In order to weather storms, not only in the Arctic, but in life, you have to put yourself in the storm.
I literally hike two miles to come arrow this.
Doctor, and it's the best meal you've ever had in your life. I am freezing cold the entire time. I hiked more than I'd ever hiked in my life, and I was like, that was awesome.
Through your curiosities and our engagements and your questions, it just was going to allow me to dive deeper into the things that I pulled most.
Dear to my heart, Welcome to two percent. I'm your host, Michael Easter. I am really thrilled about this podcast. We are now on episode two. We're off and rolling today. We have an amazing episode. But before we get in, if you are unfamiliar with me, you might have seen me on The Joe Rogan Experience, or the Hubanman Lab podcast or various TV shows. My background, I'm a health and adventure journalist. I've been doing this for twenty years.
I started at Men's Health. I was a professor for seven years, and then I ended up writing the books The Comfort Crisis and Scarcity Brain, which became best sellers, and The Thrust of my work is it improving your life. It often takes doing hard things. So this is what this podcast is about. Now. Our name comes from a study that found that two percent of people take the stairs when there's also an escalator available, only two percent.
I would argue one hundred percent of people knew that taking the stairs would be better for their long term health and well being, Yet ninety eight percent of people choose to do the easier, more effortless things. So what we're trying to do is we're trying to build a tribe of two percenters that are willing to take on challenges big and small in their life to improve in
the long run. Today we're talking to Donnie Vincent. Donnie is a backcountry bow hunter and filmmaker who travels into the world's most remote extreme areas for months at a time, and he makes these movies and I like to describe them as being a lot like the Planet Earth series, except they happen to have hunting. And he's really changing the face of hunting and how it is perceived. He's thinking about ethics, he's thinking about the life cycle and
where our food comes from. He's thinking about conservation, he's thinking about what extended time in wild places doing hard things does for the human body, mind, and spirit. Now. I first met Donnie when I was an editor at Men's Health magazine. I ended up profiling him for the magazine. We become very fast friends, and then he ends up calling me like months later. He goes, Michael, I'm going up to the Arctic on an extreme and dangerous hunt for more than a month. Do you want to come along.
We're going to see grizzly bears and climb ancient mountains, and it is going to be the most epic adventure a human being has ever go on. So I said yes, and then I find myself up in the Arctic. We have this amazing, incredible adventure that tested me in every single way. But I will tell you this, I came out the other side a better person, and Donnie was a key guide in getting me to realize the value
of challenge. During that stint up in the Arctic, we had all these moments up there, like when a storm would roll in. We had this one time we were camped on a hillside and this crazy windstorm rolls in and it almost totally destroys our camp. And I was freaking out because if you lose your tent in the Arctic, you are screwed, Like you are absolutely screwed. But Donnie just went into like, yeah, solve the problem mode. He
was calm, he got everything fixed. It was just like watching him made me realize, Oh, in order to weather storms, not only in the Arctic, but in life, you have to put yourself in the storm because that is where you figure out how to live, how to improve, and how to be a better person. So that's what we're going to talk to Donnie about. So with that all said, let's welcome Donnie, Donna Vincent. Welcome to two percent.
Dude, this is I mean, I'm beyond honored to sit down and talk with you. Obviously we're friends, but this is different different.
What was your reaction to getting an email from an editor at Men's Health.
Yeah, somebody just asked me this the other day that had just read The Comfort Crisis and they asked how you found me, and I said, I actually don't know if you were asking around and my name popped up.
But first of all, I get asked almost daily by someone if they can join me on a hunt, whether that be you know, a military guy, a kid, a parent, whatever, But yeah, I don't know, just the professionalism in which you went about it, and even in your email, there was an instant seriousness to it that you were your curiosity was real.
You weren't trying to get a free hunt out of it.
Not that not that anyone else is either, but your you're curious was real. It was honest.
Yeah, and that was in Nevada. That would have been what twenty nineteen, that was in El Kunt.
Yeah, twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, something like that.
Yeah, So for this men's hell story, we go hunting in Nevada. And I will say this, I was coming from Las Vegas and it was hot as hell in Vegas and we get up to about eleven thousand feet. I am freezing cold the entire time. I was hungry the entire time. I hiked more than I'd ever hiked in my wife, and it was absolutely rough. But I came home and I was like, that was awesome, And it gave me the seed of an idea of asking, well, why was that such a valuable experience, which eventually led
me to pitching The Comfort Crisis to a publisher. They said yes, But then I had to make the big ask of asking you, hey, man, can I go on one of these crazy month long hunts you go on? So I asked you and you said yes. Why did you say yes?
But honestly, Michael, the questions you were asking me in nova that I struggle to answer because I remember specifically one morning we were sitting up and it was kind of chilly out and you're asking me. I've told this story before, but you're like, hey, are you cold? And I said, yeah, I'm cold, and you said, well, you don't look cold. And you said that you were cold, but you said that you yourself were cold and you look like you were cold. I was also cold, and you said,
but how come you don't look cold? And I was just, well, it's just I'm I know, you know, the sun's coming up, We're gonna warm up.
I have extra clothes, whatever it is.
But then you started asking me questions about hunting and things that I thought were going to be a slam dunk to answer, you know, like why do you hunt? And why do you think we hunt? And these were questions that I really struggled to answer with you, and you know, and I could anecdotally hit elements of it that I enjoyed watching the sun come up, or you know, listening to animals or watching animals. I could strike on these little points but really not dive into the seriousness
and what it means. And then when we parted ways and you brought the project of the humpt Crisis to me, I just took it as this is this is a project that is going to this It's going to allow me to learn more about myself and more about being a hunter, and more through through your curiosities and our engagements and your questions and things that you find uncomfortable and comfortable. And it just was going to allow me to dive deeper into the things that I hold most dear to my heart.
What do you remember most from our hunts in Alaska?
I mean, I remember a lot of things, but I remember I mean, honestly, probably the thing that is more most striking to me was how uncomfortable you were to take your first animal, which meant the world to me because it's really uncomfortable for me to take an animal, and rarely do I see that in another And I'm not saying that other guys don't feel that. I think they do. I think a lot of us bury it, hide it, you know, whether it be on camera to
our buddies or whatever. But you didn't have the position or the wherewithal to bury it or hide it. You just fricking it was out. And I appreciated it very much. The uncomfortability that you went through, and also the uncertainty. I remember the tarmac with the airplanes. I remember you realizing that I wasn't joking. We are flying out in little, tiny airplanes with pilots that are very skilled, but holding no control over the weather or what is going to happen.
And so those are those are very defining moments for me. When you took your animal and then the flight out.
Yeah, totally. I mean I remember so much of that trip and think about it all the time. But to your point about taking an animal, let me just say, if you're listening and you have any qualms with hunting, we're going to get into Donnie's worldview about hunting, which I think is really nuanced and important. But I'll say this, after I took that animal, I definitely went through I was totally sad. I was angry at you guys for a minute. I was. I mean, it was just all
these emotional swings. But eventually, after going through that, I think I started to understand, Oh, this is why Donnie does what he does. And had you not because I remember your position on that was you don't have to hunt.
I'm not going to make you hunt. At the same time, I think you would understand this greater topic that you're writing about if you were to hunt, And so for me, I trusted you on that, and immediately after I go, why did I trust this son of a bitch, Like, I think, this is the worst thing I've ever done in my life. I'm never coming back from this. But then afterwards I got it, and that just totally changed me in a lot of ways.
Yeah, you could live. You could have calm just like you did in the vat.
You could have.
Calme and written the story and written the book about the things that we were doing from the outside of the fire, if you will. But if you wanted to truly dive into an experience and have those emotions well up, you you were going to have to take an animal's life. And I specifically remember your sadness, I specifically remember your anger.
I also remember.
When we were caribou their faces even when they're alive, when they were close to you, when you see their eyes and their big, huge bulbous nostrils, they are a very sweet looking animal there. People always like to use this word. It has no position in wilderness and wildlife, but people like to say they're in it.
They have an innocence about them.
They look like a creature that could do no harm. They look like a curious animal. They almost have eyes. They have looks like your dog might look at you. But I remember when you took that animal's life, and you took a fine bowl, an old bowl. That's what we do, that's how we try and do it. We try to remove animals from the herd that are gonna have very little impact on the herd. And I remember
when you took that bowl. The quietness that the Arctic brings, other than a little bit of wind is it's very, very haunting you. There's nothing as far as you can see other than pure wilderness, some mountains, some trees, rivers, but there's nothing as far as you can see. There's a true aloneness that you feel there other than the people that you share that time with. And then your bowl was laying there, you know, there's a melancholy piece
to this. And then I remember when we started skinning your bowl and you started to see, you know, dare I say, meat products that you also have seen in the grocery store.
I remember you were like.
Oh, now that the skin's off, Now that we're breaking the animal down, it's starting to look like steaks. And then I saw you kind of go oh. And I still to this day if I kill a moose or a black bear and you walk up on it, there's a sadness to it. And you start breaking the animal down, you start doing the work. You start earning these calories that you're going to have this winter or over the
summer or whatever it is. You start getting the blood on your hands and feeling the weight in your backpack, and it starts to transition into a workload that is, you know, quite an investment and a respect that you have for wild places.
Yeah. I think that's a good segue and to talk about kind of your overall worldview on hunting, because hunting is obviously controversial among a lot of people. Yeah, so how do you think about that and how do you have conversations with people who may be anti hunting. Maybe vegetarian or vegan. What do those look like? And how do you sort of shape that.
It's in a manner of what you carry yourself in. It isn't smoking mirrors that there isn't this position of you have to dance around the subject matter or come up with clever sentences or clever statements to sell what you're doing. It is who we were as a people, and ecosystems do very very well to be hunted.
Most do anyway.
And obviously human beings have encroached into a lot of wild areas and we've pressured a lot of game in different areas where some animals are going extinct, and then some other animals that do very well in near human beings, like the white tailed deer are exploding and neither numbers taken down by hunters or else. There's just an immense
amount of car collisions and things like that. If you want to carry yourself in a manner that is going to engage good conversation with non hunters or anti hunters, or vegetarians, vegans, whatever it is. People love when things are black and white, but nothing actually is black and white.
We live in the gray position, and so we better carry ourselves and be open for thoughtful questions around saying because you might get asked the question Michael that actually changes your thought process and might actually make you think about a process that you're doing that you may maybe shouldn't be.
When I think.
Hunting right now, particularly everything on social media is grandiose. People that call themselves hunters right now, and some of the things that they do are very difficult to justify and very difficult to kind of contemplate because it isn't man versus beast, it isn't man versus wild. This is
an immersion of who we are. And there's a big difference between conquering a land and shooting a limit, and then there is kind of becoming one with predator and prey and really enveloping yourself in the natural world.
Yeah, and you've made the point. You know, if a person eats me, typically the buy in is to go to the grocery store and buy me that's you know, prepackaged looks all nice, but they don't really know where it came from, what the animal live like, all these other important things. Don't really have a selection over that. And you've pointed out, well, I actually know those things you know, I know how old this animal was. I know was it close to the end of its life?
Where did it come from? How did it live? And so you said that we're kind of inserting yourself, and you're able to insert yourself and kind of I think make decisions that fundamentally change. How do you think about where your food come from? Comes from? In a world where most people, including myself, most things I hate, I have no idea. M M.
Yeah. I think we as a people, and I mean myself is included. Like if I need something today, if I need to, if I'm might have broccoli for dinner, and you know I don't have a garden going right now. If I need broccoli for dinner, I'm going to go buy that broccoli. And I'm going to go to the grocer store and I'm going to try to get the best quality items that I can. But the reality is,
you know, we don't live a lifestyle. Some people do that are truly off grade, But we don't live a lifestyle that lends itself to getting everything in this manner. But I think it's much more who you are as a person, how you live your life. And I think the more we hunt, the more we gather, the more we grow, the more we envelope ourselves in wild places
and are getting outside and experiencing the wild world. And some of the things that you discovered in the comfort crisis when you went back, when you took some of our experiences to different researchers, and they and they backed up the things that I guess I was talking about and that you were experiencing as well, with how that affects our psyche and our happiness and our feeling fulfilled that you know, I just think it's where we live best.
But man the infrastructure right now, Like you go to New York City, right, you live in downtown New York City. I don't even to me, that seems like a hell hole for me to live in Manhattan would be a prison.
I don't think you would do well there. I really don't think. What do you beyond because we've been focusing on kind of food and meat, What do you think hunting gives people, well, particularly you, beyond just the meat?
Yeah, I mean, it's it's time outside, right, it's sunrises, it's sunsets, it's the physicality. Much to like the technical book that you have just come up with now, about rocking or walking with weight like that is there's a euphoria that comes with going into the wilderness, whether it be hunting, fishing, you're looking for mushrooms, whatever it is. There's a euphoria that comes from peacefully and quietly moving about a space and becoming an observer.
You're a frontline observer.
You are picking apart everything from the birds, the fall of the fish, the weather, and just that feeling as a human being that quiet is.
It's unreal.
Yeah, and I think that the one of the important things that happens because you brought up hunting foraging. It's a search, right, and so humans evolved as hunters and gatherers. Every single day we knew we needed food to survive. We had no idea where it was going to be, so we had to insert ourselves in nature. And granted we lived in nature one hundred percent of the time, now we spend ninety three percent of our time indoors.
We had to go out and search, and that search had to be inherently rewarding for human beings, or else we wouldn't have continued to do it day in and day out. So I still and I think one of the issues that we face today. Is that the same mechanics of the search for food, for hunting and gathering,
they've been put in casino gambling slot machines. It's same way social media works all these different things, and that captures our attention the same way that those outdoor searches do, but in a way that doesn't give us all these important things like sunshine, like movement, like exposures of nature, like physical trials, like having to overcome things, and so that's been it's almost a hijacking of this ancient system, and it doesn't always help us.
I totally agree and even at things that we're doing right. I have friends that, for instance, if I'm going to go fishing, I might get a small boat and paddle down the Mississippi River and cast my lures to you know, current seams and cast behind logs and behind rocks, and cast to places that I know or small mouth bass or walleyes or muskies where they're hiding for them to attack their prey. I might go about fishing that way.
And then I have other friends that have a boat absolutely encapsulated electronics with transducers facing out from every app and it paints them a beautiful picture of this boulder, this tree, there's actually a fish laying right behind the second branch. It doesn't necessarily make them easier to catch, although you see zact where it is. But I'll guarantee you that experience is diminished. Everything in our lives is brought up as a shortcut, like you said.
And I mean, imagine, I've done this before.
I've been I've been so insanely dehydrated in the mountains because I've run out of water and I'm in an area where there aren't any streams and I'm not going to have any water until I dropped five thousand feet and then I have to find water. And I've went through that search and then found cold water, and to this day it was one of the most euphoric experiences of my life.
And I've done the same thing now.
I've never truly been starving, but I've went three or four days without food until a pilot came and picked me up. Or I went three or four days without food until I arrow it a dock and then was able to eat a doc or something like that, And that is I mean, it's difficult for me to convey the excitement that you get like holding a dead green
wing teal snowing outside. I just I literally hiked two miles to come arrow this dock because I could see it on a pond two miles away, and I dropped on here to arrow this duck because I'm I'm gonna you know, I had to arrow this dock. Then I just stripped onto my underwear. So last week of September, I just swim out into a pond that's nearly frozen, grab this dead doc, swim back, dry off as much as I could, get dressed, hike back up, pluck the doc.
Cook it. But I mean, there's no greater experience.
And it's the best meal you've ever had in your life.
Yeah, yeah, it's unreal. It's and I wish we all still live that way. I really do like and I have no bane against farmers. But when agriculture started, we started having more babies, we started staying in one place. We started you know, our excrement was now in one place. And that was that.
That started a ball rolling that we'll never be able to recover from.
The Earth will reco from it, because you know, we'll go through some sort of you know event here that will probably greatly diminish, if not wipe human beings out. You know, whether that be in our lifetime or fifty lifetimes, who knows.
So one thing is that you know when you when you tell stories about your hunts, it sounds so far away for the average person. And I remember when I first kind of became interested in hunting, and it was probably from you and your work. Before I sent that email to ask you if I could join you on that hunt in Nevada, I remember looking at how do I start? And it became I was like, oh my god, there are so many things you have to do to
get started. It's not like basketball, where if I go, you know, I want to play basketball, So I go to Walmart, I buy a ball, and then I just go to the court and I start throwing it at the rim. What I think is interesting, though, is most of my friends from high school that hunted, they grew up in hunting families, and so I think people would think, oh, you must have come from this long line of hunt but you didn't. So how did you even get drawn into hunting and start to live this way?
And that's a really good question, and it's one that I can't entirely answer, because when I was little, it was all I thought about. And I don't know if that came from my DNA or if that came from my dad's book collection, because my dad loved wildlife and he had all these different wildlife books. And I lost my dad this a little over a year ago, and there were questions. I have so many questions for my
dad now that he's gone. But at his funeral, I was talking to one of his very best friends and he was talking about this adventurous life that I live, and he said, boy, are you your father's son? And I didn't get a chance that day, but I really wanted to ask him because I didn't see my dad as an adventurous man at all, and so I want to ask him. Obviously, he's referencing something in my dad's youth, and so I don't know what it is that you know,
this gentleman was speaking of. But my dad had a really cool collection of old books, old hunting books and books on military tactics and wilderness survival and fishing and all these different how to books and had he had small game books, books that taught you how to hunt squirrels, rabbits, and crows back then to you know, books on hunting, grizzly bears and moose, and I just dove into all these things. And I can sit here and say I then wanted to be a hunter or a big game
hunter or whatever. But really what I wanted, Michael, I think more than anything is that I wanted to live a rural life. I wanted to live in a cabin. I wanted to have to kill a moose for my winter meat. And it's I haven't gotten all the way there, but that is what I wanted. That is that those
are that's the life that I wanted to live. That's those are the things that I find most charming, splitting wood and having heat your house with firewood, and going out and fishing and going out hunting, because there's there is this euphoria of doing it on your own and supplying for yourself.
Yeah. So how did you start? Because I know in college you researched wildlife biology, that's what you studied, right, and then you ended up doing some research on tigers in Southeast Asia, right.
Yeah, the in Nepaul and Bangladesh.
What'd you learn from that?
Those are scary places? That is one thing that I learned. I remember just going to the airport, and you've experienced some of this stuff yourself now, but going through machine gun checkpoints and going through checkpoints where everyone's pointing a gun at you and they think your passport is fake. And when I was younger, I thought they really thought
my passport was fake. And now as I've gotten older, I realized they just want to bribe so they can get through to the next machine gun checkpoint where he's
also going to tell you your passport is fake. And then you know, being those being in that research and kind of understanding and seeing like, for one, where when I was in Bangladesh, there's no hunting allowed in that country, But the gentleman that I was working for, he said, hey, careful kind of what you talk about when we're working with the other biologists, he said, you know, because he knew I did a lot of hunting, or that I
loved hunting, lived hunt, I guess. But he also said, you're probably gonna get a lot of respect from the biologists here because even though they don't hunt in the
country any longer. The ancestors that were the pillars of their communities, the leaders that were of their tribes were the better hunters in their tribes, So the hunters would go to the top of the community and probably because they could provide the most and kind of make decisions on where people need to go for hunting and gathering.
And so he's like, you're probably gonna get a lot of respect from them.
But just be you know, roll into it slowly because more so in a lot of those countries are dealing with so much poaching that they're you know, it's not that they're anti hunting, they're anti poaching, which is course.
Was a very different thing.
And I wanted to study wildlife biology because I wanted to be in wild systems and I wanted to contribute and help wildlife. And as weird it is for some of your viewers or listeners that don't understand hunting, that's also one of the biggest reasons why it hunts, because
I want to be a frontline observer. I want to understand, Hey, how come there's a bunch less ducks, and why are we losing so much habitat and you know, all these different elements that are really really important because as we lose our soils, Like people might think I'm concerned about the white tailed deer or the black bear or something.
But really what's concerning is our soils and our waters, insects, our grasses, things like that, because if we had those, if we still had you know, ten million buffalo on the planes, like, we would be so far better off than what we have right now. I'm having endless row crops of corn and soybeans.
Yeah, I think that's I understand why we have all these things. It's about efficiency. It's the fact that people could start to have a lot of children and then you go, well, a lot of these people are starving. What if we use some science to give people more food and keep them from starving, and then that propagates. But I do think you're right that we lose something in that process. It's like everything, right, It's like progress has trade offs, and sometimes those trade offs are good
and sometimes they're bad. Yeah, And then so then you end up doing research. Was it on the Tulisach River? Is that right?
Yes? In Alaska?
And that was doing and that was doing Samon counts. So you get I loved this story. You get sent out for how long were out there? Like five months? And there was a bunch of you that started, and I think you were the last person standing. So tell us about that experience and what did you learn from all that time alone outside.
Yeah, when I interviewed with my boss, it is really funny because I was nervous. I know, these jobs have a lot of competition to get and so I really wanted to be in the wilderness for the summer, you know, spring summer, early to fall in and so I started. I was studying up on all my biology because I was like, what is he going to ask me in the interview?
How is this going to go?
And I better have my you know, my ducktn room And he said, basically, my interview was we're going to drop you off from the wilderness. What's the what's the chance that I'm going to have to come and pick you up? And I said zero? And he said are you sure? And I said, yeah, I'm not coming out like you're not. I'm not going to get homesick. You're not going to have to come get me. He's like, well, that's that was the biggest thing that they were looking for.
And to your point, because a lot of the people that go and do this work, they end up a week in two weeks in, three weeks in, they're they're they're out, like they want to get picked up, they want to go home, they want to drink a beer with their buddies, and they want to get back to that kind of that infrastructure, that kind of noise that we feel very comfortable with. But I thrived in this, you know position like this is. You know, they provided
me with a tent and a sleeping bag. We had food, We had a research tent like I had even though to the average person, I was roughing it. To me, I had everything that anyone could ever want, and I loved it. I love being around the wildlife. I love the quiet. There were times, you know, there's about four weeks, six eight weeks where the bugs are you know, biblical like, they will wipe you out.
Like it's probably early June to early August.
It's significant, and so you just have to get your mind right. You're gonna have clouds of mosquitos, You're going to have you know, there's going to be you know, things that you're gonna have to face throughout your day. But seeing you know, I remember, like day three that I was there, I was talking to this up a kid and I was like, hey, man, I have to go take a nap because we'd been working twenty four hours a day for a couple of days. It's like, I got to go lay down. He's like, okay. His
name's Peter Gregory. He's an awesome, awesome kid. And I said, but if you've seen anything cool, come wake me up. And he's like okay. And so I went laid down and he came over to the tent. I was laying down for maybe thirty minutes, and he's like, eh, darnie, there's a big bear.
Was like, Peter, don't mess with me.
Man, Like we're just starting out working together, Like, tell him be honest. He's like, I'm serious, biggish bear I've ever seen in my life. So I was here and so I got out and the bugs weren't out yet. I remember I unzipped my tent and I stood out there with Peter, and I could see this huge tundra flat, which you know what that looks like now, I felt like I could see twenty miles and I could see the Killbuck Mountains, which Purple Mountain majesty like literally looks
absolutely perfect. And then here's this bohemoth one thousand pound plus brown bear just walking right past my tent, his furs really long from over the winter, and it's blowing in the wind, and he just walked as peacefully by it. It looked like every oil painting I've ever seen that has stopped me in my tracks. And that's just being there and doing that stuff, and seeing the fish and holding the salmon and understanding the ecosystem and watching that
river system. We'd get there early enough, there'd be no fish in the river besides residence species Dolly Bardon, grayling, northern pike. But then all of a sudden, one day you could hear the fish in the river. The river would go, it'd be very few egos, very few gulls.
Very few wolves, and grizzly bears very few.
And then one day the fish would show up and the whole ecosystem would come to life with all the animals that I just listed. And I mean to see that and experience that, and to know that that happens every year in the wilderness, whether we're there or not, I mean, that is that's everything to me.
I feel like that's this greater metaphor for a lot of ways that we improve and that is to say, you can't quit until the magic happens. And it's like, I'm sure with the people who tapped out, because if I remember right, something like ninety percent of people don't finish the full five months.
That's right.
And I think anytime you're doing something that has challenges, you hit this point where you just go, I've had enough. I got to get the hell out of here. Like you just start to freak out. But if you can just kind of wait it out and just wait and see, then you kind of get this second moment where that sort of phase and you go, oh, this is why I'm here. Yeah, But if you don't go through that doubt and the struggle, you're never going to get that big important realization.
I think that's really well said, and I think we experienced that a lot in life and even the things that I mean even exercise, right, Like, you get to a point with exercise and you're like, this absolutely sucks. But then you get over this hump where it's almost like that ball or wheels starts rolling down the other side of the hill and you're like, holy cow, I made it. And now embracing this suck is that much easier and now you have this perspective that you didn't have on the on the front side.
I think that's yeah, I think that's very well said.
So you starts as a hunter, you do this work in Alaska, and then at a certain point you start filming your hunts. And the way that I described your hunts in the in your films in the Comfort Crisis is I like to say, there are a lot like Planet Earth, except they have hunting in them in the sense that I think if people are aware of any hunting films or documentary they've seen on the Outdoor Channel,
they're not good. It's just some people who are kind of we need to get the buck with the biggest antlers and grip and grins, and yours are very thoughtful and very much embedded in nature, and nature becomes kind of the key character in this. So how did you even start doing the documentaries and what made you want to do something different? What was it about that that you're like, I want it, this is how I'm going to do it.
Yep.
So, so it's a long story that I'll give you the cliff notes.
And so I was working as a biologist and I was also going on hunts because it was just all I ever wanted to do. And when I was on these hunts, I started bringing a handicam and a camera because I wanted to come home and talk to my mom and dad and say like, look at this grizzly that walked to my camp, and look at this caribou that I saw, and look at the northern lights, and here are the things. It's kind of like bringing my
adventures home, tell family and friends. And then through hunting, I would bump into people in airports, I would bump into people in hunting camps or maybe a lodge, and they know, we'd just start talking and say what do you doing?
I'm a biologist And then I'd say what do you do?
And they'd say, Oh, I have a TV show on the Outdoor Channel, or you know, I'm editor of this hunting magazine or whatever it is, and variably, and so I started to meet people, and then people started taking interest in the hunts that I was doing and started asking me like, Hey, would you write a magazine article perhaps, or could we photograph you for.
A magazine article?
And and then can you show me some of this footage that you have because I would love to use it for my TV show, and I would just give him my footage and and so one thing kind of led to another, and I did a project with a photographer. I did a sheep hunt in in the Yukon in this Peterson's Hunting magazine, I believe it was wanted to shoot photos, wanted to do a photo essay of this
particular hunt. So the photographer contacted me and he's like, hey, I met him through some other work and he said, I would love to tag along with you on this hunt. I'll pay my own way, take all your photos, and then you know, you'll have access to all the photos, and and and then I'll he'll have his project. We went and did that, and then that opened a lot of eyes in the industry.
People wanted.
You know, I started popping up on covers of magazines and in magazine ads. That actually became a problem because I started walking through department stores and I'd see my face on like men's underwear, and you know, I didn't I didn't understand that there was a market here that was going on. I didn't realize the commercialization of this. And so long story short, I started working with a particular company and I said.
I approached them and I said, hey, I.
Would like to maybe get into more professional filming and do some more storytelling.
And they said okay.
They said, well, we have another guy that also wants is kind of hitting us up for some dollars to do this project over here. Perhaps we can introduce you too, and we can double our dollars down in one place, and you guys can work together and work on a very similar project. Sound like you guys want to work similarly, And so I went. I went and started doing that project. And that gentleman had he had some a photographer that worked for him, and then the editor that worked for him.
And I met these guys and they're wildly talented and we started working on this project together. Well, that guy that I got linked up with was not a not a good man. He wasn't good to just not a good man. He wasn't He didn't do things legally, he didn't treat his employees.
Well.
He's very talented with a with a still camera, which is why he had gotten as far as he had gotten.
But and so I just decided, this.
Is really cool filming wildlife in this manner and kind of going down this storytelling road with a bit more of a professional eye. And I thought maybe we could do this on our own. And so I approached the two guys that worked for him and I said, hey, I'm going to start my own company. And within I mean a sentence, they said, you know, hey, we want to leave and go with you and start this company. And that in the one guy's name is Kyle Nikolaite, he was, he's not my business partner. He is not
a man that gives compliments. He does not have the ability to pay someone a compliment. He only is a truth sayer, that's it. And so, like we were riding a truck one day and he said, you're a really good storyteller. You have a very honest approach to your storytelling, and you have a heartfelt sorrow or position that you hold. You're very very thoughtful in your design and architecture of
how you tell a story. And he said, if you're willing to do that on camera, I think people would respond to it in a very positive way, and I think you could make films that people would watch.
And so he is a very gifted editor. And then William Altman, as you.
Know Sawyer's Little Man, William's in the Comfort Crisis for those of you who have read the book.
Yes, and so he is an extraordinarily different human being. And I have another sort of William Altman named Forrest Row Now that works for us, and he is very similar to William. He's twenty two years old or twenty three now. But all he wants to do is all he wants to do is be outside, and all he wants to do is be outside in the right manner, if.
That makes sense, you know, William.
And so we started a company and we started making films, and then that led to us telling stories for other companies, and we started doing commercial work. And we said no to commercial work for years and years because we didn't want to really necessarily commercialize who we were. And then in true sense of kind of what you just referred to, we started telling stories for other companies and it started to be terribly rewarding to take our talent set to
get to know someone like you. Let's say you wanted to film a piece around the Comfort Crisis, and to tell your story through what it is that we do. And we really started to grow as a company and doing commercial work and then also our documentaries.
Yeah, and you guys just released this new documentary, The Way Back. This is a great one because I really feel like it hatchers who you are and it tells the story of this caribou hunt you did, but with this sort of thread of how you done that same hunt with your father who you mentioned passed away. How did that all come together? Did you go into that knowing that was what the story was, or did that arise organically or how did it all happen.
That popped up organically and in the true essence of the word. And so I started hunting as things kind of line up in my life. I started hunting with this particular pilot out of Port Olsworth, Alaska, and I started moose hunting with him and caribou hunting with him. And he's a very difficult place to hunt caribou. And he's like, I think you would really like this place where we hunt caribou. He's like, there's very few animals there. It's a huge area. You're not going to see very
many animals at all. But there are some very old and large bulls there that need to be taken because as the population basically doesn't have as the biologist put it, they didn't want to care, but to start eating themselves, not a house and home. And so this is down in the Alaska Peninsula. It's a lot of weather, very dangerous hunt and very difficult. So he's like, I think you'd love it. So I started doing that and I
did the first year and it was awesome. You kind of see a reflection of that in the in the hunt, and it was such a cool place to be. And we had really nice weather that year, which was remarkable, and we found some really handsome old bowls, and we worked really hard to get to be successful, and so it was awesome. And I remember I was texting my dad because my mom my mom had had a stroke, and so I was text with my dad and I
was like, Hey, how's everything going at home? And it's like good, and he's kind of telling me the ups and down and I was getting ready to fly home. This is kind of fun. But I was getting ready to fly home, and I probably had like four or five days left. And then I was sitting down and an interview and I felt the ground shake beneath me, and I was like, oh, that was a pretty big earthquake. And I've been an earthquakes before, but I was like that one, like really like.
Really move the earth.
And so I contacted one of the pilots, being my in reach, and I was like, man, did you guys feel that earthquake at camp? And he's like, wasn't an earthquake? A volcano erupted. He's like, so you felt the volcano erupt And I was like, oh, that's cool, and he's like it is cool. He's like, but no airplanes are going to be able to fly now for like ten days because volcanic ash destroys airplane engines and so you know you're gonna have to sit tight and you know
whatever else, and which was I thought was cool. So I was texting my dad about all that stuff, and he loved My dad always thought like he'd always asked me like, hey, man, where are you going? What are you up to? Or if I text him, he'd be like where where are you because he wouldn't even really
know where I was. And then and then he always you know, wanted me to get home safe, and he's like, you know, you can't keep doing this work and not come up short, you know, And so we always talk about I know that, and so fast forward, and I ended up suddenly losing my dad and my mom within ten weeks. And so then my life just continues like all of ours do. And you know, you obviously exist with great sorrow. And I didn't always have a great relationship with my dad, and he was very much like
some of your humble beginnings in the comfort crisis. My dad, I knew my dad with I had a relationship with alcohol. That's what I knew when I was growing up was my dad and beer, and and he was a you know, he was a great drunk, if you will, Like he just drank and you know, there wasn't fighting or anything, and he just that was his thing.
But he didn't have a lot of time for me.
And I grew up in a household with a brother and sister that were you know, they they weren't, they were troubled, and so my parents were very very focused
on my brother and sisters. So anyway, so when my dad and my mom passed, it affected me much more than I thought it would, because I instantly thought of a million questions that I wanted to ask my dad, things that I couldn't conjure up when he was alive, Right, I'd take him deer hunting and we'd sit in the truck and we talk about the weather or if the crops were out, and it would always make me kind
of giggle. He'd always tap his fingers on the windowsill of my truck and he'd be like, oh, a lot of corn is still standing, you know.
And you know, we talk about the weather. And my dad had an interesting life. He was in the navy.
And now I'm curious when his friend said, oh, you are your father's son, Now I'm really curious about like, was he fishing a lot more than he ever told me about? Was he My dad wasn't a talker, so he didn't tell stories. And so fast forward, my life continues, and we're going in on this project on the Peninsula again because I wanted to another I wanted to get
out there and see more of that country. And Yeah, there was just a complexity in my emotions and the things that I was doing that I didn't anticipate from that. And so yeah, and I wanted to put a film together and kind of talk about some of that stuff, because I mean, it's as raw and as you know, revealing, as vulnerable as I guess as a person can be.
Yeah, well, I thought it was just I thought it was excellent. And I thought also that it really highlighted how you stand out in the hunting world in a way that you'll talk about those things. I think you're a lot more I would say intellectual hunter. I would even say spiritual hunter. I would be interested in two things. How have those views evolved? Have you always had them? Have they changed over time? And then also how have you been received in the quote unquote traditional hunting world.
When I was young, I thought I had to behave a certain way that I was kind of seeing on TV or I was seeing like with Buddies of Mind, where like if we kill the deer, you know, we would hoot and holler and I would be excited. You know, if I if I shot a buck and I was hooting and hollering, it wasn't fake if I was really excited. And like Bodies of Mind, when we first started hunting, you know, we would come up empty handed ninety nine
percent of the time. So when we finally got a deer, like we'd hug and you know, like holy cown, even
though we just lived it. We'd tell each other the story again and like he came down this ridge, and you know, we'd do all this stuff, but once you were over that emotional dump, you know, you'd look at this animal and I would, and you see the blood coming out of his wounds, and you'd understand that, oh, my arrow passed through his heart or my bullet passed through his lungs and he ran, and I would see.
I'd put myself in this perspective of I'd watch and tip over, and I knew that he's losing his life right now, and so I would think about that, and what if that was me? What if I was the one that had been shot. I'm over there trying to take my next breath, but my lungs are filling and and and I would just have this connection of understanding, or at least I would think about, you know, what
did this deer go through? And now that he's laying there, and I'm going to start skinning him, you know, I'm looking at his eyes and his nose, and you know, and right away, I you know, i'd start cleaning the blood up, and I start brushing the dirt off his face and putting his tongue back in his mouth. And his tongue had fallen out and things that I felt were appropriate.
And so I've just always had this.
Ultimate respect of don't take the animal's life until you're entirely ready, or this is the animal, or this is the moment, this is what you're going to do. And then once you do that, there's this there's a proper steps that you need to take to utilize this animal into you know, to be kind of in this wild system.
And so while I've always felt that great connection, it took me a while to understand and to be honest with you, you were also a big piece of my growth because talking to you about this stuff for the Men's Health magazine it was something that I'd never done before.
And in talking and teaching it to you, or in talking about it openly with you, I found areas of my brain and things that I talked about, you know, kind of where you you'd asked me a question, I'd say sentence, and I go, yeah, yeah, that's how I feel. But I haven't had to conjure that sentence up to anyone else because nobody else had asked me that question.
And so then I started to understand.
And then once I read the Comfort Crisis, and I started to see all these metrics that you went put to the things that I was experiencing, and then all so even actually with the scarcity brain and kind of seeing like I kind of giggled when I read the scarcity Brain, because it's very easy to look at somebody and be like, dude, you're getting hoodwinked with a slot machine.
But then I also looked at it as my own life, and I was like, man, I'm getting hoodwinked with a white tail deer because every November, every November, it's all I can think about, and every springtime I wanted, you know, I want to go on and tap trees right now for maple syrup, and I have firewood to cut, and then I'm gonna have fish that I'm gonna go chase. And so it's kind of the same thing a little bit.
I mean, there's no bells and whistles, but I get maple syrup comes out of the tree once I boil it down. It's kind of the same thing you get in. And so I didn't always have this soulful, heartful connection to where I can articulate it, but I always took that time, even around my buddies, I didn't talk to them about it. But I always took that time to put myself in the deer's shoes, if you will, or to put myself in the dut shoes, and to do
these things. And I'd killed a couple of animals when I was younger, like I shot a blue jay once, I shot a black caped CHICKENI once these are non game species that I just cause and effect. I had a gun. I was a little kid or a younger kid. I saw a bird and I shot it fell and those were immediate for me, immediate no nos and sorrows. And I remember I shot the chickadee and instantly I was like, oh my, I just took a sanda's life for absolutely no reason. And then I kind of let
someone talk me into shooting the blue jay. And then I learned then that I was like, doesn't matter what anyone else wants, it matters what I want. And then even when we first started, you know, working with you, and then when we wrote our first film in twenty twelve, I wrote this voice over for the film and I handed it to Kyle nick Lay and he read it and he's like, this is terrible. He's like, you have
to rewrite all of this. He's like, I've never ever heard you talk like this, but I wrote it in a manner that I thought we were going to entertain people. And he he educated me much like you did in some essence where he's like, you have to make these films as though no one's going to watch them.
You have to make these films so they are so true to who you are that.
It doesn't matter if anyone else watches it, because if you make it for you then and you're being completely honest, then you'll never have to chase any sort of fashion or or you know, a different type of decision or or.
Or you know, inspirations or whatever.
Dude, you were always Isn't that such a good metaphor for art and how to live? Yes, it's like, why copy everyone else?
Just do your own for you.
If people like it, great, If they don't, you still you still got something internally rewarding from it.
Yeah, and if you chased the things people liked, which change all the time, you're always going to be one percent behind or ten percent behind where the people are going. You're always it's and you're not doing anything that's true to yourself. So it's literally you're it's an empty bucket.
Well, then you have to become your your copying what has become the trend? Whereas I would argue with your case, you have started a trend of hunting documentaries that are different than what was before, Like you're kind of the pioneer. You're seeing a lot more documentaries that are shot like Planet Earth if you will, that are asking big questions. What when you first released your first documentaries, what was the reaction in the hunting community.
I thought we were going to get murdered, if I'm being honest.
I thought the guys interested to have guns yep.
And I thought the guys are gonna there that it's going to be horrible, And it wasn't. People came out of the woodwork and said, I've thought about for years. I've never articulated to my buddies. I've had these same sorrows. I've had the same seriousness. Other guys came, I mean, I'll be honest with you. A couple of guys came to me and said, this is, you know, ridiculous. It's just hunting. It's just a deer, you know. But very very little of that, Michael much more was people then
wanted me, wanted their kids to watch our stuff. And then you know hunting instructors wanted their pupils to watch our stuff, and you know guys that were going to get their hunter safety cards. And it was a lot of stuff like that. I met a young lady last week at a convention. I met her dad and she started a company called Cookies for Conservation and so where she started baking cookies in their kitchen, she would go out and selling. This was something that she wanted to do.
She was thirteen or fourteen and she started selling all these cookies. She gives one hundred percent of the proceeds. I'm sure she buys cookie dough and stuff with her, but she gives on a hundred percent of her proceeds to wildlife habitat and generating wildlife habitat. And he's like that you are the one that inspired her to do this stuff. So yeah, and I got I got another guy. He's like, hey, can I take a picture with you. He's like, my kids are gonna flip out. He's like
you are and this is so weird. But he's like, your our kids reward for if like they crush their metrics during the week of school and sports or whatever. They get to watch Donnie Vincent films on the weekend, and it's just like, yeah, so it's.
Stuff like that that, and I've.
Received very little negative, you know, feedback some of it. You know, some guys don't want to listen to the long drawn out answers or writing or kind of the reflective nature of it.
They don't want to do that.
And then of course, you know, some people are just you know, they're just against what what I'm doing all together. But it's very few, very few.
What's interesting is I think that even vegans see some value and what you're doing. Oh like, you're not getting all these letters from vegans that are negative, many are positive.
Many many are positive. And then they are curious.
They'll say, Okay, for instance, I'll tell you one I did this shoot years ago. We did this shoot with a company called zeal Optics. They make sunglasses and snow goggles and stuff. And they invited they invited us out to this big photo shoot and where they're doing a new catalog and I was one of their athletes. And so it was me and all these red Bull dudes
and girls, all these super talented people. And so the first night we all got in this house and everyone's in the Red Bull gear and I'm just sitting there like I've seen you in a magazine. I've seen you in a magazine. I'm you know, I'm sitting there and the guy's like, okay, first thing first, we're going to go around a room. Say your name, you're disciplined what
you do, and you know while you're here. And so all these people are going around like I'm a professional snowboarder, I'm a professionel down hill, mountain bike or all this stuff.
And there's a guy named Mike Dowdy.
He's i think the best wakeboarder in the world out of Florida. Been a Red Bull guy forever. And he's laying on the couch and he has his Red Bull baseball cap over his eyes, which, if anyone knows anything.
About Red Bull, you can't even buy a Red Bull baseball cap. So if you see somebody with a.
Red Bull baseball cap, like, they're probably have gods of talent. So anyway, he's laying there with his baseball cap on his eyes, and it's going all the way around and it comes to me and I'm like, my name's Donny Vincent. I'm an adventure bowl hunter and they're all kind of looking at me, and he lifts his cap up and he looks over and he says, what did you just say? And I said, my name's Donny Been someone adventure bow
hunter filmmaker. And he just sat there and he's like, coolst fricking thing I've ever heard in my life.
And he put his hat back over his face. And so all of those people, most of.
Those people, a lot of those people were, you know, against hunting or had questions about hunting, or were vegans or vegetarians or whatever. And the next morning I was up early getting a cup of coffee and one of the dudes was a professional surfer and he's like, man, I've never eaten meat in my entire life. He goes, both my parents eat meat because I've never eaten meat in my entire life. But he said I and he kind of looked around. He's like, but I've always wanted
to be a bow hunter. And he's like, what is that all about? And I goes from our ancestry, man, I said, you you know, and he's like, I feel this connection in the waves he talked about feeling the energy of the earth and the waves, and he's talking about seeing fish and all this stuff, and I was just like, that's He's like, where's that coming from? And I said, that's from us being hunters and gathers. Your ancestors hunted and gathered and would skin buffalo and eat
meat and would forage. And I said that was a very successful way for us to live and a very rewarding way for us to grow muscle in our minds and to learn our thumb and great fire. And so I said, that's probably where it comes from.
And I've had other vegans and vegetarians.
In fact, I probably received more positivity from that community of people than I have from hunters, if you will. And they have questions and then they want to say They'll say, I don't want to be a hunter, but my wife and I would like to start shooting rabbits that we have on our land and eating rabbits. And I say, okay, So I kind of give them. They I'd say, okay, do you want to do it with a bowl or with a gun? We want to do
with a gun. At first, I'm not skilled with the ball. Okay, buy this gun, and we talked about it, and then they send me pictures of like him and his wife in the kitchen, skinned out rabbits, carrots, cut off, all this stuff. And then they'd send me and it's funny because they would say to me, I don't want to be a hunter, but this is what I want to do. And then you know, obviously I'm sitting there on the backside going
they'll look now, but you're a hunter. Doesn't mean you have to go out and try to shoot the biggest deer on the land, or go out and shoot a giant caribou that you're going to mount and hang on the wall, or you know some of the things that we do around our films or whatever.
And and like with you, I remember.
When I mailed you and your beautiful wife a box of elk meat from the elk that I killed in Nevada. I remember right away you mentioned me back and you're like, I think this is the finest mean I've ever eaten. I think that's what You're awesome.
And even she liked it, and she's not a big meat eater. She was worried at first, and she was, this is actually great.
It's awesome. And then you going and getting your caribou and having your caribou meat and your caribou hide, and you know, and and uh, yes, it's been a it's been a lot of inquisitive people. And I get a lot of people that write me that will say, hey, I totally disagree with you killing this mountain lion, but can you walk me through the how you did it
and and why you did it? And I walk them through it, and they'll say, you know, Okay, I didn't like it, but I totally appreciate your explanation and the why you did it and how you did it and all these different things. And I like those conversations. I think it's really important. Like I said, we live in that gray area.
So a lot of people who are listening to this right now, they may not want to hunt, they may have no interest, But how can they take some of the lessons from your hunts and find ways to apply them to get a lot of the same benefits. And I'm going to give you an example here. So after our hunt, I started spending a lot more time in the wilderness, and I just did this forty five day backcountry hike across southern Utah I wasn't hunting. I was
walking every day. But I will say I experienced a lot of the same benefits that I did when I was reporting the comfort crisis with you up in Alaska for more than a month. How do you think that if people don't want to hunt, how do you think they get some of the benefits you do? And to sort of set this off, I'm going to read you a quote of yours. To experience fantastic things, you have to put yourself in fantastic places. What can that tell us?
Yeah, I think it's funny. I said that. I said that sentence when we're on the top of a mountain in the Arctic Circle. We're in the Mackenzie Mountains of the Northwest Territories. And when I said that to one of my crew and I was like, you want to experience fantastic things, you have to put yourself in fantastic places.
But really, I've come to realize that that fantastic place that you have to be in is in your mind, because the reality is you and I could go out in my I'm in a log cabin on ten acres of woods here in Wisconsin, and you and I could go out and set a tent right now on my ten acres and get a couple of bows out, or
a couple of twenty twos out. We could go and hunt my population of gray squirrels that I have here amongst all my oak and maple trees and kill three or four or five gray squirrels, skin them out, bring them back to our tent, start a fire and cook them in a frying pan over our wood stove and the TP, and sit down and have this podcast. Dare I say this, You're in Las Vegas right now, right Mike, when I'm in Wisconsin. We're doing this over our computers.
If you said, hey, I want to experience something while we do this, and I said, okay, well fly out here. We'll hike around my ten acres, we'll kill a couple of squirrels, we'll sit down on the TP, we'll start a fire, and we'll cook the squirrels over the fire, and we'll have this conversation the TP. Our experience would be tenfold what it is over a couple of computers.
And so I realized you don't have.
To go to the Arctic Circle on hunt carryboar adulship or gris le bears You can do this in your own backyard.
You can do this in a state forest. You can do this.
It's a presence and a mindfulness that is the fantastic place for you to be in. And even if you don't want to hunt, you know you can become a fisherman. If you don't want to fish, then you can just explore and the walk about that you just did the forty five day walk about. Go and do that. Watch the sun come up, watch the sun go down, Understand when the rain is coming, when the wind is coming.
Put yourself through some hardships, and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person. It's without a doubt you can't. You can't come out the other side if you live in your essence of what's the first rule of a masogi, don't die right.
Make it really hard. The second rule is don't die.
Second rule, don't die. Beyond that, you will come out a better person. Yeah, that's that's for sure.
I'll say. For me, the time in the wilderness has always been my greatest teacher because it strips away control and I feel like modern life, a lot of the technology we have is to put us in control of every variable. We've got calendar scheduling everything out, we've got technology that can deliver food, we've got xys. Everything is predictable and in control, and when you get outside that
all gets stripped away. You might get lost. You can't predict what the terrain is going to be like, you can't predict what the weather is going to be like, shit is going to go totally off the rails. But you got to figure it out. And it's in that process of having certainty and control stripped away where you have to figure it out, that people begin to realize something that I think we've lost, and that's that you can just figure things out and do things and become competent.
And then for me, that tracks back into everyday life where I get an email I don't want to deal with. I go, you know, you just survived a lightning storm mount in the desert. I think you can be okay, go into this meeting you don't want to go to. And that just changed that fundamentally changes your relationship to your everyday life.
For me at least, I totally agree. And I think like when you were with us in the Arctic, I could see it on your face.
You were bored. There's portions of.
That time where you're like, so damn bored.
Now what do we do? You know?
Because when you're out there, are there animals or aren't animals? It's our animals. How do we get into position to look at them better? How do we get into position to maybe take one and take it back to camp?
Is it raining? Do you have to put your rain gear on? Or is it not raining?
Are you cold? Do you have to put your down on? Or are you cold and it's rain you need to put your down And you start going through these things like, oh, hey, we need it's we have no idea what day it is, but we know we need water, and we know we're running low on food, and we know we are probably going to have to hike to the next drainage because the caribou don't seem to be coming through here any longer.
But those purities for me.
Having a tent, having to maybe have a wood fire and carry all your supplies in the backpack and have to deal with, you know, one hundred mile an hour wind or an eighty mile an hour wind, or being bluff charged by grizzly bear and having a grizzly that is now starting to harass your camp because he realizes, like, if I harass these guys enough, I'm gonna be able to steal all their food and maybe even you know, like kill one of them or whatever. And you know,
you start to like break all these things down. But there's an essence, the simpleness of it that is such a pure way of living life. And but when you come from the rat race, like if I took somebody, and I've loved to do this sometime, but if you took somebody that had to totally like take a guy that goes clubbing every night or something like that in New York City and just take him out there and then just be like, yeah, this is, first of all, we're going to hike ten miles today, and you are
going to hate yourself. There's gonna be blisters all over your legs and your thighs are gonna chafe, and you're however strong you think you are in the gym, and this is going to wear you out.
It's not gonna work, Yep, not gonna work.
And then you're gonna sit there and have to reflect. And I just think that stuff is I often think what if we didn't What if things just continued in the hunter and gather society? You know, who would we be as a people? What would the world look like?
Very interesting final pal questions. What's your most important pieces of gear?
I mean, the reality is it's your mindset.
And that comes through getting out there. And I feel like that's an equation of time and not quitting. Like we talked about in the beginning, you need to go out prepared enough. You need to know that there's going to be a lot of hurdles, but you just got to take them one at a time, and in the process of hurdling, you get better at hurdling.
Yeah, because I've even seen people do you know, like we might have gear in the essence of, you know, really nice rain gear so we can go further in the rain.
We might have really.
Nice down gears, we can exist further into the cold. But if you look at the guys that were one hundred years ago and they were dealing with animal skins and wolves, and even look at some of the Eskimos now and some the tribes that are way up on the ice cap and stuff, like, they do amazing things with just seal skins and polar bear skins and things like that.
And really the gear.
Is it's a hack if you will, and you even look at the stuff that we use. Another company made it. So it's this shortcut that we're complaining about. It's the same shortcut because if I had to go out and get a seal to make my mucklucks or get a seal to then make my part cut. Now we're talking like that's you know, that is a very real essence. But everything in life comes with it's kind of give and take. But I would say your mindset and positivity.
I think people greatly underestimate our lack of time on the face of the earth. I think people greatly underestimate a positive attitude. And I think people greatly underestimate how interesting you are to the rest of us. If you were just going to be yourself, no matter what that is, I people, we will find you. You be you, and we will find you terribly interesting.
That feels like a hell of a note to end on DONI my man, this was awesome. I really appreciate you coming.
On same same anytime.
Final question, what's our what's our next adventure? I feel like we're due for one.
Yeah, we're due for one. We need to figure we
you and I need to talk. I'd love to go on a walk about with you where we're actually hunting or doing something along those lines, or even maybe a sort of Canadian canoe trip where we canoe up into a wilderness and have to pordage and paddle and shovel water for a bunch of days and go catch some fish and and I think there'd be a lot of fun to just go and kind of sit back again reflect And I'd like to hear I've read all of your books, but i'd like to hear about them again
from your mouth and and hear your ideas and the things that you're experiencing and and i'd really enjoy that.
I'd love that. Man, let's plan on it. Thanks for coming on, man, Thank you, Thank you for having me.
Michael, there you have it.
Thanks so much to Donny Vincent for coming out of the wilderness for more than an hour to have an awesome conversation with us, and thank you for tuning in. As always, we're going to be in your feed twice a week, so please keep an eye out for more, and if you have any questions, please drop them in the comments or send us an email. Even better, if you want to send us a voice memo or a video of yourself asking the question. We would absolutely love that and we will try to answer as many as
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