you're retired now 0:01:23.800 --> 0:01:27.280 game warden, lieutenant, but you're a game warden. You came 0:01:27.280 --> 0:01:31.119 out of like bust of people for not having their 0:01:31.120 --> 0:01:37.679 fishing license, having too many uh, trout the old stringer. 0:01:38.120 --> 0:01:40.520 How in the world did it become your guy's responsibility 0:01:40.560 --> 0:01:47.920 to put to like take on like cartel backed illegal growers. 0:01:48.520 --> 0:01:50.520 I mean, like, why is that not the cops? Yeah, 0:01:50.560 --> 0:01:52.360 you know, Steve, that is a great question, and that 0:01:52.520 --> 0:01:55.200 is the question that everyone started ask when we got 0:01:55.240 --> 0:01:57.640 into this, and you know, like all of us at 0:01:57.640 --> 0:01:59.840 the table here in the studio, I grew up loving 0:01:59.840 --> 0:02:02.320 to hunt fish. The outdoors were kind of the spiritual 0:02:02.360 --> 0:02:04.120 cornerstone where I was at. So when I met a 0:02:04.120 --> 0:02:06.560 game warden, you know, for the first time in college, 0:02:06.560 --> 0:02:08.520 I'm like, wow, you know you actually get paid to 0:02:08.560 --> 0:02:10.799 do this. You know, you're in your patrol truck, You're 0:02:10.800 --> 0:02:12.799 thirteen miles in the back country checking me and my 0:02:12.919 --> 0:02:16.040 hiking partner on a lake, and this is fantastic. And 0:02:16.080 --> 0:02:18.080 all you're doing is you're protecting wildlife. But you're doing 0:02:18.120 --> 0:02:20.200 as a solo, solo cop. Remember, it was funny reading 0:02:20.240 --> 0:02:22.720 near bio information that when you grew up hunting fishing, 0:02:22.720 --> 0:02:24.120 but we're kind of like not really aware that there 0:02:24.160 --> 0:02:26.440 were game wardens. The craziest thing, Yeah, so I I 0:02:26.720 --> 0:02:28.760 it was it was so random that I never met 0:02:28.800 --> 0:02:30.280 a game ward and growing up because I passed hunter 0:02:30.320 --> 0:02:32.639 safety at nine years old. My dad brought me into 0:02:32.639 --> 0:02:34.919 Waterfall first. Then it was big game. You know, four 0:02:35.000 --> 0:02:38.280 or five generations of conservationists from both Montana, California and 0:02:38.280 --> 0:02:41.840 everywhere in between. And unlike all my colleagues in the 0:02:41.880 --> 0:02:44.240 academy when I get there, when I'm like twenty years old, 0:02:44.560 --> 0:02:46.760 they've been you know, seeing game warden since their first 0:02:46.760 --> 0:02:48.440 deer camp at twelve years old, and they've been you know, 0:02:48.520 --> 0:02:51.160 going that path. Well, I certainly would have started much 0:02:51.160 --> 0:02:53.079 earlier and got a whole different direction towards me in 0:02:53.080 --> 0:02:55.400 a conservation officer had I met one. That was the 0:02:55.400 --> 0:02:56.919 first time I met one. I was actually in an 0:02:56.919 --> 0:03:00.919 engineering program at Santos State University and the Silicon Valley 0:03:00.919 --> 0:03:04.119 and looking at the r OTC Army Special Forces program. 0:03:04.880 --> 0:03:06.560 And then I'm on a winter break in the first 0:03:06.560 --> 0:03:10.120 semester engineering school and I'm camped out thirteen miles into 0:03:10.120 --> 0:03:13.320 the back country with my brother outlaw, my Baja racing partner. 0:03:13.320 --> 0:03:15.160 We got a pack horse, we don't have all the 0:03:15.240 --> 0:03:16.640 right gear. We're kind of new to it, you know, 0:03:16.720 --> 0:03:18.760 and we're soaked. We hiked all night to get to 0:03:18.800 --> 0:03:21.200 this lake. So we had an illegal fire in the park. 0:03:21.320 --> 0:03:22.839 We knew it was illegal, but we had a dryer 0:03:22.880 --> 0:03:25.120 stuff out. We're pretty wet and keep on with this 0:03:25.160 --> 0:03:27.079 five day hike, and at that time of year, no 0:03:27.120 --> 0:03:28.840 one's in the back country. This is a Henry Co 0:03:28.960 --> 0:03:31.720 State Park, a hundred five thousand acres of pristine country, 0:03:32.040 --> 0:03:34.920 second largest state park in California and all ours. So 0:03:34.960 --> 0:03:37.120 we were like, yeah, we're in the wide open, you know, 0:03:37.200 --> 0:03:39.560 like later on where our big hunts would go. And 0:03:39.600 --> 0:03:41.720 we see this guy coming down on the four by four. 0:03:41.840 --> 0:03:43.480 Thought he was a park ranger. Turns out he was 0:03:43.520 --> 0:03:45.560 a game ward and thinking we were poaching blacktail deer 0:03:45.640 --> 0:03:48.960 deep rhet because the backtail genetics in that park were epic. 0:03:49.000 --> 0:03:50.920 I mean, I'm talking Boot and Crockett things that just 0:03:51.320 --> 0:03:54.160 light us up, right. And so he comes down, finds 0:03:54.160 --> 0:03:56.680 out we're just dumb kids doing a backpack. We're not hunting. 0:03:57.240 --> 0:03:58.600 And I've been to Zeer for two and a half 0:03:58.640 --> 0:04:02.280 hours on that lake and my eyes just blew up 0:04:02.320 --> 0:04:05.160 and my head started spinning. And when he left, my 0:04:05.200 --> 0:04:08.320 partner jail. So you questioned him. I questioned him, and 0:04:08.360 --> 0:04:10.760 he's like, I really regret stopping and talking to these 0:04:10.840 --> 0:04:13.880 dumb kids this long and I was done. I went 0:04:13.920 --> 0:04:15.160 back as soon as we got out of the woods, 0:04:15.160 --> 0:04:17.680 and I changed my major criminal justice in biology and 0:04:17.920 --> 0:04:19.840 learned what a game ward actually did. I said, that's 0:04:19.839 --> 0:04:22.320 what I'm supposed to do. So I believe that was 0:04:22.600 --> 0:04:26.680 like the heavens parted, you know, I mean, non cliche, 0:04:26.760 --> 0:04:28.640 but seriously it was. It was that random. Had I 0:04:28.680 --> 0:04:30.360 not met him, I would have been on a catch. 0:04:30.360 --> 0:04:32.960 His name I did, Oh yeah, yeah, it was Henry Coletto. 0:04:33.040 --> 0:04:34.960 He was a county game ward, not a state game work. 0:04:35.520 --> 0:04:37.880 But he later was one of the guys I patrolled 0:04:37.920 --> 0:04:40.440 with when I got back home many years later. You 0:04:40.480 --> 0:04:41.960 want to you want to run it into it? We 0:04:42.360 --> 0:04:44.760 worked together. It was it was fantastic. So that's how 0:04:44.800 --> 0:04:52.960 that went. So but keep going, yeah, like like it 0:04:53.040 --> 0:04:56.960 just doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. So when 0:04:56.960 --> 0:04:58.440 I got the job, that's what I wanted to do. 0:04:58.440 --> 0:05:00.600 I wanted a bust guys, spotlight and dear taking too 0:05:00.640 --> 0:05:02.799 many fish, you know. I wanted to do hunter education 0:05:02.839 --> 0:05:05.359 and train kids. I love teaching, did that early on 0:05:05.400 --> 0:05:09.080 in my career, developed into teaching super early, did all 0:05:09.120 --> 0:05:11.400 that stuff. That's why I envisioned game wardens should do. 0:05:11.480 --> 0:05:14.599 That was the traditional role. And then fast forward to 0:05:14.880 --> 0:05:17.960 I started Riverside County way down in southern California and 0:05:18.080 --> 0:05:19.800 wanted to get back home to the Silicon Valley. I 0:05:19.839 --> 0:05:22.880 did that in about and did all the traditional stuff 0:05:22.880 --> 0:05:24.960 in my hometown area back in co where I met 0:05:25.000 --> 0:05:27.760 that game warden patrolled there. Everything was great. And then 0:05:27.760 --> 0:05:31.839 in two thousand four, um I stumbled onto with a 0:05:31.920 --> 0:05:34.240 tip from a high school buddy of mine that was 0:05:34.320 --> 0:05:37.039 now in his master's thesis at San Jose State in 0:05:37.240 --> 0:05:40.240 fisheries biology, and he was doing a three year study 0:05:40.400 --> 0:05:42.640 up a real pristine channel at two creeks where they're 0:05:42.640 --> 0:05:45.599 steelhead trout, re legged yellow legged frog, real pristine, you know, 0:05:45.720 --> 0:05:48.480 threatening dangerous species. And he hit me up one day 0:05:48.520 --> 0:05:52.080 in late spring, right after trout opening. He said, Hey, John, 0:05:52.080 --> 0:05:54.520 this is weird. One of my transset creeks is completely 0:05:54.560 --> 0:05:58.039 bone dry. I've got no kid, dead fish, dead frogs. 0:05:58.240 --> 0:06:01.400 But I'm seeing a bunch of like plastic and debris 0:06:01.400 --> 0:06:03.120 and stuff down at the bottom of the head waters 0:06:03.680 --> 0:06:07.080 and something's not right. And keep in mind, guys, these 0:06:07.080 --> 0:06:09.080 are the headwaters of Coyote Creek. What's one of the 0:06:09.200 --> 0:06:13.320 last viable steelhead migration trout streams in the Silicon Valley 0:06:13.320 --> 0:06:15.120 where they went Pacific Ocean all the way up and 0:06:15.120 --> 0:06:17.520 came to spawn. I mean, these fish were so threatened 0:06:17.560 --> 0:06:18.920 at the time. We only had a couple of thousand 0:06:18.960 --> 0:06:20.840 of them left in that part of California. They were 0:06:20.880 --> 0:06:23.520 like valued at like thirty thou dollars of fish by 0:06:23.560 --> 0:06:26.960 the FETs, so it was pretty sensitive. So I grabbed 0:06:27.240 --> 0:06:29.360 grabbed my buddy. I said, okay, jump in the truck. 0:06:29.440 --> 0:06:31.000 I'll be with you early tomorrow. Let's go up to 0:06:31.040 --> 0:06:33.119 the drop off. I want to drop into the canyon 0:06:33.120 --> 0:06:35.680 and see what it is. And that whole thing to 0:06:35.760 --> 0:06:37.599 me was, okay, there's got to be a farmer diverting 0:06:37.680 --> 0:06:40.440 for you know, agriculture, because it was you know, kind 0:06:40.440 --> 0:06:42.960 of not a real wet winner, or you know, maybe 0:06:42.960 --> 0:06:45.040 it's someone diverting a stream with development, which is what 0:06:45.040 --> 0:06:47.720 we normally see what we call stream bet alteration violations 0:06:47.720 --> 0:06:49.719 that we did a lot of in California. So that 0:06:49.800 --> 0:06:52.000 was always your groove, that was part of your mandate 0:06:52.000 --> 0:06:53.880 to look at that kind of stuff. Absolutely. Yeah, it 0:06:53.920 --> 0:06:56.359 wasn't just hunting and fishing enforcement and you know, the 0:06:56.400 --> 0:06:59.120 poaching versus the legitimate conservationist hunter doing it right like 0:06:59.160 --> 0:07:02.480 all of us. It was. Environmental damage is to water pollution, 0:07:02.680 --> 0:07:07.600 development getting into creeks, big housing projects, commercial developments. You 0:07:07.680 --> 0:07:10.280 guys are involved, you guys are not involved in h 0:07:11.880 --> 0:07:15.080 just general environmental and fractions would be like considered under 0:07:15.120 --> 0:07:18.360 your enforcement right. And the bigger, the bigger things when 0:07:18.360 --> 0:07:20.960 it comes to stream alteration, when it's really heavy impacted 0:07:20.960 --> 0:07:24.200 from developments, it gets into you know, heavy misdemeanors, felonies, 0:07:24.240 --> 0:07:28.200 civil finds, very complex environmental investigations that people didn't realize 0:07:28.240 --> 0:07:31.160 Game Morgans did at the time. So we snow go 0:07:31.200 --> 0:07:33.760 down to this canyon and we go and find this 0:07:34.160 --> 0:07:37.120 water hose basically diverting what was left of that creek 0:07:37.120 --> 0:07:39.680 and that's why it was dry three miles below. So 0:07:39.920 --> 0:07:41.760 I grabbed my buddy, put him behind me. He's an 0:07:41.800 --> 0:07:45.280 unarmed biologist and civilian like diverted like how like Basically 0:07:45.920 --> 0:07:48.120 they dam up the creek and this is a small tributary. 0:07:48.160 --> 0:07:49.680 This is the headwaters of with Steel that channel, so 0:07:49.720 --> 0:07:52.120 they damn it up. They put a water hose in it, 0:07:52.160 --> 0:07:54.680 and they're piping the water somewhere and it was kind 0:07:54.680 --> 0:07:56.480 of weird because it was like a one inch black 0:07:56.520 --> 0:07:59.280 polly pipe, which we later learned is the cartel's main 0:07:59.360 --> 0:08:02.200 method what they used to arrogate, you know, this illegal, 0:08:02.320 --> 0:08:05.440 legitimate poison cannabis. And so I put them behind me 0:08:05.640 --> 0:08:07.800 my assault rifle. We have no cell coverage, We're deep 0:08:07.800 --> 0:08:11.600 in the canyon, no radio coverage. We're hiking down this canyon, 0:08:11.640 --> 0:08:13.000 and all of a sudden, you know, we go two 0:08:13.080 --> 0:08:16.400 hundred yards down the creek and there's the start of 0:08:16.560 --> 0:08:19.520 what was a seven thousand you know plant marijuana plant 0:08:19.520 --> 0:08:21.880 cartel grow that had been in play for probably five 0:08:21.920 --> 0:08:23.720 six years. No one had any clue what was going 0:08:23.760 --> 0:08:25.520 on there. That's why that's you know, I said, I'm 0:08:25.560 --> 0:08:29.520 like boiling over with questions. Keep in mind, you gotta 0:08:29.560 --> 0:08:32.640 walk me through, Like how is that possible? That's what 0:08:32.679 --> 0:08:34.640 I was asking myself, you know. And I still to 0:08:34.720 --> 0:08:37.080 this day, after doing five hundred plus of these missions 0:08:37.120 --> 0:08:39.520 and spend the last fifteen years of my career dedicated 0:08:39.520 --> 0:08:41.120 to the kind of a special operations side of what 0:08:41.160 --> 0:08:43.200 it took to catch these guys and deal with them safely. 0:08:44.120 --> 0:08:47.640 It's baffling to think that, and keep in mind, these 0:08:47.640 --> 0:08:49.960 guys doing it you know, I mean, this isn't you know, 0:08:50.280 --> 0:08:54.440 a legitimate enterprise. These are cartel gunmen. They're classified as 0:08:54.440 --> 0:08:57.080 to portable felons, you know, um south of the border. 0:08:57.559 --> 0:09:00.240 They're on watch list internationally because they've got his streams 0:09:00.280 --> 0:09:05.480 of narcotics, trafficking, murder, uh you know, environmental destruction, human trafficking, assault, 0:09:05.559 --> 0:09:07.600 you name it. And those are some of their best 0:09:07.640 --> 0:09:09.839 growers in their heavily arms. So these guys have already 0:09:09.880 --> 0:09:13.360 been imported here illegally, smuggled across the border and they've embedded. 0:09:13.840 --> 0:09:16.360 You've found they they've smuggled across the border to do 0:09:16.440 --> 0:09:20.079 this job. Yeah, yeah, basically exactly exactly. And we as 0:09:20.120 --> 0:09:22.000 we get further into it and hidden more really goes 0:09:22.040 --> 0:09:24.320 into what we learned later on since my first book, 0:09:24.320 --> 0:09:26.520 Warren in the Woods, of how easy it is from 0:09:26.520 --> 0:09:29.640 to get here, how you know, involved business wise, the 0:09:29.640 --> 0:09:32.439 infrastructure of the cartel organizations are and how many are 0:09:32.440 --> 0:09:34.559 really you know, spread out through not only California, the 0:09:34.600 --> 0:09:36.920 epicenter of the weed part of what they do, but 0:09:37.120 --> 0:09:40.800 the method and phetamine production nationally, human trafficking, uh, you know, 0:09:40.840 --> 0:09:43.000 the synthetic heroine fent and all that's poisoning a lot 0:09:43.040 --> 0:09:45.920 of people and killing them. There's certainly environmental damages to 0:09:46.000 --> 0:09:48.520 our public lands and some of those crimes, but the 0:09:48.559 --> 0:09:51.199 poison cannabis thing is what is just devastating, and well 0:09:51.440 --> 0:09:53.520 we get more into that, but yeah, so when but 0:09:53.920 --> 0:09:55.719 back to this, So you guys come down and you 0:09:55.760 --> 0:09:58.680 say it's seven thousand plants, seven thousand plants kind of 0:09:58.679 --> 0:10:01.839 public to I want to know why it's poison cannabis. 0:10:03.040 --> 0:10:06.720 It's we're gonna talk, okay that and I think, yeah, 0:10:06.920 --> 0:10:10.680 well no, no, but but yeah, let's get through that 0:10:10.760 --> 0:10:14.160 right away, because yeah, why why are you're saying because 0:10:14.120 --> 0:10:15.920 you're not using it like a euphemism. It's not a 0:10:15.960 --> 0:10:18.160 euphemism at all. But what I want to that I 0:10:18.200 --> 0:10:20.439 need to get this though, Yeah, how many acres is 0:10:20.480 --> 0:10:24.959 seven thousand plants? They were spread out over probably four 0:10:25.080 --> 0:10:27.400 or five acres on that particular grow. Because if it's not, 0:10:28.200 --> 0:10:30.880 how are the people not every couple of days wandering 0:10:30.960 --> 0:10:33.400 through here? That's a super good question because some of 0:10:33.559 --> 0:10:35.400 what they do is they're on a lot of public 0:10:35.480 --> 0:10:38.400 land areas, but more remote tracks, like they're going right 0:10:38.400 --> 0:10:40.680 into deep canyons that most people don't go into in 0:10:40.679 --> 0:10:43.319 a park that are just hiking recreationally, but you know 0:10:43.360 --> 0:10:45.959 who's running into them, Guys like you and me, all 0:10:46.000 --> 0:10:48.040 of us here that are going for that really pristine 0:10:48.080 --> 0:10:50.760 trout stream. We're doing a deep back country you know, 0:10:50.840 --> 0:10:52.520 deer hunt, and we're gonna go to a water hole 0:10:52.559 --> 0:10:54.840 and we're gonna backtrack tracks and we're gonna look for drops, 0:10:54.880 --> 0:10:58.000 you know, offseason all that stuff. And so either no 0:10:58.040 --> 0:11:00.439 one finds them, because it's an area of land that 0:11:00.520 --> 0:11:03.040 might not be easily accessible. Only the hardcorees get there, 0:11:03.320 --> 0:11:05.840 and so it's anglers and hunters that find it, or 0:11:05.960 --> 0:11:08.360 it's a guy like my partner that was doing a 0:11:08.400 --> 0:11:10.959 bio study. He was a hunter himself and just happened 0:11:10.960 --> 0:11:12.280 to be in that canyon all the time, and they 0:11:12.280 --> 0:11:14.920 were kind of keeping out the public for this study area. 0:11:15.280 --> 0:11:18.320 So he was like he was a facilitating the secret 0:11:18.360 --> 0:11:21.920 and like unintentional, unintentional, and he was in there. This 0:11:22.000 --> 0:11:24.400 was like the third year of a five year study 0:11:24.440 --> 0:11:27.040 he was doing for this thesis, and you know, I 0:11:27.160 --> 0:11:29.160 love the critters and was freaked out. So none of 0:11:29.240 --> 0:11:31.000 us had any idea when we walked into and they 0:11:31.040 --> 0:11:33.439 feel it had been there, had been hiding there how 0:11:33.440 --> 0:11:36.120 long at least five years. And I'll get into a 0:11:36.120 --> 0:11:38.160 little more in the story as to why we knew that. 0:11:38.640 --> 0:11:40.320 And when we go down the canyon and we see 0:11:40.320 --> 0:11:42.600 the plan and don't forget your honest question. Yeah we're 0:11:42.600 --> 0:11:45.160 gonna get yeah, the poison thing, and we see I 0:11:45.160 --> 0:11:46.920 should go back to that because there's so many issues. 0:11:47.040 --> 0:11:48.839 Just get fired up. Now we're getting back, we're getting 0:11:48.840 --> 0:11:51.160 backed up. All right, we'll dig out. I love it 0:11:51.679 --> 0:11:54.079 when I talked poison cannabis. I got to make a 0:11:54.200 --> 0:11:57.960 very clear distinction between the legitimate cannabis industry that's doing 0:11:58.480 --> 0:12:01.760 you know, they're growing dispensary quality marijuana that's legally used 0:12:01.760 --> 0:12:04.720 by recreational users where it's allowed, like California's a regulated 0:12:04.720 --> 0:12:07.000 state now where I just retired from, and Montana's a 0:12:07.040 --> 0:12:10.000 regulated state where we're all from here, my our home 0:12:10.040 --> 0:12:12.560 state of Michigan, home state of Michigan. There go Steve, right, 0:12:12.960 --> 0:12:15.320 and so you know, and and actually what we're going 0:12:15.360 --> 0:12:16.640 to get into and I go into this at the 0:12:16.720 --> 0:12:18.640 very end of Hidden More, especially chapter ten, when I 0:12:18.679 --> 0:12:22.160 talk about moving forward with regulation and what are the 0:12:22.200 --> 0:12:25.520 issues on things like public land, environmental crimes. But we 0:12:25.600 --> 0:12:29.320 actually have the legitimate cannabis industry making pure product, calling 0:12:29.400 --> 0:12:32.960 us their Earth Warriors, my tactical unit called Earth Warriors. 0:12:34.000 --> 0:12:35.720 It's kind of not the term I would normally think 0:12:35.760 --> 0:12:38.640 of from a special operations background, running with retired seals 0:12:38.640 --> 0:12:40.679 on my team and swat guys and snipers and we're 0:12:40.720 --> 0:12:44.280 all hunters like myself. But they like what we're doing, 0:12:44.600 --> 0:12:47.160 you know, and and we like to support their given us. 0:12:47.160 --> 0:12:48.960 And where it was used to be handcuffs, they've turned 0:12:48.960 --> 0:12:51.679 to handshakes with the legitimate side of the industry that's 0:12:51.679 --> 0:12:53.960 really trying to do it right. And there are environmental 0:12:53.960 --> 0:12:56.000 stewards and we found a percentage of growers all over 0:12:56.040 --> 0:12:59.560 California that are as deeply environmentally protective as we are. 0:13:00.000 --> 0:13:02.760 Know they protect their water, they can serve it. So 0:13:02.920 --> 0:13:05.680 they're saying they don't put out as you'll explain in 0:13:05.800 --> 0:13:10.480 Discriminate Wildlife poisons. Yeah, and booby traps book full of 0:13:10.480 --> 0:13:13.480 pictures of like dead mountain lions and bears and littered 0:13:13.520 --> 0:13:17.200 around these growth sites from them like poisoning up poisoning 0:13:17.200 --> 0:13:19.559 wildlife because I imagine it gets into the crops. Oh, 0:13:19.600 --> 0:13:22.440 it totally does. And when I go into poison cannabis. 0:13:22.440 --> 0:13:25.600 That's exactly what I'm saying, these band toxics that these 0:13:25.600 --> 0:13:27.640 cartel guys bring across the border. She can't get it 0:13:27.640 --> 0:13:29.120 in America anymore. It was banned by the e p 0:13:29.240 --> 0:13:32.080 A fifteen years ago because so toxic and the products 0:13:32.120 --> 0:13:34.920 called carbo furan um. There's all kinds of derivative trade 0:13:35.000 --> 0:13:37.640 names meta faus, q fur and furdan. But there's all 0:13:37.640 --> 0:13:40.120 these different derivatives and they have to get it in 0:13:40.240 --> 0:13:42.600 Mexico because in third world countries don't have the environmental 0:13:42.600 --> 0:13:46.000 regulations we do. It's still produced. It was designed as 0:13:46.000 --> 0:13:49.680 an insecticide rodentious side, I say, kill anything aside um 0:13:49.720 --> 0:13:52.160 to be deluded into like five thousand gallons of water 0:13:52.280 --> 0:13:55.000 with one twelve ounce container. It's kind of crystalline. And 0:13:55.040 --> 0:13:57.640 even that was considered so toxic and harmful if it 0:13:57.679 --> 0:13:59.719 was put on crops to keep animals and insects and 0:13:59.760 --> 0:14:01.520 every off by the e p A, they banned it. 0:14:02.040 --> 0:14:04.280 What the cartel growers do, guys, is they diluted with 0:14:04.320 --> 0:14:08.000 three to five gallons at the most. So this stuff 0:14:08.200 --> 0:14:11.920 to tea spoons, no joke. A black, big three pound 0:14:11.920 --> 0:14:15.200 black bear comes into a grow site, gets to a plant, 0:14:15.280 --> 0:14:18.400 and these guys have it all over the bud, all 0:14:18.400 --> 0:14:21.720 over the flour, all over on the soil around the plants, 0:14:22.040 --> 0:14:24.160 and in the waterways directly, and they'll put it out 0:14:24.160 --> 0:14:27.440 in tunicans like little traps for animals because they don't 0:14:27.440 --> 0:14:30.600 want anything touching that potentially four thousand dollar black market 0:14:30.600 --> 0:14:33.640 profit plant. So a black bear ingested, and the picture 0:14:33.640 --> 0:14:35.720 in my book of that big black bear, Steve was 0:14:35.760 --> 0:14:38.880 exactly that went in licked up a couple of drops 0:14:38.880 --> 0:14:40.400 of this that they put in a tunican is like 0:14:40.480 --> 0:14:43.200 a little perimeter defense. And she died like a couple 0:14:43.240 --> 0:14:45.200 of minutes later, and just keeled over and she was done. 0:14:45.720 --> 0:14:49.000 And then her fifty pound cub that also was with her, 0:14:49.040 --> 0:14:51.320 she was she had a single baby and justested the 0:14:51.320 --> 0:14:53.640 same poison, didn't die as quickly. And the other picture 0:14:53.720 --> 0:14:55.960 that's superimposed in that color section of the book is 0:14:56.360 --> 0:14:58.120 the cub up in the view of the tree, got 0:14:58.160 --> 0:15:01.480 scared when above mama and I, you know, strung out 0:15:01.520 --> 0:15:03.760 about ten feet above her mother, a little fit kipoun cub. 0:15:04.440 --> 0:15:06.120 And you know, I kind of say, it doesn't matter 0:15:06.120 --> 0:15:09.240 where you sit on the conservation. Preservation, hunt, don't hunt 0:15:09.320 --> 0:15:12.440 animal rights. You know where we sit opposite of that. 0:15:12.720 --> 0:15:15.120 Nobody wants to see an animal die that way. So 0:15:15.200 --> 0:15:18.240 it's just horrendous. No animals should ever be poisoned that way. 0:15:18.240 --> 0:15:21.080 It's just it's disgusting. And so, you know, I mean 0:15:21.360 --> 0:15:23.320 when I present on this and I talk about this, 0:15:23.320 --> 0:15:25.320 whether it's a law enforcement group, of kids, group of 0:15:25.360 --> 0:15:28.400 political group, a good conservation group like we all here 0:15:28.440 --> 0:15:31.440 are here, you know, are going to animal rights group, 0:15:31.440 --> 0:15:33.920 talk to humane society, the Mountain Lion Society. I've been 0:15:33.960 --> 0:15:38.600 all over those traditionally left groups societies and they see 0:15:38.600 --> 0:15:40.520 that and they go, we need to support your efforts. 0:15:40.640 --> 0:15:42.720 You know, let's forget where we sit on this spectrum. 0:15:42.760 --> 0:15:45.520 Let's unify. Let's fund this to get the clean up 0:15:45.560 --> 0:15:47.120 done that we need to do. Make sure you guys 0:15:47.120 --> 0:15:49.680 are doing this thing safe because the violence we've been 0:15:49.720 --> 0:15:52.120 involved in, the gunfights, my partner almost getting shot and 0:15:52.160 --> 0:15:53.920 killed in the Silicon Valley. We got some stuff we 0:15:53.920 --> 0:15:56.720 could share that's crazy to see how violent these guys are. 0:15:56.760 --> 0:16:00.000 And not only to tactically trained, specialized law enforcement team 0:16:00.040 --> 0:16:02.560 like we developed into, but what if you were you know, 0:16:02.640 --> 0:16:04.760 you were on a private, you know, public hunt doing 0:16:04.800 --> 0:16:07.560 a d I y style and you run across this, 0:16:08.080 --> 0:16:09.760 you know, I mean, most hunters are equipped to deal 0:16:09.800 --> 0:16:11.480 with it and get out safely. But we've been up 0:16:11.520 --> 0:16:14.240 against some pretty crazy guys and so that's the poison 0:16:14.320 --> 0:16:17.520 cannabis we're dealing with. And the problem with that stuff. 0:16:17.600 --> 0:16:20.480 What's so nasty about it is this issue doesn't get out, 0:16:20.640 --> 0:16:23.520 you know, really far enough. I mean I wrote the 0:16:23.520 --> 0:16:25.840 first book on the topic back in two thousand and ten. 0:16:25.920 --> 0:16:28.480 We did three years of reality TV with Wild Justice, 0:16:28.520 --> 0:16:31.400 the first game ward in reality TV on on National Geographic, 0:16:31.880 --> 0:16:34.160 which was good because it showed you what game wardens do, 0:16:34.240 --> 0:16:35.960 the diversity of what we do. We're not just checking 0:16:35.960 --> 0:16:38.600 fishing licenses, you know, and closing the gate and locking, 0:16:38.680 --> 0:16:40.200 you know, locking up a park at night. We're doing 0:16:40.240 --> 0:16:43.840 some you know, legitimate, diverse law enforcement stuff. But it 0:16:43.920 --> 0:16:46.360 exposes issue a little bit. So we've been talking about 0:16:46.360 --> 0:16:48.960 it for ten years. It's been on worldwide television, it's 0:16:48.960 --> 0:16:52.320 been in one book. Now Hidden More comes out and 0:16:52.360 --> 0:16:55.000 I'm still shocked by how many people we'll get the 0:16:55.000 --> 0:16:56.760 new book. We launched an n r A annual with 0:16:56.920 --> 0:16:59.040 all Over North being a primary endorser of it, and 0:16:59.200 --> 0:17:01.600 all these A hunter himself. I didn't know that, and 0:17:01.640 --> 0:17:03.560 after he read and endorsed it, he told me, he goes, 0:17:04.280 --> 0:17:06.240 I had no idea. You know, I spent my entire 0:17:06.280 --> 0:17:11.520 military career fighting foreign drug problems from infiltrating our domestic lands. 0:17:12.119 --> 0:17:13.959 And we got a team of game wardens and other 0:17:14.000 --> 0:17:16.000 law enforcement guys, and especially you guys had to get 0:17:16.000 --> 0:17:18.760 specialized a game wards to fight this and protect our 0:17:18.760 --> 0:17:22.239 wildlife too, and being a hunter. And he wasn't even 0:17:22.280 --> 0:17:24.760 fully aware. So when you look at that aspect of it, 0:17:25.359 --> 0:17:29.200 um the growers are still insulated, not only in California 0:17:29.200 --> 0:17:31.359 but in the rest of America, and not enough people 0:17:31.400 --> 0:17:35.040 know about this. So the poison cannabis is going all 0:17:35.080 --> 0:17:38.000 over the Midwest on the black market, the Eastern Seaboard, 0:17:38.560 --> 0:17:41.000 um all over the country and being sold on the 0:17:41.040 --> 0:17:43.920 black markets, being slowed as a pure product. It's getting 0:17:43.920 --> 0:17:47.480 into that black market that isn't regulated versus a legitimate dispensary. 0:17:47.600 --> 0:17:49.160 That was that was one of the things I wanted 0:17:49.160 --> 0:17:51.360 to ask about, and we might aso try to dispatch 0:17:51.440 --> 0:17:56.399 with that early on. We're all turkey hunt in California, 0:17:56.480 --> 0:17:58.359 not on public man but on private land front of 0:17:58.359 --> 0:18:02.119 mine's place, and I was telling her and we noticed 0:18:02.160 --> 0:18:04.760 the piping all over the damn place you were on one. Yeah, well, 0:18:04.800 --> 0:18:09.479 because they have her. My friend, a woman I went 0:18:09.520 --> 0:18:12.479 to graduate school with. Her family had her dad had 0:18:12.560 --> 0:18:15.359 run cattle and he was a large animal vat and 0:18:15.359 --> 0:18:17.320 he started he got older and kind of got away 0:18:17.320 --> 0:18:19.480 from running cattle, and so some of their properties went 0:18:19.600 --> 0:18:22.240 like relatively unvisited and no one was actually work in 0:18:22.240 --> 0:18:25.719 the land, and um, so there wasn't a constant presence 0:18:25.720 --> 0:18:27.600 out there. And I brought up to her like you 0:18:27.640 --> 0:18:30.199 see this pipe in weird places, and she was always as, 0:18:30.240 --> 0:18:33.160 it's just people to sneak in to grow. And at 0:18:33.200 --> 0:18:39.720 this time, uh weed was already legal in California. So 0:18:40.160 --> 0:18:44.120 it raised the question, why if if you legalize weed 0:18:44.160 --> 0:18:46.720 in the state, why is there still an incentive Like 0:18:46.800 --> 0:18:48.840 how did it even come up? The people are still 0:18:48.880 --> 0:18:53.040 secretly growing and why why would they need to grow 0:18:53.080 --> 0:18:56.240 on public land? Why don't they like buy property and 0:18:56.280 --> 0:18:58.480 just grow eat. Yeah, and then why you need to 0:18:58.520 --> 0:19:00.800 sneak in somewhere and do it on the slot it's 0:19:00.880 --> 0:19:03.120 it gets down. That's a that's a really good question. 0:19:03.160 --> 0:19:05.880 And everybody thought that when we regulated in California, and Prop. 0:19:05.920 --> 0:19:09.159 Sixty fourth recreational did all these medical laws. Other states 0:19:09.200 --> 0:19:10.800 did it too. That Okay, that's going to stop the 0:19:10.800 --> 0:19:13.119 black market. Now it's legal. It's no big deal. And 0:19:13.160 --> 0:19:15.800 it was like a really common argument. It's the main 0:19:15.920 --> 0:19:18.919 argument here for legalizing drugs. It totally is brother. And 0:19:18.960 --> 0:19:21.680 here's the problem the backlash. What people don't realize when 0:19:21.680 --> 0:19:25.480 you dig deeper into it is once you regulate, there's inspections, 0:19:25.520 --> 0:19:28.480 there's permits you've gotta get, there's fees to that. You're 0:19:28.520 --> 0:19:31.440 now on big Brother's radar. Right, you're on the governmental radar. 0:19:31.680 --> 0:19:34.360 So you're gonna be inspected. You've gotta keep your private 0:19:34.480 --> 0:19:37.400 land grow site open to inspection. Your dispensaries are open 0:19:37.440 --> 0:19:40.520 to inspection. Use e P A band poison, Yeah, I 0:19:40.560 --> 0:19:44.520 can't do that. Can't use I mean, the the purification 0:19:44.600 --> 0:19:47.200 standards on cannabis legitimately now. And I'm gonna take California 0:19:47.200 --> 0:19:49.040 as an example because I just came from that state 0:19:49.080 --> 0:19:52.080 and was part of seeing regulation and you know, kind 0:19:52.080 --> 0:19:53.679 of trying to preach the message of hey, guys, if 0:19:53.680 --> 0:19:57.000 we're gonna regulate, great, that's the choice of the voters. 0:19:57.000 --> 0:19:59.119 That's how the legislature is gonna go regardless of what 0:19:59.160 --> 0:20:00.719 my thoughts are in at that's what we're gonna do. 0:20:01.040 --> 0:20:03.800 Let's just do it right. Let's make sure we break 0:20:03.800 --> 0:20:07.080 the back of the black market and don't facilitate more 0:20:07.119 --> 0:20:11.480 black market. Well in California is an example. When they 0:20:11.560 --> 0:20:15.520 legitimized recreational marijuana and then all the new medical laws 0:20:15.560 --> 0:20:19.000 started to come in. They took public land trespass growing, 0:20:19.040 --> 0:20:25.280 which is cartels from Mexico, from a felony to a misdemeanor. 0:20:25.880 --> 0:20:28.320 And if you were now check this out guys too, 0:20:28.400 --> 0:20:31.200 on this fact, if you're a juvenile, and a lot 0:20:31.200 --> 0:20:33.640 of these guys are juveniles because they're coming up generationally 0:20:33.680 --> 0:20:35.960 to be trained. You know, they're under eighteen, but they're 0:20:36.000 --> 0:20:39.560 formidable they're growing. Now, that's a misdemeanor to an infraction 0:20:40.440 --> 0:20:42.959 for these young growers that are with You know a 0:20:42.960 --> 0:20:45.480 guy that's a grow boss, we call him and you 0:20:45.520 --> 0:20:47.760 know he's he's vetted. And these are guys that you know, 0:20:47.800 --> 0:20:49.600 they're not just random guys coming up trying to make 0:20:49.600 --> 0:20:52.240 a quick buck because of the living conditions in Mexico. 0:20:52.520 --> 0:20:55.199 These guys are vetted grow bosses that got their vettedness 0:20:55.240 --> 0:20:58.840 by doing this successfully diverting water, hiding it from the 0:20:58.840 --> 0:21:02.240 federal allies, being successful at getting you know, big harvest 0:21:02.280 --> 0:21:04.800 out and not getting busted. Then they get brought up 0:21:04.800 --> 0:21:07.680 here because they're basically vetted journeyman that know what they're 0:21:07.680 --> 0:21:09.680 doing and they're good a lot of them. You read 0:21:09.680 --> 0:21:10.879 the stories in the book and see some of the 0:21:10.880 --> 0:21:14.000 pictures of the booby traps and the camouflage that you 0:21:14.040 --> 0:21:17.560 know the same the like the pungee stick traps. Isn't 0:21:17.560 --> 0:21:23.800 that crazy? Yeah? Sold one where we just where is 0:21:23.800 --> 0:21:26.720 it going? Are people and other people in California they're 0:21:26.720 --> 0:21:30.040 going to a dispensary and they're thinking they're buying like healthy, 0:21:30.280 --> 0:21:37.560 high quality, clean whatever, regulated inspected weed, and they're buying 0:21:38.240 --> 0:21:42.160 stuff that's laced with wildlife poisons or going to other 0:21:42.240 --> 0:21:45.679 states all together. It's sometimes being just like you said, Stevens, 0:21:45.720 --> 0:21:49.040 sometimes being utilized into dispensaries, you know, and and and 0:21:49.320 --> 0:21:52.240 masked in that. Fortunately not in super large quantities that 0:21:52.280 --> 0:21:54.560 we've seen out there but in California, but a majority 0:21:54.600 --> 0:21:56.320 of it just goes back east and gets into the 0:21:56.359 --> 0:21:59.600 black market Middle America, illegal states, illegal states, Middle America 0:21:59.640 --> 0:22:03.320 where kid is have no access medical patients seaboard states 0:22:03.359 --> 0:22:05.879 like Chicago, New York. It's going everywhere, and I mean 0:22:05.960 --> 0:22:09.639 we produce you know where I came from in California 0:22:09.720 --> 0:22:13.639 is eight of the entire nation's black market marijuana resent 0:22:14.040 --> 0:22:17.359 in private land or this public land thing. But the 0:22:17.440 --> 0:22:19.440 thing that's also interesting is even though Weed is the 0:22:19.520 --> 0:22:22.040 one of only six Mediterranean climates on the globe, so 0:22:22.119 --> 0:22:24.119 it's great growing. That's why it's the Weed state. And 0:22:24.160 --> 0:22:26.800 we February and almost December outdoors if we have a 0:22:26.880 --> 0:22:31.040 mile winner um. All those other states that are still 0:22:31.080 --> 0:22:32.920 involved in it, that still have a cartel presence just 0:22:32.960 --> 0:22:34.520 for the cannabis side of what they do is still 0:22:34.560 --> 0:22:37.400 like twenty seven states where it's to a lesser extent 0:22:37.520 --> 0:22:40.720 being grown on public lands by the cartels, but definitely 0:22:40.800 --> 0:22:44.040 not the magnitude that we saw in California. So yeah, 0:22:44.200 --> 0:22:46.080 I mean the biggest thing is is if you're gonna 0:22:46.280 --> 0:22:49.320 if your cannabis user, be careful. You know, you don't 0:22:49.359 --> 0:22:52.320 want to be one ingesting toxic poisons that eventually will 0:22:52.440 --> 0:22:55.040 kill you or the people that you're associated with. But 0:22:55.480 --> 0:22:58.080 also I don't think anybody that's a legitimate cannabis user 0:22:58.119 --> 0:23:00.920 wants to be complicit in buy into that black market, 0:23:01.000 --> 0:23:03.879 especially from you know, a foreign presence. It's you know, 0:23:04.359 --> 0:23:06.040 not regulated, not supposed to be here with the fast. 0:23:06.040 --> 0:23:08.120 I don't think people think about it too much, don't 0:23:08.200 --> 0:23:10.520 they don't. I don't think I wait to say something 0:23:10.560 --> 0:23:12.320 only people think about that because I don't think people 0:23:12.400 --> 0:23:17.560 that buy um, people that are buying like hard drugs 0:23:17.800 --> 0:23:19.879 out of Central and South America, I don't think that 0:23:19.960 --> 0:23:23.240 they're really cognizant of the blood bath that they fuel. 0:23:24.000 --> 0:23:26.320 They're not. They're not. If you told them, they're not 0:23:26.359 --> 0:23:28.439 going to care. You can take it outside of drugs too, 0:23:28.560 --> 0:23:32.560 I mean, take milk, for example. Do people really think 0:23:32.640 --> 0:23:36.159 about where that comes from? Point people like? But but 0:23:36.320 --> 0:23:38.800 I don't think the dairy farmers are going down, moaning 0:23:38.840 --> 0:23:42.159 each other down and killing hundreds of thousand, tens of 0:23:42.200 --> 0:23:44.959 thousands of innocent individuals. Not not at all. But there 0:23:45.000 --> 0:23:48.760 could be environmental damage, there could be others, you know, 0:23:49.400 --> 0:23:52.600 different man to buy definitely have to buy hard drugs 0:23:52.680 --> 0:23:56.840 out of Central and South America. You are, uh. My 0:23:56.920 --> 0:23:59.040 point is that people are very easy to sort of 0:23:59.080 --> 0:24:01.639 gloss over. No I gloss all overall. I'm I'm not 0:24:01.720 --> 0:24:05.760 passing judgment. I clossed over all kinds doing real quick. 0:24:05.840 --> 0:24:11.400 Why uh, why grow in California instead of just going 0:24:11.920 --> 0:24:14.280 south of the border and bringing it. That's a good question, 0:24:14.440 --> 0:24:17.040 that's a great question. And basically they're kind of doing both. 0:24:17.080 --> 0:24:19.360 They're still bringing it from across the border, and they're 0:24:19.400 --> 0:24:22.200 doing it smuggling, you know, across the border and getting 0:24:22.200 --> 0:24:24.680 across fairly easily, whether it's tunnels or however they're getting 0:24:24.720 --> 0:24:27.679 across and also running what they call panga boats one 0:24:27.760 --> 0:24:31.280 way boats that go around the Mazelon Point and come 0:24:31.359 --> 0:24:35.640 in and deposit six thousand three to talks about that too. Yeah, 0:24:35.680 --> 0:24:37.159 we got into pangas and it was something you know, 0:24:37.240 --> 0:24:39.359 being a being a more of a you know, an 0:24:39.480 --> 0:24:42.639 inner border kind of woodsy, kind of not on the 0:24:42.680 --> 0:24:45.359 water that much, you know, domestic unit kind of running 0:24:45.359 --> 0:24:47.840 all over. We did a lot of you know, ocean stuff. 0:24:47.880 --> 0:24:49.800 We just had to because the last ten years we've 0:24:49.840 --> 0:24:51.920 been seeing more and more of these panga boats hitting 0:24:51.920 --> 0:24:55.159 the shoreline. And you know, last we heard as we 0:24:55.240 --> 0:24:57.359 were working with you know, different different federal allies and 0:24:57.400 --> 0:25:00.040 the Homeland Security and Coastguard, you're getting sometimes twin of 0:25:00.119 --> 0:25:01.760 these boats a month, and we might catch two or 0:25:01.840 --> 0:25:04.600 three of them, so and then they're making you know 0:25:04.800 --> 0:25:07.040 that all that poison weed is coming in from off 0:25:07.080 --> 0:25:10.360 shore trucks and you know runners are there to pick 0:25:10.400 --> 0:25:13.240 it up. The distribution center is very highly structured, good 0:25:13.280 --> 0:25:16.360 corporate model. They have distribution centers, stash houses, and it's 0:25:16.440 --> 0:25:19.119 it's gone in minutes to be distributed all over the country. 0:25:19.240 --> 0:25:20.920 And I mean, you know you're not only getting that, 0:25:21.000 --> 0:25:22.720 you're getting some meth imported. And then you get the 0:25:22.800 --> 0:25:25.080 human trafficking thing, because if you can get that weed 0:25:25.119 --> 0:25:27.359 in off the coast, you can bring in a threat. 0:25:27.680 --> 0:25:29.879 You know, you can bring in somebody off this coastline 0:25:30.600 --> 0:25:33.040 from anywhere. So there's been the domestic you know that 0:25:33.200 --> 0:25:37.360 the extreme terrorist groups linked to the cartels as potential 0:25:37.440 --> 0:25:40.119 threats and evidence of that, and that gets into a 0:25:40.200 --> 0:25:42.480 whole another level of public safety, not just poison weed 0:25:42.520 --> 0:25:44.879 coming in, which is still horrible. So, yeah, we got 0:25:44.960 --> 0:25:47.200 to coming in from Mexico, but if they can produce 0:25:47.240 --> 0:25:49.960 it here, it's that much less of a burden and 0:25:50.040 --> 0:25:52.320 cost than having to try to pay what it's going 0:25:52.359 --> 0:25:54.320 to take to get these guys across safely knowing they're 0:25:54.359 --> 0:25:56.800 probably getting a few of them are going to get caught, right, 0:25:56.920 --> 0:25:59.240 and then then they're gonna lose that load. Whereas that 0:25:59.359 --> 0:26:02.119 you know, if they're embedded here and they're really good growers, 0:26:02.160 --> 0:26:05.840 those guys are embedded for generations and until they get caught, 0:26:06.000 --> 0:26:08.520 they might go ten, eleven, twelve years. We've cut some 0:26:08.680 --> 0:26:11.240 guys that have been at it for over a decade 0:26:11.640 --> 0:26:15.080 and embedded in you know, Palo Alto, Fresno, big city 0:26:15.160 --> 0:26:18.920 populace centers completely here, illegally fake I d s, not citizens, 0:26:19.040 --> 0:26:22.520 but just running operations. Back up for a minute too. 0:26:24.080 --> 0:26:25.639 You were telling a good story about this guy that 0:26:25.760 --> 0:26:29.000 was doing the He's working on steelhead and all of 0:26:29.040 --> 0:26:30.760 a sudden his stream runs out of water, and you 0:26:30.800 --> 0:26:35.080 guys going to investigate and you find a grow operation. Right, 0:26:35.480 --> 0:26:36.840 walk me through to the end of that, because I 0:26:36.880 --> 0:26:39.400 got a question, but maybe maybe you'll answer it, okay, 0:26:39.480 --> 0:26:41.280 So then what happens like you're like, wow, look at this, 0:26:41.520 --> 0:26:43.119 Look at this. Here we are. This is a n 0:26:43.160 --> 0:26:45.879 eye opener. Didn't expect this. We keep cruising down, you know, 0:26:46.000 --> 0:26:48.919 kind of tactically and carefully, like we're stocking animals quietly 0:26:48.960 --> 0:26:51.520 because you know, the spider senses are tingling. Something's wrong. 0:26:52.119 --> 0:26:54.640 And then we see two arm growers, you know, one 0:26:54.680 --> 0:26:56.560 with an a K, one with a pistol and his hip, 0:26:57.000 --> 0:26:59.399 both having Michetti's and they're walking up the creek and 0:26:59.440 --> 0:27:01.520 they're tending their plants and they're getting closer to us, 0:27:01.560 --> 0:27:03.760 and I'm like, they're sort of them out working armed. 0:27:03.880 --> 0:27:07.639 They're working armed, like they're ready. They're not like when 0:27:07.680 --> 0:27:10.080 someone finds we'll be like, yeah, I'm guilty. It's it's 0:27:10.119 --> 0:27:12.840 not that situation at all. Steve the situation and when 0:27:12.880 --> 0:27:15.320 we get further into the team that developed and why 0:27:15.359 --> 0:27:18.160 we develop the canines, and every time we go into 0:27:18.200 --> 0:27:20.880 a grow site, when we run across growers, it's more 0:27:21.520 --> 0:27:23.959 it's more often and odd that they're not armed than 0:27:24.000 --> 0:27:25.760 when they are. And if they don't have the gun 0:27:25.880 --> 0:27:27.760 right on them, then the guns being dropped or it's 0:27:27.840 --> 0:27:29.320 you know, in camp next to them. But nine times 0:27:29.359 --> 0:27:31.639 out of tenants on them, because they have a lot 0:27:31.680 --> 0:27:33.160 to lose, they at least have a pistol on them. 0:27:33.200 --> 0:27:35.600 Some of them have a slung assault rifle as they're 0:27:35.600 --> 0:27:37.560 working in the garden because you know, they know law 0:27:37.600 --> 0:27:39.439 enforcement could be around the corner. They know what our 0:27:39.480 --> 0:27:41.840 dogs are doing. But when we're going down that canyon. 0:27:42.119 --> 0:27:44.160 I see these guys armed. I have one assault rifle 0:27:44.280 --> 0:27:46.280 and an unarmed civilian in no way to radio out. 0:27:46.280 --> 0:27:49.000 And I'm thinking, if this gets western, I get into 0:27:49.000 --> 0:27:51.160 a gunfight right now, it's gonna be the worst day 0:27:51.160 --> 0:27:53.240 in my career. This is not what I was preparing 0:27:54.080 --> 0:27:57.000 m into my career. Yeah, because game wardens aren't notoriously 0:27:57.040 --> 0:27:58.960 going in on stuff like this. Now, granted we went 0:27:59.000 --> 0:28:01.880 in not knowing we were going into but we hit 0:28:02.000 --> 0:28:04.320 we hit the cut bank. We just laid low. They 0:28:04.440 --> 0:28:07.240 drifted by, they didn't see us. And then when I 0:28:07.320 --> 0:28:10.000 saw how the water was diverted as servous as hell. Oh, 0:28:10.040 --> 0:28:12.440 I was freaked out. Yeah, I mean my adrenaline dump 0:28:12.560 --> 0:28:14.200 like that first buck. You know that I missed. You 0:28:14.280 --> 0:28:16.960 got some biologist because he got some Yeah, I got 0:28:17.000 --> 0:28:18.639 a biologist for he was savvy, you know, he was 0:28:18.680 --> 0:28:21.840 a hunter. Even he was like, you know, we looked 0:28:21.840 --> 0:28:25.320 at protocol, not at all. Man. When when when we 0:28:25.400 --> 0:28:27.119 finally cleared that and we knew they were out of 0:28:27.160 --> 0:28:28.720 the way, we just looked at each other. Those eyes 0:28:28.760 --> 0:28:30.560 were huge, and he looked at me and I looked 0:28:30.600 --> 0:28:32.440 at him, and we kind of nodded, you know, I said, 0:28:32.480 --> 0:28:34.600 watch your six. We're gonna get out of here carefully. 0:28:34.960 --> 0:28:36.960 We marked it. And then that was the time I 0:28:37.040 --> 0:28:39.640 turned on and started to know narcotics Task Force teams, 0:28:39.720 --> 0:28:42.960 met the Sheriff's department, met guys from their marijuana eradication 0:28:43.040 --> 0:28:45.480 team that I later became very close to, and Warren 0:28:45.520 --> 0:28:47.720 the Woods first book goes all into that where that 0:28:47.880 --> 0:28:51.760 bond was built because game Wards are seeing this environmental crime, 0:28:52.040 --> 0:28:54.800 but now we're getting this backlash with an agency of like, 0:28:55.120 --> 0:28:57.720 you know, traditionalists that want to do what we've always 0:28:57.760 --> 0:29:00.200 done for years. But that that's that's that's what I 0:29:00.280 --> 0:29:02.440 was driving out my second there's like a question boiling 0:29:02.520 --> 0:29:07.520 up is uh, it's like such a trope of detective movies. 0:29:07.920 --> 0:29:11.360 Where's a crime, and then the local cops, right, but 0:29:11.400 --> 0:29:15.440 then the FBI they come and they assumed like they 0:29:15.520 --> 0:29:20.480 come and assume jurisdiction. So you you see this, okay, 0:29:20.680 --> 0:29:23.200 and you're like, oh my gosh, there's these guys and 0:29:23.320 --> 0:29:26.920 they they got an illegal grow and they're illegally diverting 0:29:26.960 --> 0:29:31.920 water and they're armed. Um, how does how does the 0:29:32.080 --> 0:29:37.840 local sheriff's department, the state police not say back off Sonny, Yah, 0:29:38.240 --> 0:29:40.200 we're going in hot. We're going in hot? Like, how 0:29:40.240 --> 0:29:42.800 did how did you guys make it? That's the game board? 0:29:42.920 --> 0:29:45.640 How did It's not logical that would be like, oh, 0:29:45.760 --> 0:29:47.760 the game boardings will go do it? Well, it was, 0:29:47.840 --> 0:29:50.360 it was. It was a long process and it was 0:29:50.480 --> 0:29:53.040 it was. It was met Our efforts of getting involved 0:29:53.080 --> 0:29:55.640 in that was honestly met with with mixed feelings. You know, 0:29:55.760 --> 0:29:58.280 like one hand is the group I brought in and 0:29:58.840 --> 0:30:01.160 I go into this in detail in the book, but 0:30:01.400 --> 0:30:04.360 I'll share it and just go a little further. Now, Um, 0:30:04.880 --> 0:30:07.560 all the guys I brought into that mission, there was 0:30:07.640 --> 0:30:09.960 a narcotics task force that we were working with that 0:30:10.200 --> 0:30:13.200 lead it because they were had jurisdiction for that area. 0:30:13.800 --> 0:30:16.200 Now we could have let it. We had jurisdiction. We 0:30:16.240 --> 0:30:19.040 have a game boardings have more jurisdiction on more properties 0:30:19.040 --> 0:30:21.560 than any other you know, federal, local, or state law 0:30:21.600 --> 0:30:24.600 enforcement agency because of open fields and animals belong to everybody, 0:30:24.680 --> 0:30:27.120 so we can go all over that wherever there's a 0:30:27.160 --> 0:30:29.560 wildlife impact or wildlife or president that could be posted 0:30:29.640 --> 0:30:31.640 or poison. But you know, it wasn't our forte and 0:30:31.680 --> 0:30:33.360 we don't step on toes. We don't go in trying 0:30:33.400 --> 0:30:35.800 to be something we're not. But I found it. And 0:30:35.920 --> 0:30:37.360 we're pretty good in the woods. You know. We all 0:30:37.480 --> 0:30:39.040 hunt and fish like you guys, and we know how 0:30:39.080 --> 0:30:41.000 to get in quietly and we're good at tracking and 0:30:41.480 --> 0:30:43.560 you know, being careful with our sound and our scent 0:30:43.640 --> 0:30:45.840 and stuff like that. So, um, we got a big 0:30:45.880 --> 0:30:48.000 group in Arcotics Task Force guys. We probably had thirty 0:30:48.040 --> 0:30:50.320 people in this mission. And where there was um C 0:30:50.560 --> 0:30:53.600 HP California Highway Patrol, there was state parks, there were 0:30:53.960 --> 0:30:58.840 narcotic police departments, and there were a couple tactically trained 0:30:58.880 --> 0:31:01.720 SWAT deputies from Sound of Claire County Sheriff's Office. And 0:31:01.800 --> 0:31:04.480 the reason I'm gonna highlight that is because what happened 0:31:04.480 --> 0:31:07.560 on that mission and my first mission, and what I 0:31:07.600 --> 0:31:10.000 saw that went right and all the things that went wrong, 0:31:10.360 --> 0:31:13.520 and I saw how the emphasis was on not really 0:31:13.600 --> 0:31:16.040 catching bad guys. It was we're gonna go in and 0:31:16.160 --> 0:31:18.000 you know, we're gonna bring this force down the canyon. 0:31:18.080 --> 0:31:19.640 We're gonna sort of try to sneak up on him 0:31:19.640 --> 0:31:22.320 and maybe catch them. But um, if we don't catch them, 0:31:22.360 --> 0:31:24.000 we're gonna let them run away. Don't chase them. You 0:31:24.000 --> 0:31:26.280 could get injured chasing these guys down. And then we're 0:31:26.280 --> 0:31:28.960 gonna cut the plants and we're gonna destroy the plants. 0:31:28.960 --> 0:31:31.040 We're gonnair lift him out with the big Payfalk helicopter. 0:31:31.800 --> 0:31:35.240 UM federal funding for grants to you know, fund that 0:31:35.320 --> 0:31:37.040 part of the mission was all based on plant count 0:31:37.080 --> 0:31:38.760 at the time. And I'm going back to two thousand four. 0:31:38.800 --> 0:31:40.800 This is you know, there's a historical bill that that 0:31:40.960 --> 0:31:44.640 matters for hunters everywhere. And I saw that, and we 0:31:44.720 --> 0:31:47.160 have the opportunity and myself in another game ward and 0:31:47.160 --> 0:31:49.080 we're kind of the bird dog leads of getting these 0:31:49.120 --> 0:31:51.080 guys in quietly leading in and then we pull it, 0:31:51.160 --> 0:31:53.680 went to the side, let their tactical unit kind of 0:31:53.720 --> 0:31:55.760 come in like a little swat element or seal team 0:31:55.800 --> 0:31:59.400 the other thing. And um, I knew that if I 0:31:59.440 --> 0:32:01.280 had been running the mission different, I wasn't gonna Monday 0:32:01.320 --> 0:32:03.360 morning quarterback because it wasn't my mission. Now I was 0:32:03.400 --> 0:32:05.560 just the guide since I found it, we could have 0:32:05.640 --> 0:32:09.640 caught these guys easily and safely. And then when we 0:32:10.600 --> 0:32:12.680 catch them that time, we didn't. We didn't. They were 0:32:12.720 --> 0:32:14.520 they were yelled at to put their hands up fifty 0:32:14.600 --> 0:32:17.040 yards away and they're hidden in their camp, and you know, 0:32:18.000 --> 0:32:20.920 and they booked, they booked, and nobody wanted to chase 0:32:20.960 --> 0:32:23.080 them but me and one other game warden and one 0:32:23.120 --> 0:32:25.320 other sheriff's deputy. It was a sniper and a woodsy 0:32:25.360 --> 0:32:28.320 guy from Pennsylvania. Yeah, one of my closest friends of 0:32:28.400 --> 0:32:30.760 this day. And he's he's he's highlighted in the first 0:32:30.760 --> 0:32:34.440 book especially. Um. We decided to give chase, and it 0:32:34.520 --> 0:32:36.400 was futile because I had a big head start on us. 0:32:36.400 --> 0:32:38.520 You know, this was way before canines. We had dialed 0:32:38.560 --> 0:32:40.920 in on tactics. So we're chasing these guys a good 0:32:40.960 --> 0:32:43.720 half mile down the canyon. They do get away, and 0:32:43.800 --> 0:32:46.080 I went, well, you know, I know, if we had 0:32:46.120 --> 0:32:48.040 got a little closer and stalked up to him safely 0:32:48.080 --> 0:32:50.160 with rifle cover, we could have just run him into 0:32:50.240 --> 0:32:52.600 two teams. It really wasn't that hard of a wasn't 0:32:52.720 --> 0:32:55.680 rocket science. And then we eradicated all the plants, and 0:32:55.760 --> 0:32:58.080 I looked at all the other guys on the mission 0:32:58.120 --> 0:33:01.520 and I went, we got four while diversions. I didn't 0:33:01.560 --> 0:33:04.200 know the magnitude of this pink poison. L Diablo, the 0:33:04.280 --> 0:33:05.960 carbo fury, and you know that we call it pink 0:33:06.000 --> 0:33:08.360 death because it kind of looks pink pasty. It was 0:33:08.400 --> 0:33:10.240 all over, So I had no idea that we were 0:33:10.240 --> 0:33:12.520 all around some super hazardous material. We didn't have nitral 0:33:12.560 --> 0:33:14.600 gloves yet any of the protection gear that we now 0:33:14.720 --> 0:33:17.960 have that we know about, and all that stuff was 0:33:18.000 --> 0:33:19.400 left out there, and I'm like, are we going to 0:33:19.440 --> 0:33:21.400 clean this stuff up? We got a big old military 0:33:21.440 --> 0:33:23.640 helicopter can carry like four thousand pounds, and I mean, 0:33:23.760 --> 0:33:25.520 can we take not only the plants, maybe able to 0:33:25.600 --> 0:33:28.440 camp trash, all the poisons of the pesticides and they 0:33:28.520 --> 0:33:30.640 keep a real clean camp. I'm guessing, Oh yeah, it's 0:33:30.680 --> 0:33:33.440 their Christine. I mean they're all earth first, back to 0:33:33.560 --> 0:33:36.600 green you know, it's I'm pack it out really organic. 0:33:36.680 --> 0:33:38.800 You know they make the organic growers in California. Just go, 0:33:38.880 --> 0:33:40.920 oh my gosh, this is what we gotta step up 0:33:40.920 --> 0:33:44.640 to this level. So, um, it didn't get done. And 0:33:44.920 --> 0:33:48.680 what was funny was that in the cleanup didn't happen, Well, 0:33:48.720 --> 0:33:51.719 the cleanup didn't happen, the apprehension didn't happen, and uh, 0:33:52.080 --> 0:33:54.720 we kind of and we were kind of like considered 0:33:54.720 --> 0:33:57.080 at the time by that task force of all right, 0:33:57.200 --> 0:33:58.960 game wardens are good in the wood, stumble around to 0:33:59.040 --> 0:34:01.360 your thing, you know, and guys get us down there, 0:34:01.360 --> 0:34:02.719 just get out of the way. Let us do our thing. 0:34:03.520 --> 0:34:07.680 And I thought, well, federally in state, I'm sworn by 0:34:07.720 --> 0:34:09.839 the state right work for the governor directly, and we're 0:34:09.960 --> 0:34:13.040 sworn federally. And I'm like, my mandate is first to 0:34:13.120 --> 0:34:17.120 protect public safety. Second thing is to protect the wildlife, 0:34:17.160 --> 0:34:19.759 waterways and wild lands of not only our state, but 0:34:19.800 --> 0:34:22.160 any state on min at any given time. I said, 0:34:22.520 --> 0:34:24.000 I've done a lot of game woard work now for 0:34:24.040 --> 0:34:25.720 ten fifteen years, and I've seen a lot of poaching, 0:34:25.760 --> 0:34:28.200 a lot of environmental destruction stream that stuff. But one 0:34:28.239 --> 0:34:30.480 guy poaching the trophy buck or taking you know, five 0:34:30.560 --> 0:34:32.840 too many trout, and what I saw, this one grows 0:34:32.880 --> 0:34:36.520 site doing to the waterways and everything. It's trivial. And 0:34:36.600 --> 0:34:39.360 I'm like, and plus, this isn't like the guy that 0:34:39.440 --> 0:34:41.520 just caught an extra trout, you know, by mistake, or 0:34:41.560 --> 0:34:43.320 got a little greedy, you know, with his kids fishing 0:34:43.360 --> 0:34:47.440 one day. This is a foreign entity here illegally with 0:34:47.640 --> 0:34:50.279 no respect for our wildlife, wild lands, humanity in any 0:34:50.280 --> 0:34:52.719 way from what I've seen, and that's no exaggeration, and 0:34:52.760 --> 0:34:56.120 they're embedded and just making millions and millions of dollars 0:34:56.160 --> 0:34:59.000 a black market profit, destroying our land in the process 0:34:59.040 --> 0:35:00.719 and threatening anyone that is in to do that. And 0:35:00.760 --> 0:35:03.680 I thought, well, I don't see any more important job 0:35:03.840 --> 0:35:07.960 for a game warden to do based on how we're sworn. Now. Granted, 0:35:08.080 --> 0:35:10.160 I was already more in the tactical element, working with 0:35:10.320 --> 0:35:13.000 local teams in military and getting into swat training and 0:35:13.160 --> 0:35:15.480 sniper rifle and you know, all that kind of stuff, 0:35:15.920 --> 0:35:18.200 And so I had an affinity for going that direction, 0:35:18.320 --> 0:35:19.959 but not just to be a game ward and trying 0:35:20.000 --> 0:35:22.200 to do that, but to applied if it could ever 0:35:22.239 --> 0:35:24.680 be applied. And now I saw this type of environmental 0:35:24.719 --> 0:35:27.080 criminal that was very dangerous and you can't just check 0:35:27.160 --> 0:35:30.000 them on your standard patrol route. Walking a creek in 0:35:30.040 --> 0:35:33.080 a standard you know, it just doesn't fit. It's not safe. Um. 0:35:33.200 --> 0:35:35.479 So we had we were met with mixed a mixed 0:35:35.520 --> 0:35:38.839 bag of emotions, you know, and kind of kind of responses. Um. 0:35:39.360 --> 0:35:41.400 But because of Santa Clair County Sheriff's Office, and I 0:35:41.400 --> 0:35:42.920 gotta give a shout out to them. And by the way, 0:35:42.920 --> 0:35:44.360 they're all fans of the show. They wanted me to 0:35:44.400 --> 0:35:46.480 say hi to you guys. They all listen. A bunch 0:35:46.520 --> 0:35:48.640 of them saw you when you did that live broadcast 0:35:48.719 --> 0:35:51.960 and Sacramento recently. Um and you'll read them. They're all codenamed, 0:35:52.040 --> 0:35:53.480 but they're all they're all fans of love Which and 0:35:53.520 --> 0:35:55.640 they all hunt fish, you know, so the right way. 0:35:56.000 --> 0:35:58.200 But those guys saw what we were doing, and they said, 0:35:58.239 --> 0:36:00.560 you know what, this is crap man, this whole thing 0:36:00.640 --> 0:36:01.920 that because you're a game war and you're not a 0:36:01.960 --> 0:36:04.359 real cop or you can't be a special operations guy. 0:36:04.480 --> 0:36:07.520 You can't be a legitimate swat guy. Let's get together. 0:36:07.640 --> 0:36:09.680 I saw how you work, You saw how I worked. 0:36:09.840 --> 0:36:12.080 We could have caught these guys. These other guys running 0:36:12.120 --> 0:36:14.120 didn't think it was a good deal. So they started 0:36:14.120 --> 0:36:16.600 bringing us under their wing. And so in two thousand 0:36:16.680 --> 0:36:19.560 five we started doing missions, and we started doing ourselves 0:36:19.880 --> 0:36:22.120 and not as you know, the burden bunny cops coming 0:36:22.120 --> 0:36:24.880 in behind the sheriffs. We were equals. Now. I was 0:36:24.920 --> 0:36:27.160 getting called in on planning, giving my outdoor you know, 0:36:27.320 --> 0:36:29.799 knowledge and stuff and hunting and tracking and mapping out 0:36:29.880 --> 0:36:31.680 things I can imagine, like how to get in and 0:36:31.760 --> 0:36:33.880 out of right, Yeah, just like planning a hunt, like 0:36:33.920 --> 0:36:35.239 how to get in and out of areas? How are 0:36:35.239 --> 0:36:36.360 you going to get in out of the area? Is 0:36:36.400 --> 0:36:38.319 what rid you're gonna drop down on for your camp 0:36:38.360 --> 0:36:40.319 and how to recognize a place you're never gonna get 0:36:40.360 --> 0:36:42.560 through it. It's just like hunting, you know, we just 0:36:42.719 --> 0:36:44.320 I mean, you change four legged to two leg and 0:36:44.360 --> 0:36:48.520 it's it's pretty similar. Obviously, there's all the navigational plausibility. 0:36:48.600 --> 0:36:50.680 How long does it take to walk somewhere, what you 0:36:50.719 --> 0:36:52.319 can do in the dark and can do in the dark, 0:36:52.800 --> 0:36:54.560 just on and on right, that's what would be a 0:36:54.640 --> 0:36:57.440 good glassing point to set up and find them. Seriously, 0:36:58.560 --> 0:37:01.600 good observation points. When we when we got our Stiper unit, 0:37:01.680 --> 0:37:03.880 Delta unit wrapped up in this new met team that 0:37:04.120 --> 0:37:06.320 the second book goes into, it was you know, it 0:37:06.360 --> 0:37:08.279 wasn't about getting on people all the time, although we 0:37:08.320 --> 0:37:10.120 did a lot of that. It was about getting overwatch 0:37:10.520 --> 0:37:12.799 like we would on a hunt, to watch a canyon below, 0:37:12.920 --> 0:37:15.000 knowing where they were working and getting our team in 0:37:15.120 --> 0:37:17.839 safe but seeing trends and changes. You tell that story 0:37:17.880 --> 0:37:21.160 about that you guys had identified an individual that you 0:37:21.239 --> 0:37:24.120 knew to be heavily involved, but he never came around. 0:37:25.120 --> 0:37:27.120 And you talked about just sit and watch and watch 0:37:27.200 --> 0:37:28.960 and watching for a long time, and you didn't want 0:37:29.000 --> 0:37:31.520 to raid the sight until you could get until you 0:37:31.600 --> 0:37:35.480 could validate or prove that he was in the know, 0:37:36.520 --> 0:37:40.600 right from talking about just sitting and observing at intersection 0:37:40.600 --> 0:37:42.640 out in the woods. Yeah, the big kingpin that knew 0:37:42.760 --> 0:37:44.640 once he was once he was seen there, it was 0:37:44.719 --> 0:37:47.040 conspiracy and he was responsible and he waited. That was 0:37:47.120 --> 0:37:49.160 a two three month deal, you know. And that was 0:37:49.239 --> 0:37:50.920 with the sheriff's that I mentioned. That was with some 0:37:51.040 --> 0:37:53.120 good partners. Did you guys have it once you got 0:37:53.239 --> 0:37:56.319 rolling on this? Did you have a never ending list, 0:37:56.560 --> 0:37:58.640 like like a never ending list of science that you 0:37:58.680 --> 0:38:00.880 could never even get to because it takes because because 0:38:01.000 --> 0:38:04.759 because of the danger element, you can't just go do 0:38:04.960 --> 0:38:06.560 five or six in a day, right, You've got to 0:38:06.600 --> 0:38:09.560 make a plan so no one gets hurt. So it's 0:38:09.640 --> 0:38:14.320 inherently slow. It's by design, right, is inherently slow. You 0:38:14.400 --> 0:38:17.319 can't just find one one day and grab a team 0:38:17.360 --> 0:38:18.920 and run in and hit it the next day. I mean, 0:38:18.960 --> 0:38:20.759 there's so much plan someone as you as you know 0:38:21.000 --> 0:38:24.320 very well, someone gets shot yeah, yeah, exactly. And the 0:38:24.440 --> 0:38:26.560 problem we would have is in the early days when 0:38:26.600 --> 0:38:28.800 we weren't a formalized team and didn't have the capability 0:38:28.840 --> 0:38:31.600 to plan on ourselves. It was me and a handful 0:38:31.600 --> 0:38:33.759 of game wardens that were tactically savvy and trained really 0:38:33.800 --> 0:38:35.520 good at the traditional stuff. But they were starting to 0:38:35.560 --> 0:38:38.680 see this in other areas of the state and gravitating 0:38:38.719 --> 0:38:40.560 towards it. So I would bring them down to Silicon 0:38:40.680 --> 0:38:43.319 Valley or I would be pulled up to say northern California, 0:38:43.840 --> 0:38:46.479 um if our if our boundary district chiefs would allow 0:38:46.560 --> 0:38:48.680 the move, and a lot didn't, you know, They're like, no, no, no, 0:38:48.840 --> 0:38:50.920 that's on marijuana case. That's you're going to be a 0:38:50.960 --> 0:38:52.799 garbage collector if you want to clean this stuff up, 0:38:52.880 --> 0:38:54.680 and that's not a game ward and that's for that, 0:38:54.760 --> 0:38:56.799 that's for the cops, that's for d A. I mean, 0:38:56.840 --> 0:38:59.719 we had a lot of you know, internal chiefs and 0:38:59.800 --> 0:39:01.840 caw optin is. It just didn't like it. And nothing 0:39:01.880 --> 0:39:04.440 against that because it's a traditional job of what we 0:39:04.480 --> 0:39:06.279 gotta do. The traditional stuff still important. I mean, we 0:39:06.360 --> 0:39:09.040 can't stop doing the traditional game war and hunting and 0:39:09.120 --> 0:39:11.680 fishing checks and being a steward out there. Um, but 0:39:11.840 --> 0:39:14.480 this was now becoming the biggest environmental damage and crime 0:39:14.560 --> 0:39:17.960 we were seeing throughout California because everything starts in the 0:39:18.000 --> 0:39:21.600 headwaters and it's everything that happens downstreams. So it took 0:39:21.640 --> 0:39:23.279 a long time to get to the level where we 0:39:23.360 --> 0:39:26.920 were accepted. Um, we were equals. We were co planning missions. 0:39:27.000 --> 0:39:29.480 And what we were doing is we were lending the 0:39:29.600 --> 0:39:32.480 help to arrest and apprehend and do all the dirty, 0:39:32.840 --> 0:39:35.680 arduous work of eradicating these plants and a hundred degree weather, 0:39:35.800 --> 0:39:38.600 you know, after an all night raid. But then we 0:39:38.719 --> 0:39:40.759 were starting to bring these agencies into Hey, guys, if 0:39:40.800 --> 0:39:42.920 we're gonna do this, help us. You've got a helicopter 0:39:43.040 --> 0:39:45.680 here today. Okay, it's a thousand dollars an hour to 0:39:45.760 --> 0:39:48.360 run this blade. It's gonna disappear. We're never gonna have 0:39:48.400 --> 0:39:50.279 a helicopter back in this canyon. Can we take three 0:39:50.360 --> 0:39:52.840 four more hours bringing more people or just do it ourselves? 0:39:52.880 --> 0:39:55.480 If we're not wrecked, and let's back up the trash, 0:39:55.719 --> 0:39:59.000 let's restore the creek, because if we just leave and 0:39:59.120 --> 0:40:01.640 winter hits all that crap swashing right into the creek, 0:40:01.800 --> 0:40:04.840 it's just a continual environmental train wrecks. You guys, you 0:40:04.880 --> 0:40:07.319 would do it all in one fell swoop. We're doing 0:40:07.360 --> 0:40:09.960 it all in point fell swoop. You'd come in m 0:40:10.760 --> 0:40:16.600 apprehend suspects like that lingo apprehend suspects, Um, do whatever 0:40:16.680 --> 0:40:22.319 that involves, right, collect evidence and then start picking up 0:40:22.360 --> 0:40:25.240 garbage and bottling up. Cut a bunch of nasty plants 0:40:25.560 --> 0:40:29.080 and stack those up and then going to like hazmat mode. Yeah, 0:40:29.120 --> 0:40:31.400 going to hasmatt mode and do a cleanup mode. And 0:40:31.680 --> 0:40:33.160 you know a lot of agencies that want to do that. 0:40:33.320 --> 0:40:34.560 And when he laughed, it was like that thing was 0:40:34.640 --> 0:40:37.160 never there to some extent, to some extent, and and 0:40:37.480 --> 0:40:40.120 you had to tear out irrigation tons of it. Yeah, 0:40:40.280 --> 0:40:43.160 the black pipe, even though that's not the biggest poisoning 0:40:43.239 --> 0:40:44.840 element out there with all the other stuff. Some of 0:40:44.880 --> 0:40:47.239 that pipe was running three miles to another county to 0:40:47.320 --> 0:40:49.759 get water for one grow, no exaggeration. We track win 0:40:49.840 --> 0:40:52.080 three miles one day. Is that all brought in on 0:40:52.320 --> 0:40:54.400 just people's backs. Yeah, this is a crazy thing, bro. 0:40:54.520 --> 0:40:56.760 They these guys, I will give them an a for effort. 0:40:56.800 --> 0:40:59.960 They are hard workers. They're the toughest guys. They're bringing 0:41:00.040 --> 0:41:02.920 in hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of yards of this 0:41:03.080 --> 0:41:05.920 pipe on their backs, the running loads, hundred pound loads 0:41:06.200 --> 0:41:08.520 continuously to get all their growth, the big five gallon 0:41:08.600 --> 0:41:12.080 propane tanks, all the clones of marijuana, the seeds, the 0:41:12.160 --> 0:41:14.360 camping gear. And they can't just go park at the 0:41:14.400 --> 0:41:17.520 local trailhead. Oh no, No, they're gonna take crazy routes. 0:41:17.520 --> 0:41:19.279 They gotta take crazy routes, and a lot of them. 0:41:19.320 --> 0:41:21.279 Some of them are, you know, as close as three 0:41:21.320 --> 0:41:24.400 four yards from a five billion dollar home on the 0:41:24.520 --> 0:41:26.799 edge of the kid I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding, 0:41:26.880 --> 0:41:29.120 especially where we started, because a lot of that stuff, 0:41:29.120 --> 0:41:30.680 like haven't spent some time they are, a lot of 0:41:30.719 --> 0:41:35.479 that stuff is just like impenetrable. Yeah, like brush rush, yeah, 0:41:35.640 --> 0:41:38.360 you know, coyote brush, and they go around here. Wouldn't fly, 0:41:38.480 --> 0:41:40.239 people would see it from so far away. But there 0:41:40.239 --> 0:41:44.120 it's like dnse it's dance. It's dance and deeply cut 0:41:44.480 --> 0:41:46.840 very much, very much. But they can get away with 0:41:47.000 --> 0:41:48.440 a too. You know, they could be to three hundred 0:41:48.480 --> 0:41:51.640 yards away from an affluent community in the Silicon Valley, 0:41:51.680 --> 0:41:53.960 a kids science camp, we've had that, and then they 0:41:54.000 --> 0:41:57.520 can be eight miles into crazy hike into the back country, 0:41:57.719 --> 0:42:00.880 you know, almost above alpine level, didn't you guys. I 0:42:00.960 --> 0:42:02.319 think I feel like I saw this in your book 0:42:02.360 --> 0:42:06.280 that you guys found some growth sites on designated wilderness areas. 0:42:06.440 --> 0:42:08.680 We did. We did. We had a we had an 0:42:08.719 --> 0:42:10.480 issue with one of the coolest missions I've read. It 0:42:10.560 --> 0:42:12.200 was like a top five in my career and it 0:42:12.320 --> 0:42:15.040 was definitely one of the top couple. While I ran, 0:42:15.600 --> 0:42:17.960 I think that's prohibited on a federal wilderness area, right, 0:42:18.000 --> 0:42:20.120 I think, so you can't. You can't ride a bike. 0:42:20.200 --> 0:42:21.799 You definitely can't can't ride a bike. I don't think 0:42:21.800 --> 0:42:24.960 you grow cannabis and cans and you know, kill kill 0:42:25.040 --> 0:42:28.080 golden trout and stuff like that. But yeah, we did. 0:42:28.160 --> 0:42:30.160 We got in some wilderness areas and you know, we 0:42:30.239 --> 0:42:32.839 were finding this stuff on grows um. We did one 0:42:32.880 --> 0:42:35.000 thing over on the eastern Sierra California, and there's a 0:42:35.440 --> 0:42:39.879 species of a subspecies of rocky Mountain big horn sheep 0:42:39.920 --> 0:42:42.640 called the Sierra Nevada horn sheep. They're all up there 0:42:42.680 --> 0:42:44.800 in that lone Pine area, you know, below Mount Whitney, 0:42:44.800 --> 0:42:46.520 and there's not a lot of them. They're about six 0:42:46.600 --> 0:42:49.440 hundred at their at their peak population. And something. Our 0:42:49.480 --> 0:42:51.840 agency had put millions and millions of dollars into, you know, 0:42:51.960 --> 0:42:56.239 doing hands and then in Seen we had just an 0:42:56.280 --> 0:42:59.480 excessively heavy winner. So those glacier snow packs were you know, 0:42:59.800 --> 0:43:02.160 they they stayed up a lot longer, and the sheep 0:43:02.200 --> 0:43:04.359 were pushed really low while they were getting pushed into 0:43:04.400 --> 0:43:07.359 grow country. And these guys, these cartel guys were coming 0:43:07.440 --> 0:43:09.439 up from l A and coming up on the Eastern Sierra, 0:43:09.640 --> 0:43:12.160 getting in that real pristine golden trout wilderness, you know, 0:43:12.280 --> 0:43:15.640 kind of above above timber level, and they were putting 0:43:15.680 --> 0:43:19.359 grows at like nine thousand feet. And we're up there, 0:43:19.480 --> 0:43:21.799 you know, doing scouts and recons and we find grow 0:43:21.920 --> 0:43:24.360 sites and it's you know, I mean, what is on 0:43:24.680 --> 0:43:27.879 what's the value of a big horn sheep. That's only 0:43:27.920 --> 0:43:30.040 six hundred of them in the world, you know. And 0:43:30.080 --> 0:43:32.440 then there's black bears, and so we're finding black bears poisoned. 0:43:32.480 --> 0:43:35.960 We actually found a massive, beautiful seventeen year old ram, 0:43:36.440 --> 0:43:41.120 you know, just the sentinel of that species. Lion killed. 0:43:41.760 --> 0:43:43.759 But the only the reason he was lion killed was 0:43:43.920 --> 0:43:45.719 he had ingested some of those poisons. He was only 0:43:45.760 --> 0:43:47.480 a hundred yards from a grow he found and he 0:43:47.560 --> 0:43:49.880 adjested some of those poisons and just walked off and 0:43:50.000 --> 0:43:51.640 was in the process of dying. So he was an 0:43:51.640 --> 0:43:54.120 easy target for a cat. So the cat got him, 0:43:54.280 --> 0:43:55.680 which you know where you see at the you know, 0:43:55.800 --> 0:43:58.920 end of a sheep's life, of course, but that cat's 0:43:58.920 --> 0:44:00.960 probably poison it did to do. We never found that cat, 0:44:01.320 --> 0:44:03.560 but when we started to see that, um, we said, hey, 0:44:03.760 --> 0:44:06.880 there's no just raidingness and you know, chasing guys around 0:44:06.880 --> 0:44:09.359 and cutting plants. This crap needs to get out of here. Now. 0:44:09.480 --> 0:44:12.480 Their sheep all over in this area, and you know, 0:44:12.600 --> 0:44:15.880 they're even more sensitive than like, you know, threat endangered 0:44:15.920 --> 0:44:18.080 steelheaded trout. There's far less of them, so we're we're 0:44:18.120 --> 0:44:20.920 talking a great species, you know, and just in that 0:44:21.000 --> 0:44:22.840 part and people wouldn't think that would be in California, 0:44:22.880 --> 0:44:25.120 but that was a California species in one area. So 0:44:25.440 --> 0:44:27.520 I learned a lot more about a different species of sheep. 0:44:27.600 --> 0:44:29.759 It was super cool being a big game hunter. I 0:44:29.840 --> 0:44:31.440 was just blown away. And we we spent you know, 0:44:31.560 --> 0:44:33.000 se a part part of a good month and a 0:44:33.000 --> 0:44:35.520 half up there doing missions like that. It was cool. 0:44:35.920 --> 0:44:38.080 How do how do most of the sites get reported? 0:44:38.120 --> 0:44:41.560 Our people? Do people out recreating. Find them? Do you 0:44:41.600 --> 0:44:43.560 guys find them yourself? Do you find them from the air. 0:44:44.040 --> 0:44:46.480 It's it's it's a mixed bag. We we find a 0:44:46.520 --> 0:44:48.600 bunch from the air. Um, we can do a lot 0:44:48.680 --> 0:44:51.319 with Google Earth. You know. Now Google it's gotten good enough. 0:44:51.400 --> 0:44:53.320 Just like when I'm learning a hunting route on a 0:44:53.440 --> 0:44:55.720 on a on a big game hunt. We're looking around 0:44:55.760 --> 0:44:58.080 and we're looking at six months ago, six months now 0:44:58.280 --> 0:45:01.719 in a traditional area. And really if you find a 0:45:01.800 --> 0:45:04.960 south facing slope sometimes other facing slopes where there's a 0:45:05.000 --> 0:45:07.920 water source, you know, through the summer, one out of 0:45:07.960 --> 0:45:09.480 two times if we go do a scout and we 0:45:09.520 --> 0:45:11.560 don't know anything's out there, we don't see anything from 0:45:11.560 --> 0:45:13.719 the air, there hasn't been a tip. It's maybe not 0:45:13.800 --> 0:45:15.719 even a historical grow site that's had grows there in 0:45:15.800 --> 0:45:18.759 the past. We just go, Okay, this area has a good, 0:45:18.840 --> 0:45:22.440 you know, annual stream and it might be really really trickling, 0:45:22.480 --> 0:45:25.680 but it's enough to you know, fortify marijuana, and it's 0:45:25.680 --> 0:45:27.880 in the right area and it's remote and it's never 0:45:27.960 --> 0:45:31.480 really been hit. Let's go scout it. It's hunting. Yeah, 0:45:31.560 --> 0:45:34.880 there it is exactly it was like to find it 0:45:34.960 --> 0:45:37.799 like this would be likely habitat not Yeah, one out 0:45:37.840 --> 0:45:40.120 of two times we will find a grow doing that. 0:45:40.440 --> 0:45:41.840 The guys that are in the game and it is 0:45:41.960 --> 0:45:43.520 I mean it's kind of fun. You're hunting it. You know, 0:45:43.640 --> 0:45:45.040 if you find it, you get you know, you get 0:45:45.080 --> 0:45:47.080 the Easter egg that day. You're like, oh, yeah, now 0:45:47.120 --> 0:45:52.000 we got a mission. But hunters, anglers hardcore you know, 0:45:52.280 --> 0:45:55.160 back country guys, hikers that get off the standard trail. 0:45:55.680 --> 0:45:58.399 You know, see man track signs off of a main 0:45:58.520 --> 0:46:01.200 hiking trail and wanted skill explore where does that go? 0:46:01.760 --> 0:46:04.200 Or they see that water you know that that semi 0:46:04.239 --> 0:46:06.719 annual blue line on the topo mapp or on their 0:46:06.760 --> 0:46:08.680 GPS screen and they go, you know, I just want 0:46:08.719 --> 0:46:10.799 to go check that out. I mean, I'd be hunting today. 0:46:10.800 --> 0:46:12.920 I'm scouting or putting a camera out on public land 0:46:13.000 --> 0:46:15.359 or whatever, um or whatever, and they're checking it out 0:46:15.400 --> 0:46:17.839 and they're like, oh, oh there's plants. Oh I hear. 0:46:18.080 --> 0:46:19.680 Oh that's a guy with an a K forty seven 0:46:19.840 --> 0:46:23.640 um tippy tolling out you know, weapon up and then 0:46:23.760 --> 0:46:27.439 calling us right away hopefully. So you mentioned, uh, there's 0:46:27.480 --> 0:46:29.839 some pictures in your book there are interesting just talking 0:46:29.840 --> 0:46:32.920 about man tracks. Do you guys found I know what 0:46:32.960 --> 0:46:34.680 you're gonna go to now. Yeah, you have like trail 0:46:34.760 --> 0:46:38.120 cam images of guys with carpet right strafed the booth, 0:46:38.160 --> 0:46:43.680 but also fake cattle tracks like a slip on cow print. Yeah, 0:46:43.840 --> 0:46:46.680 you strafed your boot. Yeah, so you can make like 0:46:46.760 --> 0:46:48.720 a cow print when you're going places you're not supposed 0:46:48.760 --> 0:46:50.640 to be. Yeah. And the funny part about that was 0:46:50.680 --> 0:46:52.640 we were getting duped for about a half a season. 0:46:52.760 --> 0:46:54.520 We were, you know, on a lot of public land 0:46:54.560 --> 0:46:57.920 like forest service lands, national forests. They're still catalyses, right, 0:46:58.239 --> 0:47:00.279 So these growers were realizing, hey, these you know, some 0:47:00.400 --> 0:47:02.440 of these teams are getting really good at finding our 0:47:02.480 --> 0:47:04.759 man tracks, even if we try to brush them. They 0:47:04.840 --> 0:47:06.680 know where you know, the water is, so they're kind 0:47:06.719 --> 0:47:09.399 of bisecting our tracks. So these guys would put those 0:47:09.480 --> 0:47:11.439 fake cow hoobs, you know, on the bottom of their feet, 0:47:11.480 --> 0:47:14.560 tie them off, go clumping around with the cattle, get 0:47:14.640 --> 0:47:17.040 up where the cattle are, then take them off, well, 0:47:17.120 --> 0:47:18.960 you know, a couple hundred yards into the dense stuff 0:47:18.960 --> 0:47:21.040 like you just mentioned, Steve, And then you know, we're 0:47:21.080 --> 0:47:23.440 looking around for man tracks, knowing there's a gross somewhere 0:47:23.520 --> 0:47:25.000 up there, and overseen his cattle tracks. And then we 0:47:25.080 --> 0:47:27.000 caught a guy and he had that in his backpack. 0:47:27.040 --> 0:47:29.719 When we are clever bastard, I'm like, I'll give him 0:47:29.719 --> 0:47:31.600 another a for effort. But yeah, and then the felt 0:47:31.640 --> 0:47:34.120 bottoms on the you know, on the feet, they're they're 0:47:34.440 --> 0:47:38.400 they're definitely dedicated and diligent at counter tracking and staying camouflage. 0:47:38.440 --> 0:47:41.680 These are hard to find. Um, you know, they're they're 0:47:41.680 --> 0:47:43.680 not maver, They're not half they're not half assen it 0:47:43.880 --> 0:47:48.719 by no means in terms of people finding sites. Are 0:47:48.800 --> 0:47:53.279 there areas where there's such a presence that a place 0:47:53.360 --> 0:47:57.319 gets a reputation among local hunters and anglers or other 0:47:57.480 --> 0:47:59.480 users where it winds up being that the idea is 0:47:59.520 --> 0:48:01.640 that it's not a good place to hang out. That's happened, 0:48:01.719 --> 0:48:04.239 especially in California. What we call it, we call that 0:48:04.440 --> 0:48:06.960 a d t O traditional grow area and DTO is 0:48:07.040 --> 0:48:10.440 just short for drug trafficking organization. It's basically an official 0:48:10.600 --> 0:48:12.800 term that you see in the book that's you know, 0:48:12.840 --> 0:48:16.000 a law enforcement term for basically cartail groups a majority 0:48:16.040 --> 0:48:19.000 of any drug traffing organization referring to a cartel group 0:48:19.120 --> 0:48:22.319 mostly out of Mexico, UM and we do have those 0:48:22.360 --> 0:48:25.520 traditional areas, and these guys will go in, they'll set 0:48:25.600 --> 0:48:27.840 up a grow and they'll not be successful at it 0:48:27.880 --> 0:48:30.239 two or three years, and then it gets caught, you know, 0:48:30.360 --> 0:48:32.640 we busted or some agency does. And then they go 0:48:32.719 --> 0:48:34.600 another half mile up the canyon on the same water 0:48:34.680 --> 0:48:37.879 source and they put another grow in because they're smart 0:48:37.960 --> 0:48:40.360 enough to know that the resources we put into finding 0:48:40.400 --> 0:48:41.920 these and the fact that we don't find near all 0:48:42.000 --> 0:48:44.399 of them, and there's only so much money, there's only 0:48:44.440 --> 0:48:46.399 so many guys dedicated to doing this type of work 0:48:46.400 --> 0:48:48.120 with all the other law enforcement stuff we gotta do, 0:48:48.520 --> 0:48:50.239 and we set it before. On the game ward in 0:48:50.320 --> 0:48:53.040 front is one example. You know, there's lessen four game warders, 0:48:53.080 --> 0:48:54.880 an example that I just came from my old home 0:48:54.960 --> 0:48:58.400 state of California and less and there's twelve of us 0:48:58.440 --> 0:49:01.760 on my specialized tactical unit with two canines. And granted 0:49:01.800 --> 0:49:04.480 those teams are getting bigger, but I think of all 0:49:04.480 --> 0:49:06.239 the other impacts to poaching we got to do with 0:49:06.239 --> 0:49:11.239 the attraitional stuff, commercial wildlife sales, black market ivory, you know, uh, 0:49:11.680 --> 0:49:14.320 you name it. The traditional poachers doing their thing. So 0:49:15.000 --> 0:49:17.200 these guys know by just doing the odds and playing 0:49:17.200 --> 0:49:21.040 the numbers. If their particular sector has ten or eleven 0:49:21.080 --> 0:49:22.799 grows out in the forest and they lose even eight 0:49:22.840 --> 0:49:24.600 of them, two or three them are gonna make them 0:49:24.600 --> 0:49:28.520 about thirty million dollars profit. And that gets to the 0:49:28.600 --> 0:49:31.200 attrition of, hey, if we put enough out there, we're 0:49:31.239 --> 0:49:32.719 not gonna get some of some of them are going 0:49:32.800 --> 0:49:34.840 to make it. Does I want to ask how valuable 0:49:34.840 --> 0:49:37.279 these are? Very? Yeah, they're They're valuable to the point 0:49:37.320 --> 0:49:40.279 where let's take an average growth site and this is 0:49:40.360 --> 0:49:42.080 this is the lower end of the average size save 0:49:42.160 --> 0:49:45.200 five thousand plants. You know, that's medium to medium small 0:49:45.360 --> 0:49:46.880 from what we were used to see. And I had 0:49:46.920 --> 0:49:49.480 some of the Silicon Valley foothills in northern California when 0:49:49.480 --> 0:49:52.680 we were statewide that you know, reached fifty thou plants 0:49:52.880 --> 0:49:55.120 and covered like two football fields and they were spread 0:49:55.160 --> 0:49:57.880 out over a mile. I mean crazy, But five thousand plants. 0:49:58.239 --> 0:50:01.239 It approximately two thousand dollars on the black market per 0:50:01.320 --> 0:50:04.239 pant plant. That's kind of conservative. And if you do 0:50:04.360 --> 0:50:06.400 all those zeros and multiply, you know, a five thousand 0:50:06.440 --> 0:50:08.840 plant grow is still up in the several millions of 0:50:08.920 --> 0:50:11.640 black market profits. If we don't interdict it. So not 0:50:11.719 --> 0:50:13.400 only is there a bunch of money involved, but our 0:50:13.400 --> 0:50:16.279 whole thing was, man, let's get this stuff, not let 0:50:16.360 --> 0:50:18.400 it get too big, because we don't want any of 0:50:18.440 --> 0:50:21.200 it harvested. And they dry it, they process it, they 0:50:21.239 --> 0:50:23.200 weigh it on scales. Actually in the grow site. They 0:50:23.239 --> 0:50:25.239 put in one pound bags and they take it into 0:50:25.320 --> 0:50:27.239 sea bag and it's ready for sale. They just gotta 0:50:27.239 --> 0:50:28.560 get it out of the woods, get it to their 0:50:28.560 --> 0:50:31.040 pickup car, get it to a distribution center, and then 0:50:31.040 --> 0:50:34.320 it's nationwide and we know it's all poison, carbo furience. 0:50:34.440 --> 0:50:38.200 It comes out ready to roll in their camps, very 0:50:38.480 --> 0:50:42.760 organized digital scales, you know, vacuum bags of one pound 0:50:43.040 --> 0:50:46.120 wrapping material. Um. It's ready to go and they hang it, 0:50:46.200 --> 0:50:49.800 they dry it, they trim it, um. They they're very efficient. 0:50:49.880 --> 0:50:51.920 It's like working away. It's like working away. It's like 0:50:51.920 --> 0:50:54.200 going into an indoor growth site and a dispensary, except 0:50:54.280 --> 0:50:56.879 it's you know, the bizarro version of that. It's nuts. 0:50:57.120 --> 0:50:58.960 I remember one time I was scouting for muskrats in 0:50:59.000 --> 0:51:00.960 Michigan one time and I was out cattail marsh and 0:51:01.000 --> 0:51:04.120 found a growth site that was it was all five 0:51:04.160 --> 0:51:07.200 gallon buckets. It was five gallon buckets laid out in 0:51:07.200 --> 0:51:10.960 a cattail marsh. I mean, you never like no one 0:51:11.000 --> 0:51:12.719 in a million years and find it if it wasn't 0:51:12.760 --> 0:51:14.960 for someone looking for muskrat hut. Yeah, you were going deep, 0:51:15.040 --> 0:51:16.800 man what I'm saying. But there's no one like camped 0:51:16.840 --> 0:51:19.440 out there but and looking at and and going through 0:51:19.440 --> 0:51:21.759 your book. I mean, it's like you guys can't take 0:51:21.800 --> 0:51:26.280 for granted people are living in tents and stuff, guarding, guarding, 0:51:26.400 --> 0:51:29.439 working Like a lot of these places have residents. Yeah, 0:51:29.560 --> 0:51:31.719 it's most of them. Do the big ones that get 0:51:31.800 --> 0:51:34.719 above ten thousand plants you can't like, and especially if 0:51:34.719 --> 0:51:36.960 they're way in to the back country. A grower crew 0:51:37.080 --> 0:51:39.480 can't like hike in all day and all night and 0:51:39.600 --> 0:51:41.560 tend it and water it and tend those plants before 0:51:41.600 --> 0:51:43.880 they start drying out or before they get impacted by 0:51:43.920 --> 0:51:46.719 animals or they gotta move for sunlight or whatever and 0:51:46.800 --> 0:51:48.759 then leave and then come back. They live in the 0:51:48.880 --> 0:51:52.080 site and these some of these complexes we've seen are 0:51:52.120 --> 0:51:54.800 so elaborate. I mean, you know, adobes cut into the 0:51:54.840 --> 0:51:57.560 side of hills and camouflage like little ho chi min tunnels, 0:51:57.560 --> 0:51:59.200 I mean there's a lot of make a lot of 0:51:59.239 --> 0:52:00.920 references to you know, had you know, some of my 0:52:01.000 --> 0:52:04.400 family veterans in the family and relatives, you know, Vietnam veterans. 0:52:04.520 --> 0:52:06.520 I'd show him pictures or videos and s somewhere or 0:52:06.560 --> 0:52:07.960 TV on this and see the pictures in the book, 0:52:08.000 --> 0:52:10.400 and go I thought I was back man on the 0:52:10.640 --> 0:52:12.840 you know, in order being on board this is crazy, 0:52:12.920 --> 0:52:14.839 And I go, yeah, and we we would literally walk 0:52:15.680 --> 0:52:18.200 five ft from this thing before we see something wrong 0:52:18.239 --> 0:52:20.040 in the brush on the wall and then it's dug 0:52:20.080 --> 0:52:22.360 out like a tunnel and it's you know, like a 0:52:22.400 --> 0:52:25.000 hooch that houses four guys. There's guns in it, there's 0:52:25.040 --> 0:52:28.760 a kitchen that's all hidden um processing areas. Like wild 0:52:28.920 --> 0:52:32.520 it's crazy, But explain the alluded this alluded to this earlier. 0:52:32.719 --> 0:52:35.640 Explain the like then, like the hell is the pungee 0:52:36.719 --> 0:52:41.040 pit four? I mean, who, like, how's that? That's not 0:52:41.120 --> 0:52:44.840 really gonna save your growth site? No? No? See, like 0:52:45.320 --> 0:52:46.840 so a game ward and falls in and gets like 0:52:46.880 --> 0:52:48.920 impaled on sharp sticks. I mean do they think that 0:52:48.960 --> 0:52:50.960 then everybody's just gonna leave and not come back. Yeah, 0:52:51.440 --> 0:52:52.800 I mean, it's like it doesn't make any sense. It 0:52:53.040 --> 0:52:55.560 doesn't make any sense other than you look at the 0:52:55.600 --> 0:52:57.839 mindset of the of the criminal you're dealing with it. Hey, 0:52:58.239 --> 0:53:00.839 someone's coming into my growth site and I don't want 0:53:00.880 --> 0:53:02.680 an animal, I don't want a person. I don't care 0:53:02.719 --> 0:53:04.040 what harm I do to them, but I'm gonna do 0:53:04.080 --> 0:53:06.120 anything i can harm them to such a level that 0:53:06.200 --> 0:53:09.319 I'm going to impede as much progress as they make 0:53:09.880 --> 0:53:12.040 in their element of what their mission is. So when 0:53:12.080 --> 0:53:14.680 we started to see pungee pits like and that picture 0:53:14.760 --> 0:53:17.239 was from a national park, that was that was you 0:53:17.320 --> 0:53:23.120 know Park National Park, Shasta County, And that was that 0:53:23.239 --> 0:53:25.520 was Brian Boyd, one of our premier canaine handler, and 0:53:25.600 --> 0:53:27.640 canine Phoebe, and a bunch of guys from Shaftsa County 0:53:27.680 --> 0:53:29.799 Sheriff's Office. Um, and that was when we had our 0:53:29.800 --> 0:53:31.680 full time team. So we were up there. We were 0:53:31.680 --> 0:53:33.799 all over the place and one of our point guys, 0:53:33.840 --> 0:53:35.880 a really good guy from Schafta County Sheriff's Office that 0:53:35.920 --> 0:53:39.160 we work with, almost stepped in that. And our canine Phoebe, 0:53:39.239 --> 0:53:41.399 because she's been trained to detect so many other sense 0:53:41.480 --> 0:53:44.200 our apprehension guru dog, she sniffed up on the band 0:53:44.239 --> 0:53:46.839 poisons and and alerted because that you know, that tarp 0:53:46.920 --> 0:53:48.759 was so camouflage, he was gonna walk right into it. 0:53:48.880 --> 0:53:51.160 And what they're doing on those pungee pits, like in 0:53:51.239 --> 0:53:53.480 Vietnam they used to, you know, the Vietcong would dig 0:53:53.520 --> 0:53:57.480 the pungee pit for our soul, human human exprement exactly. 0:53:57.560 --> 0:53:59.360 And then what these guys do is they take the 0:53:59.400 --> 0:54:01.680 band poise and they take the pink down. But but 0:54:01.960 --> 0:54:04.120 but they play that same game. Yeah, but track what 0:54:04.200 --> 0:54:07.200 I'm saying, where is the wind? There's no win. Where 0:54:07.280 --> 0:54:09.800 is the wind? And maiming or killing a person like that, 0:54:10.000 --> 0:54:12.800 it's just viciousness. There's no game because it's not like 0:54:12.920 --> 0:54:14.960 you're like, oh, we got him, now we'll continue to 0:54:15.000 --> 0:54:17.000 grow weed for ten years. Yeah, it's like, you know what, 0:54:17.160 --> 0:54:20.239 we hurt this guy, we slowed down his operation, We 0:54:20.320 --> 0:54:21.800 got a piece of him, and we're going to just 0:54:21.880 --> 0:54:24.760 move out. The other reason they put kind of bizarre 0:54:24.760 --> 0:54:27.040 because like, yeah, and the only other advantage they have 0:54:27.160 --> 0:54:28.839 is if you think of they put those pungee pits 0:54:28.960 --> 0:54:31.240 just like that the little bear trap with the tuna 0:54:31.320 --> 0:54:33.600 can or snares. They put him on the edge of 0:54:33.600 --> 0:54:35.040 the grow or on the edge of a camp. So 0:54:35.360 --> 0:54:38.040 if a team falls into that, they're not those guys 0:54:38.040 --> 0:54:40.200 are gonna lose the grow, but they're probably gonna get 0:54:40.200 --> 0:54:44.040 away because now we've got it, just went in and 0:54:44.080 --> 0:54:45.960 we formed a perimeter. We're looking for guns. We're not 0:54:45.960 --> 0:54:47.600 going to continue to assault that grow, and if we do, 0:54:47.680 --> 0:54:50.359 it's gonna be you know, several minutes, if not hours later. 0:54:50.840 --> 0:54:52.800 And what's gonna happen now is those guys have escaped 0:54:52.840 --> 0:54:54.759 trails and they they're good at what they do, and 0:54:54.800 --> 0:54:56.839 they get not gonna save the site, but you might 0:54:57.040 --> 0:54:58.920 they might buy you the time to go and and 0:54:59.000 --> 0:55:00.440 we like to catch him because as we know, they're 0:55:00.480 --> 0:55:02.040 so vetted, they're gonna get out of one grow and 0:55:02.080 --> 0:55:03.839 they're gonna be thrown in another one within a day. 0:55:04.040 --> 0:55:07.280 It's that, you know, it's like a journeyman moving around 0:55:07.480 --> 0:55:10.680 on a contracting job. Okay, you're not that needed here, 0:55:10.800 --> 0:55:12.560 but you know we need you twenty miles to the 0:55:12.600 --> 0:55:14.640 north on another one that we're doing. It's that same 0:55:14.719 --> 0:55:20.440 mindset model. Tell everyone about bringing dogs into this. I 0:55:20.560 --> 0:55:22.480 love it when you talk dogs. Man coming in the 0:55:22.560 --> 0:55:24.319 office and all your dogs. I get a little yellow 0:55:24.360 --> 0:55:27.120 lab that's retired as a companion canine. You know, she's nine. 0:55:27.200 --> 0:55:29.320 She was a companion canine with me at work for 0:55:29.920 --> 0:55:32.320 for six years and she wasn't gonna buy any cartel growers' 0:55:32.400 --> 0:55:35.440 gonna lick him to death, but she could sniff it out. Um. 0:55:35.719 --> 0:55:39.080 But I'm gonna talk about the dog development, which really 0:55:39.120 --> 0:55:42.080 started completely from scratch. So you know, you have you 0:55:42.160 --> 0:55:44.160 have law enforcement dogs that are working in cities, and 0:55:44.200 --> 0:55:46.439 they're working out of cars, and they're you know, they're 0:55:46.719 --> 0:55:49.280 very close to back up and doing traditional law enforcement 0:55:49.360 --> 0:55:51.719 canine stuff and those dogs are amazing save our lives 0:55:51.760 --> 0:55:54.040 all the time. And then you got war dogs. You 0:55:54.080 --> 0:55:56.160 know that My Seal Team buddies have worked around, you know, 0:55:56.280 --> 0:55:59.280 and they evolved that whole canine program. I mean relatively recently, 0:55:59.320 --> 0:56:02.839 even our military special forces guys. Um, it's been about 0:56:02.840 --> 0:56:05.080 a twenty year process. Especially the last ten years, it's 0:56:05.080 --> 0:56:07.480 really changed. We were the same way on met but 0:56:07.560 --> 0:56:09.480 we were having to take kind of a tell you 0:56:09.600 --> 0:56:11.719 what Matt means, Matt, I didn't even do that. Yeah, 0:56:11.760 --> 0:56:14.279 we're the marijuana Enforcement team, and the Marijuan Enforcement Team 0:56:14.360 --> 0:56:18.520 was the official term of the tactical unit that we 0:56:18.640 --> 0:56:22.120 built a pilot program out and I hand picked all 0:56:22.200 --> 0:56:24.560 the right guys from across the state to do just that. 0:56:24.920 --> 0:56:27.400 We weren't doing traditional work anymore, of the hunting, the fishing, 0:56:27.960 --> 0:56:31.080 you know, the traditional coaching stuff we're um chief might 0:56:31.160 --> 0:56:34.360 carry on. Was so you know, uh concerned with this issue, 0:56:34.440 --> 0:56:36.200 and he believed in us enough to say, Okay, we're 0:56:36.200 --> 0:56:38.000 gonna take some heat on this politically, and it's not 0:56:38.200 --> 0:56:40.040 you know, might be met a little weird in inter 0:56:40.160 --> 0:56:42.719 outer agency, but I want to test it. So you 0:56:42.800 --> 0:56:46.280 guys build it and we'll do three months in summer. 0:56:48.160 --> 0:56:49.840 I'll get to the dogs. But this this is relevant 0:56:49.880 --> 0:56:52.719 if you bear with me. And in six weeks into 0:56:52.800 --> 0:56:55.000 this thing, since we weren't just at Hawk, all over 0:56:55.080 --> 0:56:58.160 the state hodgepodge in it with different agencies, suddenly that 0:56:58.280 --> 0:57:00.279 we the training was better. You know, I got better 0:57:00.280 --> 0:57:02.280 equipment for the guys. We were all becoming a cohesive 0:57:02.360 --> 0:57:05.719 unit like any small unit in special ops does. UM. 0:57:06.080 --> 0:57:08.000 We got the support and the funding to go out 0:57:08.280 --> 0:57:10.399 and be boundary lists so we didn't have to worry about, 0:57:10.400 --> 0:57:12.840 oh now I'm into Northern California boundary. It's not my district. 0:57:13.200 --> 0:57:15.600 I can't go into this. You know, this Captain's territory. 0:57:16.000 --> 0:57:18.360 Now we were just working four headquarters for the chief 0:57:18.800 --> 0:57:20.760 and going anywhere we needed to, just like a small 0:57:20.840 --> 0:57:24.120 unit should be, you know. And in six weeks we 0:57:24.200 --> 0:57:27.680 were documenting everything. We're far safer, We're catching a bunch 0:57:27.760 --> 0:57:29.560 more guys. Our dogs were tearing it up. We had 0:57:29.600 --> 0:57:32.320 two great dogs, and we thought were just running out 0:57:32.320 --> 0:57:34.760 of money, and myself and uh, the captain that co 0:57:34.880 --> 0:57:36.440 founded the team with me, we're meeting with all the 0:57:36.520 --> 0:57:38.360 chiefs to like beg for money and can we keep going. 0:57:38.400 --> 0:57:39.960 We want to prove ourselves by the end of summer, 0:57:39.960 --> 0:57:42.280 and they said, hey, we've been talking before you guys 0:57:42.320 --> 0:57:44.720 got here. We're done with that. We need this full 0:57:44.800 --> 0:57:49.440 time by January one, So build it. Get the testing protocol. 0:57:50.080 --> 0:57:52.479 It's open to everybody, but obviously we have some vetted 0:57:52.520 --> 0:57:54.720 guys that are really good at it. Test them objectively, 0:57:54.800 --> 0:57:57.320 and we had to basically build the first special operations 0:57:57.400 --> 0:58:00.640 force in fish and wildlife in our hunter to your history. 0:58:01.160 --> 0:58:03.520 Test the guys and know, hey, you're leaving patrol. You 0:58:03.600 --> 0:58:05.840 know it's one way and if if it succeeds, you're great. 0:58:06.480 --> 0:58:09.360 If this thing fails, well you're gonna go back to patrol. 0:58:09.480 --> 0:58:11.480 But it's going to be different. You know, I don't 0:58:11.520 --> 0:58:13.600 know how welcome you're gonna be. And um, we just 0:58:13.680 --> 0:58:16.400 hit the ground running from until I retired. Now it's 0:58:16.440 --> 0:58:18.560 running great, And it was just it was amazing how 0:58:18.680 --> 0:58:21.760 much stuff we were not documenting, how much poisons we 0:58:21.840 --> 0:58:24.120 were taking out that wasn't getting logged to know the amount, 0:58:24.240 --> 0:58:27.880 how much hundreds of miles of black polly pipe. Steve guys, 0:58:28.520 --> 0:58:31.240 you know, I'm when I retired. I mean, you weren't 0:58:31.240 --> 0:58:34.320 you weren't you weren't cataloging You're not enough? Yeah, no, 0:58:34.760 --> 0:58:37.680 I mean everybody, everybody was doing a little different because 0:58:37.800 --> 0:58:40.000 like like Brian Boyd with Canine Phoebe, he'd be working 0:58:40.000 --> 0:58:42.680 with Shasta all the time, apprehending a bunch of guys 0:58:42.720 --> 0:58:45.600 with you know, with that team, tearing a bunch of plants, 0:58:45.640 --> 0:58:48.040 taking a bunch of poisons out, but nobody was doing 0:58:48.080 --> 0:58:50.440 the documentation that was getting back to us. And then 0:58:50.480 --> 0:58:52.520 I was doing my thing with Santa Clair County Sheriff's 0:58:52.520 --> 0:58:55.200 Office and I was, you know, honing tactics with them, 0:58:55.400 --> 0:58:58.160 and we were developing things without dogs at that time, 0:58:58.640 --> 0:59:00.840 but I wasn't documented anything. I was along for their 0:59:00.920 --> 0:59:03.280 ride because we weren't running missions. So when we started 0:59:03.280 --> 0:59:05.240 as a full time team, we were running missions, we 0:59:05.320 --> 0:59:07.520 were equals if we were using other agencies or being 0:59:07.600 --> 0:59:11.880 with them and are Our different approach was we're three 0:59:11.920 --> 0:59:15.040 pronged team. Okay, Met's gonna arrest and apprehend, you know, 0:59:15.240 --> 0:59:18.280 as aggressively as we can safely with dogs without dogs. 0:59:18.320 --> 0:59:19.920 We're gonna hunt these guys. We're not going to just 0:59:20.000 --> 0:59:22.120 go in and fly the helicopter in and drop in 0:59:22.200 --> 0:59:24.880 scarum away and cut plants. Secondly, we're gonna cut plants 0:59:25.040 --> 0:59:27.000 safely if we can. Now we're aware of the poisons. 0:59:27.400 --> 0:59:29.840 Sometimes we couldn't cut them because they're too toxically tainted. 0:59:29.880 --> 0:59:31.960 They need like fourteen days just to like dissipate a 0:59:32.000 --> 0:59:34.120 little before we can go in with the nitro gloves, 0:59:34.400 --> 0:59:37.400 the face masks, the proper protection equipment to even touch 0:59:37.440 --> 0:59:39.720 this stuff, so we don't contaminate everything. So we take 0:59:39.760 --> 0:59:42.360 the plants out. That's phase two. But phase three that 0:59:42.440 --> 0:59:44.960 we would push on any agency we would help on 0:59:45.080 --> 0:59:46.840 a mission, if Met was going to be involved, if 0:59:46.880 --> 0:59:48.720 I was going to send my guys there is you 0:59:48.760 --> 0:59:50.960 guys gotta help us reclammate. You gotta help us clean 0:59:51.040 --> 0:59:54.000 up the damages, restore the waterways. I want the wildlife 0:59:54.040 --> 0:59:56.240 content to be pristine when we leave. And if we 0:59:56.360 --> 0:59:58.160 can't do it that day, get it on the books 0:59:58.200 --> 1:00:00.120 to do it in the in the near future. Or 1:00:00.480 --> 1:00:02.120 if we don't have a helicopter that day to pull 1:00:02.160 --> 1:00:04.560 it all out, Steve, then what we're gonna do. We're 1:00:04.560 --> 1:00:07.560 gonna bag it in really really heavy contractor bags. Get 1:00:07.600 --> 1:00:09.240 it in an area where it can of road into 1:00:09.280 --> 1:00:11.640 the stream, you know, through a year, through a winter 1:00:11.840 --> 1:00:14.000 with all that fishery and all those wildlife drinking off 1:00:14.000 --> 1:00:16.480 those water sources, and we'll come back with a chopper. 1:00:16.800 --> 1:00:19.200 You guys even came back with mules. We came back 1:00:19.240 --> 1:00:22.880 with mules. Yeah, we had some wilderness areas or we 1:00:22.920 --> 1:00:25.240 didn't have a blade, you know. We Funding was always 1:00:25.240 --> 1:00:28.400 an issue because the most expensive part about these missions 1:00:28.480 --> 1:00:31.480 is a cleanup. So it gets to Horsemen's expensive, very 1:00:31.520 --> 1:00:35.320 expensive because of man manpower, equipment, manpower and equipment, you know, 1:00:35.360 --> 1:00:37.880 and you need a helicopter to pull this stuff out, 1:00:37.920 --> 1:00:39.080 and a lot of times you need a lot of 1:00:39.120 --> 1:00:41.080 blade time because if it's a big grow, you're gonna 1:00:41.120 --> 1:00:44.800 have you know, ten eleven, twelve, sometimes twenty loads of 1:00:44.880 --> 1:00:46.920 six pound loads of a net and you're gonna have 1:00:47.000 --> 1:00:49.080 to fly it to you know, a disposal area, you're 1:00:49.080 --> 1:00:51.920 gonna have to come back. So it's a big cost 1:00:52.160 --> 1:00:54.040 and a big cost that we're constantly reaching out to, 1:00:54.280 --> 1:00:58.640 you know, conservation friends to help us out um foundations, 1:00:58.920 --> 1:01:01.080 UM that we we have, Uh, well you go get 1:01:01.080 --> 1:01:04.120 outside of money to do cleanups, we have to, huh. 1:01:05.040 --> 1:01:06.320 One of the one of the groups that we've been 1:01:06.360 --> 1:01:09.440 working with, there's a really good group called the California 1:01:09.600 --> 1:01:12.760 um Wildlife Offers Foundation, And it's like you know, ex 1:01:12.880 --> 1:01:16.400 chiefs and you know, affluent donors that are conservation patriotically 1:01:16.440 --> 1:01:19.280 oriented and they formed a foundation about ten years ago 1:01:19.400 --> 1:01:22.040 and just bring money in for the oh crap moments 1:01:22.320 --> 1:01:25.240 like you know, we lose a canine to death and 1:01:25.520 --> 1:01:27.320 you know, a canine and all the training that goes 1:01:27.320 --> 1:01:30.920 into a canine, I mean, that's that's at endeavor. And 1:01:31.000 --> 1:01:34.120 then the tactical gear our team needed, night vision, you know, 1:01:34.280 --> 1:01:36.440 battle helmets. I mean I built a sniper team that 1:01:36.480 --> 1:01:38.720 had never been built before. So you know, you start 1:01:38.760 --> 1:01:42.120 getting into weapons like that besides normal patrol weapons, and 1:01:42.160 --> 1:01:44.520 there's no budget for it, and it's already unconventional anyway. 1:01:44.960 --> 1:01:46.840 We had to get outside sources to fund that, and 1:01:46.880 --> 1:01:48.880 we had a lot of good help on the canine front, 1:01:49.040 --> 1:01:51.680 especially with our new dogs and keeping our dogs safe 1:01:51.960 --> 1:01:54.560 and that equipment we needed um from our Wildlife Officers 1:01:54.640 --> 1:01:57.400 Foundation to good effect in some other places too. Yeah, 1:01:57.520 --> 1:01:59.920 So get into the dog like how you use the dogs. 1:02:00.000 --> 1:02:03.560 It's pretty interesting the dogs. It is risky for the 1:02:03.640 --> 1:02:06.760 dog on a couple levels. And and as you probably 1:02:06.800 --> 1:02:09.040 notice from the book, we've we've honed tactics a little 1:02:09.080 --> 1:02:11.040 bit because our dogs are starting to get hurt because 1:02:11.080 --> 1:02:14.400 these guys, these cartel growers, are aware of what our 1:02:14.440 --> 1:02:17.640 dogs can do. Um. The dogs are trained to be 1:02:17.760 --> 1:02:20.720 as quiet as they can go in with us. Um. 1:02:21.000 --> 1:02:22.919 If we see that they have a weapon and they're 1:02:22.920 --> 1:02:24.920 pulling that weapon, we're going to deploy a dog. We're 1:02:24.960 --> 1:02:26.360 not going to try to take that guy head on 1:02:26.480 --> 1:02:29.040 and get into a gun fight if we can avoid it. Um. 1:02:29.160 --> 1:02:32.560 We had had I think we had about four gun 1:02:32.640 --> 1:02:35.600 fights up until we really got the dogs honed, and 1:02:35.640 --> 1:02:38.400 they were happening more and more frequently because a lot 1:02:38.440 --> 1:02:40.160 of times, not every time, fortunately, but a lot of 1:02:40.160 --> 1:02:41.760 times these guys don't want to give up, even if 1:02:41.800 --> 1:02:44.080 they have a whole tactical unit of highly trained officers 1:02:44.160 --> 1:02:46.880 on them with big weaponry. So they're keeping their shotgun up, 1:02:46.880 --> 1:02:49.120 they're pulling that pistol, and then we have to we 1:02:49.240 --> 1:02:50.840 have to do what we gotta do to stay safe 1:02:50.920 --> 1:02:53.480 and you know, solve the problem. Um. But it was 1:02:53.520 --> 1:02:56.480 always close calls, close calls, close calls. In two thousand 1:02:56.560 --> 1:02:58.760 five in the Silicon Valley foothills and August fifth, the 1:02:58.800 --> 1:03:01.200 two thousand five a date you know, burned in Forever. 1:03:01.840 --> 1:03:04.000 That was the first officer involve shooting we had in 1:03:04.080 --> 1:03:06.720 a cartel grow site, and it was the first officer 1:03:06.800 --> 1:03:08.600 in the nation that had ever been hurt or hit 1:03:08.760 --> 1:03:10.880 by one of these growers. It happened to be my 1:03:11.040 --> 1:03:13.720 young game ward and partner that I had not only 1:03:13.760 --> 1:03:15.520 trained in the academy, but he had come on to 1:03:15.640 --> 1:03:18.840 be a partner in my squad in Santa Clara County 1:03:18.880 --> 1:03:20.520 and one of the best game wardens we've ever had. 1:03:20.960 --> 1:03:23.560 Great guy, and he wanted to go on a raid 1:03:23.760 --> 1:03:26.080 and I'm like, absolutely, I'm working with the Sheriff's office. 1:03:26.160 --> 1:03:29.240 This was the pre met days, right, this is going 1:03:29.280 --> 1:03:32.080 way back, and we're hiking up in there, and it 1:03:32.200 --> 1:03:34.040 was harvest time and it was an area they've been 1:03:34.080 --> 1:03:36.600 going eight to ten years a growers from working in 1:03:36.880 --> 1:03:40.280 a remote area of public land right above the Silicon Valley, 1:03:40.320 --> 1:03:43.440 the tech capital there, and um, the guys were the 1:03:43.520 --> 1:03:45.840 growers were there and they had armed gunmen just defending 1:03:45.880 --> 1:03:48.800 the grow during harvest time. I mean hardened cartel guys 1:03:48.840 --> 1:03:51.360 from down south in full camo s kss a k 1:03:51.640 --> 1:03:54.960 S pistols where all the patron st monikers on their 1:03:55.000 --> 1:03:58.440 hats and belt buckles and and and tactically they were 1:03:58.440 --> 1:04:00.200 set up right in the site. You know, they used 1:04:00.200 --> 1:04:02.080 the early morning light to their advantage. They had a 1:04:02.120 --> 1:04:04.919 little dugout parapet that they could kind of hide behind 1:04:05.400 --> 1:04:08.240 a brush wall. And you know, we're looking, we're scanning, 1:04:08.280 --> 1:04:10.479 we're doing everything we can. We're going through this grow site. 1:04:11.000 --> 1:04:13.640 And we hear one shot ring out and they only 1:04:13.680 --> 1:04:16.520 got one shot off, fortunately because we all reacted the 1:04:16.520 --> 1:04:19.080 way we needed to before the gunfight got any further. 1:04:19.760 --> 1:04:22.720 But sadly, that one shot hit my partner through both 1:04:22.760 --> 1:04:24.720 of his legs. So he was hit with an AK 1:04:24.880 --> 1:04:27.400 forty seven round through his right leg and then it 1:04:27.480 --> 1:04:29.240 exited his left leg. So he was bleeding out of 1:04:29.280 --> 1:04:32.000 four holes for the better part of three hours. And 1:04:32.120 --> 1:04:34.560 because no agency had ever been attacked like that from 1:04:34.600 --> 1:04:38.200 these guys, air support wasn't really coordinated with their administration. 1:04:38.400 --> 1:04:40.200 No one knew who would come and help us because 1:04:40.240 --> 1:04:43.440 he couldn't hike out, so we needed helicopter lift. Some 1:04:43.640 --> 1:04:46.280 helicopter teams wouldn't come in because they said, hey, that's 1:04:46.280 --> 1:04:48.320 a hot zone. Man, We're not a military bird, you know, 1:04:48.400 --> 1:04:50.720 We're like, we're we're we're a fire you know, we're 1:04:50.720 --> 1:04:53.160 a califire reputed and we're a hue and you know, 1:04:53.240 --> 1:04:54.760 if that's not a secure site and you just guys 1:04:54.760 --> 1:04:56.280 saw it, he's gonna shoot us out of the air. 1:04:56.280 --> 1:05:00.360 We're gonna more casualties, which made sense. But my partner brother, 1:05:00.640 --> 1:05:02.640 you know, is bleeding out to death and he's fighting 1:05:03.040 --> 1:05:05.760 three hours and he's fighting shock, and he was all 1:05:06.000 --> 1:05:08.960 all all fight, you know, he wasn't gonna quit um. 1:05:09.160 --> 1:05:10.480 And and it was his it was his will to 1:05:10.560 --> 1:05:12.000 survive and his will to stay in the game that 1:05:12.080 --> 1:05:15.840 really kept him alive. But we realized that day when 1:05:15.880 --> 1:05:17.720 he got here, rescued and finally made it out as 1:05:17.760 --> 1:05:20.640 he was going into shock um and survived and recovered 1:05:20.680 --> 1:05:23.640 and actually is a lieutenant now in California doing great work, 1:05:23.960 --> 1:05:27.320 Thank heaven. Um. You know, just just we we really 1:05:27.360 --> 1:05:28.800 looked out on that one, or we probably wouldn't be 1:05:28.800 --> 1:05:30.240 having this conversation. I don't know that we would have 1:05:30.280 --> 1:05:32.480 continued to do this work. Like you said, what are 1:05:32.520 --> 1:05:36.400 you doing? Um that right, and then told me there's 1:05:36.400 --> 1:05:38.480 got to be a better way to detect these guys, 1:05:38.600 --> 1:05:40.919 you know, and um, certainly we can go face to face. 1:05:41.000 --> 1:05:44.520 We can do that. And that was right before literally 1:05:44.600 --> 1:05:46.760 like a couple of months before we started doing an 1:05:46.760 --> 1:05:51.400 apprehension Canaine program. And that was before Brian Boyd Warren, 1:05:51.440 --> 1:05:53.439 buddy of mine and a longtime teammate who I brought 1:05:53.480 --> 1:05:56.000 into met when we started. That's when him and Knaine 1:05:56.040 --> 1:05:58.080 Phoebe were made it up when she was just about 1:05:58.080 --> 1:06:00.480 a year and a half old and they had to 1:06:00.520 --> 1:06:03.680 kind of trial and error these apprehension tactics are going 1:06:03.720 --> 1:06:05.800 in and keeping her quiet and you know, it's hot, 1:06:05.920 --> 1:06:08.200 we're going on long hikes, and then how do you 1:06:08.280 --> 1:06:10.760 identify a bad guy not on an open field and 1:06:10.800 --> 1:06:13.040 a concrete parking letter, in an alley or in a 1:06:13.120 --> 1:06:17.160 building right or near a car, but through all that 1:06:17.280 --> 1:06:20.040 brush and you said it before, Steve, how choked up 1:06:20.080 --> 1:06:22.880 that terrain gets. That's of our missions. So you guys, 1:06:22.960 --> 1:06:25.400 what we're dealing with is we're going in and she's 1:06:25.440 --> 1:06:28.680 got to see what that target is. We'll usually see 1:06:28.720 --> 1:06:31.480 the gun we're hiding, we're landing in wait, just typical 1:06:31.560 --> 1:06:35.320 hunting situation. And then um, when we go to make 1:06:35.360 --> 1:06:37.240 that announcement, we gotta get close enough that we don't 1:06:37.280 --> 1:06:40.400 lose our suspect. And we got to deploy her knowing 1:06:40.440 --> 1:06:42.560 that we got to get on that dog quickly because 1:06:42.640 --> 1:06:44.200 if he pulls a gun or a knife or anything 1:06:44.240 --> 1:06:45.720 on the dog, the dog is gonna get hurt, or 1:06:45.720 --> 1:06:47.840 we're gonna get shot at. Or you're creeping. You like 1:06:47.960 --> 1:06:50.120 creep up on the people. We creep up on the people. 1:06:50.280 --> 1:06:54.080 We spent something We have literally spent five hours moving 1:06:54.160 --> 1:06:57.520 twenty yards and watching them and just like hear him 1:06:57.600 --> 1:07:00.760 talking working, you're here talking working or their process and 1:07:00.840 --> 1:07:02.400 or they aren't quite up out of camp and you 1:07:02.440 --> 1:07:04.760 know you don't want to, you know, break cover for safety, 1:07:05.160 --> 1:07:07.120 just just things that you naturally got to do. And 1:07:07.520 --> 1:07:08.920 there's been a lot. How tight do you like to 1:07:08.960 --> 1:07:11.280 get for you spring the trap, you know, you know, buddy. 1:07:11.320 --> 1:07:14.200 It all depends guys on on on venue. It all depends. 1:07:14.240 --> 1:07:16.840 One time you guys, you guys were looking through their 1:07:16.880 --> 1:07:20.240 tent window. Yeah, yeah, one time. I mean literally, it's 1:07:20.280 --> 1:07:23.680 been good morning, not coffee I'm delivering, you know, and 1:07:23.720 --> 1:07:26.880 you're just right there. And sometimes it's been open field. 1:07:26.920 --> 1:07:28.840 You're in some sort of meadow, there's a processing area, 1:07:28.880 --> 1:07:31.720 and you know that they're getting Nancy, the dogs getting Nancy. 1:07:31.760 --> 1:07:34.320 And sometimes it's you know, fifty yards. Well it needs 1:07:34.320 --> 1:07:36.160 to be close, It really needs to be close because 1:07:36.200 --> 1:07:38.040 they have the advantage. I mean, they know their terrain. 1:07:38.560 --> 1:07:41.720 They have escaped trails, they walk it morning, noon and night. 1:07:41.800 --> 1:07:44.040 They know every sound. They know where the animal bird 1:07:44.080 --> 1:07:46.320 sounds are. They know when something makes us sound like 1:07:46.480 --> 1:07:49.520 you know from a good hunt, that that you know, 1:07:49.600 --> 1:07:51.840 that blue jay, that that stellar j that just burns 1:07:51.920 --> 1:07:54.400 us down, you know, or it's a raven here in Montana, 1:07:54.480 --> 1:07:56.520 a pine square or something like, oh man on that 1:07:56.640 --> 1:07:59.920 white tail and it goes a little sucker, same thing. 1:08:00.360 --> 1:08:02.800 They know every sound. And so nine times out of ten, 1:08:02.840 --> 1:08:04.760 if a team isn't really honed at taking their time 1:08:04.800 --> 1:08:07.800 and taking a long, slow, tactical stock in they're burned 1:08:07.800 --> 1:08:09.280 before they even get to the grow a gig to grow, 1:08:09.320 --> 1:08:11.480 and you know there's a pot of food cooking, there's tracks. 1:08:12.120 --> 1:08:13.920 You know, you don't see guns usually take them with them, 1:08:13.920 --> 1:08:16.760 but that's all they take. And so it took a 1:08:16.840 --> 1:08:18.560 lot of years to go, okay, how are we This 1:08:18.680 --> 1:08:21.280 is a real this is a very formal labissary to catch. 1:08:21.479 --> 1:08:23.519 And then the challenge came up like a hunt of 1:08:23.600 --> 1:08:25.719 a you know, real nice animal. You're spending your lifetime 1:08:25.760 --> 1:08:29.200 going after um and and that experience, and so we 1:08:29.240 --> 1:08:31.160 would get a little more honed. Okay, well that was 1:08:31.160 --> 1:08:32.600 a little too far to deploy the dog, or a 1:08:32.600 --> 1:08:34.760 little too far to make an announcement and announce and 1:08:34.880 --> 1:08:36.880 you know from cover and now we're gonna that was 1:08:36.880 --> 1:08:38.720 a little too close because you know, we got him 1:08:38.760 --> 1:08:40.240 before he got us, but it was you know, kind 1:08:40.240 --> 1:08:43.559 of oh crap distance. So it just veries a little 1:08:43.560 --> 1:08:46.960 bits close. And so the dog mostly just goes in 1:08:47.160 --> 1:08:53.080 to take down the guy that like, that's his main job. 1:08:53.320 --> 1:08:55.320 That's one of the two primaries. And that's I'm glad 1:08:55.320 --> 1:08:56.679 you brought that up because I would not I would 1:08:56.680 --> 1:08:58.600 have forgot to cover that. But the other thing is 1:08:58.800 --> 1:09:01.439 our apprehension do ugs you know are honestly some of 1:09:01.520 --> 1:09:03.479 the some of the finest. And we have our other 1:09:03.560 --> 1:09:08.360 agencies now local agency sheriff's departments and um, federal agencies 1:09:08.400 --> 1:09:10.240 that have incredible dogs that we work with. The whole 1:09:10.280 --> 1:09:13.040 dog thing is really kind of morphed, especially the last decade. 1:09:13.080 --> 1:09:16.439 But um, they're not just going in there to apprehend, 1:09:16.439 --> 1:09:19.799 They're going in to smell. Because like Phoebe is an example, 1:09:20.200 --> 1:09:22.240 is a great detection dog as much as she was 1:09:22.280 --> 1:09:26.240 an apprehension dog. Detection of what, detection of marijuana, detection 1:09:26.320 --> 1:09:28.920 of how they smell being in the woods that long, 1:09:29.080 --> 1:09:30.920 and the food they eat, they have a distinct smell 1:09:31.479 --> 1:09:35.080 because they don't growers. The growers exactly, Um, the band poisons. 1:09:35.360 --> 1:09:37.160 We can train our dogs to pick up that scent 1:09:37.240 --> 1:09:39.240 of that poison that we can't touch. I mean you're 1:09:39.280 --> 1:09:41.960 talking forty four thousand times on that nose of that 1:09:42.080 --> 1:09:45.840 pub and so um, you know. Traditionally, our our apprehension 1:09:45.920 --> 1:09:48.639 dogs are detection dogs are trained to sniff abalone, black 1:09:48.720 --> 1:09:52.400 bear gun cartridges, powder, Yeah, for poached animals or a 1:09:52.439 --> 1:09:54.640 guy that you know, you guys have abalone dogs. We 1:09:54.720 --> 1:09:57.360 got abalone dogs because we're around the California coastline and 1:09:57.520 --> 1:10:00.559 commercial abalone deal. You know. So Phoebe was every bit 1:10:00.600 --> 1:10:03.920 of good. And Phoebe got really amazing at detecting the 1:10:04.000 --> 1:10:06.560 girls we get in and detecting men from tracks on 1:10:06.640 --> 1:10:08.560 the ground or their smell. And then she starts, you know, 1:10:08.680 --> 1:10:11.600 she starts squirling up sheets. She gets Birdie. That's it. 1:10:11.720 --> 1:10:14.080 She's Birdie big time, and she you know, it took 1:10:14.080 --> 1:10:16.160 her a couple of years to calm down. There were 1:10:16.160 --> 1:10:19.120 a lot of missed apprehensions because she's running through brush. 1:10:19.320 --> 1:10:21.680 One bad guy runs a partner next to hers, and 1:10:21.720 --> 1:10:23.680 camouflage were face painted. We all look the same, and 1:10:23.760 --> 1:10:26.600 she's like, overload, who's the bad guy? You know? And 1:10:26.720 --> 1:10:30.320 then miss missed the apprehension. But let me say apprehension 1:10:30.360 --> 1:10:32.640 me the dog. The dog is catching the person. The 1:10:32.720 --> 1:10:35.200 dogs catching the person. And not to sugarcoat it. When 1:10:35.280 --> 1:10:37.439 they go to guns, I mean it's deadly forced. Now 1:10:37.560 --> 1:10:40.000 that dog is biting them with all the force that 1:10:40.120 --> 1:10:42.840 dog can bite them on, not leafalley, but putting enough 1:10:42.880 --> 1:10:44.920 pain compliance on them, whether they bite him in the thigh, 1:10:45.439 --> 1:10:49.640 the calf, the shoulder, the forearm. Canines. Different canines are 1:10:49.640 --> 1:10:52.320 wire different to buy different parts. I understand the legality 1:10:52.400 --> 1:10:55.800 on that, absolutely, No. Yeah, so the dog knows. The 1:10:55.920 --> 1:10:59.200 dog doesn't attack until unless it sees a gun. The 1:10:59.280 --> 1:11:02.519 dog is does attack until we give the command and 1:11:02.560 --> 1:11:05.000 release the dog to do so, gun or not. So 1:11:05.120 --> 1:11:07.799 the dog is just running like if it encounters a backpacker, 1:11:07.840 --> 1:11:09.599 it's not gonna maul the back now, No, not at all. 1:11:10.360 --> 1:11:11.920 And that's all. That's what I was trying to figure out, Like, 1:11:12.000 --> 1:11:16.000 how do you avoid just it whatever, loose on something stranger. 1:11:16.800 --> 1:11:20.360 It doesn't do it until you're like they're that individual. Yeah, 1:11:20.439 --> 1:11:21.960 And I'm glad you brought that up because I always 1:11:21.960 --> 1:11:23.400 look at it from our you know, you said use 1:11:23.479 --> 1:11:25.640 of force and policy types things, you know, and from 1:11:25.640 --> 1:11:27.120 the layman, one of this dog just sees a gun 1:11:27.160 --> 1:11:28.840 and goes man, how does that work? You know? And 1:11:29.560 --> 1:11:32.400 but from this standpoint, about two three years in, Phoebe 1:11:32.439 --> 1:11:34.840 started to become the dog and we knew we had 1:11:34.920 --> 1:11:36.960 a you know, that special dog. And we all have 1:11:37.040 --> 1:11:39.120 great dogs, but we've all had that or heard about 1:11:39.200 --> 1:11:41.280 that one in a million dog, right, that hunting dog, 1:11:41.320 --> 1:11:44.040 whether it's a waterfowl dog and mpland dog. Phoebe was 1:11:44.080 --> 1:11:45.800 that dog. And I'm gonna get into my other our 1:11:45.840 --> 1:11:47.320 other dogs here in a minute, but I'm gonna talk 1:11:47.320 --> 1:11:50.280 about Phoebe because she's not only legendary from saving lives 1:11:50.320 --> 1:11:52.560 and putting up great numbers. She was as socialist my 1:11:52.680 --> 1:11:55.680 yellow labs. She never been an officer. Um. She was 1:11:55.720 --> 1:11:58.400 the kind of canine, no exaggeration. Guys, we're doing a 1:11:58.439 --> 1:12:01.000 briefing three in the morning. We're under headlamps. We're with 1:12:01.439 --> 1:12:04.519 our group of met guys. We might have other agencies, Feds, 1:12:04.560 --> 1:12:07.719 county guys. We might have thirty guys there, and everybody 1:12:07.800 --> 1:12:09.560 looks kind of the same. And plus it's dark and 1:12:09.600 --> 1:12:11.360 we're all in the battle gear and plate carries and 1:12:11.439 --> 1:12:14.560 rifles and face paint. She would go around Brian. We 1:12:14.640 --> 1:12:17.320 do a briefing, you know, we brief everybody, our guys 1:12:17.360 --> 1:12:19.160 on the canines. We know him. We're trained to handle 1:12:19.200 --> 1:12:21.200 the canines with our handlers in case he gets tied 1:12:21.280 --> 1:12:23.360 up or hurt. But we have to tell everybody a 1:12:23.439 --> 1:12:25.880 brief that we're working with. Hey, this is my dog, 1:12:25.960 --> 1:12:27.679 this is her name. This is the command you give 1:12:27.800 --> 1:12:30.560 if you know she's on the bike and I'm disabled 1:12:30.720 --> 1:12:33.000 or you know in you know sidebard or whatever and 1:12:33.040 --> 1:12:35.880 I gotta get the dog off or needs to protect 1:12:35.960 --> 1:12:38.920 me or whatever. The com I can't say. I can't 1:12:38.960 --> 1:12:42.200 give that. I can't give that away. Is it a word? Word, 1:12:42.240 --> 1:12:44.720 it's a word, but I'll say it off the air. Yeah. 1:12:45.000 --> 1:12:48.040 So anyway, she um, and you can yell a word, 1:12:48.280 --> 1:12:51.000 scream it, yell it, whisper it. She got that good. 1:12:51.080 --> 1:12:53.120 Not all dogs are that. They get kind of wired up. 1:12:53.160 --> 1:12:54.680 But what she would do is, guys, she would go 1:12:54.920 --> 1:12:57.560 around and hip check every officer. Look you're right in 1:12:57.600 --> 1:13:00.080 the eye. Wait till you petitor, look you I I 1:13:00.200 --> 1:13:01.800 and kind of like I got you today, I know 1:13:01.920 --> 1:13:03.479 you now. And she would do it in a big 1:13:03.600 --> 1:13:05.439 circle every time she did it to me, and I 1:13:05.680 --> 1:13:07.200 knew her. She was like a family dog. She'd come 1:13:07.240 --> 1:13:10.080 and hang out with my dog before missions. And so 1:13:10.640 --> 1:13:12.920 in all the chaos, all the cacophony and all the 1:13:13.000 --> 1:13:15.439 drama when it goes down and it just it gets 1:13:15.479 --> 1:13:18.160 crazy out there. If it's multiple multiple cartel guys and 1:13:18.240 --> 1:13:20.479 multiple guns were splitting the team up and we're in 1:13:20.520 --> 1:13:23.160 different camps. Um, she never been about you know, I've 1:13:23.160 --> 1:13:25.479 never been a good guy. And one of those things 1:13:25.560 --> 1:13:27.240 that if she got a little confused, we just point 1:13:27.280 --> 1:13:28.760 the weapon in the direction where she got to go 1:13:28.840 --> 1:13:30.000 and she's like, all right, I got it, and she 1:13:30.120 --> 1:13:33.639 just keeps going. And by the time um, she semi 1:13:33.760 --> 1:13:37.560 retired in ten, she had a hundred sixteen bite apprehensions 1:13:38.120 --> 1:13:40.840 on armed gunmen and she had nine hundred more arrests 1:13:40.840 --> 1:13:44.439 where she bade him and didn't have to bite because arrests. Yeah, yeah, 1:13:44.760 --> 1:13:47.320 so almost a thousand if you look at one tenth 1:13:47.360 --> 1:13:49.840 of those being actual bites. And so see how many 1:13:49.960 --> 1:13:53.759 hundred sixteen bites and sixteen bite apprehensions and nine hundred 1:13:54.080 --> 1:13:56.040 apprehensions where she just got up to them but they 1:13:56.080 --> 1:13:58.120 gave up so they didn't get a bite because they 1:13:58.160 --> 1:13:59.760 didn't want any part of that. But when also they 1:13:59.800 --> 1:14:02.519 get volved, the dog doesn't attack, right, it would no 1:14:02.600 --> 1:14:04.800 longer threat. You know he's in custody if he puts 1:14:04.840 --> 1:14:06.680 the gun down and says, hey, I don't want you 1:14:06.720 --> 1:14:08.560 know a lot of them, Okay, So it's not a 1:14:08.600 --> 1:14:11.160 given that you're gonna get absolutely not. No, no, see, 1:14:11.200 --> 1:14:13.479 we were only gonna let that dog that's like keep 1:14:13.479 --> 1:14:15.920 being curious about like you're like toll on it, but 1:14:15.960 --> 1:14:19.600 like keepe, curious about how like how this is received 1:14:19.880 --> 1:14:24.200 by administrators the public. What I was like, Okay, you 1:14:24.240 --> 1:14:29.080 got some dogs and it seems pretty sophisticated dogs. They're 1:14:29.200 --> 1:14:32.240 very sophisticated dogs. They're highly trained. I mean you look 1:14:32.320 --> 1:14:35.360 at the way we train our dogs, the way say 1:14:35.360 --> 1:14:38.040 it's Seal Team buddies of ours train their dogs, and 1:14:38.160 --> 1:14:40.599 how they're you know, designed, and how their the mission 1:14:40.640 --> 1:14:42.760 is a little different, but the level of training, the 1:14:42.840 --> 1:14:44.840 level of control, the level of restraint or the level 1:14:44.880 --> 1:14:46.760 of aggression that needs to be executed when it does, 1:14:47.080 --> 1:14:48.880 it's the same. We use the same type of dogs 1:14:48.920 --> 1:14:51.320 that are special forces do for a reason because what 1:14:51.479 --> 1:14:54.840 you just said, Steve, is policy on how much force 1:14:54.920 --> 1:14:56.519 can you use. And when you come from a state 1:14:56.560 --> 1:14:59.920 like California, not only California, but I mean canine at 1:15:00.000 --> 1:15:04.280 hensons are scrutinized stay in the world, right, you know, 1:15:05.000 --> 1:15:08.240 chill it really like what dogs are biting people? Why 1:15:08.280 --> 1:15:09.800 would you ever have to bite somebody with a dog? 1:15:09.920 --> 1:15:11.960 So um, But to get to that point, yeah, we 1:15:12.200 --> 1:15:14.080 we we stay right within the you know, only use 1:15:14.120 --> 1:15:15.760 the force we need. And it's not only us with 1:15:15.800 --> 1:15:18.120 our weapons. It's dogs too. But what I can say, 1:15:18.160 --> 1:15:19.800 and all those bites she made, and I mean, I 1:15:19.880 --> 1:15:21.360 don't know if any other dog that has ever come 1:15:21.360 --> 1:15:23.760 close to those those numbers. And that's not a dig, 1:15:23.840 --> 1:15:28.240 but she prevented so many gun fights when we had 1:15:28.280 --> 1:15:31.960 her on the team permanently once we started in um 1:15:32.080 --> 1:15:34.040 with all the crazy missions we had when the team 1:15:34.080 --> 1:15:35.640 was developed, over the five years I was there with 1:15:35.760 --> 1:15:38.840 it running it, she prevented at least forty gun fights 1:15:38.880 --> 1:15:41.479 no exaggeration, twenty of which two of them. That's well. 1:15:41.520 --> 1:15:43.760 The third chapter of Hidden War, as you notice, went 1:15:43.800 --> 1:15:45.840 into that where we weren't a team yet. It was 1:15:45.840 --> 1:15:47.680 a year before we had our full time team. But 1:15:47.760 --> 1:15:49.280 I was able to bring Brian and Phoebe down to 1:15:49.280 --> 1:15:52.160 Santa Clara County with my Sheriff's partners, and we had 1:15:52.240 --> 1:15:54.840 two armed guys coming right at us once pulling a 1:15:54.840 --> 1:15:58.000 tarist judge. Brian's like, John, I got this guy take 1:15:58.080 --> 1:16:00.880 my dog. And so Phoebe's biting another guy that's pulling 1:16:00.880 --> 1:16:03.040 another gun, and I'm like, I guess I'm dealing with 1:16:03.080 --> 1:16:05.160 the dog now because I was his covered in his 1:16:05.240 --> 1:16:07.639 canine support that day. So I'm dealing with the dog. 1:16:07.720 --> 1:16:09.000 But that guy that had that gun, it was a 1:16:09.080 --> 1:16:12.320 Russian torqu croft pistol, and Phoebe had him bit and 1:16:12.520 --> 1:16:14.800 was putting bite pressure on his back calf, and he 1:16:14.880 --> 1:16:16.920 was laying on his belly, and she was putting enough 1:16:16.920 --> 1:16:19.240 pressure on him that he couldn't just pull the gun 1:16:19.280 --> 1:16:21.439 out real quick and start shooting me and my rifle cover. 1:16:21.800 --> 1:16:25.080 He was struggling and under pain, and he got it 1:16:25.120 --> 1:16:26.880 to write about here when I dove on his back, 1:16:27.000 --> 1:16:29.120 and had she not been there, I would have had 1:16:29.160 --> 1:16:31.240 to engage that guy. He would have engaged me or 1:16:31.280 --> 1:16:33.479 three guys behind me, and several of us would have 1:16:33.520 --> 1:16:35.360 been hurt. And then that's when the light bulb went off. 1:16:35.400 --> 1:16:37.639 I went, I've worked with you a lot of times 1:16:37.680 --> 1:16:39.640 with Phoebe all through some Wild Justice filming when we 1:16:39.720 --> 1:16:41.479 did the Nagio thing, and we would work together and 1:16:41.560 --> 1:16:43.320 not catch anybody, and then we'd go apart with the 1:16:43.360 --> 1:16:46.040 film crews and catch other people. But I had never 1:16:46.160 --> 1:16:48.840 seen Phoebe actually doing apprehension, even though I knew how 1:16:48.880 --> 1:16:51.000 cool she was and how awesome Brian was as a handler. 1:16:51.040 --> 1:16:54.400 In that symbiotic canine handler relationship they had developed, and 1:16:54.840 --> 1:16:57.040 when that when it was my life and my guys, 1:16:57.080 --> 1:16:58.840 and it got so crazy and I was this close 1:16:58.920 --> 1:17:00.840 to getting in another one and having to shoot myself 1:17:00.920 --> 1:17:03.559 since the first gun fight No. Five, when when Kyle 1:17:03.640 --> 1:17:06.080 was shot, I was like, we need this all the time. 1:17:06.640 --> 1:17:09.040 When we're doing this job with these cartel growers, we 1:17:09.240 --> 1:17:11.360 need this all the time. We can't be We're gonna 1:17:11.400 --> 1:17:14.200 do it, but we have one dog that's doing this statewide, 1:17:14.439 --> 1:17:16.120 and we're doing it in four different parts of the state, 1:17:16.840 --> 1:17:19.000 and Phoebe's tied up in Shasta and now we're gonna 1:17:19.040 --> 1:17:21.600 go just rogue it on foot. And we had some 1:17:21.720 --> 1:17:23.600 other gunfights we could not get out of because we 1:17:23.640 --> 1:17:25.840 didn't have a dog on several missions. And so when 1:17:25.880 --> 1:17:27.880 we got the full time team and how we built it, 1:17:28.680 --> 1:17:30.960 it was a godsend, guys, no exaggeration, because I had 1:17:31.040 --> 1:17:35.479 moose dogs get shot. We've had we haven't had one 1:17:35.520 --> 1:17:38.320 shot that I know of, but we've had them stabbed fatally. 1:17:38.960 --> 1:17:40.880 What started to happen and I go into this a 1:17:40.920 --> 1:17:42.200 little bit, as you remember in the book, and I 1:17:42.280 --> 1:17:44.160 have a couple of pictures where you got one dog 1:17:44.280 --> 1:17:47.240 got stabbed but then recovered right. But recovered, and that 1:17:47.360 --> 1:17:49.080 was one that did recover that got stabbed, But there 1:17:49.080 --> 1:17:51.799 are several that didn't recover, and they weren't with our agency. 1:17:51.840 --> 1:17:54.519 There were with other agencies. But um, we all kind 1:17:54.520 --> 1:17:57.000 of took a big breath and went, Okay, is there 1:17:57.000 --> 1:17:58.679 any way we could have prevented that? Is there anything 1:17:58.720 --> 1:18:00.920 we could have done to change or cane I and tactics, 1:18:01.040 --> 1:18:03.559 and you know, they become I mean, we're all dog 1:18:03.600 --> 1:18:05.519 people here in the room, man. There there there are 1:18:05.680 --> 1:18:07.800 family and they go home with us. They're not just 1:18:07.920 --> 1:18:09.679 work dogs. We have them as pets from the start 1:18:09.760 --> 1:18:12.640 in canines. We retire with them. And so you know 1:18:12.680 --> 1:18:15.120 when some of our are our allied agency brothers on 1:18:15.120 --> 1:18:18.080 the federal level, we're losing dogs because these cartel guys 1:18:18.120 --> 1:18:20.640 were starting to realize, Hey, if that dog's really far 1:18:20.680 --> 1:18:23.200 away from the officers and I'm not pulling guns, and 1:18:23.280 --> 1:18:25.160 I suck in that dog and I take the bite, 1:18:25.160 --> 1:18:26.640 but I got a fixed blade of eight to ten 1:18:26.680 --> 1:18:28.400 inches on my hip, and I can stab for that 1:18:28.479 --> 1:18:31.120 jugular up in front of those ribs. I can take 1:18:31.160 --> 1:18:33.439 this dog out because I know this dog has shut down. 1:18:33.439 --> 1:18:36.960 About thirty of my partners grows and that team would 1:18:37.000 --> 1:18:38.960 not have been as good maybe or in their mind 1:18:39.360 --> 1:18:42.479 of catching so many guys and really apprehending our main 1:18:42.560 --> 1:18:44.760 guy or a couple of guys in that grow and 1:18:44.840 --> 1:18:46.600 not only shutting it down, but putting these guys in 1:18:46.680 --> 1:18:48.439 jail and putting the hurt on them and when they 1:18:48.479 --> 1:18:50.320 would be in that violent and so if we take 1:18:50.360 --> 1:18:52.360 their dogs, we're gonna slow these guys down and make 1:18:52.400 --> 1:18:55.000 them less effective. They they're not done that way. UM, 1:18:55.120 --> 1:18:57.599 so we we hone some things and none of our dogs. 1:18:57.760 --> 1:19:00.920 Um we're stabbed fatally, but I mean being she She 1:19:01.040 --> 1:19:04.519 passed away sadly last year at thirteen years old, and 1:19:04.880 --> 1:19:07.479 um it was a leukemia. Um. She had been semi 1:19:07.560 --> 1:19:09.320 retired even though she was checked out as a seven 1:19:09.400 --> 1:19:12.120 year old dog healthwise by the ved at like twelve, 1:19:12.360 --> 1:19:17.000 she was still actually technically deployable. You know, our administrators rightfully, 1:19:17.080 --> 1:19:20.920 so are our canine program leads, and and even myself 1:19:21.040 --> 1:19:22.720 and Brian and all of our other guys on the 1:19:22.720 --> 1:19:25.960 team were like, you know, she has had a historical career. Man, 1:19:26.160 --> 1:19:28.599 let's if we can get another dog up in her place. 1:19:28.680 --> 1:19:31.280 That she's getting up there. She's like battling the odds 1:19:31.320 --> 1:19:33.639 of age. You know, it's not common for a twelve 1:19:33.720 --> 1:19:36.120 year old Belgium mall to be out apprehending guy's hardcore 1:19:36.160 --> 1:19:38.880 still they're usually done, but she was doing it. So 1:19:39.000 --> 1:19:41.639 we pulled her and we developed the new dog, which 1:19:41.720 --> 1:19:44.719 is Brian's current dog, a male, a little bigger than Phoebe. 1:19:45.040 --> 1:19:47.240 He's doing great work. What's one of those dogs way? 1:19:48.080 --> 1:19:51.640 You know somewhere the real lightweight little little missiles we 1:19:51.720 --> 1:19:54.599 call them a little female missiles and males maybe fifty 1:19:54.680 --> 1:19:57.360 five pounds sixty pounds max. And then the big ones. 1:19:59.040 --> 1:20:01.519 You know, so a fifty pound dog can take a 1:20:01.560 --> 1:20:03.960 person down. Puts crazy. We got we got a little 1:20:04.000 --> 1:20:07.479 lightweight one work and a that um, just a straight 1:20:07.520 --> 1:20:09.599 firm missile. Man, I'm no joke. You guys are think 1:20:09.600 --> 1:20:12.560 about training up some mountain lions if we could do 1:20:12.600 --> 1:20:15.000 what we would, man, that's a good idea. Hey, our 1:20:15.080 --> 1:20:19.280 people are people in your community? Um, are they miffed 1:20:19.720 --> 1:20:22.960 that that you do? You feel that you that you 1:20:23.280 --> 1:20:26.360 revealed too much about how your guys, how you guys 1:20:26.400 --> 1:20:28.400 like to operate by writing a book about it, you know, 1:20:28.640 --> 1:20:30.400 not so much. It's been one of those things where 1:20:30.560 --> 1:20:34.200 we balance it, you know, and our agency, and I 1:20:34.400 --> 1:20:36.599 was one of not the only, but one of a few. 1:20:37.080 --> 1:20:39.000 You know that we're kind of targeted by. I'll go 1:20:39.080 --> 1:20:41.120 back to Wild Justice and the TV thing because that 1:20:41.160 --> 1:20:44.200 was a big exposure. Ever, even outside of the book, Um, 1:20:44.840 --> 1:20:47.439 the thing for me was, you know, it wasn't about 1:20:47.560 --> 1:20:50.280 you know, showboating anything game wardens do, or what I 1:20:50.400 --> 1:20:51.880 was doing or what my guys was doing. It was 1:20:52.840 --> 1:20:54.880 I've been dyed in the Little Leven Wildlife wild lands 1:20:54.880 --> 1:20:57.080 and waterway since I was a kid. And when I 1:20:57.120 --> 1:20:59.320 saw the destruction, man, it broke my heart. And when 1:20:59.360 --> 1:21:01.280 I saw this car, healthing happened. And I'm like, Okay, 1:21:01.360 --> 1:21:02.800 you know, we can take the easy path, in the 1:21:02.880 --> 1:21:05.719 safer path, maybe go do the fishing license compliance stuff, 1:21:05.840 --> 1:21:08.280 or we can dive into this. But here's a problem. 1:21:08.840 --> 1:21:11.000 No one knows this that's going on. We're not going 1:21:11.080 --> 1:21:12.639 to fight it alone. I don't care for the most 1:21:12.680 --> 1:21:15.280 whiz bang tactical, high speed low drag seal Team six 1:21:15.320 --> 1:21:18.320 slack team doing our thing. We're gonna w one tiny 1:21:18.360 --> 1:21:21.280 little dance in this issue in one part of California. 1:21:21.320 --> 1:21:23.200 This is going on nationally and I'm like, and I 1:21:23.320 --> 1:21:24.720 keep hearing the same thing over and over again, over 1:21:24.760 --> 1:21:27.120 and over again. Hey, nobody knows. Nobody knows other law 1:21:27.200 --> 1:21:29.400 enforcement teams that are coming up in other states and 1:21:29.439 --> 1:21:31.240 even in our own state having the same challenge, and 1:21:31.280 --> 1:21:34.960 they're like, can you train us? Can You'm given presentations 1:21:35.000 --> 1:21:37.320 on the shootouts we were in one where my partner 1:21:37.400 --> 1:21:39.600 was shot. We have a whole debrief presentation. I do 1:21:39.760 --> 1:21:42.880 PowerPoint radio tapes for l groups all over the country. 1:21:42.960 --> 1:21:45.120 So all the mistakes we made and almost got shot 1:21:45.160 --> 1:21:46.720 and killed. I don't want to see that happen in 1:21:46.760 --> 1:21:49.479 any of my brothers are like, we're talking about that 1:21:49.560 --> 1:21:50.680 story you have where you had a guy that was 1:21:50.760 --> 1:21:52.559 down for three hours, right, yeah, you know, or all 1:21:52.640 --> 1:21:54.160 of us in the room being out and you guys 1:21:54.200 --> 1:21:56.439 get hurt. I get hurt hunting, you know, off duty 1:21:56.560 --> 1:21:58.120 doing my thing because I'm out there, you know, with 1:21:58.200 --> 1:22:01.880 just my family. Um so we we we waghed do 1:22:02.000 --> 1:22:03.640 we talk about or do we not talk about it? 1:22:03.840 --> 1:22:05.040 And one thing I do in the book and we 1:22:05.120 --> 1:22:08.320 did on TV two we give away stuff that isn't 1:22:08.400 --> 1:22:10.960 really super secret. I mean, if you really dig deep, 1:22:11.000 --> 1:22:13.040 you're gonna find it. It's pretty common stuff. I mean, 1:22:13.360 --> 1:22:16.160 I don't talk about the the inner team tactics you 1:22:16.240 --> 1:22:19.360 know right now, um on these broadcasts. I certainly didn't 1:22:19.360 --> 1:22:21.360 reveal them on TV, but we got to give up 1:22:21.400 --> 1:22:23.360 a little to get the message out. The other thing 1:22:23.439 --> 1:22:25.519 we needed to do besides getting this issue out was 1:22:25.960 --> 1:22:28.240 I just felt like we needed to legitimize game wards everywhere. 1:22:28.240 --> 1:22:30.920 The thin green line of conservation officers was checking out 1:22:30.960 --> 1:22:33.360 your shirt where it's like, it's like what you call 1:22:33.439 --> 1:22:35.519 the the blue the thin blue line. Yeah, and this 1:22:35.640 --> 1:22:37.000 is the thing green he's got. He's got one of 1:22:37.000 --> 1:22:39.360 the shirts with the with the black and white flag 1:22:39.439 --> 1:22:42.240 on it, with the game warden green. Yeah. Well you 1:22:42.320 --> 1:22:44.280 notice that I've never seen on those floor. Yeah, And 1:22:44.360 --> 1:22:46.200 that's just that's that's that's the same thing. It's just 1:22:46.439 --> 1:22:49.559 you're looking at rangers, conservation officers, border patrol, You're looking 1:22:49.560 --> 1:22:51.160 at those of us that are in our wild lands 1:22:51.439 --> 1:22:53.840 without a lot of support, and you know, not to 1:22:53.880 --> 1:22:55.720 take anything away from the thin blue line because we're 1:22:55.720 --> 1:22:58.400 all law enforcement. You know, this isn't anything different. It's 1:22:58.439 --> 1:23:00.720 just showing that as thin as the blue line is, 1:23:01.200 --> 1:23:04.000 there are so few game wards per capita compared to 1:23:04.080 --> 1:23:07.000 our populations throughout the entire country. And obviously we still 1:23:07.040 --> 1:23:09.000 have all that traditional wildlife poaching going on that we 1:23:09.080 --> 1:23:11.000 talked about that we you know, some of us don't 1:23:11.040 --> 1:23:12.680 do a lot of anymore. And you and you're not. 1:23:12.880 --> 1:23:14.599 And then you've got this too, Yeah, you're not. You're 1:23:14.640 --> 1:23:18.200 not acting like that's not important. No, no, And there's 1:23:18.240 --> 1:23:20.960 some Pennessee sections and hid more that you probably noticed 1:23:21.040 --> 1:23:23.240 where we did a study between the first book and 1:23:23.240 --> 1:23:25.320 the second book. It's been exactly a decade and we 1:23:25.439 --> 1:23:28.360 look at the population of every state in the nation 1:23:29.040 --> 1:23:30.960 numbers and the game ward numbers, and you've got this 1:23:31.120 --> 1:23:35.479 explanation multimillion growth in impacts to our wild lands and 1:23:35.520 --> 1:23:38.760 we've added like eight hundred game wards nationally and it like, 1:23:38.880 --> 1:23:41.040 you know, ten years ago there's forty six game wards. 1:23:41.120 --> 1:23:44.600 Now you've got a forty seven. So it boys, it 1:23:44.680 --> 1:23:47.200 really comes down to um sharing what we need to share. 1:23:48.000 --> 1:23:50.400 Not only you know, talk about what the thing green 1:23:50.479 --> 1:23:53.120 line of conservation warriors do nationally, even outside of the 1:23:53.160 --> 1:23:56.120 special ops stuff, the traditional stuff, but letting all you 1:23:56.200 --> 1:23:57.680 guys know that our eyes and ears, I mean, we're 1:23:57.720 --> 1:23:59.800 all team. You guys are avian hunters for all the 1:23:59.880 --> 1:24:01.599 right reasons. You're in the woods for all the right reasons. 1:24:01.920 --> 1:24:04.800 We call you, you know, fellow hunters, force multipliers. You're 1:24:04.800 --> 1:24:07.280 gonna find it, You're savvy around it, you're gonna get 1:24:07.280 --> 1:24:10.400 out safely because you've got great skills and you're piste off. 1:24:10.479 --> 1:24:12.479 And I rate to see this happen on your public 1:24:12.560 --> 1:24:15.880 lands or even private honey ranches. California is a fifty 1:24:15.920 --> 1:24:19.080 fifty split right now. When I retired and Steve, this 1:24:19.200 --> 1:24:21.280 is guys, this is an interesting stat we I did 1:24:21.320 --> 1:24:23.120 those stats as I keep them all annually and I 1:24:23.479 --> 1:24:27.120 tabulate my my spreadsheets. It was literally a fifty fifty 1:24:27.240 --> 1:24:30.200 ratio of private land, personal ranches that the cartels are 1:24:30.240 --> 1:24:33.200 infiltrated and public lands. So I could be on one 1:24:33.200 --> 1:24:35.120 of my buddies blacktail hunting clubs that I grew on, 1:24:35.400 --> 1:24:37.800 grew up on, doing a blacktail deer hunt, or I'm 1:24:37.800 --> 1:24:39.840 doing a you know, spring hog hunt, thinking, oh man, 1:24:39.920 --> 1:24:42.479 you know he won't be this deep in. My buddy 1:24:42.520 --> 1:24:44.599 and his ranchers and his cattlemen are running fence all 1:24:44.600 --> 1:24:47.120 the time, and I find a grow site, like you 1:24:47.320 --> 1:24:49.240 got to be freaking kidding me. I don't want to 1:24:49.320 --> 1:24:51.320 name the place, but I was on his place was 1:24:51.360 --> 1:24:53.680 a big ranch and they do a lot of like 1:24:54.120 --> 1:24:56.200 there's a lot of there's a big recreation program on 1:24:56.280 --> 1:24:57.960 his ranch. They run cab but they also have like 1:24:58.040 --> 1:25:02.280 an actual recreation program, an advertised recreation program. And when 1:25:02.280 --> 1:25:04.439 I was talking to those guys, it's a constant thing 1:25:04.479 --> 1:25:08.120 of theirs. Yeah, it's become literally the biggest people backpacking 1:25:08.280 --> 1:25:10.600 in and a state. And this is on a on 1:25:10.720 --> 1:25:15.920 a very active ranch property and they're constantly encountering illegal 1:25:16.000 --> 1:25:19.760 grow sites to pop up. Yeah, and not happy about it. Yeah, 1:25:19.960 --> 1:25:21.600 And it's you hit it on the head to the 1:25:21.640 --> 1:25:23.679 point where how much do you want to keep hunting? 1:25:23.760 --> 1:25:26.960 I mean, how much is that starting to outweigh? Are 1:25:27.360 --> 1:25:30.200 you know? We have dwindling consumptive users and conservation actually 1:25:30.280 --> 1:25:31.680 hunt in California, And I mean I go back to 1:25:31.760 --> 1:25:33.560 my old home state and I say, look, there's so 1:25:33.640 --> 1:25:35.960 much good resource there. That is a beautiful state, and 1:25:36.040 --> 1:25:39.720 we're losing you know, hunting numbers like exponentially. And that's 1:25:39.800 --> 1:25:42.479 necessarily not helping because I go back and one out 1:25:42.479 --> 1:25:44.280 of two times, even on private land, I'm gonna run 1:25:44.280 --> 1:25:45.720 into a grow site and I'm like, dude, I really 1:25:45.760 --> 1:25:47.680 want to deal with the grow site today when I'm 1:25:47.680 --> 1:25:49.720 on one of my few hunts because I still go back. 1:25:49.760 --> 1:25:53.120 I have little kids, and yeah, problems, but the Turkey 1:25:53.120 --> 1:25:54.639 and you know, it's a great state. I mean, there's 1:25:54.680 --> 1:25:57.000 some really cool hunts out there, so we want to 1:25:57.080 --> 1:25:59.280 we want to counter that as much as possible. Hey, uh, 1:26:00.120 --> 1:26:02.160 I don't expect you to do this out of memory, 1:26:02.439 --> 1:26:04.720 but in your book you have in the end, you 1:26:04.800 --> 1:26:06.559 have a little bit of a snaps as the house 1:26:06.680 --> 1:26:11.120 of you put some metrics okay around miles of pipe 1:26:11.400 --> 1:26:14.760 the stat sheet. Yeah, rat open that up and rattle 1:26:14.800 --> 1:26:16.400 a couple of those off. It's kind of funny to 1:26:16.439 --> 1:26:18.880 look at the It's kind of funny to look at 1:26:18.920 --> 1:26:21.200 the list. I can't remember where I encountered it in there, 1:26:22.520 --> 1:26:25.599 so so looking at breaking it down, like you said, 1:26:25.640 --> 1:26:28.840 the metrics, breaking down the stats um in six years 1:26:28.960 --> 1:26:34.840 between and the end of our team destroyed three million 1:26:34.920 --> 1:26:39.120 of the of the contaminated marijuana plants, all carbo fuen contaminated. 1:26:39.680 --> 1:26:42.200 It's three million plants, three million plants that would have 1:26:42.320 --> 1:26:45.080 hit that black market. And then we uh, then we 1:26:45.160 --> 1:26:48.120 destroyed almost fifty nine thousand, or twenty nine tons of 1:26:48.200 --> 1:26:50.280 process marijuana. And that's the stuff in the one pound 1:26:50.320 --> 1:26:52.280 bags with all the poisons on it about to go 1:26:52.400 --> 1:26:54.920 back east or you know, be sold in the black market. 1:26:55.000 --> 1:26:57.280 I've forgotten it was that high. Actually, twenty nine tons 1:26:57.400 --> 1:27:02.519 daying um, seventy felony arrests and armed gunmen UM seized 1:27:02.600 --> 1:27:05.519 six one firearms during those missions, and I'm sure we 1:27:05.560 --> 1:27:08.640 didn't get them all. That's a pretty significant almost a 1:27:08.680 --> 1:27:11.920 thousand felony arrests, almost as south yet almost just under 1:27:11.960 --> 1:27:14.000 a thousand felony arrests. And you know, our our dogs 1:27:14.080 --> 1:27:15.960 were a big part of that making that happen that 1:27:16.080 --> 1:27:17.840 Are there a lot of the same individuals that are 1:27:17.920 --> 1:27:19.960 rolled up in there. Are you guys pretty successful at 1:27:20.000 --> 1:27:23.360 prosecuting people, Well, we're successful at prosecuting him. Now when 1:27:23.400 --> 1:27:25.439 we get the environmental crime Enhancement's keep in mind when 1:27:25.479 --> 1:27:28.640 it went felonyto misdemeanor once legality started in California and 1:27:28.680 --> 1:27:32.760 miss ametar to infraction, very few d a's offices would 1:27:32.840 --> 1:27:35.479 even prosecute these on the local level because they wouldn't 1:27:35.479 --> 1:27:37.800 get a jury on a marijuana case and take those 1:27:37.880 --> 1:27:40.960 risks and and you know, convictim. They didn't want to 1:27:41.000 --> 1:27:43.519 do that, but we would say, wait a minute, you 1:27:43.600 --> 1:27:46.280 know they were within a hundred fifty feet of a stream, 1:27:46.560 --> 1:27:49.040 or they were using a band poison and I'm glad 1:27:49.040 --> 1:27:52.560 you Brobably they overstayed their fourteen day federal camping limit exactly, 1:27:52.640 --> 1:27:54.760 so let's make it a felony again. But Steve, the 1:27:54.840 --> 1:27:57.160 thing that you just you just triggered, which is great, 1:27:57.160 --> 1:27:59.880 that I forgot to mention, is that band toxic poi 1:28:00.040 --> 1:28:02.120 and as a felony in the California Peano coade is 1:28:02.200 --> 1:28:04.519 one example. So even to possess it now it becomes 1:28:04.560 --> 1:28:07.720 a felony. If they divert a waterway, if they you know, 1:28:07.920 --> 1:28:10.360 block up a creek, if they alter a stream bed, 1:28:10.840 --> 1:28:13.920 all that becomes a felony enhancement. So that's how we're 1:28:13.960 --> 1:28:17.600 starting to get prosecutions even after regulation is working. But 1:28:17.720 --> 1:28:19.679 we had a yeah, we had six hundred one firearms 1:28:19.800 --> 1:28:23.160 UM four and fifty tons of just general gross site trash. 1:28:24.360 --> 1:28:27.360 And that's that's one team at twelve not getting everything, 1:28:27.560 --> 1:28:29.599 and a bunch of other teams that have done other work, 1:28:29.640 --> 1:28:34.559 other good work that hasn't even been food packaging, propane cans, 1:28:35.479 --> 1:28:39.360 toilet excrement in the creeks, trash, dumps. And if we 1:28:39.439 --> 1:28:41.240 haven't got it in one year, imagine five years of 1:28:41.280 --> 1:28:43.240 that with guys living out their freight month straight. It's 1:28:43.280 --> 1:28:45.680 it's a train wreck. They must have to start to 1:28:45.760 --> 1:28:47.960 hide the trash. After a while they try to. They 1:28:47.960 --> 1:28:51.960 actually dig big like compos you know, like like landfill holes, 1:28:52.560 --> 1:28:53.960 and we'll go out and see him, and we'll do 1:28:54.000 --> 1:28:55.560 a reclamation and clean up one, and then all of 1:28:55.600 --> 1:28:57.720 a sudden there's another layer and another layer. And the 1:28:57.760 --> 1:28:59.439 worst part about it, you brought up a good point 1:28:59.560 --> 1:29:02.040 is they'll they'll have these holes that are like almost 1:29:02.080 --> 1:29:05.120 twenty ft deep for the next grow site the next year, 1:29:05.479 --> 1:29:07.680 for their trash or for a water catchment, and they 1:29:07.680 --> 1:29:09.920 don't cover it up, so animals are coming in and 1:29:09.960 --> 1:29:11.920 deer slipping into it and going to their death. We're 1:29:11.960 --> 1:29:13.799 walking in. We could walk into one on a scout. 1:29:14.200 --> 1:29:16.360 So you have that besides the pungee pits and you 1:29:16.400 --> 1:29:19.200 know the little little trail things. And something listeners especially 1:29:19.240 --> 1:29:21.840 should know about is good. But um, yeah, four and 1:29:21.960 --> 1:29:24.600 fifty tons of just general grow site waste, and you 1:29:24.680 --> 1:29:28.120 talk about polly pipe, guys, before two point three five 1:29:28.240 --> 1:29:31.440 million feet or four d forty five miles of black polypipe. 1:29:32.280 --> 1:29:35.760 I mean that's more about polly pipe. Yeah, that's a 1:29:35.800 --> 1:29:37.320 one inch line. That's how much of that crap we 1:29:37.400 --> 1:29:42.519 took out. Four five So that's one tip of Montana 1:29:42.560 --> 1:29:44.360 to the other far corner of Montana. That's the whole 1:29:44.360 --> 1:29:47.600 stretch of californa half of California. It's crazy. Um. And 1:29:47.640 --> 1:29:52.000 then and then forty six tons of fertilizers, seven fifty 1:29:52.000 --> 1:29:56.040 gallons of the illegal toxic chemicals the yea seven yeah, 1:29:56.240 --> 1:29:59.160 and then seven three. This is the one that UM, 1:29:59.640 --> 1:30:02.200 this had I think is one that's underlooked, and it's 1:30:02.240 --> 1:30:05.120 important because every time we take out a water diversion, 1:30:05.400 --> 1:30:07.360 just think what that water diversion was due. And it 1:30:07.400 --> 1:30:10.080 wasn't only blocking water for everything downstream that you survived, 1:30:10.120 --> 1:30:12.680 mostly our wildlife or our drinking water, but it was 1:30:12.760 --> 1:30:15.760 also poison in the water to the grow site. And 1:30:15.840 --> 1:30:18.960 what was you know ingesting that all that wildlife. So 1:30:19.439 --> 1:30:25.320 and that's basically seven water dams we dismantled in that time, 1:30:25.520 --> 1:30:28.160 and there's a lot more out there. So UM and 1:30:28.240 --> 1:30:30.799 then those dams, when you look at the number amount 1:30:30.840 --> 1:30:33.280 of water they would steal, and we didn't know how 1:30:33.439 --> 1:30:36.080 much water was really being impacted. California was in their 1:30:36.120 --> 1:30:40.640 most severe drought in a century between about twenty thirteen 1:30:40.720 --> 1:30:46.479 and about remember that, and the whole country was taken notice. Yeah, 1:30:46.520 --> 1:30:48.000 and it was. It was just really dry. And so 1:30:48.479 --> 1:30:51.400 all the cartel grow sites, like in the traditional mountains 1:30:51.400 --> 1:30:54.240 of northern California Silicon Valley, it just wasn't happening. They 1:30:54.280 --> 1:30:56.000 couldn't even get underground water. So they were like in 1:30:56.040 --> 1:30:58.600 the Delta, they were doing stuff in weird places. But 1:30:59.840 --> 1:31:02.400 the science finally came out and we just and we 1:31:02.479 --> 1:31:04.679 were able to learn that an hot aird outdoor grow 1:31:05.720 --> 1:31:08.840 each plant takes between ten and twelve gallons of water 1:31:09.200 --> 1:31:13.439 per day stolen for up to ninety days before it's harvested. 1:31:14.160 --> 1:31:16.040 So when you do all the on ten thousand plant 1:31:16.080 --> 1:31:18.560 grow for ninety days ten to twelve gallons, you know 1:31:18.720 --> 1:31:21.800 a plant. How many millions and hundreds of millions of 1:31:21.840 --> 1:31:23.720 gallons of our water was being stolen in our worst 1:31:23.800 --> 1:31:25.599 drout would take us to ab at it. We did. 1:31:25.720 --> 1:31:28.640 We actually calculated it, and the dams that we dismantled 1:31:28.680 --> 1:31:32.519 were responsible for twelve billion gallons of water conservative estimate, 1:31:32.560 --> 1:31:34.559 that was pulled out of its natural course of its 1:31:34.640 --> 1:31:38.680 natural course whether it was drinking, wildlife, habitat, whatever, and 1:31:38.800 --> 1:31:41.120 that was very conserved because that doesn't take into account 1:31:41.160 --> 1:31:44.760 any of the private land grows that were quasi legal 1:31:44.840 --> 1:31:46.519 or maybe not legal at the time, and people were 1:31:46.560 --> 1:31:48.720 doing it wrong, maybe diverting their own water, but not 1:31:48.800 --> 1:31:51.920 a cartel public land trespassing. So that really got the 1:31:51.960 --> 1:31:54.160 governor's attention, and that's when we started to get teams 1:31:54.240 --> 1:31:56.519 for watershed enforcement and stuff like that. So yeah, in 1:31:56.560 --> 1:32:00.240 the West, right fight over water exactly. I'm quote like that. 1:32:00.479 --> 1:32:02.760 That's it. I call water is life. I mean, it's 1:32:02.800 --> 1:32:05.000 it's gold. You know, it's more precious than gold in 1:32:05.439 --> 1:32:08.200 states and so pristine states like we have here in 1:32:08.439 --> 1:32:11.600 in true you know, public land Mecca of Montana. I 1:32:11.640 --> 1:32:13.200 always keep an eye out for this stuff and that 1:32:13.320 --> 1:32:15.519 it's been in this state before, not as much fortunately 1:32:15.640 --> 1:32:18.439 because of the terrain, but um, the Mountain states will 1:32:18.439 --> 1:32:20.559 get it and they have and it's it's just something 1:32:20.600 --> 1:32:24.000 we got good enough environment to grow here. It is, 1:32:24.120 --> 1:32:27.240 but it's a very short summer the grow the grow 1:32:27.280 --> 1:32:30.080 window is really tight, really tight, so it doesn't happen often. 1:32:30.680 --> 1:32:32.320 But up here we get a little bit of that, 1:32:32.960 --> 1:32:34.360 but we get a lot of the methamphetam in the 1:32:34.400 --> 1:32:35.960 fat in al and we certainly always have the gun 1:32:36.040 --> 1:32:38.840 running and trafficking because that's in every state these same groups. 1:32:38.880 --> 1:32:41.719 We gotta remember, guys, is you know, the poison, cannabis 1:32:41.760 --> 1:32:43.840 production and all the drama my team focused on is 1:32:43.880 --> 1:32:46.719 a kind of a focused mission. That's only one element 1:32:46.720 --> 1:32:48.880 of what these groups do. They're doing all kinds of stuff. 1:32:48.880 --> 1:32:51.120 They're on the same organization, and you know, when they're 1:32:51.160 --> 1:32:52.880 not growing weed in the summer, they're cook a meth 1:32:52.920 --> 1:32:55.639 in the winter, they're doing fat in al, they're running guns. 1:32:56.080 --> 1:32:57.880 And something people don't understand, and I didn't know this 1:32:58.080 --> 1:33:00.080 until towards the end of my career and we are 1:33:00.200 --> 1:33:04.200 really in bed in intel circles, was that of all 1:33:04.200 --> 1:33:07.000 the hundreds of millions of dollars of profit these cannabis growers, 1:33:07.120 --> 1:33:10.800 these cartel guys make a third or more of those 1:33:10.840 --> 1:33:13.679 profits go just two guns and ammunition stolen in America 1:33:13.960 --> 1:33:16.439 to fight the cartel wars south of the border because 1:33:16.479 --> 1:33:17.800 they don't have the EMMA and they don't have the 1:33:17.840 --> 1:33:20.840 infrastructure for weapons, and down there they're at full on 1:33:20.960 --> 1:33:23.880 war because it's it's you know, it's wild West hands 1:33:23.920 --> 1:33:25.960 off up here. Fortunately, they want to play nice. They 1:33:26.000 --> 1:33:28.599 want to draw attention and you have you know, law 1:33:28.720 --> 1:33:30.920 enforcement or public outrest. And the other thing is they 1:33:30.920 --> 1:33:32.479 want to keep it as quite as possible because it's 1:33:32.479 --> 1:33:34.680 gonna hurt business. Hence one of the reasons we name 1:33:34.680 --> 1:33:36.439 the book hid More. You know, it's just one of 1:33:36.520 --> 1:33:37.960 these things. Let's try to keep it under the weight 1:33:38.040 --> 1:33:41.280 our domestic eco terrorism thing, if you will. And I'm 1:33:41.280 --> 1:33:42.880 glad we're not having that here. Our job to be 1:33:42.920 --> 1:33:45.080 a lot different. But um, a lot of that is 1:33:45.080 --> 1:33:46.960 going into guns and going down south of the border. 1:33:47.040 --> 1:33:50.679 So um, kind of a little uh eye opening fact there. Okay, 1:33:50.760 --> 1:33:55.679 so uh tell people real quick. We've talked about hidding 1:33:55.680 --> 1:33:57.479 war a couple of times. But but but talking about 1:33:57.640 --> 1:33:59.120 plug both of your books in the best way for 1:33:59.160 --> 1:34:01.160 people to find you if I don't know how much 1:34:01.160 --> 1:34:03.000 you want to be found, But well, at least you 1:34:03.000 --> 1:34:06.240 can plug yourself, plug yourself, all right, basically whatever degree 1:34:06.240 --> 1:34:08.560 you're comfortable, no, no problem. You can get copies of 1:34:08.800 --> 1:34:10.600 hitting More, that's the newest book, and you can go 1:34:10.680 --> 1:34:13.160 back and get the old one, the first one, or 1:34:13.200 --> 1:34:16.120 in the Woods on Amazon. Um, there's an audio book 1:34:16.120 --> 1:34:17.880 out I'm gonna be doing an audio read. Well. The 1:34:18.479 --> 1:34:21.840 audio book will be read in August. It's on Kendall UM. 1:34:21.920 --> 1:34:23.680 You can get it through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, any 1:34:23.760 --> 1:34:26.599 major bookstore. You can also get it through me if 1:34:26.600 --> 1:34:28.320 you want you through. If you want a personalized copy, 1:34:28.600 --> 1:34:30.640 I work that out, you know, through my email, and 1:34:30.680 --> 1:34:32.360 you just get me on John Norris dot com, on 1:34:32.439 --> 1:34:35.120 my website and on Instagram Facebook and O R E 1:34:35.360 --> 1:34:36.880 S j O h N N O R E s 1:34:36.960 --> 1:34:39.800 on Instagram, Facebook and the website, So real easy. And 1:34:39.920 --> 1:34:42.960 I encourage feedback questions, you know. I try to answer 1:34:43.000 --> 1:34:45.680 all the questions I can and UM educate because we 1:34:45.800 --> 1:34:47.519 we were getting a lot of public awareness. Now now 1:34:47.560 --> 1:34:50.000 that I'm retired and out of California, it's kind of 1:34:50.040 --> 1:34:52.120 cool to be going more on a national level and 1:34:52.240 --> 1:34:55.360 presenting on the book, doing signings, doing presentations to this 1:34:55.439 --> 1:34:57.720 stuff with some pictures and video, and just sharing some 1:34:57.800 --> 1:35:00.880 stories that everybody seems to resonate with rather conservations or not. 1:35:01.120 --> 1:35:02.920 You know, kind of a unified front. So I just 1:35:03.000 --> 1:35:05.920 appreciate you guys. One. I love the work you guys do, 1:35:06.640 --> 1:35:09.800 love what you stand for. UM fan, myself, my team members, 1:35:09.840 --> 1:35:11.600 are all fans, so they're really excited to hear this, 1:35:12.479 --> 1:35:14.280 and thanks for spreading the word. It goes a long way, 1:35:14.439 --> 1:35:16.639 and we are one big team here, you know, trying 1:35:16.680 --> 1:35:18.680 to protect our wildlife, waterways and wild lands, and you 1:35:18.680 --> 1:35:20.280 guys are stewards of it at the top level. I 1:35:20.320 --> 1:35:22.800 appreciate it. I didn't ask you if you got you 1:35:22.920 --> 1:35:27.880 got your final conclude you're saying thank you, great questions. Guys. 1:35:28.200 --> 1:35:36.519 He's gotta go check on as illegal grow on Joe's joke. Um, yeah, 1:35:36.520 --> 1:35:39.960 I think I got anything more anything open book. I'll 1:35:39.960 --> 1:35:42.200 share what I can. Yeah, thanks for coming on. And 1:35:42.360 --> 1:35:45.760 it's like, uh yeah, I'm glad you guys. You know, 1:35:45.760 --> 1:35:48.479 I'm glad you guys are out there and it's interesting. 1:35:48.560 --> 1:35:51.040 I think one of the biggest, like my concluder is um, 1:35:51.520 --> 1:35:56.479 I don't think people realize the complexity of game Warden life. 1:35:57.080 --> 1:36:00.439 That's it like growing up man, Yeah, hand I was 1:36:00.479 --> 1:36:04.000 like everyways, just like you know, you didn't talk fondly 1:36:04.080 --> 1:36:06.320 of the game Warden. Yeah, it's like he's we gotta 1:36:06.320 --> 1:36:08.439 watch our back, I gotta watch over back. He's you know, 1:36:08.560 --> 1:36:10.800 he's on her, but he's always suspecting us. I know, 1:36:10.960 --> 1:36:12.720 I didn't have that fear because I never met one, 1:36:12.840 --> 1:36:15.160 but everybody else it was the same thing. And then 1:36:15.560 --> 1:36:17.000 once you get to your point in life or you're 1:36:17.000 --> 1:36:19.599 not where you haven't recently broken a law, you start. 1:36:19.680 --> 1:36:21.559 Now I see a game ward and I'm like, hey, hey, 1:36:21.720 --> 1:36:24.559 I'm your buddy, because yeah, we all went through those moments. 1:36:24.600 --> 1:36:28.280 I'm not gonna say, yeah, I didn't know what I 1:36:28.360 --> 1:36:31.880 was doing. The game warden get that first Crossman seven sixty, 1:36:31.920 --> 1:36:33.760 and you know, you're on every Blackbird Hunt and whatever 1:36:33.840 --> 1:36:36.240 else you can. You're like, oh, there there's really a limit. 1:36:36.280 --> 1:36:38.799 There's an on game. Oh okay, yeah, you know bad stuff, 1:36:38.840 --> 1:36:40.960 but um but no it is. And that's I really 1:36:41.000 --> 1:36:42.960 appreciate you seeing that, Steve, because that's the thing. The 1:36:43.040 --> 1:36:45.200 whole thing now for me is like we said before, 1:36:45.360 --> 1:36:49.400 is don't you know, don't simplify what game wardens do. 1:36:49.760 --> 1:36:52.280 You know, they're legitimate law enforcement officers no matter what 1:36:52.439 --> 1:36:54.680 state they're from. They're highly trained, and they're out there 1:36:54.680 --> 1:36:56.639 by themselves, you know, And it was it was hard 1:36:56.760 --> 1:36:59.799 enough to deal with a poacher with a felony warrant 1:36:59.880 --> 1:37:01.479 or or you know, a guy that could get really 1:37:01.600 --> 1:37:03.880 violent on you. You know, we a lot of fugitive recovery, 1:37:03.880 --> 1:37:06.240 your guys hiding out in wild lands. That's where you know, 1:37:06.439 --> 1:37:08.160 these guys that need to stay off the grid, not 1:37:08.240 --> 1:37:10.560 to go back to prisons, and not to mention that 1:37:10.720 --> 1:37:12.360 most of the people you go and talk to are 1:37:12.439 --> 1:37:15.360 probably already toting a gun, already going a gun. The 1:37:15.439 --> 1:37:17.600 flip side of it, you gotta run a lot of 1:37:17.640 --> 1:37:20.200 math in your head, right, you got to. When I 1:37:20.280 --> 1:37:22.320 was doing all the traditional stuff for the majority of 1:37:22.360 --> 1:37:24.559 my career, the cool thing was is that I knew 1:37:26.560 --> 1:37:28.479 the guys I was contacting. They were cool. You know, 1:37:28.720 --> 1:37:30.519 they might help. Can we check? I want to check, Hey, 1:37:30.520 --> 1:37:31.680 what do you want? That's why I feel like it's 1:37:31.720 --> 1:37:33.680 helpful to have game wardens, and I know a lot 1:37:33.680 --> 1:37:35.479 of them do. It's helpful to have game wardens that 1:37:35.600 --> 1:37:38.479 come out of a hunting and fishing background. Thank you, 1:37:38.720 --> 1:37:40.519 because thank you for saying. But you know what I'm saying, 1:37:40.560 --> 1:37:42.120 just to sort of have a sense of having to 1:37:42.200 --> 1:37:44.479 read on people because people that are gonna be It's 1:37:44.520 --> 1:37:46.640 like people that have this thing where there's suspicious as 1:37:46.680 --> 1:37:48.479 someone like, well, why does he need a gun? Right 1:37:48.560 --> 1:37:50.400 for something like that's not the right attitude to have. 1:37:50.600 --> 1:37:52.920 You gotta kind of know who you're dealing with. And 1:37:52.960 --> 1:37:54.960 I think I feel that would be a major advantage. 1:37:54.960 --> 1:37:56.599 I'm just saying that's the only way, the only path, 1:37:56.960 --> 1:37:59.080 but I feel a major advantage would be having people 1:37:59.120 --> 1:38:03.640 who understand culturally the groups of individuals they're likely to 1:38:03.680 --> 1:38:07.519 be policing in order to make those those really those 1:38:07.640 --> 1:38:10.880 judgment decisions that you can't explain, and teach someone about 1:38:10.880 --> 1:38:14.479 how to read a situation, reading a person's intents right 1:38:14.560 --> 1:38:17.080 where someone could walk into it and get a really 1:38:17.200 --> 1:38:21.120 wrong impression of what's going on, or adversely miss things 1:38:21.760 --> 1:38:24.000 that they that someone else would have picked up on. Yeah, 1:38:24.120 --> 1:38:26.200 that you hit it on the head. Haven't known the culture. 1:38:26.400 --> 1:38:27.800 And that's what we've seen, right, most of us, at 1:38:27.880 --> 1:38:29.760 least from my academy. I'm a dinosaur, you know. When 1:38:29.800 --> 1:38:31.400 I you know, going back to like the early nineties 1:38:31.400 --> 1:38:34.360 when I started, we all grew up handloading, you know, 1:38:34.479 --> 1:38:36.599 we learned how to use a rifle early. We were 1:38:36.640 --> 1:38:39.280 taught at the respect of it, very comfortable around firearms 1:38:39.360 --> 1:38:41.559 like you, like all of us, you know, and um, 1:38:41.760 --> 1:38:43.679 then as we started to get to the latter generations 1:38:43.720 --> 1:38:45.880 of game, Warden's coming in the last ten years, and 1:38:45.960 --> 1:38:47.560 I was you know, I taught at the Academy a 1:38:47.640 --> 1:38:49.759 lot of a lot of subjects and been an instructor 1:38:49.760 --> 1:38:52.400 in my whole career, and you know, we would get 1:38:52.880 --> 1:38:55.479 people coming into the job, these young you know, college 1:38:55.600 --> 1:38:58.240 kids that have how many of you guys hunt? Two 1:38:58.280 --> 1:39:01.320 hands go up at a forty cadets. I'm like, okay, 1:39:01.400 --> 1:39:02.960 how many of you have done a lot of shooting 1:39:02.960 --> 1:39:06.120 with a rifle, and like six hands go up, like wow. 1:39:06.360 --> 1:39:08.240 So we're going to teach people to shoot weapons in this. 1:39:08.280 --> 1:39:10.280 We're gonna get them qualified, and then we're gonna have 1:39:10.280 --> 1:39:12.880 to get them comfortable. Like like you just said, Steve, Hey, 1:39:12.920 --> 1:39:14.600 if I didn't have that background that we all have, 1:39:14.920 --> 1:39:16.400 going up to a guy with a gun, even that's 1:39:16.400 --> 1:39:18.400 a cool sportsman, Hey, how you doing and that rifle 1:39:18.439 --> 1:39:20.880 comes out? I mean, that's an O crap moment. And 1:39:21.240 --> 1:39:23.920 training past that to get the comfort level. It really 1:39:24.080 --> 1:39:26.000 is an upward It's a learning curve that is so 1:39:26.160 --> 1:39:30.240 steep compared to the traditional guys you know that have 1:39:30.360 --> 1:39:32.000 been on it and gals that have done it for 1:39:32.000 --> 1:39:34.599 a long time. So it definitely helps and it keeps 1:39:34.760 --> 1:39:37.280 you know that one Warden, no matter how much experience 1:39:37.320 --> 1:39:39.280 they have in the field because of their background from 1:39:39.360 --> 1:39:43.000 overreacting or in some cases underreacting. Because you're right, it's 1:39:43.000 --> 1:39:44.360 a good judge of character. I mean, you know from 1:39:44.400 --> 1:39:47.200 your experience how easy it is to see someone that's 1:39:47.320 --> 1:39:50.479 really what we call hanky with a weapon or really relaxed, 1:39:50.600 --> 1:39:52.400 and it's like, hey, it's another buddy hunter. We're on 1:39:52.400 --> 1:39:54.240 the range site and this guy is not a threat. 1:39:54.680 --> 1:39:57.080 But it's that fine line. So yeah, it's it's it's 1:39:57.080 --> 1:40:00.519 a tough game. Well, thanks again for I'm not Man. 1:40:00.600 --> 1:40:02.599 Thanks to help people go find your book. It's pretty 1:40:02.600 --> 1:40:05.880 interesting read, and especially that you know people from other 1:40:05.920 --> 1:40:07.840 states are just beginning to deal with this. I'm guessing 1:40:07.880 --> 1:40:10.240 the problem is not going to go away. Um. Unfortunately, 1:40:10.240 --> 1:40:11.880 it's not going to go away. And I mean there's 1:40:11.880 --> 1:40:14.519 all kinds of debates on you know, do we legalize nationally, 1:40:14.640 --> 1:40:16.280 do we do this? Do we do that? In In 1:40:16.560 --> 1:40:19.559 chapter ten, I go into not so much solutions because 1:40:19.560 --> 1:40:22.240 there are no easy solutions, but things to consider coming 1:40:22.280 --> 1:40:25.120 from a state that is a heavy cannabis state on 1:40:25.200 --> 1:40:28.719 the legitimate and also the dark side, um, and looking 1:40:28.760 --> 1:40:30.559 at what has worked and hasn't worked. And looking at 1:40:30.600 --> 1:40:32.519 our you know, our home state now in Montana, what's 1:40:32.560 --> 1:40:34.560 working and not work Colorado some others, you know, like 1:40:34.680 --> 1:40:37.400 maybe some you're probably experiences like what you got back 1:40:37.439 --> 1:40:41.240 in Michigan. Um. I think legislatively, we need to really 1:40:41.280 --> 1:40:42.800 think that if we're going to regulate, we gotta let 1:40:42.840 --> 1:40:44.960 regulate right. And one thing I can say that I 1:40:45.000 --> 1:40:46.760 get into in this book a little bit without giving 1:40:46.800 --> 1:40:49.880 it all the way is don't go easier on these 1:40:49.960 --> 1:40:53.960 public land trespass cartel foreign growers. Let's go harder, you know, 1:40:54.320 --> 1:40:56.639 because there's gonna be tax money. There's gonna be funding 1:40:56.760 --> 1:40:59.799 coming in millions and millions of dollars now from legitimate 1:41:00.000 --> 1:41:02.800 anibus that are now paying into the government pot that 1:41:02.920 --> 1:41:04.839 really needs to go back to this stuff. In California, 1:41:04.880 --> 1:41:08.280 we're supposed to start seeing those proceeds actually this year 1:41:09.080 --> 1:41:12.240 from legality that started two years ago. So where we 1:41:12.360 --> 1:41:15.800 were millions of dollars short and only able to reclamatecent 1:41:15.840 --> 1:41:18.519 of all the growth sites we went and start to finish. Now, 1:41:18.600 --> 1:41:20.400 maybe we can get to that d percent mark. Maybe 1:41:20.400 --> 1:41:22.840 we can put double the amount of officers on doing 1:41:23.000 --> 1:41:26.600 reclamation education and UH and just spread the word. So 1:41:26.760 --> 1:41:28.479 I think we need to learn from our mistakes and 1:41:28.640 --> 1:41:32.000 and not be you know, so cocky in our position 1:41:32.080 --> 1:41:34.519 that we're not making mistakes. Hey, we made a lot 1:41:34.560 --> 1:41:37.200 of mistakes before we formed this team. We made mistakes 1:41:37.280 --> 1:41:39.280 as we formed this team, and we were you know, 1:41:39.360 --> 1:41:40.880 there are a lot of things we could have done differently, 1:41:40.920 --> 1:41:42.760 and that's one of the things. When we formed MET 1:41:43.200 --> 1:41:45.120 as well as when we do legality. They're almost kind 1:41:45.120 --> 1:41:48.320 of two parallel courses. Let's just try to fail forward, 1:41:48.640 --> 1:41:50.120 you know. And one thing I'm doing now and my 1:41:50.200 --> 1:41:54.760 teammates back in California are we become very effective specialized, 1:41:54.960 --> 1:41:57.720 UM diversified. But the cool thing about you know, being 1:41:57.760 --> 1:42:00.360 more successful would be more effective environmentally, which is great. 1:42:00.640 --> 1:42:03.920 But of what I was mandated to do as a 1:42:03.960 --> 1:42:06.640 lieutenant and team leader of the unit was outreach. So 1:42:06.720 --> 1:42:08.800 it was to do interviews, it was to do podcasts, 1:42:08.840 --> 1:42:10.280 it was to you know, if we had to do 1:42:10.400 --> 1:42:14.479 TV documentaries, investigative news, things like wild Justice. You know, 1:42:14.600 --> 1:42:17.479 certainly there were parameters that I could work within UM. 1:42:17.680 --> 1:42:20.040 And I think being retired, I'm glad I met you 1:42:20.080 --> 1:42:22.120 guys now and not then, because we can talk a 1:42:22.160 --> 1:42:26.160 little more freely, not to discredit anything, but get down 1:42:26.240 --> 1:42:28.400 to the raw real answers. You know of what's working 1:42:28.439 --> 1:42:30.200 and I think and what we discussed today, and you 1:42:30.240 --> 1:42:33.120 guys amazing questions. Thank you for those questions. I think 1:42:33.120 --> 1:42:34.560 we've kind of broke a lot of that down and 1:42:34.760 --> 1:42:37.600 I think a lot of fired up. You know, outdoorsmen 1:42:37.640 --> 1:42:39.680 and women are gonna gonna think a lot about it, 1:42:39.720 --> 1:42:41.920 and I know appreciate any input you guys, how are 1:42:41.920 --> 1:42:44.479 your listeners do? Yeah? Thanks man, Thanks again for coming 1:42:44.520 --> 1:42:46.559 on until we can talk all day. But we asked 1:42:46.560 --> 1:42:50.000 a really interesting idea of widening that discrepancy between the 1:42:50.120 --> 1:42:52.080 right way to produce the product and the wrong way. 1:42:52.160 --> 1:42:58.439 But again, we could talk all day. Concluded, you guys 1:42:58.560 --> 1:43:00.400 might want to hook up with on at and do 1:43:00.600 --> 1:43:05.000 like a historical growth site layer because those would be 1:43:05.080 --> 1:43:07.400 some good hunting spots here soon. That would be good 1:43:08.080 --> 1:43:09.800 right across the parking lot. You can go ahead over 1:43:09.840 --> 1:43:13.240 their next Okay, no hundreds had found him for six years. 1:43:13.560 --> 1:43:15.200 Get that referral from the meat Eator team and I 1:43:15.280 --> 1:43:16.559 might get in the door. They have to work up 1:43:16.600 --> 1:43:20.040 a new icon. I know what it will be. I 1:43:20.160 --> 1:43:22.080 know what it will be. There's one in your book. 1:43:22.520 --> 1:43:26.280 All right, thanks John Norris. Uh is that a John 1:43:26.360 --> 1:43:29.840 Norris Jr. I'm a junior. Yeah, there you go. All right, 1:43:29.960 --> 1:43:55.040 thank you very much. Thanks guys, Okay everyone, thanks for listening. Again. 1:43:55.240 --> 1:43:57.240 And if I said it once, I said a thousand times. 1:43:57.360 --> 1:44:00.599 Please go check out our feature length doc mentory about 1:44:00.680 --> 1:44:04.880 hunting in America today called Stars in the Sky. You 1:44:04.920 --> 1:44:08.639 can find it at Stars in the Sky film dot com. 1:44:08.880 --> 1:44:12.680 It is available for streaming and download. Again, do us 1:44:12.760 --> 1:44:16.080 yourself a good turn, do us a good turn Stars 1:44:16.120 --> 1:44:18.920 in the Sky. Find it at Stars in the Sky 1:44:19.160 --> 1:44:22.720 film dot com. You can stream it, you can download it, 1:44:23.240 --> 1:44:25.800 and you can watch it again and again. Thank you.