#610 - Steven Rinella

Today's guest is a renowned outdoorsman. He's a hunter. He's a survivalist. He has his own show Meat Eater on Netflix as well as his podcast. I had a great time learning about some of the beautiful and brutal aspects of our world. Today's guest is Mr. Steve Ranella. Oh, you're having a little, huh? You having a little bit of that? I'm familiar with that product. Oh, hell yeah, brother. We just gave something to an Amish kid the other day. Never had it, huh? Did you like it? What, Celsius?

I mean, when you gave it to him, did he dig it? I mean, he definitely, he couldn't bend his arms for a couple minutes. It hit him hard. Because of why? I mean, brother. Just unfamiliar. I think, yeah. Something like something, you know. You put that brain petrol that is Celsius into a damn Amish. You know?

He might want to plug in something in. I mean, he might. I thought he's going to get. He's going to put his finger in that. He wants to find out what it's all about. He's going to put his finger in that sock. Yeah. I thought he did. I thought he's going to get court-martialed right there or something.

I don't know what was going to happen. What was the circumstances you were hanging out with the Amish guy? We finally got a hold of one. You were seeking some woodwork? Oh, okay. Yeah. No, no, no. Yeah, we finally got a hold of one. We've been trying to not capture an Amish or whatever. I don't know what the terminology is, but we've been trying to... wrangle one I guess because you can't get a hold of them

You know, you can put messages out there. You can do message in a bottle or shit. They don't reply to a lot of that. And so finally we had a guy who was on Rum Springer. He was on their kind of like, it's like spring break for the Amish. And he came to a comedy show. There he is right there. While on Rome Springer. He looks young from Rome Springer. He's young. He got out there and he brought me this hat, too.

and he came great great kid though we learned so much about it but he'd never seen so many things it was unbelievable but he never had to hit a celsius when we got it in him so we'll see Now he's got his Rum Springer documented. Oh, yeah. But it might make it difficult for him to integrate back in. Oh, I'm sure, dude. Yeah, because people, well, maybe his community won't know.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's a good point. It'd be a good honesty test. If they know, you'll know they violated. How did they know? Yeah. It's a good point, actually. So we're helping out. Yeah, but it was just interesting to get to talk to somebody who'd lived a total different life than the average American, probably. Are you making a show right now, or are we pre-making the show? Oh, this can be the show. Yeah, I mean, we can start into it. Sorry. Oh, no, I don't care.

And so that's one type of person who kind of has their own like way of living. Yep. And you're another type of person who has had a unique life and has like. Good, good, good transition. Was it? Yeah. Oh, damn. I thought it was going to be, I think, I don't know what's going to happen, but, um, no, you have a show on Netflix called meat eater and you guys are in your, you guys are.

We made a lot. I got a 13th season of the show coming out. We made many, many, many episodes over the years. Yeah. And they appear in a lot of different places. Yep, we've seen some of them on YouTube. I've gotten to enjoy some of them. So thank you so much, man. It's definitely exciting to watch. It's really beautifully shot to you guys' show. You went turkey hunting with Mike Waddell, I heard. Oh, yeah, I did.

Yeah, I went down there. And it was fun, but it's like, I don't know, some of the tur- it's like, they just seem like an unwell bird. What do you mean? Turkeys. Unwell in what way? They just don't seem like they're like a top, like, I don't want to say like they, like, I don't want to say uneducated. They just seem like they, like they got picked last for Jim, kind of.

Dude, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Really? Oh, yeah. About a turkey? Yeah, if you look at a turkey, it doesn't seem like they, like, they can't do, they just are, yeah, they just, I don't know, they weren't doing a lot. Dude, it's a big-ass bird. His head changes colors from red to white to blue. He tastes good. Yeah, he's basically the Toby Keith of jerky. They fucking walk around the woods making insane noises. Yeah. But I mean, like, it's an omnivore.

It can eat all kinds of stuff. Okay. Well, now you're selling me on it. Yeah. Waddell didn't tell me all that. Name a better bird. It's like, you could be, oh, a bald eagle. He eats a bunch of rotten fish from the side. Like a turkey, that's America's bird, dude. Are you familiar with a gentleman named Ben Franklin? Yeah. Okay. Did you know that Franklin didn't like the bald eagle?

As a national bird, because it was a scavenger and he threw out some, it's debated how honest you, it's bait is debated if he was trying to be a smart ass or not. Ben Franklin said, America ought to go with the wild Turkey. Because at least it's a vein bird. What does vein bird mean? It's beautiful. He puffs his feather. The male puffs his feathers all out. Yeah. He's got a snood. He's got like a, imagine like a pecker.

laid across your face that changes all the time. It gets erect. It goes limp. Turkey has that? Yeah, dude. Come in and start disparaging a turkey right off the top of the bat. You don't know me. I'm just, okay. It's like very, it's like a, it's disrespectful. That is a, that is a, that is the best. That's the best bird in our, in our country. Okay. Well, look, I didn't, no one's ever, first of all, lobbied for this animal in front of me. Well, Franklin.

Well, not in front of you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. I didn't know him personally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you don't know how old I am. Maybe I was there. I'm with you. But no, Waddell did not. Waddell was just like, we're killing these MFers and he used some slurs. I'll say that straight up. He used a couple of slurs and I was like, I don't think those are for birds or animalia even. But he was like, I think I just had a unique.

angle into it. Tell me more about that nose wiener that they got. It's called a snood. Bring it up. See, you get into turkey anatomy, man. They got a lot going on for them. They got a snood. There's not many birds that have like basically a. So they have a cloaca. Birds have a cloaca like called a uni hole. All their actions. Defecating.

Taking a leak. Well, when they defecate and take a leak, it's kind of a single deal. Okay. I'll do that. They have sex through the uni hole. When they shit, you can tell a male from a female by the shape of its shit. Wow. A male throws a J-shaped hooked shit. So there's not many birds you can sex his shit. Yeah. He's got a snood. They got spurs. Sometimes an inch and a quarter long for fighting.

You ever been to a cockfight? Mm-hmm. Okay. They got spurs. Look at that. Some of those spurs are so big you can hang the turkey by the spur on a branch. That's called a limb hanger. That means he's huge. Pull up the beard. Pull up the beard. Pull up the beard. They got a beard, which is actually a feather. Look at that. Hold on, let me see it. When he's big, when that gets so big.

that it drags on the ground. You know what you call them? Rope dragger. Oh, yeah. So you got limb hangers, rope draggers. Yeah. Like, it's just, you kind of. Okay. I couldn't, you know. I could walk out of this room right now. Okay. And it'd be like, you know what I mean? Yeah. But I'm not going to do that. Well, first of all. Yeah, because you talk bad about America's bird. I appreciate that. And look.

I'm glad that I'm not going to get up and storm out, dude. You might, but look, you won't storm out without teaching me something. I'll say that. And I didn't know any of that. Turkeys are great. Yeah. Their head changes from red, white to blue. It's kind of like they knew that they were going to be America's bird. Oh, yeah. They're the fucking Trace Adkins of birds. When they get real excited. Like when you see when he's coming in and his head gets that whitish color to it.

He is fired up. Okay, so what does that mean when their head changes to different colors? Look at this guy. Blue and white. He's torn between some feelings. Yeah, blue and white. He's in. He's like... blue and white he's coming in you hunt him in the spring during the breeding season okay blue and white he's coming in and he's he's he's thinking

He's thinking about ass. Okay, so he's looking for sex. But Waddell had us. We were in the off-seat. They were in the locker room, and we went to chase them. They were not even on the field. They were fucking back there getting physical therapy. I mean, we were in some – I was like, should we even – Yeah, some of them had their towels around their necks. They were sitting there texting their wives. It was the off-season. If he's coming in, you see a blue head. Okay.

And then all of a sudden, you know, and he's coming in, he's all puffed out and they did another thing. So I know I'm sorry, but they got so they got the big you heard the big gobble. Yes. All right. If you're if you're telling a turkey hunting story. And you get to the part of the story where, like, picture you're telling a story that has a gun in it. Okay. And we get to the part of the story where the gun goes off. You go like, and I heard bang. Right? That's not what it sounds like.

right but you go back and then yeah a friend of mine's latvian and when they hear when they get to a part of a story where the gun goes off they say blouch okay so if you're telling a turkey story and he gobbles it's hard to make the gobble noise. So in a story you'd go, but it's like, but if you, when he's coming in, like if he's coming in and he thinks he's coming into a hen,

You're making a hand noise. Yeah, yeah. So the noise that the man that Michael Waddell was making, and he makes that noise really well. Oh, yeah. He's the best of the best. Oh, yeah. I mean, he was calling a couple of fucking... I mean, even some busty chicks from the gas station. No, he was like a competitive. Yeah, so he's making a hand noise. Oh, dudes were coming out of the closet when he was doing it. I mean, he'll get people going. No, he's very good. And what would happen?

What would happen in the natural setting there is the gobbler is just cruising. Okay, and the gobbler is that big male turkey. He's a big male turkey. He's cruising. And chicks are supposed to hear him. And like he doesn't he's kind of got his little route and they're supposed to kind of come into him. So he's on the highway going down the highway and they're kind of coming on the.

Okay, the on-ramps. To catch him. So what you're trying to do is you're trying to get him to be like, well, I'm going to go over there and have a seat. That's not normally what I would do. But what is going on over there? I need to go out of my way now to go have a seat. What's happening? When he's coming, you see like a blue head.

And he's coming and he's going like this. You can't hear it. Like if you hear it, he's in range. He's going, here's what it sounds like. He's doing two things. He's spitting. Okay. He's making it. noise we always goof on it and go like but it's like he's making a noise with his mouth okay and he's taking his wings and on the ground okay and that is the that is a like

extremely exciting noise to hear. So the first part is with their actual, they do it with their mouth. And the second part, they do it with their wings on the ground. He's drumming. Wow. So it's a real mating call. Yeah. Like he'll, you'll hear him. Like you'll hear him. He's kind of like making, he's like doing a vocalization.

he's doing a vocalization, but like he's got his, his wings. You're on the ground. Okay. And you'll even see, you'll sometimes be going down a sandy trail or something. You'll see the wing drags and you can tell that one's been cutting it out there and they do this little dance. Wow. Oh, yes, dude, it's the best thing in the world. But if he's coming in and all of a sudden his head turns red, his head turns red and lifts up. And if he goes, game's up. Oh, he knows. He knows that it's not good.

Like when you hear that noise, he's on his way out. But what's the problem? Wait, when you hear what noise is on the way at that? When he putts. Oh, when he putts. His head goes boom, red lifts up and putts. He's gone. But they don't do anything too quick. but that's his way of saying like i don't like it wow this isn't about ladies anymore

Oh, it's about dudes being secretive, pretending they're women. No, they're like an absolutely fascinating bird. You know, I took years ago. Wow. Yeah, I didn't know, man. You know Rogan. I did turkey hunting with him years ago. And he wound up being kind of underwhelmed by turkeys. There might be something like some kind of like offshoot of being a comedian is that you can't appreciate turkeys.

Well, I think there's... Do you think that there might be something to that? That's a good question. I think... Oh, I remember watching this, and you had Brian Callen, too, which was... That's hilarious. Oh, yeah. They didn't appreciate turkeys. Drove me... Yeah. I know. Turkey people do not like it if you do not like... talking, being, thinking about Turkey. No, if you just said something bad about my three kids, I'd be like, yeah, I see that. I'm like, yeah, that's fair.

But like with the turkey deal? No. Right. It's baked. Yeah. Turkey's baked into American history. I didn't know that much about turkeys. I think if I knew some of this and maybe I didn't ask enough stuff, you know, I think if I'd have asked more stuff and I'd have known a little bit more of like the lower. I think I probably would have been more hyped about it. Yeah. Can I hit you with one more lore bit? Yeah, sure. So when, at the time of like when Europeans arrived in North America,

There were turkeys. They think there may be turkeys in like 34 states. And then they were extirpated from many of those states because they were good to eat. Everybody wanted to eat them. People to hunt them at night, shoot them out of the trees at night. It was a popular food item. Yeah.

And they nearly wiped them out and it got to where there's only turkeys hiding out in like the deepest patches of swamps up in the highest mountain woods, you know, hiding out here and there. And it got bad. Right. There's only a couple of states where you're allowed to hunt them anymore. And then they started. putting them back out there. You can hunt turkeys. You can hunt turkeys now in 49 states. Wow. You can hunt turkeys now in more states than had turkeys. A cost to that of the bird.

is that people now take the bird for granted. Like from a PR standpoint, I was talking about eagles earlier. From a PR standpoint, eagles are kind of everywhere now. There's still people who will see an eagle and they'll be like, oh my God, an eagle. But dude, you know, we have a little shack in Alaska and you might see 13 eagles in one tree. Yeah. So from a PR standpoint, they have a little bit of, they like, you risk overexposure as a bird. Turkeys.

are so everywhere now that now we have like town turkeys. But there's wandering around like stray animals. And so the mystique, it like, it costs them some of their mystique. Ah.

And then people will get a sense from town turkeys, which aren't hunted. They'll get a sense of that a turkey is whatever, that he's not cautious, that he's not careful. Right. Right. That'll just use any crosswalk or whatever. Yeah. So. A lot of times when people disparage the turkey, they're referring to some town turkey, but they don't know what a turkey who's out there busting ass.

in the woods with people trying to kill them. And coyotes trying to kill them. And bobcats trying to kill them. And red fox trying to kill them. And possums eating their eggs. And skunks eating their eggs. And raccoons eating their eggs. Greyhorned owls blasting them out of trees. And they survived through all that. So when I think of a Turkey, I'm thinking of a persecuted Turkey. Some people are thinking of a town Turkey. Yeah. It's just different.

Yeah. I think I was probably thinking of like, yeah, I mean, there's a Turkey right there. It's almost. Yeah. Catching a bus to work or whatever. I mean, that's fucking unbelievable. That's what's going on. But no, I didn't, I didn't know. I mean, I think that gives me like definitely a different appreciation.

I didn't know they had so much baked in. They're such a thermometer of sexual activity and so many little ratings are relevant right on them and the way that they operate and the sounds that they make. They're a dynamic bird. And that I'll agree to 100%, man. So all, like, here's another thing about them. Can I hit you with one more? Yeah. Most of the domestic animals that we utilize, okay, when you go into a store.

and you see what's for sale down there for domestic meats you know whether you buy you buy weird shit like you buy lamb goat uh pork uh beef okay that's all That all winds up being like Eurasian, species of Eurasian origin that became domesticated. And when you say Eurasian, what are you talking about? You're talking about animals. Animals that are indigenous, animals that are endemic to Europe and Asia.

became like the domestics that we know today. Wow. So when you see like a horse, that's a Eurasian creature. Cattle came from a thing called the oryx. Okay. Goats came from other continents. Sheep. other continents the turkey is uniquely north american really okay so when the spanish came they took turkeys they drew turkeys from mesoamerica

brought them back to Europe and turned them into like the white looking butterball turkeys through selective breeding and then brought those turkeys back to the new world. But it's like the new world's contribution. It's North America's contribution to the domesticated species that we know and love today. Got it. So if you go into a meat market and you're like, they got all the normal shit laid out.

Turkey is one you're like that that's origin is here. It's a new world creature because the new world didn't produce. The new world didn't produce domestics. We haven't effectively domesticated New World animals, but the turkey's an exception. Wow, so that really is kind of our national animal, huh? Oh, yeah, dude. You think it's our most national animal, not just bird? i can't answer that i haven't thought about that before yeah

Damn, dude. No, thanks, bro. Yeah, I think it's interesting to learn about that kind of stuff. When I was growing up and stuff, I didn't have a lot of influence in that kind of world, you know? Like the wildlife world. Yeah, I think hunting or something. I mean, the first thing. I mean, I saw a buddy of mine get shot.

brothers at mardi gras once that was like my intro to hunting you know like and i was like oh shit he lived yeah where did he get hit he got hit in the back kind of right here just a stray bullet um

Yeah, it looked like a... Like aimed at him or he just caught a bullet? Aimed at him. Oh, I got it. Yeah, or like semi-aimed, I guess, yeah. I mean, the guy looked like he didn't know what he was doing that much, but he was shooting. Yeah. You know what I said? I wanted to ask you a question. I wanted to ask, like...

How many years did you spend growing up in Louisiana? I was reading up on your background a little bit, and you spent time in Illinois, but also in Louisiana. Yeah, I spent time in Louisiana until I think I was maybe 21 or 22. But yeah, we'd go up to Illinois in the...

in the summers and fish. We did a ton of fishing and we would do a good bit of fishing in Louisiana, but, um, I just never really got into hunting. The first time I ever went hunting was with Michael Waddell. Oh, okay. Yeah. What I wanted with Louisiana, have you. that was the last state i ever went to and i mean like went to went to was louisiana have you did you switch did you switch to gulf of america no you didn't switch no i would be well i want to see how it pans out first

Because Mexico, bring it up. Let's get a look at that big puddle, brother, because what I'm trying to see is where is most of the land around it? Well, shit all over the place. Northern South America. I think you do a year for each area. Like maybe you do like everybody gets a year and then you look back and see how good that year was. You do like, and then they get it.

You know what I'm saying? You get one year to operate that MFR and then you see who really owns that bitch. That's to me, that's like a fair way to do it. Yeah. The reason I was asked about it is we. Once I found out about Louisiana, we filmed a couple, we filmed a number of episodes down there. I started going there with friends because we spearfished the oil rigs. And, uh, and so right when all that shit was heating up. Okay.

We're like cutting an episode about that was filmed out in the Gulf. And between the time I wrote the VO and the time we recorded the VO, all this shit hit the fan. Okay. So I'm sitting there and in my, in my script, it's Gulf of Mexico, but then it switches. So we're in the studio and I'm talking to.

my colleagues and we're trying to decide what way we roll on it we tried doing like a joke we tried doing like the gulf of uh you know but then we thought that's like a dated joke and in the end after careful contemplation I was like, I can't switch. Yeah. Like I'm old, you know, I'm, I'm half a century old. Yeah. It's just, it's maybe I'll leave it to the youngers, but for me.

I can't like, I can't do it. I can't switch. Yeah. It just seemed kind of like, I think you got to figure out who's going to earn it. I think you got to find some way. Maybe there's a competition each year and then between Mexico and America and some.

the other countries those are smaller countries that are touching it i think like cuba um they ain't gonna be the goal for cuba though yeah they're probably yeah they probably wouldn't let that happen but i think you have a competition each year and whoever wins it they get to name it maybe it's a soccer game or something and whoever wins it, they get it for the year. Fishing contest. Yeah, that's kind of fucking dope, actually. Like a soccer tournament isn't really applicable.

Well, I think it's applicable, Stephen. And what I'm going to tell you is this, brother. That's as far as I got with that. But I think it's – I think the soccer would be fun because a lot of people love soccer. That's what I'm thinking, you know. But, yeah, maybe it's a fishing rodeo or something. But I think then aren't they automatically going –

kick our ass I don't know I was trying to think of something we'd win better maybe it's a and this would actually be this is actually a great idea I think it's 10 events It's Mexico and America. Yes. Like of all the shit, man. Yeah. Swimming in there. Hunting on the edge of it. I wonder if we could get. Spear fishing it. Spear fishing and just fucking.

Somebody singing near the edge and seeing if officials swim up, that's fishing. You know, I was going to tell you about these. I told your producer this. Guys I work with were buying these Celsius. And I didn't know that I didn't really read what was on there. So I was drinking them all the damn time. I was drinking them like seltzers. And I was having a hard time sleeping. And someone pointed out.

They're like, well, shit, you've been drinking those stupid things all day. And I was like, I thought I was drinking LaCroix or something. It is good. I know that. I'll say this straight up, baby bear. Anywhere worth going is worth going. In a boot. Mmm. I put my feet in some boots and I say, yeah, baby girl. I love that.

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I think that's a good idea. I like him, man. He's a fun guy. Oh, he's so great, dude. I get to spend, we go to a summer camp together every year with him and his family, and it's fucking hilarious. I would say volume control and going from soft to aggressive, if that's what you want to call it, or louder, is important to find in a diaphragm. If you get those tones and you can control that, it don't have to sound perfect.

My opinion on turkey calling, rhythm is more important than specifically the sound of it. That's what I've been saying. That's what I've been saying. Dude, I think one thing that would be cool, I wonder if he could put together almost like a animal call orchestra where it was like you had this sort of like an orchestra pit and somebody was like the conductor and they had all the animal calls. That's a good idea.

It'd be kind of neat. I was hip on this idea for a while. We didn't take it as far as I wanted to, but what I wanted to do is I got a directional, we bought a directional mic, and I wanted to build a catalog of... I never thought about what I was going to do with it. We actually bought the damn thing. I wanted to build a catalog of animal noises. Yeah. So we picked up different.

and then kind of abandoned it. I think because I didn't know what, we hadn't really decided what we were going to do with them. I could think of something. I just wanted them. Oh, yeah. Like a great catalog of animal noises that people wouldn't know.

You could do a couple things with them that come into my mind. One of them is you could. The orchestra. Yeah, create, have that. A second one is people that are deceased, put a special headset on them. It guarantees it'll play for 30 years or whatever. They get to have that, all the best animals of the world on the way out. A third idea I think it could be neat would be if you create it all.

This would be cool. You create one of those things. I shouldn't say it would be cool. Who knows? It might be horrible. I don't think it's that great. I'm going to say it. What it is is it's like one of those white noise machines, but it's all the fucking animals. dude and it's Steve Rinella's fucking come sleep with Steve it's called

That sounds a great thing, man. I check my wife on that shit. I know every now and then, every now and then in the distance of the animals, you hear Steve's wife be like, it better just be you in there.

but that's what it's a special machine and it's all and then every now and then you can go to different regions of the world and hear them you go to Africa you go to like sleep with me in Africa yeah sleep with me in Asia or whatever yeah sleep with me in Alabama and every now and then there's just some country dude

He's like, oh, something's – I'm going to go fuck one of these things or whatever. You're like, whoa, whoa, buddy. But it's just like a unique way to fall asleep at night. Are you hip to the app Merlin? I've not even heard of it. Yeah, you should check it out. I've had people that design the app on.

On your podcast? Yeah. Is your podcast called Meat Eaters 2? It's called the Meat Eater Podcast. Meat Eater Podcast. So when you're out in your yard and you hear birds off in the distance, anywhere, and you open it up. It just listens and tells you what birds. It's a phenomenal app. The reason I bring that up is it's what is harmful to peoples. The self-esteem is when you're turkey hunting and you're making, you're mimicking the noises. So we'll open up Merlin and be like, oh.

is it picking you up or not bro is it is it throwing is it saying there's a turkey over there is it not saying there's a turkey over there yeah like i got friends that are very that put enormous amounts of energy into learning how to mimic the call of a barred owl. Really? Yeah. Like you mean those, what is it? They go like, I got to roll. Yeah. You do it loud as shit.

Okay, hold on. Just give me a second. Yeah, I'm not good at it. Southerners are good at it. It's a very Southern thing. There's like Yankees that can do it, but they're not going to do it like a Southerner. The barred owl. Pull it up. I just want to get a gander at it. Sorry you had it up. Yeah, pull up Clay Newcomb. Say Clay Newcomb barred owl. Unless you want to hear the real thing. No, I want to start with this man. Well, he's a southerner. Oh, yeah, he is. Oh, this is me and Clay.

You see Clay and the birds, right? Anyhow. Definitely, dude. You got to stay in school, brother. What is fun is to open up Merlin. And see who's got it. And then get off a ways. Yeah. And so one of my buddies who is a Yankee, he's a Northerner, buddy Seth, like he's a real good owl caller. Yeah. And it started when he realized that Merlin, like when he realized that Merlin wasn't picking him up. wasn't putting him down as a barred owl.

He had like an emotional crisis and started redoing his shit and working on his shit until Merlin, he had to change his stuff until he could figure out why Merlin wasn't grabbing him. Look, all I'm telling you is that motherfucker ain't registering on Merlin. That's all. Look, I'm going to shoot you straight. That's crazy. It's also crazy to be.

I actually, now this I really understand wanting to be this animal. Being an owl. Yeah. Wanting to really get into their head. And we had, I've had a little bit of owl actually. My sister's husband cooked two owls. during Thanksgiving. Well, he might want to keep that more secret. Yeah, I don't know if he did it. I mean, I haven't seen him in a long time. That's what I'll tell you. But it's not a lot of meat, I'll tell you that.

It's kind of like you see those women in Little House on the Prairie, a lot of skirts, not a lot of meat under there. That's a good way to put it. You think it's going to be Philadelphia under there, but it's a little more Arizona when you get under there. See, I'd tell you a good story my father told me.

dead so they're not gonna do anything bad I will tell it I don't know why my father did this okay I don't know why my father did this but in talks about that like a lot of skirt not much not much meat yeah so obviously my father was from another time My dad was born in 19. He had me when he was old. He was born in the Great Depression. Oh, wow. Like 1910? No, not that late. He was a World War II veteran. Oh, wow. Anyhow. Thank you, Mr. Ranella, for your service.

He tells a story about sitting deer hunting with his bow. Oh, there he is on the right there. He tells a story about sitting deer hunting with his bow. deciding to shoot an owl with his bow. And he says he doesn't, and he like, it feels like he hits the owl. I can't account for why he would decide to do this. It's not something I would do. I don't condone it. Shoots the owl and like hits it.

dead center but he said the owl doesn't even change tune wow because he realized just it's all feathers yeah yeah It's all brassiere, baby. No tit. That was his only owl hunting story. The owl escaped unharmed. Look at these motherfuckers. What are we doing? What are we doing, dude? Oh, yeah, there you go. If you don't think all of the world is a PSYOP, look at this MF-er, homie.

Look at this thing right here. You want to know a current controversy about the barred owl? I'd love to. The noise that Clay was just making there and the owls were making? Okay, do you remember back to... Do you remember back to the kind of culture war issue around spotted owls, like logging in the Pacific Northwest and the spotted owl?

Well, I think they were tearing down their habitats, right? Exactly. And the spotted owl became, this happens to animals now and then, where a spotted owl stopped being an owl. and kind of became like a cultural emblem. Oh yeah. Like when they put them on frontier airlines, like on their wing. Yeah, sure. It'd be like, like, like wolves occupy this now. Like there's wolves as flesh and blood.

creatures and then there's sort of the symbolism of the wolf right so the spotted owl became a symbolism of land use you know like land use controversy okay meaning they're yet loggers in the pacific northwest trying to produce harvest timber products, but...

There's this owl, this endangered species, this owl that they're trying to protect. So the owl becomes this kind of like proxy symbol for whether we should cut trees or not. I remember even in Dumb and Dumber, they went to the banquet where they were raising money for the spotted owl. So it became like a cultural thing. Barred owls are one of those species like Canada geese, white-tailed deer, crows that do really well, that they benefit off people, right?

The more people there are in more places, the more beneficial it is to that owl. That owl does well in disturbed ecosystems. They like people. They'll hang out above your house. They'll hunt in your yard. We don't bother them. other things hate people but this thing that's gradually happening is barred owls which were historically more in the eastern us yeah are colonizing

the spotted owls range and displacing spotted owls. So there's this big push and there was even federal money. I don't know where it stands right now. I think the current administration was rolling it back. There was a push where they were going to go kill. Right there. They were going to cull 470,000 barred owls in the Pacific Northwest. To keep them from migrating? To try to save the spotted owl. The spotted owl. Fuck.

And I think they might have pulled that money. I'm not sure. But just a little like, you know, like wildlife politics, like there's always wildlife politics brewing, you know? Yeah. And so there's this kind of thing like, does it make sense that you ask the question? And it's not like people are moving them in trucks. They're moving on their own. So if this bird is getting there on his own. It's nature.

Yeah, he's getting there on his own, under his own wing, spreading across. Is that, can you really call it that that's like bad? Or is it just that it's natural? Like throughout your 45 years of life. Raccoons have gone north and west throughout your 45 years of life. Opossums have gone north and west. Barred owls have gone west all on their own.

And it's human in that they're sort of like our crop fields, our clearings, our developments don't bother them and they're beneficial to them. Right. So we don't have an effect really on it. Yeah. So like it's happening and they're talking about, you know, dusting off. That many, you know, dusting off that many owls. And I don't know.

I mean, that's interesting. Yeah, it's like how much do you want to mess up with what Mother Nature is doing? You know, it says right here. Yes. Funding for the barred owl removal initiative was recently pulled in July 2025. The Trump administration terminated three critical federal grants totaling.

1.1 million, which were essential for launching the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services plan at coal-barred owls across California, Oregon, and Washington. Who was going to do that? Were they just going to send some... How would they go about that, do you think? I applied for one of those gigs one time. They were doing...

I just thought it was kind of interesting. There's another animal that lives that is in more places than it was historically, the mountain goat. And there was this project one time to, they were trying to get mountain goats out of Olympic. Was it? No, no, no. Not at Olympic National Park. I can't remember. Pull up a mountain goat. It's a great animal. Now, you do not see a lot of these around here. No, no, no, no, no.

But they were looking for teams of people to go do this mountain goat pole. Yeah, of course they were. And so we made a team. Get professional wrestlers, dude. We made a team to do the mountain goat pole. And our team was not selected because a part of the thing was they wanted you to keep your mouth shut. And I think that they looked and they were like, this guy's not going to keep his mouth shut about that shit. He's like a fucking writer. So they're like, I think they saw through me.

And I had a crack commando team put together. Yeah. But didn't get the nod. Because I think that they could see that, like, let's say you're a writer and you're trying to get in the military. They're like. Yeah, I got a feeling. This ain't patriotism. Do you know what I'm saying? So I didn't get the job. It's almost like Armageddon where that team gets chosen to go save the world or whatever. You guys should have got the chance, brother. That'd be a great movie.

commando team put together really who'd you get on you get any diversity on it how do you attack no i didn't do no this was before that dei no this is before that yeah you know now that i review it in my mind it was decidedly it was decidedly it was a it was a group of guys that you could mistake for me. That was my mountain goat team. They're fixing to do the same thing in Grand Teton.

In the Grand Teton National Park? Yeah, because mountain goats are largely in the coastal ranges historically. God, they're beautiful, aren't they? Oh, yeah. So you got like Idaho, Colorado, Utah. They all have non-native mountain goat populations. Oh, yeah. South Dakota has a non-native mountain goat population. And when you say non-native, that means that they just ended up there? They weren't naturally from there? They were drove in. Ah. They were drove in. They were brought in.

You wouldn't believe like if you're interested in animals, man, you wouldn't believe how much humans have reshuffled the deck. Of how animals exist? Of distribution of animals. In the world or mostly in America? World too. Our country hosts African species in certain places. I mean, totally wild, feral animals. We have African species running around in our country. We have Asiatic species running around in our country. We've just completely reshuffled the deck. Like I was saying, like...

Historically, there was turkeys in 34 states. You can hunt turkeys in every state, but Alaska now. We've been very good at moving it around, and we used to have the ambition of moving it all around. Now we have the ambition of trying to put it back the way we found it. Yeah. But for a while, the ambition was to like, I want more of the merrier. Spread it everywhere. They just cut shit loose just to see what would happen. Fuck. Yeah. All the time, man. Just move it around. See what happens.

That's bonkers, man. Where is Grand Teton National Park? It's basically Yellowstone National Park. Do you have a place in America that you feel... has the strongest connection to nature kind of to just pivot a little bit like do you like where you feel like the most like innately connected

Is that a weird question, kind of? No, it's not a weird question. Because I know that some of the natives had the Black Hills and stuff like that in the Dakotas. They had places where they felt extremely connected to nature. Oh, yeah. You mean like places that had a... spiritual, like an aura or something to them. Yeah, sure. I just wondered if it was, yeah, I can't pretend. I can't, like, I don't know what that felt like. I don't know what that looked like.

Um, I have things that mean a lot. I have places that mean a lot to me. Um, I have places that mean a lot to me from a standpoint of personal experiences that have happened in certain places. I had a place for a long time. I told, like I told my kids. I was like, man, if I die, like I had originally said, if I die, I want, um, I was like, this is going to be hard to pull off, but like in a perfect world, I would have my body like dumped there.

Oh, yeah. Just hidden away somewhere to be eaten and my bones strewn about by. Bears. Yeah. Like I thought that seemed like a cool idea. It is kind of neat. Yeah. There's there's a number. There's a number of people that Crazy Horse, his friends took his body and put it somewhere they don't know where it is. Really? Has anybody gone to look for it? Edward Abbey, the writer.

Edward Abbey. So Crazy Horse, they hid his body? His friends took his body. He was killed in Nebraska. They took his body and put it in a crevice somewhere. They don't know where it is. And no one's found it yet? Ed Abbey's body was out. Ed Abbey from... You ever hear of Monkey Ranch Gang? He wrote Monkey Ranch Gang. Not from... Desert Solitaire. He was an environmental... Not the odd couple, huh? No, no, no. He was an environmental warrior. You should read up on Ed Abbey.

Yeah, he's a he's like a he's a big figure in defending the desert in a novelist. Anyways, his friends took him and they dumped him. And they don't tell anybody where? I won't tell anybody where. That's cool. That sounds like the way to go. So I wanted to have that kind of, I wanted to have a program like that. And that where I wanted it was a spot that had, was a place that had like, that I had a deep.

what to me passes as a sort of spiritual connection to that place. Then there's places I just like, because there's like, I like. I love being in Alaska. I spend a month or so in Alaska. It's kind of throughout different times of the year. I spend a month or so in Alaska every year. I love Alaska. What I like about Alaska is it's, you know.

it's a big place, but there's a lot of places where you can just kind of picture what time was along. Like you can kind of picture what things were a long time ago. Got it. Yeah. So it's like, cause I think that if you've, as a, As an outdoorsman, as someone that likes nature, oftentimes you find yourself trying to imagine, like trying to imagine a long time ago. Right. There's something like, there's some kind of continuity thing.

You know, people have been out on the landscape, living, hunting and fishing and living off the land for since the beginning of human time. And so naturally your mind goes to. Like what, how did other people experience this? Like how did, what, what was the experience of other people doing these activities in these places throughout time? Yeah. So I like spots where you can kind of picture it.

Right. It's still, you can picture it. And there's a lot of places in Alaska. You can go there and be like, you can feel it. Oh yeah. I mean, you can feel it. Yeah. Um, like it feels so untouched by so many, like just a lot of other bullshit energy and stuff. Yeah. And it winds up being like, you can imagine, like you could go, there's places you go and you can imagine like, man, some dude standing here.

10, not 10, let's do whatever. Some dude standing here 7,000 years ago, beheld, like however he perceived it, whatever his ideas of God were, you know, whatever his allegiances were, this is kind of what it looked like. Right. You know, it's what it looked like.

And those places mean a lot to me to be able to be like, man, like you could stand here, you know, at all these points in time and be like, it's just, you can just imagine it. It makes this continuity similar because a thing that I'm very interested in is. and professionally and personally, very interested in like the experiences of, of, of, of other people who,

had aspects of a lifestyle that I live today. Like I'm always fascinated by that. That's why I could give a shit about Antarctica. Cause there's no human history there. Right. So. That's the cool thing about Alaska. My brother's a fisheries biologist in Alaska. And he had a really interesting point that he made to me. He's like, if you think about the conservation efforts, environmental efforts in the lower 48, we are in.

Like someday what we're doing might be regarded as a recovery phase where we're trying to like fix things. We broke a lot of things late 1800s, early 1900s for decades. You know, we broke stuff. And so for the most part now, when someone talks about conservation, oftentimes it's like fixing broken shit, bringing the turkey back, fixing broken shit. Right. Right.

Cleaning up rivers, cleaning up. Yeah. We're like, we broke a bunch of shit. Like we built a bunch of dams in the Pacific Northwest and killed all these salmon runs. Now we're trying to fix all the shit we broke. And so for most of like most conservation work is oftentimes like fixing shit that we fucked up.

He was saying his work in Alaska, he's been in Alaska forever. His work in Alaska at times is like, they're still doing, they're still trying to describe what's there. Meaning there are salmon runs. They'll go look at salmon runs. People know they're salmon. They're fishing for thousands of years, but no one's ever went and sort of like scientifically described the salmon run. There are rivers where no one's gone and scientifically described what lives in the river. Got it.

So they're still in a phase of just trying to write down what's there. Yeah. And we're in a phase of just trying to fix all of our broken shit. Right. So in that way, Alaska is cool. Right. Because it's still like in such an early process of being affected by humans. Yeah. And if we play our cards right. Then what we learn here, we won't have to go through the same thing. Yeah, if we play our cards right.

When someone talks about building a big dam, you know, on the Yukon or whatever, you might look and be like, man. We were spending a lot of it down in what they call in Alaska, what they call the outside and the outside. We're spending a lot of time and energy trying to fix all the shit we broke by doing that. Just so heads up as you think about your plans. Hey, guys.

Do you have a part of, I know you've traveled extensively. Do you have a place that you feel like is the most dangerous for people to go? Is that really a fair question? I mean, I guess every place is dangerous depending on what your behaviors are. Yeah, there's it's this is something I think about and talk about a fair bit. There's a lot of like there's places where there's a high level of perceived danger. OK, I think I always try to point out.

If my wife thinks I'm doing it, like my wife often thinks I'm putting a lot of risk on my kids or doing too much, too risky as shit with my kids. Because they're going to try to do it. Or you're taking them with you. Then I'm going to hurt them or drown them or whatever, you know? Oh yeah. Like she's always afraid I'm going to.

Something like that. My recklessness will lead to my kids getting messed up. Right. Why do they need safety gear for Christmas every year if you're not trying to do something bad to them, Steve? Oh, there's one of my little kids. No, that's not my little kid. That's my friend's kid. Yeah, if you don't even know whose kid it is. That's my kid. Okay. Well, she's 12 now. Daddy's future hunting buddy. She has much more hair now.

I believe that. I'm just saying the shirt is lobbying for a certain type of behavior in the future. She is my hunting buddy now, dude. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, we don't show pictures of our kids much anymore. But there at all, really, except my older one. Anyhow, what the hell was I talking about? Oh, she's always afraid I'm going to...

drown them or whatever oh yeah reasonably so but but i'm always like man the most important like the most dangerous thing this is me like you're my wife not me all right the most dangerous thing that's going to happen is us driving to the airport sure steve look Sign the papers.

Okay? Sign the papers and you can do whatever you want. Okay, that's what my attorney said. Sorry, I was trying to role play a little. No, that was a good role play. You'd have to have more time with her, you know? Yeah, I should have also went into it a little bit more. You didn't hit it at all, dude. But I understand she just didn't meet her.

Let's try it. But she, she brings up, so there's like high levels of perceived danger, but like, but then there's like reality, meaning driving down, driving down a highway is. The hazardous. Yeah. Like highway travels, hazardous flying in single engine. We do a lot of flying in single engine aircraft. That's hazardous. Flying in single engine aircraft is like a legitimate occupational hazard. But where people's minds go, people's minds go to getting attacked by wild animals. Right.

Because people don't want to, like, they're not thinking about that you're going to go in, like, when you go into a remote environment, exposure. Dehydration? Yeah, exposure is like. far more dangerous than wild animals but it's not falling into a hole sure it's not fun to think about right right it doesn't it doesn't occupy any there's no intellectual energy

You can't put like intellectual or emotional energy into you thinking about exposure. It doesn't have the same PR. Instead, you're like, well, shit, there's wild animals lurking in the bushes. Right. And so people are afraid of things. See, I feel like I seem like I'm hacking on my wife. I love her. My wife carries pepper spray. My wife will sometimes carry pepper spray. Of course. Because there's black bears around. Oh, yeah. I've been in some neighborhoods.

You, anyone in this country, most people in the major cities of this country, they're all within a 40 to hour drive of a black bear. Right. You're much closer to black bears right now. Yeah. Okay. But you're not sitting here with pepper spray. So why, when you go walk, like, why, when you, why does she feel, I'm like, you know, like you have black bears that come into the outskirts of New York. Right.

New Jersey has the densest black bear population in the country. Yes. And the densest human population. New Jersey does. Yeah. So like. They don't all, when they're golfing, they don't carry pepper spray. Right. It's not like you see Trump out there with pepper spray and a fucking pocket full of... Why does my wife want to have pepper spray? Yeah. For black bears. Like, black bears don't matter. They're not dangerous, but they're perceived as dangerous in certain environments.

make people feel like now they're in danger but golfers in new jersey aren't we're carrying pepper spray right though they have probably have bears if you're golfing in in some semi-rural new jersey environment you're within hundreds of yards of bears right but they're not giving their energy to thinking about bears, but you put someone at like a trailhead in the woods and all of a sudden they got bears on their mind. Yeah. So dangerous would be like,

I spent a month in Africa this summer, and we saw a black mamba, a snake called, you know, that's the deadliest snake. Like, they just kill you when they get you. The guy we were with said, you'll never see one. Then we saw one. So all we talked about was black mambas. Yeah. He didn't bite anybody. Right. But all of a sudden, like anytime I sat down, once I saw that son of a bitch, I saw a puff adder, a black mamba and a cobra. Damn. Okay. What is a puff adder?

Oh, he's a bad mother licker, man. Pull up how he gets around. Pull up how he gets around. A puff adder? Watch how he gets around. You think of a snake doing a serpentine movement? For sure. Well, check his ass out. Pull up him getting around. Oh, shit. He just wiggles along like a centipede. Shorty Bay got that fucking... Look at that. No, he don't need to do... He doesn't even need a footprint. He don't need to...

That's what you call cutting corners right there. That's the kind of employee that I need. Dude, that dude just, he's got little, his scales just walk, man. Yeah. That's crazy. I don't know if this is true. You want to hear something they told me about that thing? This Kenyan dude told me? He told me that.

I don't know if it's true, but it's just a great, it's a wonderful detail. He told me that Puff Adder, he strikes so fast. We just caught one crossing the road and got out and messed with it a little bit. Not up close, but distant messed with it. That puff adder strikes so fast. This guy was telling me this could be total lore. Don't even look it up because I don't want you to refute it because it's too cool. He says that he can hit a balloon twice. He can hit a balloon twice before it pops.

Which I don't even know what that means, but doesn't it sound cool? It sounds. You know, like you can fight, fight before the balloon deflates. I don't know. Oh, yeah. So he's got he's got a bad venom. So anyways, we see one of these. We see a. Black Mamba, who can cruise around with half of his length up in the air. If he's seven foot, his head, when he's cruising through the woods when he's pissed, his head's at your navel. Damn. He's a bad...

Bad, bad dude. Well, he's got some calves on him. That's what's amazing to me. Why do Indian people love fucking with these things? And Kill Bill is a black mamba that kills... that kills uh michael madsen's character is it really yeah it's black mom anyhow so we see this we see these different critters running around and then like you're not gonna get killed by a snake it's just like like it doesn't happen right but it feels like it's gonna happen but all of a sudden

Instead of me thinking like, oh, I might get like some amoeba from drinking the water or like who knows or a mosquito-borne pathogen. All that's out the window. Instead, everywhere I look, all of us, me and my other guys I was with. we didn't take a step do without being like

Because all of a sudden in our head was the perceived danger. Meanwhile, you're with all these people that are born and raised there. None of them's dead. Right. Yeah, they're doing fine. Some of them have some emotional issues or whatever, but overall they're well. They're not all dead from snakes. It's just that's where as humans.

Oh, like that's where the head, your head goes to like. Whatever's had the best advertising and probably whatever's most recently been seen, those sorts of things. So when you say like the most dangerous place, like to an outsider. The Tanzanian bush felt dangerous for a reason that's probably not true. Right. It felt dangerous because one day we saw a black mama. Or the Tasmanian devil, too. Well, he doesn't live there, but sure. Yeah.

Yeah, that's true. Tasmanian tiger. Right, yeah. Tasmanian devils, yeah. I'm thinking of Tanzania, I think, or something. I don't know what I'm thinking. Oh, no, no, no. You're right, yeah. But no, Tanzania and the Tasmanian, that's the island of Tasmania. Yeah. Tanzania comes from Zanzibar combining with Tanganyika.

Oh, yeah. When those two countries came together, they were called Tanzania. So, Tanganyika doesn't exist anymore. It's now Tanzania. Tanganyika doesn't. Zanzibar does. But the Zanzibar Archipelago was rolled into... Tanganyika to become Tanzania. I'm a subject matter expert. I spent a month there. Did you really? A lot of women will go to Zanzibar to meet men, kind of African men, a lot of women in their 40s and 50s. Is that true? Yeah.

That's what I know about the migration or whatever it's called. But I, or it's for, I don't want to say it's for sex, but I think people say it is. I don't think that you're going there for that. It's pretty buttoned up there. Is it? It's pretty buttoned up. No, I don't think it's like illegal. I think it's they go there and it's sort of a popular space for courting of those of African men and women who are kind of divorcees. Really? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Cause my buddy went there and he was like, dude, it's not for me. It wasn't for him. See my subject matter expertise is crumbling, but I'll point out I was only there one week. Yeah. So I only absorb so much. And you don't fit either one of the parties that are mating there. I brought my own mate with me, man. Oh, there you go then. Look, we know that a lot of fellas enter the room wiener first, baby.

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rocketmoney.com slash Theo. I'll say this, dude. I remember the first time that I saw a snake. It makes me think of what, like, my perception and everything was. Like, we were walking. I was with my grandparents. Or walking and suddenly I just kind of felt something on my like I had some just boots were fishing And something wrapped around my leg like that and it was a snake

Really? Yeah. And I was like, oh my God, I couldn't move. I was so scared. I'd never seen a snake outside. You know, you'd heard about snakes. and i mean it had just fucking wrapped around just like it was like my like my leg was a stripper pole and this thing had just came to just fucking grind just straight out of hell to grind on me you know and my grandmother looked at it

And she's like, she goes, I remember she's like, did you summon that? She asked me. Because my grandmother was out of her fucking mind. And that's when I knew that it was just going to be a long life right there. I was like, you think, and I looked in her eyes and she thinks I fucking, a child that she barely ever even welcomes into town.

She finally takes you to catch some bullheads in the fucking Spoon River out here. And you summoned a serpent. She thinks I'm the fucking Jimmy Baker of fucking fanged lizards. Do you remember what kind of snake it was? I want to say it was a water moccasin, but that may have just been the lure of me growing up in Louisiana. Because I don't know if they have those in Illinois or not. No, I don't believe they do.

But I worked on a farm in Louisiana, and at lunch break, we would always just walk around. If they had a boat that was turned over, we'd flip it over, and there'd be a water moxon under it every single time, dude. Yeah, that's a cool snake. They were scary, though. There's like a, there's an idea and I kind of buy it that, um, from, from like a evolutionary standpoint, or we carry this sort of like this.

I want to preface this by saying I'm not a geneticist. Okay. We care, despite, despite your impressions, I'm not a geneticist, but that we carry with us this innate. let's say this sort of genetic marker or whatever, this innate fear of serpents. Yes. Do you know what I'm saying? Like it, like it does you well, it, it, it, it does you well to be like,

Standoff. You follow me? 100%. Yeah. Oh, dude, I think anybody would be creeped out. There's nothing. Yeah, there's something so. Why are we so scared of snakes? Do you know? I want to look. Let's look that up a little bit. There's a bunch of venomous snakes. There's a. But they.

feels dude when you see oh they're not right man and it feels so foreign oh i will say this we interviewed this blind girl one time right and we're just learning about what it's like to be blind and someone like the different stuff and she talked a lot about animals and like getting to spend time with animals and the feelings you get and she says that she doesn't get any feeling from a snake like there's no energy that she gets really and that's when I was like dude if a snake

Yeah, Tanya Milojevic. That's when I knew if a blind don't even like a snake, I don't like a snake. That's a great idea to interview someone where you can just get right in because then you can ask all the questions you would be not. You'd ask all the questions. Remember Howard Stern? He used to have a show where he'd have a panel of black guys that white dudes could ask questions to. Oh, that's great.

You know, all like, like it was like, I can't remember what he called. It was like, ask a black man. Yeah. And now that, yeah. It was called Ask a Black Guy? I can't remember what the shtick was, but you just have dudes volunteer to come in. No, that's what we need. Like idiotic white guys to be like, hey, you know. Yeah. Hey.

So it's an interesting interview format to be able to have a person come and say, like, I will now entertain all your dumb ass questions that you wonder, but don't ask. Yeah. And that that are like that I get sick of. But I'm going to sit here and indulge you. for an hour and you can be like well what do you see yeah

You know? Yeah. She said that a lot of it was like memorizing patterns. Like when you're going somewhere, like the more you go there, the easier it is. Like, um, she said a lot of times it felt like she was playing like a video game in her head. Like just remembering, like almost as if you're like controlling.

somebody through a video game that that's kind of how she would like guide herself. I thought it was pretty interesting. I should do it again soon. That's a really good interview deal because she probably like generally going about her life probably can't stand You know, people staring at her, wondering shit, asking her the same dumb shit over. So to be like, I'm just going to sit here and just do it.

Yeah, it was great. Hit me with it. Have you ever taken a blind person on one of your hunts before? No, man, but it's a thing. It's a thing. And I've had a blind hunter on my podcast one time. Wow. To talk about what the experience was. Yeah, I had a blind person on. And what do they, because they're just, I mean, they got to feel like there's no chance when they shoot, right? You know, they had people help. We had a, you know what I'm dicking up?

I actually just told you something that's not true. Because we were going to. We one time had a paralyzed. We had a paralyzed. We were going to have a blind hunter. We didn't. I don't think we did. We had a. fully paralyzed hunter who had to hunt with like an automation thing wow took a lot of assistance from his friends but he had been a hunter had an accident and then paralyzed from the neck down developed a way

that he could continue hunting with the help of his friends. Wow. That's pretty cool. With a mouth control apparatus. But it took a ton of assistance. That's who he had on. But a point I was going to make about that innate fear of snakes is if you could...

do time machine shit okay and you talking time travel i'm gonna okay this would be like a really good question to to have okay the good use of if you had like one pass one time pass um here's a thing that would be on my list of shit i would be curious about when human like after the sort of African diaspora and humans started colonizing the whole world. Right. Um, the people that came, the people that became the first Americans came in from.

You always hear about the Bering Land Bridge, right? The land bridge is the size of Texas. It wasn't like a bridge. It was like a landmass. People colonizing the New World would have been born and died on the Bering Land Bridge without thinking that they were going anywhere. They were just living their lives. Got it. And slowly spread down. And those were like Inuits, like kind of natives?

They became native. Right. The people that became the Inuits, by our understanding, the people that became the Inuits came much later. Got it. Okay. They came from Japan and the Aleutians and whatnot. But these like Siberians. Came into the new world. So by this point, you have hundreds of generations, hundreds of generations of people had lived in a snake free environment because they'd lived in the Arctic.

Hundreds of generations. And then they slowly, generation to generation to generation, they slowly move down the North American continent. There's two theories that... Like Alaska, you know, they don't have a snake, right? There's two theories. There's one that they came through the mid-continent and maybe emerged down around Edmonton, Alberta, onto the Great Plains. That was a fashionable idea for a long time. The currently fashionable idea is they came down the coast.

OK, so now you've had you have hundreds of generations of people that would never have seen or experienced a snake. Yeah. And you got snakes down there. But all of a sudden they spread southward. Yeah. And at some point, one of those sons of bitches is out just, right? Fuck. He's out cruising around, doing his deal, and there's one laying there. That happened. That happened. If you could take your time machine and go see that guy, see that snake, did he go, fuck, or did he jump down and grab it?

That was some good time machine shit right there. Well, I'll say this. If he was with someone else when it happened, you have to cut that person's throat immediately, I think, because you would think they have something to do with this. Like, they're in on it. Like, that's what I would do. You're like, who the fuck? Who summoned this? Yes. Yeah. Your distant ancestor summoned that snake. Yeah, you would think it was like other, I don't know, but you'd probably seen fish.

But I don't know. Do you just get that energy? Yeah, like then you would be able to answer the question. That's the way, the one way to be able to answer the question. Do humans have some baked in shit? Or is it not that? Right. Yeah, you'd have to go all the way back. There's probably another way too. You could take a child at birth, buy one, sequester it somewhere. Well, they do that all the time. There's Indian babies playing with snake.

yeah but take one and sequester it so it doesn't get any information from any human beings oh yeah let it become an old person and throw a snake in that room do they jump back That'd be easier and less expensive than time travel, but it wouldn't be as authentic and you'd run into legal.

And if they've been alive so long, are they going to not care anymore? Because you've damaged them psychologically and stuff by locking them up in that room and shit, you know? Yeah, they're like, I don't give a fuck if something's a snake. Because then the detractors would be like, yeah, but he was... destroyed psychologically that this is not telling us anything right yeah i think you're just with a with a

With a person you victimized out of this whimsical scientific study. Oh, yeah. I think at that point, you're really looking at the Elizabeth Smart of Reptiles kind of vibes, you know? And I don't think that's what we want. No, it is going to be a time travel problem. Yeah, we'll go time travel. Let's talk about a topic that some people think is kind of controversial. Like you see a lot of people who will post photos with like big game, right? They go and kill like a...

A woolly, not a woolly mammoth or whatever, but like a... A deer. A big, huge deer. Big old turkey. Yeah, huge turkey. Rope dragon, limb hanger. Yes, rope dragon, limb hanger. You know, one that's just singing, you know, one in an Allen Iverson jersey. You know what I'm saying? Like a real fucking... boss out there. I'm following. I'm following. I'm getting excited. And they put a picture of it up. Let's say it's a deer, something with eyelashes. Okay, okay, okay. Because that's what...

Or lions and stuff like that. Yeah, it's got an eyelash. It's emotional for people. OK, so that's fair. So, yeah, I think I just want to know about some of that. But then also you hear that people put up these like that some of these animals, they're going to die in the places that they're in. And so for conservation that they kind of sell off kind of tags or lottery for.

So anyway, take me into some of that world, kind of, if you don't mind. Well, I thought you were going to get into the ethics of you posing with a dead animal in a picture. But you're talking about, like, the sort of conservation, like, the kind of... There's a perceived conflict or like a incongruity around the notion that how can you help a species by hunting it?

Right. How do you help a species by hunting? Wouldn't that be like that? That would appear to people to be quite illogical. Right. How does killing it help it? Right. Is that is that? Yeah, I think that's fair. That really kind of boils it down. Yeah. Yeah. It's a phenomenal question. I can see why it puzzles people. But you can point to case after case after case of ways in which it has worked. We began our conversation around turkeys.

There's a saying that I like quite a bit. It's not mine, but it's, success has many fathers, but failure is a bastard's child. Okay. The success in restoring the wild Turkey, many people claim parentage of that success. And there was many people that attributed.

efforts to that success all these different like whoever state you live in your state has a fish and game agency okay i'll point out that your state's fish and game agency gets the bulk of its funding from people buying hunting and fishing licenses that's how we fund the agencies that take care of wildlife and the states so does that but when they were restoring the wild turkey from nearly being wiped off the continent okay

The main player that was involved in that nationally is an organization that happens to have their annual convention in Nashville called the National Wild Turkey Federation. The National Wild Turkey Federation was kind of a through line of the efforts to restore turkeys to North America, to recover the wild turkey, to put the wild turkey back on the ground and all the places where it had been wiped out.

The National Wild Turkey Federation is a hunting organization. OK, so if you went and looked and you said. Here's these guys that put enormous amounts of expertise, scientific expertise, enormous amounts of funding, enormous amounts of physical effort into restoring the wild turkey to where they exceed historic levels. is it fair to go like you just did that so you could hunt turkeys you'd be like guilty as charged right guilty as charged right um

There are other because like turkeys are so widely available. But is that a bad thing? It's not a bad thing. It's not, but it's not always even that way. Because, for instance, if you look at there's there's an organization called the Wild Sheep Foundation. It's an American based conservation organization that works to restore, recover, protect wild sheep species. Okay.

Desert bighorns, Rocky Mountain bighorns, doll sheep, stone sheep. Okay. They work on behalf of wild sheep. I have been hunting my whole life. I apply every year to get. a bighorn sheep tag in a half dozen states every year i have never drawn a bighorn sheep tag i have never hunted bighorn sheep it is likely It is likely that I will die. Okay. Right. There's a likelihood I will die and have never had the opportunity to hunt a bighorn sheep yet on occasion.

I do things to support the wild sheep foundation. So what am I guilty of? Like I aspire to hunt a bighorn sheep. Yeah. Um, I recognize them as like an integral part of the Western landscape. I want to see more of them around. I'm a hunter. I would hunt one if I could, I probably can't, but I want to see them back in their place.

There are many, many conservation organizations, the most impactful like wildlife conservation organizations that do real work on the ground. I'm not talking about lobbying bullshit. Okay. I'm not talking about like, you know. I'm talking about like the kind of work where you're like putting effort on the ground, you're putting animals on the ground, you're proving habitat on the ground, right? You're helping migratory animals, whatever. That shit comes from hunters.

That shit comes from hunting-based organizations. So you're saying that most- In this country. Most of the wildlife and the preservation of wildlife here comes from hunters. That's like, we fund it. We do the groundwork.

people that come out of that world of hunting, move into conservation. There are like environmental orgs. There are lobbying orgs. There are orgs that work in all these different ways that aren't, but like they're really effective on the ground stuff comes from hunters and anglers. Wow.

It's just this isn't like this is like this is settled science. I mean, this is me giving you some spin. I'm not giving you like a novel way to look at something. It's just like it's just the reality. Well, yeah, I mean, you're a fish and game agency. What state do you? It doesn't matter what the hell you answer me. You're a resident of Tennessee. Your fish and game agency gets the bulk of its funding. So your fish and game agency handles like disease work.

access work, enforcement of game laws, they get their money from hunting and fishing licenses, the bulk of it. Or they get money from excise taxes on sporting goods, equipment, guns, ammo, whatever. It's just like, we pay for it. There's guys that are there's people that want to deny that reality. But like I said, it's like it's settled science. You can't debate the nuts and bolts of it. So this plays out in other ways that draw a lot of attention, like something like.

Let's talk about Tanzania for a minute. Totally different system than what we have in America. But in Tanzania, the most effective way that they're able to protect... large tracts of wilderness habitat is drawing revenue from them by allowing hunting to occur on those places. Got it. It's like productive for them. It's either that or it's slash and burn agriculture.

So it's like you're able to go into an area and by having people like Westerners, Europeans, Americans, whatever, come there to have an experience of going there and hunting and paying a big amount of money to hunt there warrants them. being able to set aside large chunks of ground, the government and monetize it and monitor it and then pay for, uh, anti-poaching efforts and other things that, that protect it.

You might look at it and hate it. You might look at it and be like, I don't think that humans have a right to harm animals. And like, I'm not going to argue that perspective. So you might look at it and be like, it sucks that that has to be true. And I'll be like, okay. It's fine. Maybe in your opinion, it sucks that that has to be true. But what I can't debate with you is, does it have to be true? It's just true. Yeah.

You might hate that that's the way, but that's the way it is. But that's the way it is. Did humans always eat animals, do you think? Yeah, since they could. It'd be hard not to, I think. I'm trying to think if I went back in time. That would be cool, too. You go back, some guy. The first dude to eat meat. You'd have to go back some fire ass. You'd have to go back.

That's fine. We can go back that far. There's an idea that like there's there's an anthropology. There's a debate about what time at what point in time that you have. behaviorally and anatomically modern humans this is um this is not we're getting way outside of biblical understanding but we're talking about like from the non-biblical science world okay okay so so a

stepping outside of like the biblical confines and going into like purely scientific world. Some people think that you could have grabbed a dude 75,000 years ago, put him in, grabbed him at birth. And he could learn to fly an airplane. He could go to college, do well, blend in. You'd see him going down the street and wouldn't think anything of it. Yeah, be a pie cap or whatever. Absolutely. Absolutely.

That was a hunting. That was a hunting consumer of large quantities of animal flesh. That was. Yeah. So. So there's no doubt at that time period that people were really snacking on animals. Oh, yeah. And then there's this other idea. And you know how you wind up liking the ideas that confirm your own. For sure. There's this other idea that the great.

in in a scientific understanding that that when we had when humans had this kind of uh renaissance like like um we seem to have suddenly kind of figured a bunch of shit out And some people correlate that to us becoming predominantly to eating huge amounts of animal flesh. It's so efficient and so full of energy. That was our intellectual renaissance. Like that's when humans became.

bright and developed like religion and organizational structure and language and all that is when we discovered meat eating. Right. Because we had enough energy not only to satiate our bodies, but then also for the rest of us to maybe flourish some because we finally had a new source that was really. replenishing us constantly. We were broken from a cycle of needing to eat low-grade, low-grade, low-calorie food all the time.

Right. So then you're constantly just sitting there snacking, whereas otherwise you can have a nice meal. Then you sit back and kick it and think of something creative. Like a deer is on a really strict schedule of like eating a bunch of low grade food, sitting, ruminating, eating, you know.

So deers always, so there's this idea. Yeah. That's the idea that like, and of course I like it cause it reinforces like that. That's what I like to eat deer meat and stuff. So when I hear that, I'm like, fuck yeah, bro. That's right. That's the truth. Cause we just like the stuff that.

Oh, yeah. We want to support our own ideas and causes, our own truths. What about, pull up like a Neanderthal. What was that called? Like a man that was 75,000 years ago. Was that Neanderthals? Well, it would have been homo sapien. oh god that must have been well no i've been like they would have been oh did you have you ever had your have you ever done like a

You know, the late 23andMe organization? I've done 23andMe. Yeah, they sold all my fucking information to this Japanese company. I went in and deleted mine. Oh, yeah. Just the other day. My shit. You can still delete your shit. Really? Yeah. I'm getting a bunch. Because I would go, I would say like, hey, I want to buy his shit and see what he's got going on. And I, you know, so I had mine deleted. You can have it deleted. I'm getting emails from like, you're related.

to this guy, you know, and it's like a fucking Japanese guy. I'm like, this motherfucker? Hey, they recently solved... They're lying. Where I live, they recently solved a 30-year-old murder case. Nuh-uh. Because so many people doing 23andMe. filling up these, these filling up databases. And so all of a sudden now, also now they're like, also now they're like, Hey, we got a little ping, a little ping on the map. Yeah. Of like a family that seems.

Because they had a biological specimen. We're going to solve all those old crimes. They had a biological specimen, right? And so just from people willfully going and doing this kind of work, all of a sudden you start popping all these like. And then you got to buy a hair, a sperm or whatever. Oh, yeah. And all of a sudden you're able to be like, well, it's not him, but there's some dudes a lot like him. Fuck. That live in this town. Let's go have a look around that town.

When you do it, they tell you what percent Neanderthal you are. Yeah? Yeah. I was lower than average Neanderthal. Huh. Did it upset you? No, I wasn't surprised. I just don't, like, I don't have that vibe, you know? I remember, I feel like, I feel like Joe was telling me, Rogan was telling me that he was high up.

I could see that kind of. I could definitely see that. I swear. I hope I'm not making that up. I swear he told me that he was higher than average. I don't think he would deny that at all. He's definitely like a Neanderthal guy that got struck by some fucking cool ass. lightning i could be i swear that's what he was saying but anyways i was lower than normal but the point being oh yeah there he goes more than regular people

57% more Neanderthal. That's classic, dude. So, you know, an understanding is that, you know, they were... Here's a weird deal. I wrote this one time. I wrote this in a forward to one of my cookbooks. I was writing it. you could have been like at a certain time you could have been in Spain. Okay. Okay. You could have been in Spain. You could have been the Iberian Peninsula. You could have been in Northern Israel and see a campfire.

often burning in the distance. And you would have had to have asked yourself, what kind of, what kind of human is that? Do you follow me? Like you mean you would have had to be like what race or class or something like that? What kind? What species of humans are? Oh, like is that somebody who's like kind of like... Is it Neanderthal dudes? Somebody's a little more monkey? Yeah, is it like Neanderthal dudes? Is it like...

Like the same way that we were talking about somebody eating a month, somebody eating a banana. Somebody who has a sandals at least on eating one of me. Yeah. Like the same way you got like white tail deer and me like where I live. We have white tail deer on me. They're so similar. Like it takes, I don't want to say a trained eye to tell them apart, but.

you know someone from another country would look and it might take them a few days for like oh they're different yeah they're just gonna see and be like whatever you know deer deer but at a time it'd be that at a time it'd be that

you'd be like, oh, no, there's the one kind of human and there's these other kinds of humans. Like, fuck, that guy's about 2,000 years back. Yeah, and they don't mix or they get together or they kidnap each other or whatever the hell they got going on. They still have bad breath, all that. Yeah, but. When you see that, you're like Joe having that as high as 57% more Neanderthals because it's like we under dearest. Was it like an act of passion? That made you evolve?

No, I'm saying that drove humans and Neanderthals to interbreed. Was it coercion? You think they're separate beings? You think there's one more advance in the... Neanderthals were... Far more successful species than we are. Like Neanderthals were in Europe far longer than our ancestors were in Europe. But aren't Neanderthals our ancestors though? No, I wouldn't. You can't really.

I wouldn't really. Yes. And that it seems like direct human ancestors are like homo sapien. Yeah. Okay. It seems like at times they were able to have viable offspring that at times Neander. Neanderthal people that were in Europe far longer. They were in Europe long, long hundreds of thousands of years before modern humans made the scene. Got it. And because of everyone having a little bit of introgression from. Nanderthals.

This is not my field of study. I'm just a curious onlooker. Let's take a look right here. Ancient human species, including Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, Denisovans, and others did interbreed as they encountered one another during the Middle and Upper Paleolithic. periods leaving detectable genetic legacies in modern populations. Dude, I didn't even know this. I thought.

Have you seen that chart where it's one man like that and then he has a briefcase and then he has Nikes on or whatever? That's a deceptive chart. Dude, that's fucking, I can't even believe that. This is one of the main things I talk about with my kids.

Wow. Trying to explain. They're like, what do you mean we came from monkeys? I'm like, don't look at it that way. Yeah. Oh, and I want to start talking about my next hour comedy is about the middle monkeys. Like, why don't you ever see that middle monkey? Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, you'll see a monkey.

And then you'll see a dude, you know, who's a mechanic, right? But you never see that middle motherfucker. You know what I'm saying? What happened to them all? The dude who's just scratching under one arm, wrenching the other.

Fucking just, they don't allow him to work the register because he's just like, whoop, whoop. You know, but he can change a tire and a fucking, just with his lips. You know what I'm saying? You don't see that chimp, that chimp man, that middle man. So I'm just amazed. They're locked away somewhere. Yeah. But dude.

I never thought that you'd be sitting there and you'd be like, oh, shit. Oh, yeah, you'd be like, uh-oh. You and your buddy, like, dog, let's go do a lap, right? Yeah, we better go figure out what kind of dudes it is. But the fact that they, the fact that they. Fuck. Why didn't they tell us this? Well, you might have missed that part. Oh, I wouldn't know that. Let me get to my point, though. The fact that they interbred leads to this question of, was it...

was it a romantic bonding? Was it like a romantic, right? Was it something that was like under coercion? It was coercion. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Like, was it like a, like a sort of like conquerors? choice kind of shit. Yeah. It was like when there, I mean, it wasn't that they would like me in, in, in over like, like the Capulets and, you know, from.

Like Romeo and Juliet's family. No, Stephen, it was not like that. They'd meet and come together despite family condemnations and produce offspring. No, it was like when those nurses that don't treat people well at those hospitals take advantage of them. That's what I think it was. I do wonder. Another good time machine burner up right there. You just go back. But here's the tough thing. If a person who is more mentally advanced, hypothetically a homo sapien, if they tried to.

If they try to like, oh, here's just a Neanderthal, let's get a little bit of love, you know? Because they're easy to trick. Right. But they're not easy to fucking just pin down and make love to, I bet. You gotta trick them. But even if you trick them with a little wind chime or something, get their attention.

I bet you can't. How quick can you make love and still enjoy it and get away from them? I wouldn't. That's not a risk I'm taking. No, it's time machine questions. I'm not. That's not a risk. I'm someone that hasn't brushed their hair in 70,000 years. I'm going to try to fuck them.

i'm out you know what i want to put out a call to you don't mind me doing a call for a guest i'm trying i've been trying to find your show but i want to find them so it's like i'm like using your i'm using like your audience to find someone that I might not find on my own. Okay. What I've been trying to do for years is I've been trying to find a really, really good, um, a really good Neanderthal.

You can say Neanderthal or tall. You sound a little bit smarter. I understand. My understanding is you sound a little better to say Neanderthal. It's a valley in Germany. It is? Yeah. It's a valley in Germany? Yeah. And you sound a little more. Like I'm more likely to get a good guest by saying Neanderthal because they're like, this dude knows his shit. I want to find a really good Neanderthal behavioralist. Hard R in that Neanderthal too. Neanderthal researcher.

Okay. Come on the show and talk about what they know, but it can't be just like a writer who spent a month researching it's because our audience doesn't like those kinds, right? It's gotta be someone that like, it's gotta be someone that. lives and breathes. It can't be like an interloper. Yeah. Like I need like a legit, a verbose

animated Neanderthal research. I don't want some halfway house. I want a fucking trap house that people have been shooting up in for 50 years with information about motherfuckers who could digest a stone if they need to. Yeah, like that. like a really good Neanderthal person to come on the show.

And you just reach out to us. I want to interview you. Okay. There you go, guys. For Steve, they would like that. Do you have a lot of Neanderthal researchers that listen to the show? I mean, I bet we have some consumers who would rank high on a... neander scale or whatever but i'll say this i want somebody who has a high amount on their 23andme an extreme i don't want they don't need to have that i know you want this is what i want the highest i want somebody

Who's 80% Neanderthal. Yeah. Find the highest guy. And when I get them, I'm just going to send them over to you too, Steve, because I think you would do well. And because you might be able to notice some patterns that they have or behaviors. Yeah. Who. If whatever I had low, who was the highest? Who's the highest? Somebody has to have the highest Neanderthal amount. I know that there is a, I was reading a book.

I read a lot of anthropology books. I can't remember if it was The Seven Daughters of Eve. I was reading a book about human history. And in it, they were pointing to some controversy. around this question okay um it's not always uh people don't always look upon this uh this is not something that everybody likes to talk about really where you see

Like as much as I'd be whatever, proud of it or whatever, there are places, there are places in the world where these geneticists see. More N-tals? Yeah, more Neanderthal in certain areas. And it's a sensitive subject. It winds up being a sensitive subject. So you might wind up having not only a fascinating show, but you might have a show that courts a certain level of controversy. I like that. Yeah. But what I've found, because I am interested in this subject, I've found that there's a sort of.

trend in academics to that were, there's a trend in academics of being that we're like rebranding Neanderthals. So it wants to be like, Oh, they had art. Oh, they like wore jewelry. Oh, they were free divers. Right. They, Jimmy, like every, like, why do you think we're doing that? Do you think, I don't know why it's like, cause there's this, there's used to be this idea that there are these like thuggish.

Brutes. Right. You know, but there's like, when you look, when you, if you kind of follow Neanderthal news, like I do, there's a theme. Yeah. There's like a theme of, of this kind of like. This delight, like this kind of delighted realization about how come, like how complex their culture was, how complex their society was. It'd be like. Like you don't find like, man, it turns out they were dumber than we thought. Right. That's not like a news story. It would be like, oh, they appreciated.

The finer things in life. Well, it's like the branding. It's like even when it goes back to like you were talking about the bald eagle. It's like just that PR, that spin. I wonder if they have a very. Very good PR agency. Neanderthals right now are, I have a good one on retainer and they're getting a lot of good ink. about that they liked art and movies, you know, and it's like, they're just getting cooler. They're getting cooler. Oh yeah. They love stand by me. You're like, that's insane, dude.

I'm telling you, dude, start paying attention to Neanderthal news and you'll see what I'm talking about. When I get my guest on, he'll tell you all about it. Oh, I love that. I'll send you the episode. I love that you're going to have that, man. Dude, what would be better? Of course, I could talk about humans all day long, bro. Listening to two Neanderthals talk about themselves, they wouldn't know a lot, but they would try pretty hard.

That could be us, dude. That's awesome. That's really awesome, dude. People tell you you look like Harry Connick Jr. sometimes? No, I've gotten... i used to get kevin bacon that's who it is i used to get a dude from the a dude from remember the show where they would like do all the crazy stunts to each other oh uh johnny knoxville

Oh, yeah. Johnny Knoxville, I could see that some. I would get that. What else would I get? Those are good ones. Yeah, I don't see that one too clear. Because I never do clever shit with my hair. yeah yeah johnny's hair is always kind of stylish and stuff yeah so i think that kevin bacon like he doesn't get too clever with his hair i saw that he was kicking ass when i was a kid in the movie making business man you know oh he's such a talented guy

I saw the guy who was in Fight Club the other night. Brad Pitt? Nope. I saw Edward Norton the other night. Oh. With some friends. It was like at our little restaurant. And I was like, is that Edward Norton? And it was him. I don't look like him. No, you don't. I'd love to look like him, Edward Norton. I'm trying to think. If you had to look like a woman, who do you think you'd look like? That's a great question. I don't know. There's sure there's one out there.

No, I'm sure. But look, if we get to pick, that's why we're having this conversation, dude. I didn't want to talk about it, but let's talk about it. What I'm saying is if you got to look like a woman, who would you look like? It's kind of a good question.

Trying to think who I could see you as. I'm not even like equipped, man. I can't really think of what you're getting. I mean, like, if I was a woman, what woman would I want to look like? Or if I had to be a dude that looked like a woman? No, dude, what are you talking about? I don't know. I'm not talking.

talking about some fucking chop shop aftermarket woman i'm talking about some i'm talking about a certified bone-in woman like your woman from the jump yeah but what i'm getting at is there's two ways of looking at it you're saying that I remain a dude. I remain a guy. No. Oh, I become a woman. No. What, what woman do I, you're a woman from the start.

Say somebody. Oh, like going back, I was born a woman. Yes. And then I wanted to pick which of these women I wanted to look like. Right, like which woman would you be good at? Which woman would you be, I wonder? It's a great question, actually. I'm trying to think who you would be.

Let me think about it for just a second. I'm trying to think, man. For some reason, the name Naomi Watts keeps coming to my head, but I don't know why. It's just popping in my head. Little pervert. I know. It's just popping in my head. I don't mean it to. Bring her up. Oh, yeah. It just popped in my head.

I don't want to be held to it. It popped in my head. Dude, it's not a bad choice. She's great. Naomi Watts. I like that. It just popped in my head. A thousand Watts. I look exactly like that anyway. I'm in, dude. Look, that's what I look like. Yeah, that's why, dude, there were some cuties in our neighborhood, and that's why people started doing peep and timing. I'll tell you this. If you grew up around busted women, nobody's getting that step stool out. You know that shit.

Oh, there we are right there. There's you and Joe right there. No. No, that's not. I'd be more like, it'd be one of those dudes in Naomi Watts. Yeah, neither one of those is us. I saw, what were you talking about? I saw something you were talking about going on a safari in Africa. oh did you notice this so i did do that but yeah but either way i noticed that like i was talking about the the snakes and shit

Yeah. When I went to Africa, right? So I went there like a couple times for some different safaris and stuff like that. I felt like some of the people, when you look in their eyes there, it goes further back in time. Does that make any sense to you at all? I think that... It may have, but I believe that that would be your perception of that. That would be your perception. Right. Dude, I talked to this one guy and I was like, this guy, he's just got damn just.

Just back through. I mean, it just felt like it went back to the, like, just to where the fingers of existence first snapped right there at the damn sound. You've gone hunting in Africa? I did for the first time ever this summer. You did? Did you enjoy it? Were you life changing experience? Like in what way? I hadn't been to that. I hadn't been to that continent.

It wasn't like the going hunting there was life changing. But one of the things I like about hunting is it immerses you and it immerses you in a situation and immerses you in an environment in a deeper way than you would be immersed otherwise. Because you're doing something very like.

very ancient and base, you know? So it wasn't the experience of being there hunting, but just the, I hadn't been, that was like, I hadn't visited that continent. And so I got to go to a couple of places and it was just. It just scrambled up my head about, you know, when you see different ways of living, you know.

So in that way, it was profound. To me, it was profound. Did you guys visit some innate cultures there and stuff like that? Yeah, like some really ancient cultures. I spent a little bit of time in this place called Maasai Land.

and met dudes met messiah dudes that are herders you know um they'll live in they'll live in structures they make themselves from native material and herd cattle and been herding cattle since you know from our perspective since the beginning of time on this place did it feel like traveling back in time yeah it did for me for sure just just like those glimpses into like those glimpses into into cultures that have those glimpses into cultures that have

remained relative to our own that have remained very constant. Okay. So like that was, that was, yeah, here's some photos of Maasai folks. That was very eye-opening. The dark Amish right there. Being out. They're herders, you know. They're like. Beautiful. Oh, dude. Stunning.

stunning do you think they have such a different relationship with existence than we do yes yeah me too oh yeah like they send their they send like the kids bust their ass they'll spend they'll send little kids out like when they'll send their kids out to watch goat herds man those kids don't drink water and eat until they come home at night

They raise them to be tough, tough, tough. You kick it more as a grownup. Like kids will work real hard, you know, and as you get older, you get, you kind of get more of like, you get to kick it a little bit more. But when you're a kid, you bust ass. That was fascinating. A lot about it was fascinating. And I also liked like the animals, a thing that I've been. There's a thing that I've like lamented in.

conversations with my friends in my writing and all kinds of things i've i often i spend a lot of time thinking about studying talking about writing about uh ice age america so our continent what it was like in the, at the Pleistocene, Holocene transition. So like humans that were here during the tail end of the ice age, the first people that came here, what was their, what were their lives like? And they lived amongst this, this great abundance.

and diversity of wildlife that we don't have now. Mammoths, Mastodon, short-faced bears, right? All this kind of shit. They had a giant, like a beaver that was the size of a black bear. There was an American lion. Fuck, man. We got a bunch of shit. Aftermarket shit. Oh, we don't have shit. So going there, like that was the one continent. That was the one continent where all the big shit didn't vanish. We got fucking Bichons. Yeah.

Africa is the one continent where humans and all this megafauna. Never changed. They. for whatever reason, it's the one continent where all the big shit didn't vanish. So you still have that great diversity of wildlife. So you can sit in the U S like if you're a guy like me, who's really interested in history, you can sit in the U S and lament.

that our elephants are gone like we don't have like 9 10 11 12 20 species of ungulates running around at any given time antelopes yeah like whatever but you go to after you're like oh that that's what they were talking about like the ice age yeah like the ice age is alive and well like there is an elephant there's a hippo there's stuff that weighs thousands of pounds like thousands of pounds there's stuff that weighs tons you know

And so it didn't. What happened everywhere else didn't happen there. So that was. To go like, oh, it's not gone. It's somewhere else. But you can go and be like, this is what it would be like. I wrote down a list. I kept a list on my notes function in my phone. I kept a list of like large mammals.

large mammals species that we encountered. And I can't remember, man. By the time we were done, we had like 27. I could pull out my phone and show you. Maybe I have it. Anyways, I had like 27 large mammal species that I personally laid eyes on. Wow. that's cool and that would be like that's the shit we're talking about like in ice age america um

And so life-changing in those kind of ways. Yeah. I wonder if you had a brain scan whenever you see those types of things, right, as a human. I wonder if there's a different reaction that happens in your brain as opposed to when you see different animals. Like, does it take us back to a part of us that... like knew those animals well or knew that they existed like i wonder there's a theory about that that like why do that that you know when you take babies and make a mobile the animal things

It seems to me kind of a cockamamie theory, but there's this idea that, and this is kind of like ancestral Africa thing, that those animals resonate with babies because it's drawing back to some deep. Deep. memory oh the animals that are on a mobile mega fauna oh yeah it's always a giraffe i don't buy that shit but like i i think it's like i said i think it's a little goofy but there is that idea bluey resonates with you know i'm saying that's crazy you think thomas the train

resonates like from prehistoria or whatever well it's just it's just an idea but there is a thing that is that i do think about when i think about animals and deep history and shit that's gone is um as bummed as you can get As bummed as you can get about animals that used to be around that aren't anymore. Like the way little kids trip out about dinosaurs being gone. As bummed as you might get about all that. The biggest animal to ever live.

The largest animal to ever live on the face of the earth is here right now. And it is a blue whale? Yeah. Biggest animal to ever live on the face of the earth. So when little kids are like, golly, those dinosaurs. It's like.

The big boss is still here. The biggest animal to ever live is here. Yeah, that's the DMX. If you put your effort into it, you go see the biggest animal that ever lived on the face of the earth. Dude, that is crazy. And it gives you hope that if he wants, he'll bring those other ones back.

that they can do it with science if they can do it. Dude, it's going to happen soon. Yeah, I disagree, but that's a different time. Really? We'll talk about that another time, though. But, dude, one thing. I will say this. I went on a safari, and were they all right? So the guy. It was like an Amboseli or somewhere. I think we were in maybe in Kenya. And the guy. But you're on a photo safari. Yeah, we were just like in. Yeah, we didn't get. We got out, but only near the.

place we were staying. Otherwise, we were just kind of in... Cruising in trucks. Cruising in trucks, yeah. Oh, there was a Pride Alliance. that kind of came around us at one point and they were just laying down like they weren't bothering us or anything and the guy is like do not stand up in here everybody just stay i'm gonna start the engine up in a little bit i'm just gonna back out of here

And they were, like, somewhere like six or seven feet away. Like, it was definitely pretty gnarly. It was probably like seven or eight of them. And this one woman's fucking phone goes off, right? And it was a, like a... It was like an iCarly ringtone or something. It was like some... I don't know what that means. It was some TV, some children's show. And we're all... It was just like... Fuck, we're gonna die.

And she immediately kind of just like, I don't know. It's just funny that you thought it would have startled the cat and the cat might've done something. oh for sure the guy just said do not make any sharp moves do not stand up and this lady's camera like phone went off and she kind of went like that and the guy just turned around but it's just like In a moment's notice, you can be wiped out because of human ignorance, human error. Again, it takes up psychological space. Big old cats. Yeah.

But, man, yeah, I appreciate you coming and talking, man. This was a lot of fun. Oh, I enjoyed it. Yeah, it was a lot of fun, man. I got to come over there and go on one of your journeys sometimes if you guys. Well, I'll take you out to do something. Yeah, do you guys go in Montana?

Yeah, that's where I live, yeah. It is? Yeah. Dude, I love to fish. What do you like to catch? Catfish. You like catfishing? I like catfish, but I'm willing to catch other fish as well. What's the kind of fish you'd most like to catch? I would like to catch probably one of those big, long trout. Big, long trout. Like the ones you see in that Brad Pitt and his brother caught, remember? Sure. Those. Those are awesome, dude.

We can arrange that, man. I would be honored to take you out fishing. I'm going to be in Montana in the beginning of, I think, the first week of October. I don't know if you're going to be over there or not. Yeah, I might be. What are you doing there? I'm supposed to go to some like seminar kind of thing or something. Seminar? Yeah. I don't know what it's for. On Neanderthals? I wish. Dude, if it is. And I can bring somebody. Yeah, please ask around. I'm going to be like, hey, look.

If it is, I'll make sure to do some recon for you. Yeah, I'd appreciate it. No, yeah, it'll be fun. It'd be fun, dude, to go fish. You know, I think, yeah, like. Do you ever do, have you ever done a float? Like, you want to float down a river and catch trout? I've never done that before. Oh. Yeah. I've done, I've done, whatever the one, not the fucking, like, I've done fly fishing. Oh. Yeah. I've done fly fishing, yeah.

You've done fly fishing. Do you like that? I did like it. It was cool, man. I only got to do it one time. Do you like the water? Have you never spearfished? I've never spearfished. I love to fish, though. Well, I would be honored to take you fishing, man. That'd be fun. Cool. All right, we'll do it. Yeah.

That'd be great. It'd be awesome, man. Thanks for all your contributions to just, uh, helping people learn about the outdoors and the history of the outdoors. I know you have a book out that's, uh, or it might be your newest book about, um, when people were looking for beaver pellets and stuff.

across North America. Yeah. So it's about mountain men, right? Yeah. I have a new, there's a new meat eater season coming out. And then we have, I've been working on these things, these meat eaters, American history series. We did one on. The long hunters. So like Daniel Boone was a fan. He used to hunt this country. Daniel in the deerskin trade. So the late colonial deerskin trade did one on the mountain men, the beaver trade. And then our new one coming out now.

It's called The Hide Hunters, and it's about the people that wiped out the last 15 million buffalo off the Great Plains at the end of the Civil War. Fuck. So it's these things about... the mark it's about market hunting history there that's that's that's that's pre-sale it's not that's available that's available for pre-sale right now but we just finished that the hide hunters so the meat eaters american history series

that that's a lot of the shit we talk like like what you and I have been talking about it's a lot of that's kind of a home for a lot of that information cool yeah like a lot of like human history, wildlife, like how resources get exploited, overexploited, recovered. Those series, they're audio originals, right?

I do print books too, but those are like audio, they're audio stories. Like I, we, that, that me and a researcher, we like put them together. I narrate them. And they kind of tell that story of America.

through like american history american movement through these kind of like keystone wildlife species that supported a lot of industry and economic activity in different times because for a long time that's what american economies were driven by was leather yeah fur and leather wow yeah is it interesting to see that like hunting has like taken away species like i mean it's kind of takes them away and puts them back i know yeah dude

We've done, we, like speaking collectively, hunters, as much as I hesitate to speak collectively, like the practice of hunting has done a lot of damage and has done a lot of... We've righted, like we collectively, historically, hunters have done a lot in the last century, done an extraordinary amount in the last century to right the wrongs of our fathers.

Yeah. Well, I think it does feel like in the end, like the general feeling of a lot of hunters, it's not just about going out and killing something. It's about having a relationship with nature. Yeah. Anyone who's serious about it, that's what drives it. That desire, like if you just have a desire to go out and kill something, it doesn't last long. Yeah, you can fucking do that in Memphis. It doesn't last long.

Thank you, man. Steve Ranella, thank you so much, dude. And thanks for putting up with me today. I appreciate it. I appreciate the opportunity. I look forward to us going fishing together. That'll be a great time. It was fun. I got a bunch of friends going to be jealous. Really?

Shit, I might bring one of them. Bring one. Very good friend of mine, Seth. He's a huge fan of yours. Oh, really? He was shitting his pants when I told him I was coming on your show. Oh, that's cool, dude. Yeah, bring, dude, yeah. Maybe he'll fish with us. Oh, yeah. If he wants to come, that would be great. He won't say anything weird. He probably won't say much at all. It already seems weird. But it's okay, man. It would be an honor, man. Thank you so much. I appreciate it, Steve.

on the breeze and I feel I'm falling like these leaves I must be cornerstone oh but when I reach that ground I'll share this peace of mind I'll knock it.