#765 - Tovar Cerulli

[0] No?

[1] Yes?

[2] Live?

[3] All right, we're live.

[4] Hey, what's up, man?

[5] How are you?

[6] I'm well.

[7] I'm here with Tovar Suruli.

[8] He's got his pen and his notebook out, like he's about to take notes.

[9] Author of The Mindful Carnivore.

[10] Boy, you went an unusual path, man, and this is one of the reasons why I really wanted to talk to you.

[11] I've read some of your stuff, and I've seen some interviews with you online.

[12] Obviously, a very intelligent, very thoughtful guy.

[13] you started out a vegan and became a hunter.

[14] Boy, that's a tricky path.

[15] And it had to be fraught with peril, right?

[16] I mean, how much grief did you take for that, first of all?

[17] You know, not as much as I kind of anticipated.

[18] Really?

[19] Well, it's because you live in Vermont.

[20] You know, they could be part of it, you know.

[21] They can't get to you up there.

[22] Well, and it's a funny blend of cultures there.

[23] I mean, I didn't become vegetarian until I was like 20.

[24] So I spent basically 20 to 30 as vegetarian, mostly vegan, that whole time.

[25] And so then in my early 30s, I made this kind of bizarre transition into being a hunter.

[26] And I wondered how friends, not so much family, because I had one uncle who was a hunter and was well respected.

[27] Welcome back, son.

[28] But, you know, but friends, you know, I wondered, you know, what was that going to be like?

[29] and there were some, you know, some occasionally odd moments with friends or neighbors, but not as much as you might expect.

[30] What was it that made you switch over?

[31] Like, was there a moment?

[32] Was it a realization?

[33] Was it an accumulation of information?

[34] Like, what was it?

[35] I mean, the switch to being vegetarian had a lot to do with ethics and animal welfare and compassion, and then it became other issues, environmental, you know, kinds of things.

[36] The switch back, the first step really was starting to realize that my diet, whatever I was eating, was connected to all kinds of things that I didn't realize, you know, control of deer in soybean fields to make tofu.

[37] I mean, you know, the control is a nice way to send murder.

[38] It's a gentle, it's a gentle word, right?

[39] And just the impact of agriculture on the landscape as a whole.

[40] Talk about wildlife habitat.

[41] appearing in a hurry, you know.

[42] And even the local organic farmer down the road where we'd, you know, go get organic strawberries.

[43] You know, when there's enough crop damage, he calls a friend and they shoot a deer or there's smoke bomb in the wood chucks all the time.

[44] So there are all kinds of impacts that I realized my diet was having, even though I wasn't eating animals, you know, indirectly.

[45] That didn't change my diet.

[46] that just sort of softened these very black and white hard edges that I had drawn in my mind, these ethical lines, right?

[47] The shift to actually eating something different had more to do with nutritional needs in the long term.

[48] And once I started eating some yogurt, which is a big radical step, if you've been vegan for 10 years, you know, eating a bowl of yogurt is a big deal.

[49] Right.

[50] Or a few, you know, eggs and fish and chicken.

[51] And once I did that, I said, I'm going to go back to fishing, which I did as a kid.

[52] And then I live in a rural area, you know, I'm in the woods practically.

[53] And I look around, I was like, hmm, if I'm going to get protein, animal protein, there's something that running around here in the woods.

[54] And it's still part of the culture there, you know, where I live in Vermont.

[55] You know, hunting is still alive as part of the culture.

[56] So it started to sort of sneak up on me as this idea to get into hunting.

[57] Wow.

[58] Well, eggs are an easy one because nobody has to get hurt.

[59] Like eating eggs is so easy.

[60] Especially, I have my own chicken, so it's just, hey girls, what's going on?

[61] Take the eggs.

[62] No one gets hurt.

[63] Everything's fine.

[64] And that seems to me to be the easiest and most ethical way.

[65] If you just want to get some animal protein in your body, that one really is no one, no one's getting hurt.

[66] Those things, I didn't, you know, this is so embarrassing, but I didn't even know, I think I was in my late 30s or early 40s when I I found out that chicken eggs couldn't become a chicken because they weren't fertilized by a rooster.

[67] Like, this is how stupid I was.

[68] Or more really removed from any farming or any idea of farming.

[69] I just, in my stupid mind, I just had this idea that, and then I thought, I think, oh, yeah, of course, there's no rooster.

[70] How it, wait a minute, why are they laying eggs every day?

[71] Like, what the hell's going on?

[72] I don't understand that part of it, but it's so easy to just get eggs from chickens.

[73] I mean, as long as you're feeding the chicken, and chickens exist off of so many different things, they clean your garden, they run around, they're mostly bugs and grass and chicken and, you know, healthy chicken food.

[74] But once you decide you're going to pull the trigger on a deer, things get real.

[75] That's a totally different experience because there's this one guy who's this healthy, ethical, vegan who's walking around looking at the deer, like, hello, friend, and the next day, you know, your elbows deep in that deer, pulling out its guts, hanging it up in a barn and taking skin off of it.

[76] That's exactly right.

[77] And it took me a few years from when I started hunting to, and I was learning through email to my uncle and reading articles and poking around in the woods.

[78] It was a slow learning process.

[79] Yeah.

[80] And there aren't tons of deer running around Vermont.

[81] There are some, but there aren't.

[82] Is not, really?

[83] No. Back in the 60s and 70s, we had all this young growth forest, you know, all these farm fields that were coming back into forest.

[84] And there were a ton of deer.

[85] It was really rich habitat for deer.

[86] Now it's a much more mature forest, and so the numbers have really dropped down.

[87] Do they have predators up there?

[88] What do they have?

[89] We have coyotes and bear, but, you know, nothing that is really a good predator.

[90] on adult deer.

[91] So I was trying to hunt, but unsuccessful for several years.

[92] And in retrospect, I'm really glad because I don't think I was ready for that experience.

[93] So you were saying, I'm going to go hunting, but you weren't getting anything.

[94] So you're trying to find the deer.

[95] So it was more like hiking with a backpack that has a gun in it.

[96] Yeah.

[97] I mean, I did a little bit of small game hunting.

[98] I took a, you know, a snowshoe hair or two.

[99] small, you know, but a deer is a different experience.

[100] You know, something, it's a mammal, but something that big, too.

[101] And, you know, something that beautiful.

[102] I mean, they're stunning animals.

[103] And so, when it finally happened a few years in, it was a total shock.

[104] The actual experience.

[105] Even though I'd seen someone else with a deer they had just killed and I'd help my uncle, but doing it yourself, different game.

[106] And how did you prepare for this?

[107] Did you take courses?

[108] Did Did you train yourself how to shoot?

[109] Did you already know how to shoot?

[110] I had shot a bit as a kid.

[111] I'd been around firearms.

[112] Can you push that right up to your face?

[113] Sure, I went a little closer.

[114] Sure.

[115] You know, I'd been around firearms a little bit as a kid.

[116] I'd never shot a deer rifle, you know, center fire rifle.

[117] So that was new.

[118] But, yeah, it was learning from books, articles, my uncle, a lot of emails back and forth.

[119] I was totally clueless, you know, about firearms, about deer, about everything.

[120] It was starting from ground zero.

[121] And so it was slow.

[122] It was slow.

[123] It's a real commitment, like, especially if you're doing it essentially by yourself, you know, to decide to really get involved in quote -unquote gun culture and understand what kind of round you need, what kind of rifle you need, what's the best kind of rifle, was the best way to pull the trigger, how do you keep yourself from jerking or punching the trigger, and, you know, there's a lot of practice involved.

[124] Oh, yeah, there's a ton to learn, and I think that's one of the interesting things with, you know, what I call adult onset hunters, those of us who come to it later in life.

[125] Sounds like diabetes.

[126] It does, exactly.

[127] Adult onset hunters.

[128] That we don't know a million things that those people who grew up doing it take for granted.

[129] Yeah.

[130] About the woods, about firearms, about all kinds of things.

[131] And they forgot they even learned them because they learned it when they were 10.

[132] or 15 and we don't know any of that we've lived maybe we've spent some time in the woods maybe we know something about fishing but we don't know that whole world so it's a challenge without a mentor so for me my uncle was really helpful but having a mentor is really key I think for folks who come to it later in life yeah it's so much so that I was thinking that there's got to be some way to start a program that teaches people the ethics of it and it's boy it's it's so hard to do because you're talking about something that reasonably should take a long time before you actually like i think the way you did it taking a long time before you actually shoot a deer it's probably the way to go i got a crazy crash course from steve ronella right um where i did his television show i shot literally a couple times at a piece of paper and i'm not bullshitting we set up a target put it on like a patch of dirt and shot a couple of times where he was explaining how you have to squeeze you can't jerk it you have to squeeze and uh then next thing you know i'm shooting a deer like five days later or whatever it was it was uh very strange and it took me a while to sort of let all the information set in and then get my my skills up to like i pulled it off the first time but i easily could have fucked up i easily could have wounded an animal you know i really wasn't ready, to get someone, especially someone with a full -time job, someone with a family, obligations, to get them, and somehow, another set up some sort of a course that allows them to learn how to do that.

[133] Right.

[134] Well, there's a demand for it, and there are a bunch of states that are doing it.

[135] They're, like, Wisconsin, Minnesota have really good programs, adult, learn -to -hunt programs, and they do it over the course of, like, six or nine months, you know, so they have an intro workshop, usually at the local food co -op or something.

[136] recruit people there, and then they end up having these weekend sessions throughout the course of the year, and it culminates with sort of a mentored hunt on public land in Wisconsin, Minnesota, or other states that have similar programs.

[137] But there's enough demand that there are private courses.

[138] I mean, there's weekend workshops being offered by folks I know not associated with the state program at all, just teaching people because they didn't learn.

[139] And there's a huge demand, I think, not just for hunting, but people, want these old skills, you know, hands -on, you know, whether it's how to physically build something out of wood or how to can your own food or how to, you know, hunt and butcher a deer.

[140] And there's an interest in that sort of do -it -yourself, quote -unquote, primitive or just basic self -reliant skills.

[141] Yeah, I mean, even if you're not thinking about being a prepper, if you're not, you know, if you're not getting ready for the end of the world, it's still, it's a fascinating thing to learn how to take care of yourself.

[142] learn how to get your own food from the actual wilderness.

[143] Right, or even, or from the garden.

[144] I mean, just that hands -on experience, that direct experience is really different from sitting in a cubicle, getting paid and then going and buying food at the grocery store.

[145] Yeah.

[146] You know, the author Richard Nelson, who's written great books about deer and all kinds of things.

[147] He lives up in Alaska and he calls the supermarket an agency, an agent of our forgetfulness.

[148] You know, we forget where things come from.

[149] Yeah.

[150] If we don't live on a farm, if we didn't grow up doing that kind of thing.

[151] Yeah, I think that's an issue that a lot of people who have paid attention to all the different videos that have been released from these factory farms that are horrific.

[152] And they try to figure, well, what is a way to get around this?

[153] There's got to be a way to get around this.

[154] And the most ethical way, I think, and a lot of people think, is if it's possible, to hunt it yourself.

[155] Because then you're getting an animal that was never caged up.

[156] was a wild animal, and in one brief moment, its life ends.

[157] And realistically, that life was probably on its way out anyway.

[158] If you're shooting a mature deer, you're shooting something that's six years old, five years old.

[159] It's amazing that deer lived that long in the first place.

[160] Yeah, most wild animals are prey, you know, most prey animals, and even most predators, in fact, you know, die when their pops, basically.

[161] I mean, the mortality rate is incredibly high.

[162] Yeah, I mean, even the mortality rate for bears is insanely high.

[163] And the predator of bears is bears.

[164] You know, bears kill half of all the moose calves and deer fawns, like half of them that get born, get killed by bears or coyotes or wolves or anything.

[165] So to get something that's five years old, you're essentially stepping in just before nature did.

[166] Yeah, I mean, I don't know enough about all the ecology and biology of all these species to speak.

[167] authoritatively on that side of it.

[168] But the idea of it being an ethical alternative makes sense to a lot of people.

[169] I think it resonates.

[170] The people I've interviewed who are adult onset hunters, you know, and from my own experience, that's a pretty common theme.

[171] There's an ethical drive involved.

[172] Whether it's practical for a huge proportion of the population to really do that is a different, you know, sort of statistical question.

[173] It's just not.

[174] But, you know, it's also not practical for the United States to feed every country in the world.

[175] It's not practical for everyone to exist off all the crops grown in England.

[176] There's a lot of things that aren't practical.

[177] Exactly.

[178] Not that those things do exist, but what you can do as a human, you can still today in the United States, still learn how to hunt, hunt, and get all your food from that.

[179] It is still possible.

[180] It might not be possible for everybody in the country to do it, but guess what everybody in the country is not going to do it anyway?

[181] It's like, you know, like saying, is it possible to write a book?

[182] Yes, it is.

[183] Guess how few fucking people write books?

[184] You wrote a book.

[185] How many people write books?

[186] I mean, you could go all day without meeting anybody who's ever written a book.

[187] Sure.

[188] This book that you wrote, The Mindful Carnivore, I don't think I've ever even seen a book written by a guy who started off as a vegetarian and a vegan and was compelled to become a hunter.

[189] You know, it seems when I first got into the idea of writing a book, which seemed crazy and still, in retrospect, seems kind of.

[190] crazy.

[191] But when I started even writing a couple essays about that, about going from being a vegan and vegetarian to being a hunter, I thought, this is bizarre.

[192] I don't know what people are going to make of this.

[193] Over time, I've met more and more people who have actually had a pretty similar experience, other vegetarians who became hunters.

[194] And there's a, there's a logic to it.

[195] Like, if you were that concerned about animals that you decided.

[196] to be vegetarian or vegan and then you changed your diet animals are still a pretty serious issue for you unless you just abandon your entire philosophy and left out the door if you still have those basic values and you still take animal welfare and environmental conservation and these sorts of issues seriously then there's a interest in engaging directly like confronting it Right.

[197] Instead of just saying, oh, well, just go to the supermarket now and just buy some ground chuck.

[198] Right.

[199] So for those of us who still have animal ethics and welfare in mind, when we make that transition out of being vegetarian, there's a way to confront it.

[200] You know, I know some folks who were vegetarian, young couple, and when their diet changed, They decided they're going to raise their own animals instead of hunt.

[201] They started raising chickens.

[202] And now they do it full time.

[203] They're chicken farmers.

[204] Chicken, cows, rabbits.

[205] They run a CSA, you know, community support agriculture.

[206] They supply meat to these two ex -vegetarians supply meat to this, you know, whole area up where we live.

[207] So they wanted to confront it directly.

[208] the same kind of thing.

[209] If we're going to do this, we're going to do it ourselves.

[210] Now, you say your diet changed like it used to be spring and now it's summer.

[211] What does that mean your diet changed and why did your diet change?

[212] Like what was the compelling reason?

[213] I mean, for me, it was that my health was iffy.

[214] I wasn't in, you know, on death's door, but my immune system was kind of depressed and that sort of thing.

[215] And several people, including my wife and my doctor, said, you know, well, maybe this is part of the picture.

[216] You know, think about your diet and start adding some other things in.

[217] And so when I started to add in, you know, some eggs, yogurt, some local chicken, that kind of thing, it did change.

[218] It really did.

[219] So for me, it was a nutrition issue.

[220] Is it possible that you just weren't doing veganism correctly?

[221] That's always the question.

[222] Yeah.

[223] You know, that's always the question.

[224] Could I have done some things differently?

[225] Possibly.

[226] What were you eating for your person?

[227] protein well i mean i was eating you know plenty of what they used to call sort of mixed you know you know you know rice and beans and veggies and fruit and but even on very strict vegan websites they'll say you know you need to take b12 supplements there's there's things that are really hard to get if you're not eating any animal well some people deny that that's a really fascinating conversation i've had with a friend of mine who's a vegan who says you know You know, you really need very little B -12 and you can get plenty of B -12 from your diet.

[228] I'm like, boy, that's controversial.

[229] Like, for you to be real confident about that, I'm not sure that's necessarily correct because I've seen both really strong statements on both sides, really strong statements that you definitely can't get it from your diet and really strong statements that you can.

[230] And I don't know who to believe.

[231] Yeah.

[232] I mean, I'm no nutrition expert either, but.

[233] It's primarily from animals, though, B -12, correct?

[234] As I understand, I mean, flax seeds and...

[235] And there are ways I think you can get it, but whether it's that easy to assimilate into your body and actually use, I think it depends on the source.

[236] And, you know, there's a huge difference nutritionally, as I understand it, between a vegan diet and a vegetarian diet.

[237] You know, if you're eating some eggs, you're eating some dairy, that's a different ballgame.

[238] I mean, we have cultures and traditions of vegetarianism around the world that have sustained themselves.

[239] I don't know of any communities and cultures or traditions around the world where they've been vegan for generation for generation.

[240] I don't think it exists.

[241] Isn't it possible, though, that it requires more education and more understanding about what the nutritional requirements are, like as far as mixing your proteins and making sure...

[242] Because we had some guys on from the documented Cowspiracy, and we talked about it, and I really wish I'd read a little bit more of the arguments against what they were saying before I had them on.

[243] Because one of the things we were talked about is like complete proteins and the complete amino acid profiles.

[244] Well, there's very few complete proteins in plant form.

[245] It's very few.

[246] And if you're getting like, if you're trying to get all your protein from broccoli, Jesus Christ, you've got to eat like pounds of the stuff in order to like.

[247] And so I don't, it's one of the things it becomes with a lot of people, it becomes almost like you're talking about their deity.

[248] It's almost like a religious argument Because they don't want to be objective about it One exception of that is Rich Roll Rich Roll is very objective And I don't know if you know who he is He's a...

[249] I know the name.

[250] Vegan endurance athlete, very good guy And he has a great podcast And he's been a guest on the podcast a couple times here Really cool guy But he's very non -dogmatic And also not a judgmental guy He's not a he's not preaching But for a lot of them They just don't want to admit the difficulty in getting complete sources of protein and then there's a few vegan bodybuilders.

[251] These are, these people are hilarious.

[252] You find out they're doing steroids.

[253] Like, dickhead.

[254] Vegan steroids?

[255] Yeah.

[256] I don't think so.

[257] But like vegan bodybuilding is fraught, it's fucking infested with people that are doing steroids that aren't being honest about it, that are getting gigantic, that are eating vegan food and like vegan power.

[258] and they're flexing, you know, meanwhile, they've got fucking synthetic testosterone, which, by the way, is made with yams.

[259] You can make synthetic testosterone of Mexican wild yams, yeah, in a way, but it's just hilarious.

[260] They're attributing all this, these fucking scientists have made your body, man. Right, right.

[261] Scientists in a weight room.

[262] But, you know, there's, you know, that's neither here than there.

[263] But I think it's, for some people, it is very difficult if you're, if you're going to be, be vegan to get everything your body requires.

[264] You know who Travis Barker is, the drummer from Blink 182, really cool guy, got in a plane crash and was burned really badly, had a bunch of skin grafts and stuff, and it wasn't taking until he ditched his vegan diet.

[265] He was having a real hard time healing.

[266] And I hear things like that.

[267] I go, man, what is going on?

[268] Because how come some people can tell me that they're doing so well, they heal quicker, They recover quicker on a vegan diet.

[269] They feel better on a vegan diet.

[270] And then other people are telling me, you know, it's just their body just wasn't healing correctly.

[271] Their immune system was floundering.

[272] Right.

[273] What's going on?

[274] I mean, I think part of it is probably that we have, you know, our bodies are different.

[275] We have somewhat.

[276] I mean, we're the same species.

[277] We have basic profile, but we have all kinds of, and as the more science progresses, looking at, you know, our microflora inside our bodies, and we're all really different.

[278] So it may be that we process and need things in different ways.

[279] And there's, for many people, I think there's a real change in over time.

[280] So in a short period of time, if you've been eating a really crappy diet full of tons of fried food and then you start eating a whole food's vegan diet, lo and behold, you're going to feel better.

[281] Right.

[282] Because you're suddenly eating, in general, healthier, cleaner food.

[283] after 10, 20 years, for many people, I think there are depletions and consequences in the body of being strict vegan for that long period of time.

[284] Did you attempt to talk to a nutritionist and find out, like, are there any foods that I should, like, quinoa, things on hemp protein, things that I need to mix in that are more complete proteins?

[285] I didn't really, you know, by that point, because my, those sort of black and white lines I had drawn, those really rigid ethical ideas, that sort of deity concept that I had in a way, and its attachment to my identity, you know, that had started to blur and loosen enough.

[286] I was like, you know, I live in this world, not in some fantasy world.

[287] I live here, and even the local farmer who grows our strawberries is.

[288] smoke -balming woodchucks and shooting deer and he's eating venison and like I'm part of this interconnected system you know this natural community of all kinds of creatures you know plants animals yeah I'm not separate from that and why do I why am I so fixated have I been for you know this past decade so fixated on separating myself from this world that I actually inhabit You know, I think not, I'm not saying this is true for all vegetarians or all vegans by any means, but for me there was, in a sense, a desire to live in this ideal philosophical world.

[289] Right.

[290] Not in this, like, physical, natural world that I actually inhabit.

[291] I'm actually an animal that inhabits this place.

[292] Right.

[293] I have a footprint here, you know, not just my carbon footprint because of the car I drive, whatever, but I have a physical footprint no matter what I eat.

[294] I'm impacting.

[295] It's a whole network of connections, you know, through agriculture and all kinds of ways.

[296] I'm not separate from this.

[297] Right.

[298] Why don't I actually eat more of the kinds of foods that human beings have been eating forever that we evolved on, you know?

[299] And so I just started to experiment with it and see both how it felt physically, but also sort of emotionally, ethically, spiritually, philosophically.

[300] how does it feel to start to do that?

[301] And it was strange.

[302] I mean, it was kind of a bizarre experience to start to eat, especially to start to eat meat again.

[303] It was weird, even before I was hunting.

[304] I can only imagine.

[305] I think what's going on is all connected to what your friend calls the supermarket.

[306] What does he call it, agent of forgetfulness?

[307] Yeah.

[308] I think it's connected to that in that we are so disconnected from our food that even people that are vegans that that, you know, they think that they're causing no harm because they just eat plants.

[309] If you're eating commercial grain, you're a part of a massive, wide -scale death.

[310] In fact, it's probably, there's probably more dead animals per acre in, if you're getting commercial grain than almost anything.

[311] When they grind up that grain to chew it up and to turn it into, like if you have corn or wheat and they chop all that stuff down, those combines are indiscriminate.

[312] they kill everything right i mean they've made some improvements in that you know over the decades but sure small mammals birds and then there's also just the fact that when you create something like that whatever natural wildlife would have been there has been completely removed and you turned it into this weird new thing where it's a monoculture right where you're just growing soybeans or you're just growing whatever whatever hell it is i i think that by not participating in it by not participating in any aspect of the gathering of the food.

[313] You get this attachment from it and you say, you know, hey, I can remove myself from any cruelty, any ethical concerns by just establishing a cruelty -free vegan diet.

[314] Right.

[315] And it becomes a lot easier to think in those black and white terms.

[316] Right.

[317] Either or good, bad, you know, it's very easy to separate that because you don't experience it and realize, oh, plants eat animals, animals, eat animals, then animals die and plants eat them.

[318] It's all this whole system that everything, including us, is part of.

[319] Yeah.

[320] And we, as a culture, as a society for, for, you know, decades, centuries have been various ways separating ourselves from that through industrialization, through, you know, just our ideas.

[321] Again, this is culturally specific.

[322] Not every culture in the world thinks this way, but we do.

[323] Think of ourselves as very separate.

[324] and there's an environmental philosopher who's now passed on, but her name was Val Plumwood.

[325] She was in Australia, and she talked about this, and she talked about how even our practices around and our ideas around our own life and death as humans and how we bury ourselves in these concrete boxes to sort of keep ourselves from decomposing, supposedly, right?

[326] So, like, protect ourselves from death.

[327] And the idea of us being part of that world in a physical way, we actually, you know, ending up being food eventually.

[328] Yeah.

[329] She thinks that we, and I think she's right, that we reject that as a culture.

[330] We just, we don't have room for that.

[331] Right.

[332] Well, that's one of the things what we do to our bodies when we embalmed them.

[333] We sort of remove ourselves permanently from the cycle.

[334] Right.

[335] Which is really kind of fucked up.

[336] Have some formaldehyde, buddy.

[337] Like, why do we, do we really need to stare at our dead bodies, like, sitting with perfect clothing on and, you know, pretend you're not dead?

[338] Well, it's just so fucked up that we, I've only seen it a couple times, but I remember when it was my grandfather, and I was really close to my grandfather.

[339] So when I went to his funeral and I saw him sitting there in that box, and I realized, like, how bizarre it was her.

[340] First of all, he's not there.

[341] I'm like, this is a shell.

[342] This is not my grandpa.

[343] He's gone.

[344] Like this is some strange thing And like they've pumped him full of all this stuff So he doesn't stink Because the stinking is natural It's like that's what's supposed to happen to a person Right You were supposed to put them in the ground And the bacteria eats them You fertilize a soil And make it better for everything around Right And when we don't do that what do we do We burn ourselves to turn ourselves into powder Right So we're fucking totally useless We're real weird with how we treat our bodies And the concept of death Yeah Yeah, yeah, it's totally true.

[345] One of the things that I love to do with people that have too much of a Disney view of animals and, like, I forget, you know, I can't believe that you would hunt, I can't believe that you would kill deer.

[346] Do you know that deer eat birds?

[347] And they'll go, what?

[348] Yeah, deer eat birds.

[349] Yeah, it's probably a bizarre, I've seen a couple of those videos.

[350] I mean, it's probably pretty darn rare, but they've been -chase them.

[351] They've been known to, again, very rare, but they've been known to, like, in the shallows, like, whack fish and eat them.

[352] I mean, pretty unusual.

[353] behavior.

[354] Most of the time they can't pull it off, but when they can pull it, it's like deer are designed essentially to graze.

[355] It's real simple.

[356] The way they are, but they'll take their food any way they can get it.

[357] And that is really hard for people to believe.

[358] Like cows as well.

[359] Like cows eat ground nesting birds all the time.

[360] There's videos of cows doing it.

[361] And when you show that to people, they're like, what the fuck is going on?

[362] Maybe what we're doing is we're ruining the earth so much that the animals themselves are killing each other and eating it?

[363] No, they've always done this.

[364] They just don't do it a lot because they're just not designed for it and there's plenty of vegetation where the deer live, especially like whitetail deer who live primarily around agriculture.

[365] They're around so much vegetation, so much food that the last thing deer have to worry about most of the time is starving to death when they're around like farmlands and stuff like that.

[366] Sure.

[367] I mean, up our way in the north and in some other parts of, you know, U .S. and up into Canada, where you get into mostly forested areas, and you get overpopulations of deer, they wipe out their winter habitat.

[368] If they have too many deer and their starvation time is winter.

[369] Right.

[370] Because of the deep snow, they're compressed into tiny, tiny fractions of their usual range.

[371] And they can, in fact, you know, starve to death in vast numbers, but around agriculture in more moderate climates, yeah, they've got no shortage of food.

[372] Yeah, and deer, it's really interesting how they're set up.

[373] It's almost like it's making sure that they don't last through when they're the older, strong, mature bucks.

[374] Because a mature buck will go from the prime of its life to on death's door within a couple months during the rut.

[375] And it's really crazy.

[376] They drive them.

[377] I mean, they use all their fat reserves.

[378] They just burn it.

[379] And they're doing it right when the winter's coming.

[380] Right.

[381] And sometimes...

[382] It's a bad design.

[383] Yeah, it's terrible.

[384] But it's almost like it's on purpose.

[385] because for people who aren't aware of the process, what happens is the deer will eat all throughout the summer.

[386] They'll fatten up.

[387] They look great.

[388] Their antlers grow.

[389] And as soon as the air starts getting crisp around the fall, they get ready to party.

[390] The velvet falls off their antlers.

[391] Their antlers start to get hard.

[392] And then the females go into heat, and then the party starts.

[393] And they just run around running for so long that they sometimes forget to eat.

[394] They burn off all their fat, and they get skinny and scrawny, and then by the end of it, it's cold.

[395] And when it's cold, that's when they die.

[396] So they'll go from being like a stud prime of their life deer to being a dead, starving to death, frozen to death deer within a couple of months.

[397] It's really weird.

[398] Yeah.

[399] And especially in those kinds of harsh climates where it is cold, deep snow, limited food, it can be really risky.

[400] Yeah, like mule deer in particular, right?

[401] because I don't know.

[402] I know what happens to the white tails, but it may happen with mule deer as much or more.

[403] Well, it's just nature almost has like these fail -safe system set up to make sure that these mature bucks only have their time in the sun for so long.

[404] You know, you get your party on.

[405] All the females love you.

[406] You're having a great time.

[407] You father a lot of offspring, and then that's a wrap.

[408] Yeah.

[409] One of the things that I find fascinating is that that different groups, vegetarians, hunters, and others who often seem diametrically opposed on an issue like hunting, often are motivated by really similar values.

[410] I mean, a concern for environmental conservation, a concern for even animal welfare.

[411] I mean, in hunting, the ethic of the clean kill, the idea that you should only shoot once and it should be virtually instantaneous, you know, and even the concern that you expressed, you know, I got this crash course so fast, I could have wounded an animal.

[412] You know, the concern about wounding an animal is a concern about, you know, not causing suffering, you know, undue suffering, not violating essentially an animal welfare ethic, right?

[413] And there's such different languages being spoken often by, you know, folks who are on sort of an animal rights or animal welfare activist side.

[414] and folks who are on sort of a hunting and hunting conservation activist side of things.

[415] And often they're speaking very different languages and don't realize that they have some things in common.

[416] You had, back at the beginning of January, you had, is it Phil Demers?

[417] The guy with...

[418] Marineland?

[419] Marine land, exactly.

[420] You know, and so he's an animal rights activist doing really important work related to, you know, orcas and other captive animals.

[421] And he has a real respect for and gets where you're coming from in your interest.

[422] in hunting.

[423] You know.

[424] And so there are people who do get it across those, you know, those camps.

[425] He's different.

[426] First of all, I'm pretty sure he eats meat.

[427] Didn't he say he eats meat?

[428] I think he does.

[429] He may be, yeah.

[430] But also on top of that, he's, we're talking about marine mammals that are super intelligent.

[431] And I have a deep appreciation and respect for those things.

[432] And I think they're basically like water people.

[433] I really do.

[434] I just think they don't have fingers.

[435] They don't have a language that we can really accurately interpret.

[436] But when you pay attention to how insanely smart dolphins and orcas are, to me, locking them up is akin to a slavery.

[437] It's almost like slavery.

[438] It's insanity.

[439] I just despise it.

[440] I think it's sick.

[441] It costs me money because there's the best comedy room in Vegas is in the mirage.

[442] And I won't work it.

[443] I've done it in the past.

[444] And then I was told that the Mirage has dolphins.

[445] And I was like, oh, fuck, man. I can't.

[446] I can't.

[447] I can't.

[448] I can't.

[449] I can't do comedy.

[450] I can't have a fucking he -he and a ha -ha show above a slave ship.

[451] And that's what it feels like.

[452] Sure.

[453] But that idea that they're water people.

[454] Yeah.

[455] Is interesting because in many traditional hunting societies, they speak of animals as people.

[456] You know, and of them as, and even, deer.

[457] You know, they have a society.

[458] It's not the same, say, as a dolphin pod or a wolf pack.

[459] It's a different.

[460] But they know those animals really intimately as a species and sometimes even as individuals.

[461] But the language, the idea of them as other people, as as animal people.

[462] And yet they're hunting cultures.

[463] And so they're taking lives, but they also have a deep respect.

[464] It's not that, oh, well, we'll kill the ones we don't respect.

[465] But we're to kill the ones we don't respect.

[466] But we're to kill the ones.

[467] that are kind of ugly but the ones that we respect are the ones that are beautiful we won't touch that's not it that's not how they're thinking about it yeah and we often do my agent i have an agent i love her to death she's awesome but she loves animals she's vegetarian she loves animals but she doesn't mind if i hunt wild pigs because they're disgusting they're ugly and disgusting right there's this arbitrary aesthetic that that some people say well you know it's an ugly kind of fish yeah or it's an ugly kind of mammal or any kind of fish really there's very few people give a fuck if you kill a fish they just really don't care right it's and it's a different experience yes emotionally yeah it's totally different and it is but it is it is weird and moving i mean oh yeah it's a tangible sense of a loss of life i was i was big into fishing when i was a kid when i was probably like um i guess i moved to boston when i was 13 that's when i really got into fishing and i used to every day.

[468] I used to live in this place called Jamaica Plain.

[469] And they had this lake there called Jamaica Pond.

[470] And they had bass and trout.

[471] And I loved it.

[472] I'd go there every day.

[473] And I'd catch fish there all the time.

[474] And whenever I killed one and ate it, it always felt weird.

[475] Like I just killed something.

[476] Right.

[477] I mean, that was the experience that actually made me decide to be a vegetarian.

[478] I'd fished all my childhood growing up, loved it.

[479] My fishing mentor was a guy from Boston who grew up in the Bronx.

[480] And he was a furniture builder in Boston.

[481] and he'd come up and visit us in southern New Hampshire, and we'd fish all the time.

[482] But when I was 20, I had been thinking a lot about, you know, what kind of life I wanted to lead, what were my values.

[483] And I went fishing, and I caught this trout, and I killed it.

[484] And I was like, I didn't have to do that.

[485] I didn't have to kill that.

[486] I could have had, you know, rice and veggies or whatever, right?

[487] Well, I didn't have to, it was one of the big arguments that people even say against hunting, even if they eat meat, you can go to the supermarket.

[488] You don't have to kill it.

[489] Right.

[490] It's a voluntary participation that for some people is hard to fathom.

[491] Now, do you get all your meat from hunting?

[492] All my red meat, if we have red meat.

[493] I mean, we'll buy local chicken, you know, but if we happen to have red meat in the house, it's because I was lucky the previous November.

[494] And you won't go to these people that you know that grazed chickens and cows.

[495] I could, and there's just, there's no really good rational argument for it.

[496] I just never got back into the habit of, like, buying beef.

[497] Right, right, right.

[498] Ecologically and ethically, it probably makes pretty good sense, you know.

[499] And I don't have a big argument against it.

[500] I just never got into that, back into that habit.

[501] So the experience of taking a deer is so profoundly different, obviously, from going to the grocery store.

[502] Yeah.

[503] Or even going to a farmer, you know.

[504] and having that is so valuable to me and it's such a reminder you know talk about the the opposite of the supermarket as an agent of forgetfulness you know when you take a package of innocent out of the freezer and you remember that deer that you killed i mean there's no forgetting where that comes from oh yeah you know it's always present yeah it's indescribable to someone who has hasn't experienced it.

[505] It's very, very difficult to even imagine what it's like because there's some, I mean, I hate to use the word spiritual because it just gets so beaten down and overused and watered down.

[506] But there is a weird spiritual connection between your meat or a tangible energy that's connected to the experience that you had, the meat that you're eating the knowledge that you were the one who took the life, the knowledge that it was a life, that it was a living being, and now it's food on your plate and you're watching your family eat it or you're having friends that come over and eat it.

[507] It's, it's, I just think that cities are something really unusual and alien.

[508] And I think human beings have created them out of convenience and it's wonderful and it's allowed us to gather information and to create these incredible places where you can just group together millions and millions of people and you just ship all the food in.

[509] But in doing so, we've created this really convenient way of looking at things.

[510] And I think this is what I'm trying to get at with this whole series of interviews and series of conversations that I'm having with different hunters, different vegans, different people that are trying to ethically source their food.

[511] I'm trying to get a sense of how the hell this happened and how it's so pervasive and how there's so much resist.

[512] to understanding and appreciating what the overall, what the really big picture of where our food comes from, what it actually is.

[513] Sure.

[514] Instead of this utopian view that I think, like we were talking about, you had this idea before separating yourself from this world of animals.

[515] And it's not just food, obviously.

[516] I mean, every material that a city uses, water, huge issue here in California, right?

[517] Huge issue in Atlanta, Georgia, huge issue in many places.

[518] That water is coming.

[519] from somewhere else, every material that that city uses very little is being produced actually the raw materials coming from that location.

[520] So we're constantly drawing on rural areas, you know, far flung around the globe sometimes, but certainly the immediate surroundings and cities are utterly dependent on that.

[521] Yes, and plastic and then waste products.

[522] And then, you know, I have a friend who's a surfer, he's a yoga teacher, and he loves surfing.

[523] He's a real interesting cat, kind of a free spirit.

[524] But he told me, he's lived all over the world, and it's got a very bizarre accent because it's like a combination of like a bunch of different places where he lived for 10 years here and Argentina for 10 years.

[525] And he surfs everywhere.

[526] Well, he went surfing in Los Angeles.

[527] He went surfing in Malibu after the rain and didn't know that you can't do that.

[528] Like, you can't because there's so much waste that comes from our city.

[529] when it rains, it pours into the ocean, and it's like you're bathing in a toxic soup.

[530] So he was sick for days just from surfing in the water right off our shores.

[531] Just from all these chemicals and pathogens and sloughing off the land.

[532] All the oil, all the residue, breakdust residue that's on the roads, all of that.

[533] When you have a pouring rain, it comes down that L .A. River, and it just goes right into the ocean.

[534] They say for like five or six days you're supposed to stay out of the ocean.

[535] It takes a while, filter all that stuff out and get it back to where the state that it normally is at.

[536] But, you know, we live in this really dirty, gross, polluted city that's right next to this beautiful ocean.

[537] And there's consequences.

[538] Yeah.

[539] When you took your first year, was that, what was that like as an experience?

[540] Shocking, strange, a definite, tangible feeling of loss, you know, the loss of this life.

[541] but also an incredible feeling of exhilaration, this weird primal connection when you're actually eating the meat over a campfire because we did it, you know, hardcore...

[542] Backcountry, yeah.

[543] Back country, public land in Montana, off the Missouri River, camping, like the whole deal.

[544] Right.

[545] We did it the right way.

[546] And, you know, you're around a campfire with a bunch of people that you really care about and you're all eating this meat from this animal that you just killed.

[547] It's intense And it's It is the male bonding experience You know I mean There's like There's like Football games Oh yeah This is fun But hunting Going out and hunting parties together I had a conversation With my friend Duncan Trussell Yesterday about this That I think that there's some things That we Don't know That we have a requirement for In our minds Or in our bodies Or in our Maybe perhaps in our DNA That our bodies are set up with these certain reward systems.

[548] It's rewarding to gather up your own food.

[549] And anyone who's ever grown in a garden, completely outside of hunting, gardening is super satisfying.

[550] It's amazing.

[551] When you eat some food that you've grown yourself, when you're chopping up some kale and tomatoes, and you're making a nice salad, and you made all this, you grew all this yourself, and you paid attention to it, and you fertilized it, and you added water.

[552] There's this amazing feeling, like the exuberation, this, like, weird exhilaration feeling when you're eating food that you grew yourself and these things I think are these reward systems that are in place because it was always good to do that because it ensured survival just like helping other people that feeling of that good feeling you get sure helping others you know in your community absolutely helping and also um hunting I think is in there so but there's a bunch of weird things that are in there too um you know being sexually attractive is in there too.

[553] Having someone think you're attractive.

[554] That's a normal primal reward system that we all love.

[555] And even people that are in committed relationships, like women in committed relationships, like to go out with their girlfriends and dress up and look nice to get looked at.

[556] They do.

[557] I mean, they might not have any desire to find a new man, but they want to get looked at because it fulfills these primal reward systems that are in our bodies.

[558] and I think archery is in there too and I definitely think hunting and eating your own meat from an animal or from a fish or something that you've gotten and pulled from the wild.

[559] One of the things about, you know, you say it's a male bonding experience, one thing that's fascinating is that in so many of the old mythologies, the deity of hunting is a goddess.

[560] Well, the earth itself, right?

[561] I mean, Artemis and Diana, you know, they're women.

[562] And I know many women who hunt and they, you know, have a, just like men, have a wide range of experiences and views and values and attitudes toward it.

[563] But, you know, they, of course, also have this experience of giving life, of, you know, whether they're actually mothers or not, they have this potential.

[564] And the combination of that plays out differently for different women, but to both be a giver of life and a hunter and a taker of life.

[565] you know talk about being sort of spiritually connected to the world and to life and death yeah the giver of life thing is something that men will never really truly understand there's no way around i mean i have this whole bit i'm doing about it in my act because we'll never understand what it's like to even have a desire to have a baby in your body i mean that's so alien so alien to us and i think the earth itself the thought that the earth and that nature itself is a woman, that nature itself is a mother, a mother that provides, mother that gives life and gives birth to life.

[566] It totally makes sense.

[567] Women hunters, it's a very interesting thing because Steve Ronella wrote this really interesting article about sexism in the way we perceive hunters, because there was this cute girl who was going on these African safaris and taking photos with these animals that she had shot and all these people were so angry at her and this was pre cecil the lion and so um he had this take on he was like trying to figure out like what is with all this hate like where's all this hate coming from and he believes that a certain percentage of it is just sexism is that someone looking at this girl like why is this girl going over there and shooting a kudu like why does she do that why does she even want to do that that beautiful animal why does she want to go over there and shoot that and that if it was like some fat old ugly dude nobody would care but because it was this pretty i think her name was kendall jenner jones kennel jones oh kendall jones like kindle jones like kentle jenner is like one of the cardiacians right probably i don't know so you know i'm talking about you yeah and she you know she had death threats and got hundreds of thousands of facebook likes i think she's probably got more facebook friends than i do um and it was all really quick and really fascinating how many people just turned out and attacked her.

[568] And, you know, the hunting community supported her in a lot of ways, but the hateful people, the things that I would read about it, a good portion of it was that she doesn't have to do this.

[569] If you want to eat meat, you can go to a store.

[570] I saw all that stuff.

[571] Sure.

[572] The fly, and there's a, there's a lot of really good arguments for that.

[573] First of all, not that you, if you want to get meat, you can go to store, but for real, if you're going to fly all the way to Africa to get meat, there's no eco -friendly in that.

[574] That's not what you're doing.

[575] Yeah, I mean, if you're going to get on a jet and you're going to fly 16 hours across the ocean to go get meat, let's be honest about what we're doing here.

[576] We're having fun.

[577] Right.

[578] And, I mean, I think the, you know, like Steve Rennell, I remember that article by Steve, and I think that there are a whole bunch of different things going on in a situation like that.

[579] There's the perception of hunting, particularly so -called.

[580] trophy hunting or so -called sport hunting.

[581] And the language is really problematic.

[582] Right.

[583] That it is about us, you know, and I say us, you know, the hunters who do that, who are like, you know, fly to Africa.

[584] I don't, I never done that, and I don't intend to, but a hunter who flies to Africa and is whether they're hunting lions or kudu or whatever they're hunting, they're clearly not hunting that so they have food.

[585] Right.

[586] Right.

[587] Right.

[588] So that ethic of respecting life, and therefore you take life for a serious purpose, including food.

[589] That's an ethic that actually not just in those who are criticizing trophy hunting, but in hunting traditions, you know, there are many wanton waste laws in many states.

[590] You cannot kill a deer and just leave it there.

[591] Right.

[592] Even if you have a hunting license, it's illegal.

[593] Right.

[594] That's understood as wrong.

[595] Right.

[596] And there are many traditional hunting prayers from hunting cultures.

[597] where it's, you know, I took your life because I needed the food, the hide, et cetera, you know.

[598] So that basic respect for life.

[599] And also, like in the Cecil case, you know, there was the fact that he was shot and then 40 hours later killed.

[600] You know, the animal suffered.

[601] It was not a clean kill.

[602] Right.

[603] And there was outrage over that.

[604] That ethic also is part of hunting culture.

[605] You don't do that.

[606] Well, you also don't leave, you know, you don't take the head and leave behind the rest of the body.

[607] That's one of the things that Ronella said about lion hunting.

[608] He's like, if I shot a lion, I would eat that lion.

[609] And you can eat a lion, I guess.

[610] Right.

[611] I guess they're edible.

[612] But he has this, I'm sorry.

[613] No, I'm just saying that there are these values about respect for life and about animal welfare and suffering and so on that are seen as being violated by a situation like Cecil.

[614] Or by, you know, other hunters, Kendall Jones or others who go over, it's like, you didn't need to do that.

[615] Why are you doing that?

[616] You're not using it yourself, you know.

[617] So there's that.

[618] To put it, Africa is one of the problematic places, but to, just to, in all fairness, a lot of people go to New Zealand and they hunt over there and they do bring back the meat.

[619] It's still, ecologically, you're flying in a plane, you know, it's really kind of real.

[620] But it is an ethical way to acquire meat.

[621] In fact, a lot of the lamb and most of the elk that you buy commercially in America comes from New Zealand.

[622] So they import elk from there.

[623] Yeah.

[624] I didn't know that.

[625] Yeah.

[626] Deer elk, red deer, a lot of venison comes from New Zealand.

[627] Lamb comes from, a lot of lamb comes from New Zealand.

[628] They don't have any predators.

[629] So if you've ever been over there, or have you ever seen a video about it last night.

[630] I mean, they have fucking enormous herds of sheep.

[631] I mean, you've never seen anything like it.

[632] It's insane.

[633] And elk and, well, not elk, stags.

[634] Red deer or something.

[635] red deer, and they have so many of them that they, it's really easy to go over there and shoot them because they don't have any predators.

[636] There's no predators there, and all the animals have been imported there.

[637] So New Zealand is a very strange place because it's almost like a paradise.

[638] It's unbelievably lush, green.

[639] I've never been there, but I've seen footage of it.

[640] I haven't either, man. I've only seen footage.

[641] I want to go just, I'm not even in hunting, just as a vacation.

[642] I want to take my family over there and just check it out because it just looks so cool.

[643] Yeah.

[644] But I think in addition to the sort of trophy and sports issues in terms of what is objectionable to a lot of people about certain kinds of hunting, I think there also is in many cases, not in the Cecil case, obviously, but in the case of, you know, Kendall Jones and others, there's also a gender issue.

[645] There's also an issue about women as killers, you know, and I think that is even more disturbing.

[646] Right.

[647] I don't agree that that's the only reason people jumped on it because people jumped on the dentist, too.

[648] Right, I agree.

[649] But I think it also, it is troubling in a different way.

[650] Well, the dentist killed a line that had a name, and that's where things got really weird.

[651] Because the anthropomorphization of these animals that we've experienced in movies and and television shows and commercials and what have you.

[652] That's, it gets real weird with people because you name something and all of a sudden they think that that thing is like someone's pet or something.

[653] Yeah, I think the naming has a, you know, certainly adds a dimension to it the fact that, you know, turned out to be, you know, a famous lion.

[654] But, you know, there have been other cases, you know, Donald Trump Jr. or, you know, one of the Trump sons was, you know, several years back.

[655] Yeah, it is Donald Trump, Jr. And it wasn't a named animal.

[656] No. But still, the whole trophy, the image of trophies.

[657] And, you know, you've got these, you know, these skulls of deer and elk you've taken, and I have some, too.

[658] And they're, for me anyway, it's not a trophy in the sense of, oh, look, here's what I did.

[659] You know, it's not some, you know, some kind of my.

[660] macho proving, you know, that I'm going to hang up in the living room and show off.

[661] It has some sort of totemic or symbolic power.

[662] You know, it reminds me of that hunt.

[663] Right.

[664] And, you know, I don't want, I'm not just throw it away.

[665] It's something that I value and respect.

[666] Well, it's art. It can be seen as art. I think it's nature's art. I mean, that's why I don't have anything that's been taken care of, like, there's no stuffed things.

[667] Because they're not real.

[668] Like if you look at, and I'm not knocking anybody that kills an elk and wants to put its quarter on their wall or whatever or put its head on their wall.

[669] But the bodies, when you see those things, it's a foam body and they tan the hide and they stretch the hide over it.

[670] And it's so much, it's fake.

[671] These skulls are, this is the actual skull of the animal.

[672] And to me, that is, it's a beautiful piece of art. It's fascinating to me. And when I look at, I mean, that's the mule deer, the first animal I killed over to your left right there.

[673] I look at that thing every day And I look at it and every day I find some new area on it Just the design of the deer's skull Is fascinating Sure Yeah And I mean I wouldn't ever shoot an animal Just for its skull Or just for its antlers But I wouldn't ever leave it behind either You know I would want to keep that too Right And so You know The idea of trophy And the language of trophy And the symbols like It's cruelty Is you know That's trouble for people.

[674] And I think it's important for hunters to get better, and Steve Ronell has spoken about this too, to get better at expressing what's meaningful about the experience of hunting, what's meaningful about the meat, as you've spoken about a bit, what's meaningful about a skull or something, you know, what is it that is meaningful?

[675] And I think people can actually understand that if we can move past just, black and white hunting is good or bad trophy hunting is good or bad and that kind of thing no I think they can too I mean we're always going to have problems with people that are really hardcore vegans that have they've and it's really interesting I got in this conversation with someone really recently about it where I found a bacon lettuce and tomato sandwich on their Instagram page after they were talking all kinds of crazy shit about hunters and she told me that she's only been a vegan for seven months she was like one of the most like outspoken angry, forceful, like, everything about it was like, like, it must be done.

[676] You must stop.

[677] This is, oh, we're killing people.

[678] You have a BLT on your fucking Instagram page.

[679] Like, what's happening here?

[680] Like, what is this that causes that?

[681] Well, it's almost like when you get into something for the first time, you can't shut the fuck up about it.

[682] And I've been guilty of that many times in my life.

[683] If I got into a race car driving or something like that, people in the podcast are probably like, will you shut the fuck up about race car driving?

[684] And it got to the point, you know, with.

[685] Hunting is a lot of that.

[686] Like, to this day, like, I'll put this podcast up and people go, oh, great, another hunting podcast, Z, Z, Z, Z, Z, Z, Z, Z. I get it.

[687] I don't care.

[688] I'm going to talk about what's interesting to me. And also, I think part of these podcasts is these things will last for as long as they get shared and spread around in the digital form.

[689] And I think these conversations are important right now.

[690] I think this conversation, the conversation about where's your food come from, what made you make these choices, I think these are important.

[691] important conversations because I think the disconnect and recognizing the disconnect that we have between where our food comes from and these attitudes that we develop and have that we really don't have any problem with or we don't think there's anything wrong with the way we're alienating people or pointing out the flaws of other people's behaviors and we're not looking in herself there's a blind spot there and then I think this is a very important conversation Because, like I said, I think we've created something really weird with cities and with supermarkets.

[692] We've created this really weird thing where for our entire history, as long as people have been people, we knew where our food was kind of coming from.

[693] You knew you went to a butcher, you got the food, that butcher killed that animal.

[694] You knew you go to a farmer.

[695] He grew the vegetables.

[696] You knew that they came out here.

[697] Or you did it yourself for thousands of years.

[698] And those were, it was real clear.

[699] And now it's not anymore.

[700] Now it's real weird.

[701] Right.

[702] You go to a drive -thru and you give them paper and within seconds, you get a ground animal sandwich and you're eating it.

[703] The whole process takes a minute and you're eating something that's already cooked.

[704] Right.

[705] And you're drinking this vat of sugary liquid with ice cubes in it.

[706] Like, how the fuck the ice cubes?

[707] It's 95 degrees outside.

[708] Where did you get the ice?

[709] There's this weird sort of removal from nature that we have and the natural process of colloquy.

[710] and gathering and then enjoying the food that you've gathered.

[711] Right.

[712] And for me, the interest in reconnecting those things and being aware of where things come from and how they're connected, that is what led me to be a vegetarian, but it's also what led me to be a hunter, you know, wanting to understand and recognize the connection and not turn away, you know, and the turning away, when people willfully, like, I don't want to know, that willful ignorance, that's the thing that bothers me. I don't care if someone's vegetarian, vegan, if they hunt or not, that doesn't matter to me. As long as they're willing to at least look at what, at how things are connected and look at what's going on.

[713] One of the first reviews of my book that was written was by a vegetarian.

[714] And she said that the, book actually made her think about going back to being vegan because she was disturbed, you know.

[715] And she also said that she thought that the author, who she didn't know me, would consider it a compliment to know that it led her in that direction.

[716] And she was actually right, because I wasn't trying to convert her into being an omnivore or being a hunter.

[717] I was asking, look at these issues, think about these values, think about animals, think about nature, or think about our relationship with these things.

[718] And you decide what you're going to do in your personal life, you know.

[719] And the fact that she could respect me enough and anticipate that I would respect her decision was great because she wasn't doing that willful ignorance thing.

[720] Right.

[721] You know.

[722] I think we're lucky that there's so much confusion.

[723] I really do.

[724] I think this is a fascinating time to be alive.

[725] And I think we're lucky that everything is so bizarre because it makes these conversations so they crackle.

[726] Because there's something so weird about it.

[727] There's something so weird about a civilization, an animal, a life form, a species that has developed for whatever hundreds of thousands of years we've been people, eating meat.

[728] I mean, it's essentially, when you look at scientists, when they discover the difference in the size of the lower hominids brains and humans' brains, they're trying to figure out what the fuck went wrong, or right, rather, where we developed this gigantic brain.

[729] Or wrong.

[730] Or wrong.

[731] Yeah, I mean, could be wrong, you know.

[732] We've got to get back to the garden, right?

[733] If it was what they think it is, it's because we started eating meat.

[734] We started hunting.

[735] We had to develop ways to be more clever and capture these animals.

[736] We're soft and spongy and we're very weak animals.

[737] Right.

[738] So we had to get smart.

[739] Yeah, compared to saber -toothed tigers, we're really, we're crunchy.

[740] Yeah, we're ridiculous.

[741] We can't outrun anything.

[742] I watched a video.

[743] Pull this video up that I tweeted yesterday.

[744] Because if anybody wants to know how hard it is out there, there's a video of a Martin, which is an animal that a lot of people associate with fur trading.

[745] And people go, oh, how could you kill a Martin?

[746] Yeah, the weasel family, the big weasel.

[747] And it's chasing a rabbit.

[748] And I don't know why I never thought of them as carnivores.

[749] I probably should have thought of them as carnivores.

[750] There's a fucking Martin chasing a rabbit, and it chases this thing for hundreds of yards.

[751] And this is a sprint.

[752] Look at this.

[753] Look up the screen.

[754] You look right over here.

[755] You look to your right.

[756] You don't have to look behind you.

[757] Look at this thing.

[758] So this Martin is chasing after this rabbit.

[759] Unusual terrain.

[760] Well, it's open road.

[761] Open road and ice.

[762] And it's a dead heat for a while.

[763] But the Martin is just slowly, relentlessly closing in on this rabbit.

[764] I don't know where these people are, but they were speaking a different language.

[765] And the rabbit's trying to zig and trying to zag and trying to zack.

[766] but the martin is just one step after one step just an inch closer a little closer a little closer and they're fucking hustling and this rabbit is like shit bam and then he gets them but look look at this fucking evil little animal it is the size of the rabbit which is what's really crazy it might actually be smaller than the rabbit oh smaller probably lighter and he just we had we had essentially the same thing happened in front of our front porch a year or two ago, we were, I think we were on the porch or out in the yard, and suddenly we hear this squealing, this horrible shriek.

[767] And there was a young snowshoe hare, you know, little rabbit, and a tiny weasel, like an ermine.

[768] I mean, things like as big around as a hot dog.

[769] I mean, it's a tiny little thing.

[770] Much small than rabbit.

[771] Killed that rabbit.

[772] They're intense.

[773] They're amazing.

[774] Right there.

[775] Right there.

[776] I mean, and I'm a hunter, but it was still horrifying to see.

[777] And it's totally, I mean, it happens all the time.

[778] Yeah.

[779] Plants getting eaten, animals eating animals.

[780] Yeah.

[781] Insects, birds.

[782] I mean, everything's eating everything all time.

[783] Everything's eating everything.

[784] Most of the time, most of us, unless we are out, you know, out in the outdoors a lot or paying attention in the garden.

[785] You don't see it.

[786] My friend lives in Alaska, and a brown bear killed a moose in his driveway.

[787] And they had to shoot the bear, the people that, you know, whoever the wildlife man, management people.

[788] They had to shoot the bear because it decided to bury this fucking moose in his garage.

[789] And he was going to keep coming back.

[790] In his driveway, yeah, or in his lawn.

[791] Like, this is his territory now.

[792] Yeah, be coming back for that.

[793] And there's a 600 -pound fucking bear who just killed a moose in his driveway.

[794] And that's not even a big bear, which is really terrifying.

[795] For brown bears, yeah.

[796] Yeah.

[797] They're so big.

[798] And to think that, and he loves it there.

[799] And to think that he's watching out his window, like a little piece of glass, a little thin piece of glass.

[800] The family's, look, oh my God, look.

[801] You know, there's a video of the same thing happening of one, there's a video of a bear killing a moose in this family's driveway where they're looking out the window.

[802] It happens all the time because, you know, these people that live in these parts of the world, especially Alaska, it's so like you've got like anchorage and then you've got wilderness.

[803] When I was up in Anchorage, we would just drive a little bit Oh, here's one right here.

[804] Here's another one.

[805] It's like fucking common up there.

[806] This is a bear that's dragging this moose.

[807] And this moose, I've seen this one.

[808] This moose is dead, right?

[809] Or is it still alive?

[810] It looks dead.

[811] This one's dead.

[812] There's some where there's another video.

[813] We don't need to see a lot of these videos is enough.

[814] But there's one where it's still alive and it's killing it in the driving.

[815] Things screaming and trying to get back up and the bear drags it away and malls it.

[816] Yeah, I mean, it's.

[817] It's tough for us, you know, as humans because we have this, you know, we have this moral conscience that presumably the bear doesn't have about the suffering of another animal, of its prey, you know.

[818] And we do as hunters, as farmers, you know, as pet owners, you know, they have companion animals.

[819] We have this moral compass of some kind.

[820] Well, we're conscious entities, aware of ourselves.

[821] We have compassion and a moral code built around.

[822] these sorts of impulses to protect animals from suffering and stuff anything.

[823] And yet we see what happens in nature, on occasion at least.

[824] We get to witness something like that.

[825] And we have to integrate, you know, what's real in nature, the way animals do things.

[826] You know, our moral frameworks aren't terribly relevant in that world.

[827] But we still evaluate them.

[828] Like you say, it's evil.

[829] You know what I mean?

[830] Even though you don't literally mean the Martin's evil, but we think in those moral terms about animals.

[831] Yeah, we do.

[832] Well, I think this is the real argument that vegans have that we're trying to move away from any suffering.

[833] And this is what they're trying to do by trying to take a cruelty -free path, by trying to choose what they think is the most ethical lifestyle.

[834] What they're doing is they're sort of answering this call of evolving, this call that they have of the evolving.

[835] Right, away from slavery, away from certain kinds of practices that we historically, we've abandoned, you know, not saying slavery has been banished worldwide, but we as a society said, we can no longer do this.

[836] We have to evolve socially beyond that.

[837] And the argument, which has, you know, some legitimacy to it in a sense, is that we have to evolve beyond eating meat and so on.

[838] Well, that's why I think this conversation is so fascinating is because the argument does have a little bit of merit to it.

[839] It is not a black and white issue.

[840] And neither is what you would call, quote, unquote, trophy hunting.

[841] That's not a black and white issue either.

[842] Because Zimbabwe just announced they're going to call 200 lions because they've outlawed lion hunting.

[843] So now they have a surplus of lions.

[844] They have a problem with the undulates are getting decimated.

[845] So they're like, all right, we've got to fucking kill some lions.

[846] And each one of those 200 lions that they're going to call would have brought them $50 ,000 of revenue towards conservation.

[847] That would stop poaching.

[848] that would keep wildlife habitat.

[849] It's really complicated.

[850] And the people that are on the outside conveniently ignorant to all these facts that are incredibly complex, they're not aware of this big picture.

[851] I'm not saying you should go to Africa and go hunt lions.

[852] I don't want to do it.

[853] I'm not going to do it.

[854] I don't have any desire to kill anything like a lion.

[855] But to that part of the world, that brought in a considerable amount of revenue and there's a balance that they were attempting to achieve with the predators and with the prey and that balance is kind of screwed up now that they've taken out hunting of lions which is hard for people to imagine you know because you'll read about africa that some areas the lions are threatened you know there's this really interesting page that i follow on instagram called save the lion they have all these really cool photos of lions and you know I think lions are amazing.

[856] I'm glad they're around.

[857] I like looking at videos of them.

[858] I would love to see them in real life other than a zoo, you know.

[859] But you get too many of them.

[860] You've got a real problem.

[861] And the only animal that can figure that out is us.

[862] It's it.

[863] You know, the goats aren't going to get together and go, hey, man, we've got to do something about this mountain lion population.

[864] There's no more goats.

[865] We're going to help.

[866] You know, no, it's only people that can count the number, wildlife biologists, that can figure out what's the right amount.

[867] and people that can study the results of having a disproportionate population of predators and realize that we've got to do something about that.

[868] Yeah, I mean, the predators are really complicated in all over the world.

[869] I mean, here, they're complicated in Africa.

[870] They're complicated in many parts of the world.

[871] Ecologically in relationship to prey, you know, if we had a very large area and we just weren't part of the picture, it's not as though predators would just completely wipe out the prey.

[872] They will run out of food as prey gets harder to catch.

[873] Prey's not going to disappear entirely just because of a lion, you know, group of lions or wolves or any other kind of predator.

[874] They will ebb and flow.

[875] They have different sort of states of equilibrium, high density of both, low density of both, changes, and those sorts of things happen.

[876] in relationship to us and our different interests, agriculture, livestock, you know, ungulates that the local human population values, then it gets really complicated.

[877] And, you know, the issue you're bringing up about, well, they're culling lions and it could have brought in so many tens of thousands of dollars from hunters.

[878] And I've just been working on this essay about these sorts of issues.

[879] There's all these practical issues about money, conservation.

[880] and those sorts of things that are happening in Zimbabwe, for example, or other countries, or here.

[881] And then there's the moral and ethical issues around animal welfare.

[882] And is it respectful of life to kill an animal just for the head?

[883] Or do you have to eat it?

[884] Right.

[885] So there's a language of practicality.

[886] What does the Zimbabwe need to fund given programs?

[887] How do you fund that?

[888] And then there's the whole discussion and language of the morals and ethics of it, which is, you know, those are active discussions among hunters, too.

[889] Yeah, they really are.

[890] And they should be because, again, this is not a black and white issue.

[891] It's very complicated.

[892] You're talking about a country like Zimbabwe, which is incredibly poor, which could have benefited from $1 million in money that would aid conservation if they allowed these hunts to continue.

[893] So each one of these 200 lions that were killed would be worth $50 ,000.

[894] You know, that's fascinating.

[895] It is.

[896] It is.

[897] Because it's not really that simple.

[898] And also, Africa is enormous.

[899] This is something that a lot of people don't consider either.

[900] When you think of Africa, you hear, well, lions are in danger.

[901] Well, they're in danger in some spots.

[902] But, you know, that's like saying, I looked out my yard today.

[903] There's no deer.

[904] Okay, well, go to upstate New York.

[905] There's a shitload of them.

[906] They're everywhere to the point where they have to hire assassins, essentially, to go in and call the deer, because they've got so many of them.

[907] They've got to go in and shoot them.

[908] I mean, this is a big problem in a lot of places on the East Coast.

[909] There's areas in Pennsylvania that don't have a hunting season for deer.

[910] And in people's neighborhoods, you can just shoot them all the time.

[911] They bring in archers.

[912] There's this television show.

[913] archery bow hunting show where it was in the middle of the spring and they brought in these archers to set up tree stands in these like residential neighborhoods.

[914] It's crazy.

[915] Yeah.

[916] The rebound in white tails in, you know, in the country as a whole, but particularly, you know, along the eastern seaboard has created some bizarre, bizarre situations, particularly in suburbs.

[917] The animals that used to be symbols of the wild and still are for many of us are hanging out in people's lawns.

[918] Not only that, they're giving people Lyme disease.

[919] That's a big...

[920] There is concern about that.

[921] That's a big concern.

[922] Ticks that carry Lyme disease, they say something like 60 % of the ticks in New York State have Lyme disease.

[923] There's some insane number like that.

[924] I might just made that up.

[925] Check, check, check.

[926] Fact check.

[927] But it's some really bizarrely high number of ticks in certain areas of upstate New York where there's a giant prevalence of deep, both D .E. and Lyme disease, that they have a huge issue and they really don't know how to stop it.

[928] Because Lyme disease is devastating.

[929] If you get it, it's horrible in your immune system.

[930] It's rough, yeah.

[931] I can get into your nervous system and do all sorts of things to you.

[932] Yeah, and that's also a problem that happens when you have overpopulation of deer.

[933] There's all the chronic wasting disease, a bunch of different diseases that come through overpopulation and, you know, and it's...

[934] Well, in the chronic wasting disease, of course, that, you know, the risks associated with that brings up the whole sort of captive deer hunting industry and issues when that, they start moving animals around that maybe carry CWD or other diseases, and then do they have contact with wild populations?

[935] Well, they're doing these, this is part of the whole trophy hunting thing that's so bizarre.

[936] They're doing these fenced -in establishments where you go and hunt, and you're hunting these animals.

[937] animals that have been grown just for their enormous antlers.

[938] We covered it a couple of days ago with my friend Doug Duren, and we showed some photos that animals that don't even look like deer.

[939] No, they're bizarre.

[940] They have like these weird sculptures on their heads.

[941] Yeah, like bushes.

[942] Right.

[943] Like a bush growing out of their head.

[944] Yeah.

[945] It's just so much, so much antler material.

[946] It just doesn't make any sense.

[947] Yeah.

[948] It's a huge industry.

[949] The Indianapolis Star, I think, a few years ago, did a really good, long, form expose on that whole industry and it is bizarre isn't that just how it's always going to be though I mean if you have any sort of a discipline any sort of a pursuit you're going to have people that are unethical you're going to have people that are you know race car drivers that are using just stronger engines they're supposed to use or they're cheating somehow or another on this or on that or it's just it's how it is all across the board in life sure you can have people who want to do that Yeah.

[950] Whether it's legal or not and how much industry is allowed to be built up around it.

[951] Right.

[952] And so you have like the hunting industry or the hunting community, the hunting world.

[953] You're going to have people like yourself that are doing it to provide their family with sustainable meat.

[954] And then you're going to have a guy who wants a collection of different animals from all the world stuffed in his room so you could show everybody.

[955] You know, like this is my zebra room.

[956] You know, like you've ever seen those fucking guys?

[957] It's strange, man. I was watching the television show once, and this guy brought these people into this room that looked like a high school auditorium, and he was just like this super wealthy guy who hunts all over the world.

[958] That's all he does.

[959] And it was just like a stuffed zoo.

[960] It was the strangest thing, birds and fucking baboons and all these stuffed things.

[961] I'm like, this is the weirdest guy.

[962] This guy's like a serial killer of animals.

[963] Right.

[964] Like some weird things.

[965] thing that he's attached himself to.

[966] One of the things that's tricky is because such a relatively small percentage of the population here in the States haunts, you know, it's How small is it?

[967] You know, it varies depending on how it's millions of people, though.

[968] It's millions of people, it is.

[969] But, you know, it's on the order of 10%, give or take.

[970] What percentage are vegan?

[971] Fewer than that.

[972] But, again, it's a small number.

[973] Right.

[974] You know.

[975] In L .A., I bet it's higher.

[976] Vegans to hunters, I bet the hunters are way outnumbered in this fucking goofy city.

[977] Could be.

[978] I would imagine.

[979] But because, because, and this is true for vegetarians and vegans, too, because we're a minority population, it's really easy for most people to have sort of a stereotype view and to lump them all together.

[980] Right.

[981] You know, and the analogy I sometimes draw is, you know, because such a huge percentage of the population drives cars, we can distinguish between good drivers and bad drivers, people who get into road rage and people who are polite.

[982] We can distinguish these things, and we have understandings of it because we experience it and we see it.

[983] And we don't judge people for being drivers or lump them all together, you know, but any minority community runs the risk.

[984] Because it's true for vegetarians, true for hunters, true for any minority community.

[985] We run the risk of being identified as a sort of a monolithic singular group.

[986] So you get, you know, a hunter who portrays a certain image of hunting.

[987] And if that gets pretty, oh, that's what hunting is.

[988] Right.

[989] Boom.

[990] Yeah.

[991] You know, this identity gets attached to all hunters.

[992] I'm not saying it always happens, but there's a risk of that.

[993] And I think the part of the gift of this time, particularly in relation to the food movement, you know, Michael Pollan's work, is that people are asking questions.

[994] People are thinking about agriculture, people thinking about wild foods, people thinking about their relationships ecologically and ethically with what they eat.

[995] Yeah, and I think that's great.

[996] I think it's a good thing.

[997] I think these weird sort of stereotypes that we have about hunters, they're really easy to do.

[998] in this day and age.

[999] It's, they're attractive, you know, from the time Bambi was released.

[1000] It's attractive to lump hunters into this evil.

[1001] Like, if you see hunters in a movie, they're almost always these cruel assholes.

[1002] Like, did you ever see the movie Wolverine?

[1003] No. Wolverine got mad because there was a bunch of hunters and they poisoned a bear and he beats them up in a bar and they're all mean people.

[1004] Like, meanwhile, Wolverine, what are you eating, dude?

[1005] Look at the size of you, you fuck.

[1006] You know, what are you eating Hugh Jackman?

[1007] It ain't lentils, you know?

[1008] You're eating a lot of meat, I bet.

[1009] But it's a strange, you know, it's this strange thing that we have decided because we're conveniently removed from the process of killing the animal, seeing the animal alive, killing it, butchering it, chopping it up, and then cooking it.

[1010] We just get to the, give me a piece, or even more disconnected, we go to a restaurant.

[1011] So disconnected.

[1012] It's like we're 18 steps removed.

[1013] Sure.

[1014] And it's real convenient to look at hunters like some horrible evil thing.

[1015] Like I said, one of my favorite is the people that eat meat and say, you don't have to do that because you can just go to the supermarket.

[1016] Why would you want to do it?

[1017] You only do it because you're cruel.

[1018] They can't imagine that you would do it because you want to kind of understand what are the consequences of what you're doing.

[1019] Is this what you want to do?

[1020] I mean, I think you're right about the movies from Bambi on having that.

[1021] that kind of cultural impact and portrayal of hunters as, you know, a force of evil and being sort of anti -nature, right?

[1022] You know, the sort of disruptors of this Eden -like natural world.

[1023] And I think that a lot of times hunting industry and hunters today and the media around hunting, for how the rest of the world perceives, like, the trophy photo, even if it's an animal you're going to eat, you know, you're smiling with the picture, you know, as like, what is seen in that from someone who's not experienced that and doesn't, you know, is that an image of respect for the animal?

[1024] What is the, if a hunter is expressing joy in that picture, is it joy?

[1025] Is it joy at the death?

[1026] Well, what's going on, you know, and those sorts of images in, you know, TV shows and just photos posted online.

[1027] I think it's hard for, and it's always even hard for me, you know, but I think it's hard for a lot of non -hundred.

[1028] Like, what does that mean?

[1029] It's a, it's kind of disturbing.

[1030] Well, yeah.

[1031] Is it that you're happy, that you accomplish this very difficult thing?

[1032] Or is it that you're proud of yourself that you're a killer?

[1033] Right.

[1034] Are you, are you posing with this thing because it's your trophy and you win?

[1035] You know, are you cruel?

[1036] Are you happy because you're happy that you're happy that you killed something?

[1037] Are you smiling because that's what you do for cameras?

[1038] Yeah.

[1039] You know, and I've never been terribly comfortable.

[1040] I've taken photos, like when I've hunted and succeeded.

[1041] And the first time I did it, I, you know, took a photo mainly because I wanted to be able to send it to my uncle.

[1042] Right.

[1043] But I wasn't smiling.

[1044] I just, for me, it was like.

[1045] I'd have to force a smile.

[1046] I'm actually not, I don't experience the same sort of rush that some people do in it.

[1047] I find hunting meaningful, and I find that moment incredibly powerful.

[1048] But it's never been, only until just this past fall, I finally took a photo that I actually felt, that I really felt good about, you know.

[1049] What were you doing in the photo?

[1050] It's actually on my Facebook page, I think.

[1051] my book's Facebook page it's the deer was down and I was just kneeling there and I had my hands on the deer and I was just you know just being in that moment with that animal it wasn't about you know the camera it wasn't about smiling it wasn't about this is what I accomplished it was just this is an important there it is right there yeah that's that's the image that's like the first time I've taken a photo after a hunt that really felt good to me you know that's a great picture you know that's a great picture because boy that is the wild i mean you are in the woods and that's less than a half a mile from home that's awesome you have a great place and you're there with a really wild deer a nice big mature white tail that was probably at the end of his voyage and you took them out um i've posed with uh pictures of animals that i shot and I've done it smiling because I'm happy because it's difficult to do.

[1052] It doesn't take away from the reverence that I have for the animal, you know, especially elk.

[1053] Elker, in my opinion, they're like almost like a mythical creature.

[1054] I'm very, very happy when I've killed an elk, especially the one that I killed with a bow because it's so hard to do.

[1055] It's insanely difficult.

[1056] There's an insane amount of pressure.

[1057] And when it's over, when you've accomplished it, like if I, If I get ready for a rifle hunt, I cite my rifle in, I go to the range, I squeeze off a few rounds, I make sure my form is good, I make sure my trigger discipline is good, and I'm ready to rock.

[1058] I'm good to go.

[1059] If I am thinking about hunting in September, I will start preparing in October for the following September.

[1060] With a bow.

[1061] I'm not bold.

[1062] With a year round, yeah.

[1063] Because once I started hunting with a bow, I realize like, this is.

[1064] is insanely difficult.

[1065] This is not something you can kind of dabble in.

[1066] And I know some people do, and I don't know how the hell they do it.

[1067] Maybe they just don't, maybe they're not worried about the consequences as much as I am, or maybe, I don't know, maybe they're just better at it than me. I don't think so, though.

[1068] I just think archery is something that you have to do all the time.

[1069] I don't think you could take 10 months off of archery, practice for a couple weeks, and be as proficient as if you were practicing those entire 10 months.

[1070] Most of the people that I know, there's me with an elk that I shot.

[1071] I'm happy right there.

[1072] People got mad at me for that picture.

[1073] But it's hard, I think, for people who, you know, you've experienced that.

[1074] You were there.

[1075] You know what you felt.

[1076] You know what your reverence was for that animal.

[1077] You know what you were happy about.

[1078] I'm happy to die quick, too.

[1079] Right.

[1080] You know what all the things that went on there.

[1081] Yes.

[1082] But as a snapshot to someone who's never.

[1083] experienced anything like that it doesn't they don't know any of that you look like a mean person who's happy that you've just killed exactly that's yeah exactly there's so much going on when it when it comes to a photo with that animal because it's not just about look if i took that photo just for me that's perfect if that's just my photo and i keep it on my phone and i and i go i want to look at it every now and then this is the moment where i shot that elk and i was really happy that i was able to make a clean shot, the animal died in seconds.

[1084] Everything went great.

[1085] All my training paid off, all the hard work, all the thinking, all the preparation, all of it paid off.

[1086] But that's not just for me. That's for everybody else, too.

[1087] But that's also why it has a really long paragraph attached to it, where I went into it.

[1088] And usually there's not that context.

[1089] Yeah.

[1090] Well, for me, I think it's very important.

[1091] It was very important.

[1092] It was important to thank my friend Cameron Haynes, because without his help and without his teaching me, it would have taken a lot longer to learn how to get good with a bow and to understand what a difficult pursuit it is and just to keep your nerves together when this thousand pound tree forest horse is coming up the hill screaming at you and you have to shoot that thing with a bow and arrow there's a lot going on there man and there's consequences that thing decides to kick your ass there's not a whole lot you could do you know that's a have you ever hunted elk before?

[1093] I was I was out in New Mexico this fall for I had a writing residency down there for a month and I had a mule deer tag for a few days at the end of that.

[1094] I did not end up shooting, didn't shoot at all when I was down there at an animal.

[1095] Saw a few deer but saw a few elk up close.

[1096] I wasn't hunting them but they came through.

[1097] We heard them coming and it looks like, wow, that's almost like a moose up where I am.

[1098] That's a big animal.

[1099] They're pretty close.

[1100] They're pretty close to the size of a moose.

[1101] They're awesome, man. They're amazing.

[1102] They're so cool And I heard At least one bugle Which was wild I'd never heard him I'd heard tape of it But I never actually heard one bugle What time of the year Was it when you were there?

[1103] I was there in October When I go I'm gonna go Hunting again in September And I'm going to bring my kids And on one day I'm hoping that I could be successful And have a day Just to take them out And bugle for them And just make some cow calls Just so they can hear the screams Because it is an amazing, man. For someone who's never been in a canyon while they're all around you screaming as the morning light is coming up, it's one of the weirdest things in all of nature.

[1104] And the fact that this is going on in the American wilderness and the vast majority of people that live in this country will never experience that.

[1105] Outside of hunting, just take the hunting out of it.

[1106] Just be there and hear This huge barrel -chested Thousand -pound animal screaming at the top of his lungs.

[1107] There's really nothing like them.

[1108] Yeah.

[1109] And, you know, the fact that we have these populations of these animals, these amazing, amazing animals, and the places, you know.

[1110] It's a big debate that I know Steve Renell has been involved in, you know, the politics of public lands.

[1111] You know, there are a lot of people who want to, want to turn, you know, federal lands over to the state and privatize a lot of that, sell a lot of that off.

[1112] Well, that's a big issue with a lot of Republican politicians.

[1113] It's one of the reasons right now.

[1114] Ronella considers himself a political eunuch.

[1115] He's like, the Democrats want to take your guns away and the Republicans want to take your land.

[1116] And it's real interesting.

[1117] Right.

[1118] This land that we have in this country was established these wild lands, these public lands by Theodore Roosevelt.

[1119] And he established it because he was a hunter and a conservationist.

[1120] and he realized, like, you've got to lock this stuff down.

[1121] And then you had, you know, John Weir, founding the Sierra Club, who had a lot in common with Roosevelt, disagreed them about hunting, but, you know, equally important, equally committed to preserve, you know, Yosemite, preserve these places.

[1122] We need, you know, not everything is going to be public, but we need public land.

[1123] And even Yosemite is an issue, man. They're calling Buffalo now.

[1124] They're shooting bison.

[1125] Yosemite or Yellowstone.

[1126] Yellowstone, I'm sorry.

[1127] I always fuck those two up.

[1128] Those whys, you know.

[1129] It's just a Y, why, yeah, I guess.

[1130] But Yellowstone with the Bisons, they're having a real issue.

[1131] You know, they have to call them now.

[1132] And people that want to be able to hunt Yellowstone are kind of angry about the whole thing.

[1133] They're eventually going to have to call some of the grizzlies they're saying, because the grizzlies are getting too crazy and they're getting too comfortable with people.

[1134] Yeah, they have real issues even in Yosemite, I think, with bears, not black bears.

[1135] But, you know, getting in people's cars.

[1136] Yeah, yeah.

[1137] Like, open your car, like a can open or taking a can apart.

[1138] Yeah.

[1139] It's all food.

[1140] Good night.

[1141] I know.

[1142] Even a smaller black bear, you just can't believe how strong those things are.

[1143] They're amazing.

[1144] We, because we live in the woods, I mean, we have them come investigate our house sometimes.

[1145] You'll see their prints or I've seen them on the back porch, you know, through the screen.

[1146] Right.

[1147] It's like, hi.

[1148] I mean, and they're pretty skittish.

[1149] I mean, where we are.

[1150] They're, you know, they do not hang around people.

[1151] And so all you have to do is make noise and they take off.

[1152] You know, they're not really dangerous to people at all.

[1153] But it's pretty neat to be that close to them.

[1154] And you see even a small one, you're like, that's a pretty good -sized, powerful animal.

[1155] Ronella's friend took this young guy, like, I don't know if one of his relatives or whatever, took him on a black bear hunt.

[1156] While they were sleeping, it took them on some kind of hunt.

[1157] I don't even know if it was a black bear hunt.

[1158] But while they were sleeping, it was attacked by a 500 -pound black bear in his tent.

[1159] Big melee ensues.

[1160] Everybody's screaming.

[1161] One of his friends shoots the bear and hits this kid on his first hunt ever in the elbow, shatters his elbow with the gun.

[1162] Yeah.

[1163] The whole thing is chaos.

[1164] They wind up killing the bear.

[1165] Seven -foot -tall, 500 -pound black bear that had come to kill this kid.

[1166] mauled them cut them up pretty bad but yeah bears are there are a crazy thing that if they weren't real I mean if a grizzly bear wasn't a real creature and you saw it in a movie be like what like it's a Star Wars animal in a lot of ways they're very powerful yeah yeah and you know it's amazing to think about you know traditional subsistence hunting cultures that hunted bears of that scale went into their dens sometimes and it was like that's pretty hardcore oh so crazy you have to do what you have to do to stay alive and that's again we can't appreciate that yeah we're in some strange state now where our meat we associate meat with a thin plastic wrap over a styrofoam tray right right that's meat you know going back to the idea of you know animal people and spirituality i'm thinking about these sort of traditional hunting cultures too.

[1167] There's this great film documentary called Diet of Souls that was done by this guy up in the north, up in like Alaska.

[1168] And one of the basic questions in the film is how can an animal be your spiritual equal, which is how it's thought of in many traditional hunting cultures, they're your equals.

[1169] They aren't just animals.

[1170] They're powerful, and yet they're also your daily bread.

[1171] They're also what you eat every day.

[1172] And how does that get, you know, integrated in these traditions?

[1173] It's pretty fascinating because we don't think, you know, as a sort of Western civilization, we've developed these, you know, the lower animals and the higher primates.

[1174] Yeah.

[1175] Right?

[1176] We have this sort of hierarchy and we'll eat the lower ones or the ugly ones as we talk about.

[1177] But the ones that are equal to us or higher or.

[1178] better, or maybe there's nothing higher better than us in Western civilization in our imagination.

[1179] Unicorns.

[1180] Right, unicorns.

[1181] Exactly.

[1182] Rainbow unicorns.

[1183] So we've had this convenient way of creating this hierarchy and thinking of ourselves sort of being at the top of this pyramid in some way.

[1184] But in cultures that see themselves still as very much part of more of a circle of peers, you know, in a community and yet also are eating these animal people all the time is a different world view.

[1185] Well, vegans would say, well, why don't you start eating people then?

[1186] If you want to be all spiritually connected to your food.

[1187] Right.

[1188] How about, hey, friend, you're going to be my dinner.

[1189] I respect you.

[1190] I'm going to eat you now.

[1191] You're going to feed my whole neighborhood.

[1192] Right.

[1193] Yeah.

[1194] Well, you know, there's something that we appreciate about these Native American cultures that had a deep reverence for the animals that they told.

[1195] Or ancient European cultures, for that matter.

[1196] What ancient European cultures too?

[1197] Well, I mean, pre, you know, before agriculture, before Christianity.

[1198] You know, we have traditions in all of us that go back, you know, arguably all of us back to Africa or all parts of the world where, you know, we had, you know, the caves of Lascault and France, you know, were painted by ancient European people who had probably a somewhat similar.

[1199] sort of shamanistic, spiritual, and hunting relationship with these other animal people, you know.

[1200] Well, the first time I went deer hunting, I really do believe that, like, locking eyes on that deer and about being about to shoot it, I felt like it was some weird psychedelic experience in some sort of a strange way.

[1201] It almost felt like I had taken a drug because I felt like there was some strange connection or some strange frequency that I had tuned into that.

[1202] I had never been a part of before.

[1203] I'd never experienced that before.

[1204] Now, I could, you know, I had a protein bar in my pocket.

[1205] I could go back to camp.

[1206] We had a cooler full of food.

[1207] I was still pretty detached, even while being interconnected.

[1208] But those people that painted those paintings on the walls in the caves in France, they were desperately connected, intensely connected.

[1209] And they were without the burden of our, these.

[1210] sort of strange moral ideas we have about what's okay to eat and what's not okay to eat and what's ethical and what's not ethical they were free from those burdens and yet in in hunting cultures for thousands of years hunting has been surrounded by ceremony right and ritual and you know been very much part of the religion celebration but also you know ceremonies for for sending the hunters out and ceremonies for welcoming them back in because you are out there doing violence to another large mammal.

[1211] And those ceremonies and those sort of religious or spiritual practices are different from, but also kind of similar to how we've dealt, again, in big time history, in the large scale, how we've dealt with warfare?

[1212] You know, how do you send a warrior out and then welcome a warrior back into the community after he's gone out and done violence.

[1213] To other humans.

[1214] To other humans in that case, which is different.

[1215] And yet, they're also, you know, if you're doing to other animal people, you know, the buffalo people, the deer people.

[1216] Right.

[1217] There is still a similar, you know, moral ambiguity about this, you know, they were free in a sense from some of the baggage we carry now.

[1218] Sure.

[1219] I think you're right.

[1220] Yeah.

[1221] But was there still moral ambiguity about taking life and needing to, respect that animal by using it fully and I think so I don't know if there was ambiguity but there was certainly probably a deeper reverence and an understanding that these were inevitable decisions that people had to make whether it's to defend your life against other humans that want to take your life and take their life instead or whether it was to eat an animal that you hunted they were they were sort of unavoidable I think so I mean what year do you think it was for the first vegan was invented.

[1222] I don't know.

[1223] Was it the 80s?

[1224] Oh, probably earlier than that.

[1225] 60s?

[1226] Could be.

[1227] I have no idea.

[1228] But it had to be within 100 years, right?

[1229] I mean, vegetarianism...

[1230] It's been around for a long time.

[1231] It's been around for a long time, even here.

[1232] I mean, since 1800s.

[1233] Yeah.

[1234] Came over as part of this Christian group from England and has been around in other parts of the world for much longer, you know, in India and other parts of the world.

[1235] Veganism is, I think, a relatively new invention.

[1236] Jamie's got an answer.

[1237] The Vegan Society, 1944.

[1238] Okay, a couple decades off.

[1239] The first modern -day vegans in November of 1944, Donald Watson, called a meeting with five other non -dairy vegetarians, including Elise Shrigley, to discuss non -dairy vegetarian diets and lifestyles.

[1240] All right, 40s.

[1241] And he died of a common cold a week later.

[1242] so that's what he was a non -dairy eating vegetarian in 1944 that was back before they really totally understood how to get your vitamins and what the amino acid profiles of vegetables were too so taking some weird chances back then yeah no i probably had very little little idea what they were doing nutritionally yeah well that's a weird thing too when people like they show a picture of a gorilla and show the gorilla only needs to vegetables you can do it too um or yeah we're not gorillas try feeding a cat only vegetables they go blind yeah they do not they do not do well although people still do it i know i heard you talking about that on one of your shows reading about it today i was reading about it today this morning about vegan cat owners yeah like gosh they go blind yeah it's not they're obligate carnivores they must eat yeah well so much so that they actually have to add taurine right to cat food because a lot of cat food just in the process of loses that yeah loses torrine like they're brutal they are the fucking cleanup crew of nature the cats anything with a limp gets taken out you know and i have these two cute fluffy rag doll cats that are the sweetest cats in the world but they're fucking vicious man they're vicious to each other and they definitely are vicious they catch something outside my cat was 18 years old and she killed a bird in the courtyard.

[1243] Fucking 18.

[1244] The estimates on the number of wild birds, you know, songbirds that are killed by cats, both domestic and feral here in the States, it's like a billion a year.

[1245] I'm not kidding you.

[1246] They think it's the biggest threat, I believe it's estimated to be the biggest threat to wild songbirds in North America.

[1247] God.

[1248] They are hunters.

[1249] They are hardcore.

[1250] Yeah.

[1251] There's way too many of them.

[1252] There's so many of them.

[1253] And, you know, people love them as pets.

[1254] Here it goes, 3 .7 billion birds annually.

[1255] Oh, my God.

[1256] Cats that live in the wild or indoor pets allowed to roam outdoors kill from 1 .4 billion to as many as 3 .7 billion birds in the continental U .S. each year.

[1257] 3 .7 billion birds in the continental United States.

[1258] That's amazing.

[1259] So you're a kitty cat and that bird feeder, bad combination.

[1260] Oh, my God.

[1261] That is amazing.

[1262] Yeah.

[1263] That's amazing.

[1264] That's amazing.

[1265] What a crazy animal a cat is.

[1266] They're just these little killers that allow us to take care of them.

[1267] And you pick them up and they purr because they just can't eat you.

[1268] You're just too big.

[1269] That's right.

[1270] That's really the relationship.

[1271] My friend is a cop.

[1272] Much better than saber -toothed tigers.

[1273] Yeah.

[1274] My friend's a cop and he said one of the craziest things.

[1275] was where they would find people that had died in their house and they had cats.

[1276] The cats just go right for your face.

[1277] Yikes.

[1278] Eat your face off.

[1279] So they'd find this person who had died a week ago and they just ran out of cat food.

[1280] The cat just eats your face.

[1281] What is this?

[1282] Domestic cats.

[1283] 6 .9 billion and 20 .7 billion mammals, mostly mice, shrews, rabbit, squirrels, and I don't know what a volle is.

[1284] VOL.

[1285] It's like a vol.

[1286] a mouse, a little bigger.

[1287] Each year, according to a study published last year in nature communications, that is insane.

[1288] Between 1 .4 and 3 .7 billion birds and 6 .9 and 20 .7 billion mammals.

[1289] Well, I'm not a big fan of mice.

[1290] So, fuck them.

[1291] I like cats.

[1292] Not big into mice.

[1293] I pick sides.

[1294] We all big sides.

[1295] We do.

[1296] We do.

[1297] And that's, you know, when we, have a cat that's part of our family or a dog is part of our family and obviously they're very different species but they become family yes you know and that's another vegetarian argument that has a real logic to it and has an ethic to it of well you wouldn't eat your dog why would you eat a deer or a cow right and yet we as as a species you know we're very tribal we identify with a group whether that's all human or whether we have, you know, wolves that become dogs that, you know, that hunt with us or cats that we adopt for various reasons.

[1298] And that, you know, that group becomes, you know, family.

[1299] You don't eat family.

[1300] No. Well, if you ever watched that Penn and Teller show, bullshit, they had an episode on animal activists and the people for the ethical treatment of animals, like what the roots of their argument and their ideas are.

[1301] They don't want pets.

[1302] They don't think we should have any captive animals.

[1303] No pets, no pet dogs, no pet cats.

[1304] Everything's free to roam and do as it will.

[1305] And no eating any animals.

[1306] Which is like, what kind of where are we going to live in then?

[1307] Well, there was a fascinating, I think it was Cleveland Amory, who was one of the founders of the Fund for Animals, I believe, I have this right, had a vision of the future world.

[1308] And it was separate predators and prey.

[1309] Separate them.

[1310] Like in the wild.

[1311] So how do the predators eat?

[1312] Magic.

[1313] Magic.

[1314] Unicorns.

[1315] I mean, yeah.

[1316] That's hilarious.

[1317] So he wanted to stop any sort of cruelty even in nature.

[1318] Right, right.

[1319] Well, then you're going to get cannibalism, done.

[1320] I mean, there's already a huge problem with cannibalism in the bear community.

[1321] Like bears, when male bears come out of dens, they actively search for cubs.

[1322] They want to eat cubs.

[1323] It's one of the first things they do.

[1324] They do it to try to bring the female to estrus, and they also do it because they're hungry, and they're cannibals.

[1325] When I was in Alberta, some friends of mine run a hunting camp up there, and they saw a male bear kill a female bear's cub, and the female chased the male off the carcass, and then the female finished it off.

[1326] Her own baby.

[1327] She just ate it.

[1328] Once it was dead, she started eating it.

[1329] And they were like, whoa.

[1330] And they said, they had been, I mean, these people, they live in northern Alberta, okay?

[1331] They've been around some animals and wildlife their whole life.

[1332] And they're like, even for us, that was like, whoa.

[1333] Yeah.

[1334] Because there's really good documentation and research also, you know, that animals and not just, you know, orcas or some, you know, dolphins, something that we assume is or have good evidence that they're really intelligent.

[1335] that they have a wide emotional range, you know, and including grief, you know, including mourning for the death of family members, including their, you know, the calf, you know.

[1336] So there's, it's, and I think this is one of the unfortunate things that happens is that when we get into these black and white struggles, you know, hunters versus animal rights activists or anything like that, any similar kind of black.

[1337] and white, is that each side has its argument and each side doesn't really want to acknowledge too much that there might be some validity to either the argument on the other side or just to the reality of the world.

[1338] Like animals have feelings, not just they can physically suffer, but they have emotional, you know, they have emotions.

[1339] You can see it in your dog.

[1340] You can see it tough, and often on the hunting side will be, oh, that's just so -called anthropomorphism.

[1341] You're just projecting human, well, there's pretty good research on a wide range of species that they have emotions as well as the ability to physically feel pain and suffer.

[1342] And I think it's really helpful when we get into these kinds of conversations across those lines to be able to at least acknowledge, you know?

[1343] Yeah.

[1344] Or acknowledge where, you know, PETA, you know, or other animal rights groups, at least not acknowledge where they're coming from.

[1345] You may not agree with their arguments or conclusions, you know, same as some people might not agree with you hunting, you know, but at least acknowledge there's a, for you hunting, there's a valuable experience and an ethical impulse to, you know, confront what it means to eat meat, for example.

[1346] For vegetarians and animal rights activists of various kinds, there's an impulse to prevent suffering and respect life.

[1347] You know, there are honorable and understandable impulses on both sides, even if we don't agree with, you know, what all the conclusions are.

[1348] Yeah, I think, and I think it speaks to what we're talking about earlier about reward systems that are in place to ensure survival and ensure certain types of behavior and activities.

[1349] I mean, it only makes sense that an animal would feel remorse if its child got killed, that's why you take care of it and protect it.

[1350] I mean, if you've ever seen a mother cow around its calves, if you go near those calves, a mother will go crazy.

[1351] And there's built -in systems that are established to make sure that these animals continue to procreate and continue to stay alive and make sure they have healthy populations.

[1352] It's just the same reason why our emotions are in place.

[1353] I mean, it's all really kind of a grand scheme to ensure breeding and ensure community and ensure all these that, I mean, we'll call it emotions, we'll call it civilization, we'll call it communication between sentient beings, but really, it's what it is, is all these different systems that are established to make sure that we stay together, we keep together, we breed, we ensure that we stay alive and continue to have food and make sure we make more people.

[1354] I mean, I don't want to break it down as cruel and say like, you know, all romance songs and every book on companionship is bullshit.

[1355] Every movie that shows an awesome relationship is just a ridiculous biological trick that's established to make sure that you continue to stay alive long enough to make more people.

[1356] But really, that's kind of what it is, you know.

[1357] I mean, I don't want to break it down so much to that because I think there's beauty in all of it.

[1358] You know, there's beauty and love.

[1359] And look, there's, in a strange way, there's beauty in watching that grizzly bear mull that moose in the middle of the driveway.

[1360] There's beauty in watching that Martin chase down that rabbit.

[1361] I wouldn't want to be the rabbit.

[1362] I'm not really sure I want to be the Martin either.

[1363] You know, I mean, I don't think I have to identify with it to appreciate the spectacle, the amazing spectacle the nature is providing.

[1364] And, you know, the, we throw the word awesome around a lot now, you know, the last 10, 20 years.

[1365] Yeah.

[1366] But the old word awe, you know, the power of that.

[1367] And there's beauty, but there's also sometimes borderline horror or fear.

[1368] But nature is awesome in that.

[1369] I mean, life and death and our own lives and deaths, the creation of life, the taking of life, watching it happen around us, doing it.

[1370] There's awe and there's beauty.

[1371] Yeah.

[1372] There is undeniable.

[1373] Undeniable awe.

[1374] You know, I watched this documentary on Komodo Dragons.

[1375] and they're intense oh my god they're so gross but they're so awesome and their grossness and one of the things about it was how they will bite like a water buffalo on the leg and their mouth is so toxic they're really toxic they're so toxic with bacteria and their saliva so funky that just one bite and that thing's dead so they just follow it wait around yeah they wait around a couple of days and slowly but surely all the toxic shit from their mouth like yeah no thank you yeah that's not even that you don't even see their teeth in that one like look at the one above it where you see their teeth oh god i mean what a crazy animal and that's another thing that i think is amazing and beautiful is just the biodiversity of the world that these and i think again i hate to keep bringing up the same theme but i think we've done ourselves a disservice by creating these cities we've done ourselves an amazing service in that, look at that, all the funks drool it off of his face.

[1376] What a fucking creepy.

[1377] That looks like Jurassic Park or something.

[1378] Creepy monster.

[1379] Komoto dragons are.

[1380] The funky slime coming out of his mouth.

[1381] But we've done ourselves, I mean, we've made an incredible thing.

[1382] You know, it's incredible that we don't have to go out and hunt our food.

[1383] So because of that, we could develop iPhones.

[1384] We could figure out how to make 4G, LTE, and better laptops and cars that drive themselves and all this cool shit that we have, it's amazing.

[1385] It's great.

[1386] Because without our easy access to food, no one would have the free time to develop all this stuff.

[1387] So I think it's imperative that we do have cities, imperative that we do have an easy supply of food.

[1388] Because you're not going to get all this electronic equipment and all this stuff that we have.

[1389] You're just not going to get it if everybody has to forage.

[1390] So we've enriched our lives in this way.

[1391] but in doing so we've somehow or another forgotten that we're a part of this wild world we're a part of wildlife we are wildlife we're just not wild anymore right we're or if we are wild we're not wild in the sense that the way we look at the rest of the wild world right but we are sure and i mean there's there's arguments in anthropology that actually there were lots of societies that had a lot more leisure time than we do hunting gathering societies would spend four to five hours a day quote unquote working hunting and gathering and they had lots of time for you know ceremonies and all kinds of other things it depends on where you are in the world and how harsh the conditions were but but the you know sort of the original leisure society may have predated uh predated agriculture certainly they had no iPhones and maybe that was a blessing who knows but four or five hours of hunting and gathering is exhausting you know and you really don't have enough time to develop a car.

[1392] No, no cars.

[1393] Yeah, after you figured that out, after you've done your hunting and gathering, then it's about cooking.

[1394] And also, there's no days off because you don't have any refrigeration.

[1395] Right, depending on, you know, depending on your climate, I mean, they could dry things and do certain things, but clearly, clearly not a frigid air around the corner.

[1396] But, you know, what you're talking about, about whether it's cities or just modern society, that high -tech, high -speed, world that most of us live in where many of us don't feel like we have much free time and we're running around and doing all these things in cities usually when I talk to people who become hunters as adults by and large that's part of why they did it they wanted to reconnect yeah you know it's part of why they garden it's part of why they raise chickens it's part of why they do all sorts of other things that you understand and and value too they want to get back in touch with those, not only the hands -on skills, but just the world they inhabit, you know, beyond the domesticated, concretized city.

[1397] Concretized.

[1398] You know, that's a good word.

[1399] You know, the pavement, you know, beyond the pavement, into nature.

[1400] And whether it's a little garden patch in your backyard or, you know, hunting around the Missouri breaks, you know, there's a sense of wanting to.

[1401] reconnect so that all these practices hunting gardening raising chickens in part are like an antidote to modern life you know people want to reconnect to some of that or is it or are we clinging to the past and trying to ward off the inevitable right are we trying to ward off this inevitable symbiotic relationship we're going to have to computers we're going to be a part of our head yeah well you know have you read richard louvre's work at all no He was a journalist, I believe, for many years.

[1402] His first really famous book was called Last Child in the Woods, and then his follow -up book was called The Nature Principle.

[1403] How long ago was this kind of?

[1404] Let's see, Last Child in the Woods came out, what, 2006?

[1405] I could be wrong about that date.

[1406] We'll know in a moment, I think.

[1407] But, you know, his argument is, in part, how they spelled the last name?

[1408] UV.

[1409] Right there, I'm sure there.

[1410] He looks very serious.

[1411] Look at him.

[1412] He's a neat guy.

[1413] And he says that actually the more high -tech we get, the more we need these sorts of experiences.

[1414] And he's not a hunter, but he does fish and he spends a lot of time outdoors.

[1415] And that we need that, you know, neurologically, not just in some romantic sort of throwback fantasy, but we deeply need it because we are wild.

[1416] And what does he use to establish that argument that we need it?

[1417] I mean, he's got all kinds of, you know, research and, you know, umpteen citations of different sorts of studies and cultures and different things that happened to kids at first in his first book and then to adults.

[1418] If we're deprived of that, if we're always in front of a screen, for example, if we're just never out in the dirt, you know, never out in the woods.

[1419] we certainly evolved in the real world, in nature, not in cities, right?

[1420] And our, you know, we're hardwired for that three -dimensional textured, I mean, I guess there's textures in the city too, but that kind of natural surrounding in whatever climate, that's what really nourishes us, not just physically in terms of food but keeps us sort of sane at some level as a to ever agree we're still saying yeah that's the argument are we sane and is saying even a rational request or uh just a hope is it is it what is sane what is sanity and our sanity what's health in comparison to the sanity of someone who lives in a tribal environment in the amazon i mean they would look at us and laugh and go you're you You're not saying you people are fucking crazy.

[1421] You've been crazy for 2 ,000 years.

[1422] Yeah, what are you doing?

[1423] You know, like, I don't know who's right because I don't want to live in the jungle.

[1424] Right.

[1425] You know, I mean, I think they're crazy.

[1426] Like, you didn't have TV, stupid.

[1427] And it's easy to, it's easy to have that either or, like either we're now in the city, you know, or we're in the Amazonian jungle.

[1428] Yeah.

[1429] And Louvre is not some kind of romantic throwback, oh, we should go back to the garden.

[1430] You know, it's not that.

[1431] But that these experiences that.

[1432] you know, the experiences that you have gardening or the experiences you have hunting are deeply human, valuable experiences for us and to not have them, to have a culture, to have an individual life or a whole society that has no connection.

[1433] Right.

[1434] It's all supermarket.

[1435] It's all drive -through.

[1436] But...

[1437] Big Macs, you know.

[1438] During the time that we're not hunting and we're not gathering and we're not farming.

[1439] There's time for philosophical pursuits, creation of literature, all sorts of writing and different communication and wonderful conversations over meals.

[1440] You had no part in creating and the building of community and the bonding of friendships and the evolving of ideas that a lot of these things could be thought of by some people as being more valuable than the collection of food.

[1441] Sure.

[1442] Absolutely.

[1443] They could be.

[1444] And I think the risk is in having it be like, oh, we have to go back to the woods and live in the woods to be real humans.

[1445] No, no, no, no, that's not it.

[1446] You know, or say that's just ancient history, give it up, stop having these fantasies about the past, just live in our cyborg future.

[1447] Right.

[1448] No. To be healthy human beings, whether it's a, you know, just a walk in a park or being part of a community garden in a city, you don't have to leave the city.

[1449] you can have some experiences of connection with the, you know, the earth right in L .A. Yeah.

[1450] You can have some.

[1451] Some.

[1452] Well, I always wonder, and this is like a reoccurring theme with me, like, what are we doing as a race, as a species?

[1453] Like, if you could step outside of ourselves, if you could hover a mile above Earth and your objective, free from any influence of our culture, you're some calculating being that sort of is gathering up all the data in.

[1454] information and all the behavior patterns that you're seeing exhibited by this bizarre species.

[1455] What is this thing doing?

[1456] Well, this thing is creating technology.

[1457] That's what it's doing.

[1458] It's involved in some sort of ever -accelerating path of innovation, ever -accelerating path of creating new and better technology, new and better devices, new and better things, and it works all day in order to obtain the latest and greatest of these things and that therefore fueling the creation of these things while longing for the past, while longing for some little house in the prairie type fucking situation where, you know, everybody died of polio and, like, that was a terrible time to be alive.

[1459] But you look at it on TV and you're like, oh, it was awesome back then.

[1460] Monpa.

[1461] Yeah, we long towards a simple past.

[1462] We longed towards, you know, people that would hold hands in front of the dinner table and say a prayers and everybody was a good person except for the few bad people wore black hats you could spot them a mile away.

[1463] You know, I think in this ever more and more complex life we belong towards this time where things were simple and it's one of the things that I believe is very appealing about the idea of hunting and gathering your own meat and it's very primally enriching because we do we do reward our system.

[1464] We give ourselves the opportunity to participate in those reward systems that are set up and have been established for thousands and thousands of generations.

[1465] Yeah.

[1466] And it's one of the only ways to do so.

[1467] And that, you know, that experience that you talked about, like, locking eyes with that deer and having that intense experience of seeing that deer alive, the intense experience of taking a life, and how.

[1468] My sense, as you were describing it, is that the primalness of that, in part, is a sense that this is really familiar.

[1469] Yes.

[1470] This is really old.

[1471] You know, like a cellular level memory.

[1472] This is old, old stuff.

[1473] And, you know, for me, when I took my first year, it was so shocking emotionally.

[1474] I mean, shocking I finally succeeded.

[1475] How many years did you try for?

[1476] I did not succeed the first three years.

[1477] How many days are you going out?

[1478] It's a, it's all, the main season we have in Vermont is a two -week rifle season, and I wasn't able to hunt the full two weeks.

[1479] Usually it was, you know, less than half of that time, probably.

[1480] A little bit in other seasons, but mainly it was in the rifle season.

[1481] So it wasn't really years of hunting.

[1482] It was weeks of hunting.

[1483] Right.

[1484] Stretched out over years.

[1485] But the deeper shock was, you know, as you say, sort of that sense of loss of life.

[1486] For me, it was a sense of grief that this beautiful animal is dead.

[1487] And do I ever want to do that again?

[1488] I really wasn't sure at first.

[1489] And you were by yourself this entire time?

[1490] When I took the deer, yeah.

[1491] Yeah, I was on myself.

[1492] And it was the process over the next few days of butchering that deer.

[1493] that felt really familiar.

[1494] You know, it was almost like a ceremony.

[1495] You know, I was doing this, the knife and the, you know, skinning and then in the kitchen with a leg, you know, and taking apart this amazing animal, all these layers of muscle and bone, and that is what gave me the sense of, this is really old and familiar.

[1496] and I'll probably do this again.

[1497] You know, in another year, maybe not next week, but next time deer season rolls around, I'll probably hunt again.

[1498] And that sense of deep sort of primal familiarity is common.

[1499] I mean, I've heard, I've read accounts of this, people who are not hunters, but who have had a sort of hunting -like experience.

[1500] George Monbio or Monbi, I'm not sure how you say it, he's from the UK and has advocated for veganism and against veganism at various times.

[1501] Really?

[1502] What a conflicted guy.

[1503] But very much an ecology, environmental advocate.

[1504] He has this passage that he wrote about having this experience of, I think it was being with a spear going after fish, like flounder in shallow water and his account of it is very much this felt like it was thousands of years old like this primal connection with ancient human existence and i think it's valuable for people even if we live in a high -tech world to have some connection to that well i think these are genetic imprints these are these are things that are written into our code that it was really important that you kill an animal in order to survive x amount of thousands of years ago Those people that did that and bred, I believe they gave that genetic information to their offspring, and it carried on, on and on and on, and then when you tap into it, it lights up.

[1505] Like, when I locked eyes at that deer, and that deer was bouncing around on the side of this hill, and it saw me, and I saw it, and I locked eyes at it, and then I'm looking at it through the rifle scope.

[1506] There was like this light bulb that went off in this area of my mind that was illuminated for the first time.

[1507] It was like, check out this part.

[1508] Like, you don't even get in here without doing this.

[1509] And it was like, oh, this is what the hunting thing is.

[1510] Like, it illuminates this ancient genetic variable, this ancient genetic pathway.

[1511] And it felt psychedelic.

[1512] It felt like I was on a drug.

[1513] And I'm not like a lustful, I must kill.

[1514] No, it was like this weird sort of.

[1515] It's an altered state.

[1516] Yes.

[1517] Animal, spiritual connections.

[1518] This very strange, strange experience, which I was shocked.

[1519] I expected the sense of loss.

[1520] I expected the sorrow.

[1521] I expected all these different.

[1522] The sorrow never really came.

[1523] There was a sense of loss, but there wasn't a sense I did something wrong.

[1524] There wasn't a sense like I shouldn't have done it.

[1525] And part of it was also because I was seeing bones everywhere and mountain lion shit.

[1526] I'm like, this is a goddamn war zone.

[1527] I'm in.

[1528] You know, when you're in the brakes, you find these ropes of shit.

[1529] And I say ropes.

[1530] It's hair.

[1531] Yeah.

[1532] Shit that was filled with hair because these animals were just jacking deer and whatever the hell else they got a hold of.

[1533] You know, we're in a war zone.

[1534] Right.

[1535] It was a nature war zone.

[1536] So I didn't, I didn't, for a bunch of reasons.

[1537] And also because I knew I was going to eat it.

[1538] I didn't feel bad about it.

[1539] But I did feel like, wow, this is intense.

[1540] This is intense.

[1541] But the surprising part was the altered state.

[1542] And I feel that still.

[1543] I mean, it's changed over the years.

[1544] I've been hunting for, like, a dozen years or so now.

[1545] And it has, my experience has changed.

[1546] It's not as shocking or quite as intense as it was the first time.

[1547] But it still remains powerful.

[1548] And I'm still in an altered state for, like, hours or days.

[1549] Yeah.

[1550] Afterward.

[1551] And a state of thankfulness, too, which is also, like, there's a warm happiness to it, a thankfulness that you are successful, and now you have this meat.

[1552] and you're going to provide this meat to your family.

[1553] You know, like my friend Duncan sent me a photo of some elk meatballs that his girlfriend had cooked for them and their friend from an elk that I, some elk that I gave him.

[1554] And it made me feel so good that my friend was eating some meat that I had given him from an animal that I had killed.

[1555] Yeah, I mean, you're grateful to the animal, to the land, and then grateful to be able to provide.

[1556] Yeah.

[1557] I'm grateful that you have this.

[1558] established community feeling, bond feeling with your friend.

[1559] You give them meat and then they're cooking this meat and he takes a photo of it.

[1560] But it's all bizarre, you know, like this digital representation of this thing and it's sent to you through the air.

[1561] Can't smell it.

[1562] It arrives on your phone.

[1563] You're like, hey, man, we're in the woods, bro.

[1564] This is nature.

[1565] It's kind of, sort of weird, you know?

[1566] Yeah, it is.

[1567] It's all very odd.

[1568] It's all very odd.

[1569] And I do wonder if what I'm doing by getting into hunting and is just clinging to the last remaining gasps of a dying world.

[1570] It's possible.

[1571] Yeah.

[1572] It's possible.

[1573] But I sure hope it's not really dying.

[1574] Do you do much hunting outside of your home state of Vermont, or is that mostly what you do?

[1575] That's mostly what I do.

[1576] I mean, I've hunted a little bit down in Massachusetts where I have a friend and my uncle.

[1577] So I've hunted out of state a little bit.

[1578] Do you go on trips?

[1579] I've never gone on a moose trip or?

[1580] I haven't.

[1581] I mean, Moose technically do get hunted in Vermont in small numbers.

[1582] Is it hard to get a tag?

[1583] It is, yeah, because it's such small numbers.

[1584] But I haven't really, except for when I was in New Mexico, but I was in New Mexico already for something else.

[1585] I mean, and I've never really gone on a hunting trip somewhere far away.

[1586] And I don't know.

[1587] I might at some point I have a friend who's.

[1588] been trying to get me out to Colorado.

[1589] And I have a friend who lives in Colorado as well.

[1590] For deer or elk?

[1591] Either.

[1592] And I love, you know, this particular friend in Colorado I'm thinking of, I'd love to hunt with him.

[1593] You know, he's a guy I'd love to hunt with.

[1594] Really enjoy his company.

[1595] But I don't have like these fantasies of big, you know, big Western or Alaskan hunts or whatever.

[1596] So your hunting is almost like you're doing it.

[1597] almost entirely for food?

[1598] You know, yes, but if I just wanted food, there are much more efficient ways to produce that.

[1599] I could raise chickens.

[1600] Right, sure.

[1601] It's a guaranteed thing.

[1602] Unless they get taken out by predators or disease or something, you raise these chickens and then you have meat, or you raise chickens and have eggs or so on.

[1603] So the prime motive for me to hunt as the prime motive for humans to hunt when it started, you know, way back is food.

[1604] That's essentially why I hunt.

[1605] But there's often been this split that's been drawn between, this distinction drawn between hunting for utility, utilitarian food, and hunting because you enjoy hunting.

[1606] You know, whether you call that sport hunting or recreational hunting or whatever you call it.

[1607] And the problem with that is that, one, for most of us, they're not separate.

[1608] I mean, you hunt because you enjoy something about hunting and it's meaningful to you and the food is meaningful and you get food from it.

[1609] That's why I hunt, both of those reasons.

[1610] Traditional subsistence hunting cultures, those people love to hunt.

[1611] they also totally depend on the food yeah so it's both you know it's not really a separate thing i don't think it probably really ever has been for any haunting culture yeah um so or fishing or fishing exactly right so it's for both yeah uh it's enjoyable and they're you know if it wasn't enjoyable you know we'd probably find other ways to we wouldn't do it and that's probably why it's enjoyable because it provides food.

[1612] I mean, it stimulates these areas that we're talking about, these primal need areas.

[1613] Right.

[1614] So, yes, food is my primary sort of motive in terms of a product, materially, materially food is my motive.

[1615] It's not to have a big set antlers on the wall.

[1616] If I end up with the big set antlers, I'll probably keep that skull and antlers like you do, but it's not the point.

[1617] Right.

[1618] But it's the experience of it.

[1619] And as I got into it more, as I started to have more relationships with other people that I really respected and who also hunted, then it's also part of that if I'm hunting with someone, you know, that I really enjoy their company.

[1620] So there's social and, you know, natural experience motives that are very much just about the process and the experience.

[1621] Right.

[1622] And then there's the food.

[1623] Right.

[1624] But they're all, you know, they're all interwoven.

[1625] Yeah.

[1626] Now, I think there's some people that want you to feel bad about it.

[1627] So they don't want to, they don't want you to be enjoying it.

[1628] Sure.

[1629] And if it was, I sadistically enjoyed killing.

[1630] Right.

[1631] I would find that disturbing.

[1632] Yes.

[1633] And I do find that disturbing when I see people talking about or acting about hunting or anything else that way.

[1634] I don't care whether it's a cat or a dog or a wild deer or to sadistically enjoy causing pain and or taking life.

[1635] Right.

[1636] That's problematic.

[1637] Which is one of the reasons why that's the number one accusation that anti -hunters will label on hunters, that you're a sadistic person, you enjoy doing this, is the only reason why you possibly do this.

[1638] But when you say you enjoy hunting, if the understanding is what you enjoy is simply that moment of taking life, there's nothing else about it that you enjoy, and the way you enjoy that moment is sadistic.

[1639] Right.

[1640] Not the kind of light bulb goes off in some part of this ancient, you know, human mind that that's a different kind of an disaltered state.

[1641] Some people might describe that as exciting or pleasurable, I guess.

[1642] Yeah.

[1643] It's not like a, as you said, it's not for you a lust to kill.

[1644] No. It's not that.

[1645] But there's something that is magnetic and powerful about it.

[1646] Yeah, there's something.

[1647] insanely primal about it, but one of the weirder things that people lobby at you that people insults that they send your way, one of the big ones is you can't get an erection so you go kill animals or you have a little penis so you kill animals.

[1648] Like it gets brought to this weird sexual lust thing that's I, I'm really confused about, I always get confused like what is the root of that because so many people go to that one.

[1649] Like Like, they go to that one whenever I watched, no matter who the hunter is that people are attacking, like, whether it was the Walter, the dentist guy who killed Cecil or whatever, it's so many of them go to that, that it's, this person is sexually inadequate.

[1650] So they're going out and killing animals.

[1651] There's just a bizarre connection.

[1652] I don't understand that one.

[1653] No, maybe we should just blame Freud for that.

[1654] I don't know.

[1655] I mean, maybe, right?

[1656] I mean, part of it is we have a tendency to, to, in our society and culture, maybe since Freud, to link any kind of like aberrant behavior or motive or desire with sex, which is crazy.

[1657] But there's also been a longstanding story that's been told by critics of hunting that, you know, violence toward.

[1658] animals through hunting is the same as sort of sexual violence toward women and that women like mother earth there's association between women and earth and nature and men are these dominating domineering violent macho evil right and and there's a you can sort of see the logic and the sort of cultural roots of all of that um part of the problem and then Mary Mary Mary Stange wrote this fascinating book called Woman the Hunter back 25 years ago and part of her argument she's very much a feminist you know and and and a hunter and part of her rebuttal to that parallel around sexuality is that the same story is told both by the sort of mainstream culture that portrays men as domineering and women as nurturing and men as violators and women as victims which has happened certainly historically that relationship exists right but the parallel to nature as man the hunter as a cultural myth which is very strong in our culture that the critics sort of ecological feminists and so on the critics of that are retelling the same story it's men play this role and women are inherently nurturing inherently not the sort of sexual violent you know lust driven sort of male And her argument is, let's break this down.

[1659] Let's also have women as hunters being honored and respected and accept that strong women and hunting can be compatible.

[1660] And women are not inherently nurturing always.

[1661] They can be life takers.

[1662] They can be hunters.

[1663] You know, they can provide for their family through taking life.

[1664] And hunting does not have to be motivated and isn't motivated for most hunters by some bizarre, twisted, sexual thing.

[1665] Yeah.

[1666] You know, whether it's women or men.

[1667] That's not what the real experience is.

[1668] Well, I don't think they really mean it.

[1669] I think it's just a simple go -to criticism.

[1670] They like to latch on to it.

[1671] I don't think if you gave them a quiet room and said, okay why do you think people hunt if you if you wanted to if you're correct you're going to win a million dollars so I want you to really do your best to try to calculate and formulate the actual process that's going on in a person's brain when they're hunting an animal I guarantee you they're not going to go with get it up they're not because then they want to get that million bucks they would they would try to figure it out and they would try to be objective about it it's a it's a cheap go -to insults you know I think I think it is and I think that when it's something that's, when people hear a hunter talk about the experience of hunting, the way you're talking about it, and what that food means and what that moment is like, when they hear that, they respect that in general.

[1672] You know, most non -hunters who have no experience of it.

[1673] As long as they eat meat, most likely they'll accept that.

[1674] And even some vegetarians.

[1675] I mean, and some vegetarians will make exceptions for meat that's been hunted.

[1676] Right.

[1677] I mean, they can really respect that in general.

[1678] It's when there's no experience of someone speaking about it that way.

[1679] And it's just some picture of some guy with some zebra or, you know, it's so incomprehensible.

[1680] It's so removed.

[1681] And there's no story that can be understood.

[1682] Right.

[1683] So it's kind of, I get having been a vegan and having had a pretty dim view of hunting myself for a long time, and having having had very strong feelings and still having very strong feelings about animals, I get where that hostility and outrage comes from, you know?

[1684] Right.

[1685] And I can understand why someone would even come up with that sort of bizarre thing.

[1686] theory.

[1687] Yeah, I can as well in a lot of ways.

[1688] You know, without, again, like if I wanted to win a million dollars, then left me alone in a room and I'd never hunted before it.

[1689] And if I wanted to come up with a motive, that wouldn't be on the list.

[1690] Right.

[1691] Because I don't really believe it.

[1692] I don't think anybody else does either.

[1693] But before I first hunted, I was thinking to myself, I'm either going to become a vegan or I'm going to become a hunter.

[1694] That was what this experience, when I first went hunting, I was saying, well, one of the things is going to happen.

[1695] Either I'm going to shoot this animal.

[1696] I'm going to be horrified with myself.

[1697] I'm going to be like, I'm going to eat this animal and then I'm done.

[1698] Or I'm going to become a hunter.

[1699] I just, I feel like this is one of those things that will not be solved.

[1700] This is one of those things that the debate will continue to rage on and I see both sides.

[1701] I absolutely see and admire the motive that the ethical vegans want or are attempting to pursue.

[1702] I also see the intense hypocrisy when I find out they have cats you know I mean it's it's super common you know and amongst my friends I have a good friend waitress at the comedy store she's got a bunch of fucking cats and she's a vegan she gives people a hard time about meat like bitch you're feeding your monsters you have vampires you live with you bringing them home dead things they're probably bringing her home dead things if they get out yeah um I just think that the this is uh this is sort of a stage that human civilization is going through that's going to take a few hundred years and in that few hundred years or so we're going to evolve to be something that's almost unrecognizable than to in comparison to what we are now and we're going through this process and in this process we're longing we're longing towards the idea of wearing a flannel shirt and going into the woods with a bow and arrow you know like that's what grandpa did you know Grandpa seemed happy all the time.

[1703] Grandpa didn't even have an email, you know.

[1704] And he was happier for it.

[1705] He may have been, you know, I don't know.

[1706] I don't know.

[1707] I don't, you know.

[1708] Is there anything that's been surprising about this process and creating this book and all this stuff?

[1709] You know, it goes back in a way to where this conversation started because you asked, you know, how much grief did you get?

[1710] How much flak did you take?

[1711] And what's been most surprising in a way, and most rewarding is that I've had opportunities to talk with such a wide range of people.

[1712] I've done seminars for a hunter education instructors, and I've talked to rooms full of non -hunters, including some vegetarians.

[1713] And the conversations have been remarkably respectful and civil across those different and some things in the same room a mix of those people in the same room I went very similar to the sort of experience you're talking about with what it felt like to hunt and actually take an animal I went out to Colorado two three years ago and did some seminars for hundred education instructors and I was a little uncomfortable because one of the topics they asked me to speak on was ethics.

[1714] And I thought, I'm a new hunter.

[1715] I mean, I just started a few years ago.

[1716] And here are all these lifelong hunters pretty much in this room, 75 guys, mostly guys.

[1717] And I'm going to tell them about hunting ethics.

[1718] Like, oh, my God.

[1719] How am I going to preach to them?

[1720] Right.

[1721] But it went well.

[1722] And as soon as I opened it up for Q &A and we got into discussion, these guys are talking really deeply about the experience of taking life and the sort of emotional dimensions of that and they're talking to each other and challenging each other to bring that into the classroom with their students.

[1723] I was like, wow.

[1724] Two days later, I was just outside Boulder, and I'm sure you know Boulder.

[1725] Boulder's the butt of every joke in Colorado and vice versa.

[1726] About hippies.

[1727] Exactly.

[1728] You know, so they say, you know, all these hunter education instructors were actually joking about Boulder.

[1729] We were up in the mountains at this place, but they were joking about Boulder, and they said, you know, how do you get to Boulder?

[1730] Well, you go to the edge of reality and you turn left.

[1731] And it's always left.

[1732] It's true.

[1733] Of course.

[1734] Yeah, it's probably one of the most liberal places on Earth.

[1735] Right.

[1736] Yeah.

[1737] And of course, Boulder, that stereotype of Boulder, is telling the same jokes, or different jokes, but jokes in return about...

[1738] Evergreen.

[1739] Yeah.

[1740] Well, no, I mean, about the rednecks.

[1741] Yes.

[1742] And the hunters.

[1743] Yeah.

[1744] Yeah.

[1745] And, you know, these, you know, all these hunting jokes and redneck jokes.

[1746] I was in Boulder because I was being interviewed by this ex -vegetarian who ran this show for Guyom TV, this online TV station.

[1747] It's all Eastern spirituality and, you know, all that kind of thing.

[1748] Exactly the people who would make fun of each other, right?

[1749] A hundred education instructors and Guyom TV.

[1750] As soon as we got into the conversation, we're talking about, you know, the emotional, and ethical dimensions of taking life.

[1751] She's an ex -vegetarian.

[1752] She's now eating meat, but she's not a hunter.

[1753] She's thinking about these issues, about confronting life and death.

[1754] And when I got done the trip, I looked back, I was like, wow, those two conversations were really similar.

[1755] Completely different communities who normally would think they had nothing in common, especially around hunting.

[1756] And yet the very basic human questions, the basic moral, ethical, emotional issues around taking another creature's life, especially a big mammal.

[1757] It was a similar conversation.

[1758] And so that's been, I guess, in a way, one of the most rewarding and surprising things about the whole process and the journey since is that you get to see and talk with people in these places where there's common ground in different cultures, you know, radically different communities.

[1759] There most certainly is.

[1760] And one of the things that I'm hoping is going to bring common ground.

[1761] or bring some common ground or at least bring an understanding is the emerging science behind understanding the intelligence of plants and that plants are in fact a life form that we take for granted because they're not in motion because they're stationary and they slowly grow and we don't really you know we don't really associate them with being a life form but they are a life form and they're a strange life form that has some form of communication some of them can make calculations some of them in fact rare, but they exist.

[1762] They're carnivorous.

[1763] It's a strange type of life.

[1764] And as we grow to understand that life deeper and deeper and have more respect for it and really understand what exactly they're doing when they're making calculations, what exactly they're doing, they're communicating with each other, how this network of intertwined life forms, similar plant life forms that exist in this topsoil, which is also some sort of a very bizarre ecosystem of life that these electrical impulses that they're sharing with each other are some sort of form of communication.

[1765] And this whole traditions of the spiritual dimensions, not really of animals, but plants, too.

[1766] Yes.

[1767] Yeah.

[1768] And that this is an unshakable, undeniable truth that life eats life.

[1769] Right.

[1770] And we are, and we and every animal on the planet is utterly.

[1771] dependent on plants.

[1772] Yes, yeah, all of them.

[1773] None of us are photosynthesizing.

[1774] Yeah.

[1775] You know, I don't know if there's any way ever to get away from what we've established in this country with the giant numbers of human beings in these population centers and the factory farms that support these population centers.

[1776] I don't know what the way of getting around that is.

[1777] But I do think that people like yourself and other people that are proponents of at least removing your own existence from it in as clear a way as possible by doing some growing and gardening, by doing some hunting, by experiencing the wild of this world and going out there and getting into it, understanding it, this is, this is a real environment that coexists with the city during the same time frame on earth.

[1778] And you, we all, I think, I don't think there's a person and it looks at those factory farm videos and goes, oh yeah, awesome, fuck those cows.

[1779] Yeah, I'm glad those chickens get stuffed to those boxes.

[1780] I don't use a single person that does that.

[1781] And I think that's also why those aggag laws are in effect to protect those businesses, because if that stuff gets out, people get horrified and then they vote with their dollar and they make choices that reflect the horror that they experience when they're watching those videos.

[1782] Sure.

[1783] I don't know if we can all collectively as a group get out of this.

[1784] but I think as individuals we can start moving away from it.

[1785] You know, I think what you're doing or what your friends are doing when you're talking about these people that used to be vegetarians and now they grew their own chickens, now they provide food to these other people.

[1786] Like, that's ideal, you know, finding the people that are involved in growing and butchering this meat and getting it from them.

[1787] Like it's a cleaner, easier way of existing.

[1788] I don't I don't know if we're ever though with the amount of people that we have stuffed in these cities How else?

[1789] Maybe we have stuff on the globe Yeah That's insane How else we're going to get them fed?

[1790] We fucked up Yeah if you were that Objective being hovering bugs Say wow what a mess Yeah It's almost like An insurmountable student debt Like, what did you do?

[1791] You're not going to pay this off.

[1792] How are you going to pay this?

[1793] What did you do?

[1794] You can't feed all those people the real way.

[1795] You know, oh, you've got to keep stuffing chickens into factories.

[1796] You know, you've got to keep stuffing these pigs into warehouses and then...

[1797] Or something.

[1798] I don't know what that something is, you know.

[1799] I don't know what the other alternative is, you know.

[1800] I don't know.

[1801] Anything else for when we wrap this sucker up?

[1802] No, it's been great and been good fun.

[1803] Thanks for doing this.

[1804] I really appreciate it.

[1805] Tovar's book is The Mindful Carnivore, and it is available everywhere.

[1806] It's on Amazon, printed by Pegasus Books, and Tovar Suruli.

[1807] Thank you, sir.

[1808] Appreciate it, man. It was a lot of fun.

[1809] Good night, everybody.