Tovar Cerulli

00:03no yes live all right we're live hey what's up man how are you I'm well I'm here with uh Tovar CI he's got his pen and his notebook out like he's about to take notes uh author of The mindful carnivore boy you went an unusual path man and this is one of the reasons why I really wanted to talk to you I've read some of your stuff and I've seen uh some interviews with you online obviously a very intelligent very thoughtful guy you started out a vegan and became a hunter boy that's that's a tricky path and it had to be uh fraught with Peril right I mean how much grief did you take for that first of all you know not as much as I kind of anticipated really because you live in Vermont you they could be part of it you know they can't get to you up there it's well and it's a funny blend of cultures there um I mean I didn't become vegetarian until I was like 20 so I spent basically 20 to

00:5930 as was vegetarian mostly vegan that whole time um and so then in my early 30s I made this kind of bizarre transition into uh into being a hunter um and I wondered how friends not so much family because I had one Uncle who who was a hunter and was well respected welcome back son but you know but friends you know I wondered yeah you know what was that going to be like and uh there were some you know some occasionally odd moments with uh with with friends or neighbors but not as much as you might expect what was it that made you switch over like what was there a moment was it a realization was it an accumulation of information like what was it 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 all kinds of things the switch back um the first step really was starting to realize that

02:01my 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 I mean you know the control is a nice way it is it's a gentle it's a gentle word right um and just the impact of Agriculture on the landscape as a whole talk about wildlife habitat disappearing in a hurry you know um and even the local organic farmer down the road where we'd you know go get organic strawberries you know when there's enough crop damage he calls a friend and they shoot a deer or there smoke bombing the woodchucks all the time and so there are all kinds of impacts that I realized my diet was having even though I wasn't eating animals you know indirectly that didn't change my diet that just sort of softened these very black and white hard edges that I had drawn in my mind these ethical lines right the shift to actually eating

03:04something different had more to do with nutritional needs in the long term 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 yogurt is a big deal right or or a few you know eggs and Fish and Chicken once I did that I said I'm going to go back to fishing which I did as a kid and then I I live in a rural area you know I'm in the woods practically and I look around I was like hm if I'm going to get protein animal protein there's some of it running around here in the woods and it's still part of the culture there you know where I live in Vermont you know hunting is still alive as part of the culture so it uh started to sort of sneak up on me as this idea to to get into hunting wow well eggs are an easy one cuz nobody has to get hurt like eating eggs is is so easy if you especially I have my own chicken so it's just hey

04:00girls what's going on take the eggs no one gets hurt everything's fine and um that seems to me to be the easiest and most ethical way if you just want to get some animal protein in your body that one really is no one no one's getting hurt 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 found out that chicken eggs couldn't become a chicken because uh they weren't fertilized by a rooster like this is how stupid I was or more more really removed from any farming or any idea of farming I just uh for my in my stupid mind I just had this idea that and then I I had to think oh yeah of course there's no rooster how wait a minute why are they laying eggs every day like what the hell's going on and I don't understand that part of it but um it's so easy to just get eggs from chickens I mean as long as you're feeding the

04:58chicken and chickens exist off of so many different things they clean your garden they run around they're they mostly eat bugs and grass and right chicken and you know Health chicken food but once you decide you're going to pull the trigger on a deer things get real that's a totally different experience 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 the skin off of it that's exactly right 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 and it was a slow learning process yeah and there aren't tons of deer running around ver there are some but they're is not really no back in the back in the 60s

05:58and 70s we had all this young growth forest you know all these these Farm fields that were coming back uh into forest and there were a ton of deer it was really rich habitat for for deer now it's a much more mature forest and so the numbers have have really dropped down do they have predators up there what do they have we got coyotes and bear but you know nothing that is really a good predator on adult deer M um so I was trying to hunt but unsuccessful for several years and in retrospect I'm really glad because I don't think I was ready for that experience so you were saying I'm going to go hunting but you weren't getting anything so you're trying to find the deer so it's more like awesome deer hiking with a backpack that has a gun in it yeah I mean I I did a little bit of small game hunting I took a you know Snowshoe hair or two small you know but a deer is a different

06:52experience you know something it's a mammal but something that big yeah too um and you know something that beautiful I mean they're they're stunning animals and so when it finally happened a few years in it was a total shock the actual experience even though I'd seen someone else with a deer they had just killed and I'd helped my uncle but doing it yourself different game and how did you prepare for this did you take courses did you train yourself how to shoot did you already know how to shoot I had shot a bit as a kid i' had been around firearm push that right up to your face sure went a little closer sure um you know I'd been around Firearms a little bit as a kid I'd never shot a deer rifle you know Center fire rifle so that was new um but yeah it was learning from books articles my uncle a lot of uh emails back and forth you know I was totally clueless you know about about

07:48Firearms about deer about everything it was uh starting from from ground zero and so that was slow it was slow it's a real commitment like especially if you're doing it essentially by yourself you know to to to decide to really get involved in quote unquote gun culture and uh understand what kind of round you need what kind of rifle you need what's the best kind of rifle what's the best way to pull the trigger how do you how do you keep yourself from jerking or punching the trigger and you know there's a lot of practice involved oh yeah there is 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 you those of us who come to it later in life sounds like diabetes it does exactly um adult onset Hunters um that we don't know a million things that those people who grow up doing it take for granted

08:42yeah about the woods about Firearms about all kinds of things and they forgot they even learned them because it you know they learned it when they were 10 or 15 uh 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 or but we don't know that whole world mhm uh 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 then 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 is probably the way to go I got a crazy

09:36crash course from Steve Rella 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 a patch of dirt and uh 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 5 days later whatever it was MH 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 up I easily could have wounded an animal I you know I really wasn't ready MH um 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 right well there's a demand for it and

10:29there are a bunch of states that are doing it there 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 at usually at the local food co-op or something you know recruit people there and then they end up um having these weekend sessions throughout the course of the year and it culminates with a sort of a mentored hunt on public land in um in Wisconsin Minnesota or other states that have similar programs but there's enough demand that there are private courses I mean there's work weekend workshops being offered by folks I know not associated with the state program at all just teaching people because they didn't learn 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

11:19to physically build something out of wood or how to can your own food or how to you know hunt and butcher a deer and there's an interest in that sort of do it yourself uh quote unquote primitive or just basic self-reliance skills 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 and learn how to get your own food from the actual Wilderness right or even or from the garden I mean just that hands-on experience a direct experience is really different from sting sitting in a cubicle getting paid then going and buying food at the grocery store yeah you know the the uh author Richard Nelson who's written great books about deer and all kinds of things um he lives up in Alaska and he calls the uh the supermarket an agency

12:10an agent of our forgetfulness you know we forget where things come from yeah if we don't live on a farm if we didn't grow up doing that kind of thing 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 and they try to figure out well what is a way to get around this what's there's got to be a way to get around this and the most ethical way I think and a lot of people think is if it's possible to hunt it yourself MH because then you're getting an animal that was never caged up was a wild animal and in one brief moment it's life ends and realistically that life was probably on its way out anyway if you're shooting a mature deer you're shooting something that's 6 years old 5 years old it's amazing that deer lived that long in the first place most yeah most wild

12:58animals are prey you know most prey animals and even most predators in fact you know die when they're pups basically I mean the mortality rate is incredibly High yeah I mean even the mortality rate for Bears is insanely High and the predator of bears is Bears yeah there's like bears kill half of all the Moose Cales and um and deer fawns like half of them that get born get killed by bears or coyotes or Wolves or or anything so to get something that's 5 years old you're you're essentially stepping in just before nature did yeah I mean I don't know enough about all the ecology and biology of all these species to speak authoritatively on that side of it but the idea of it being an ethical alternative makes sense to a lot of people I think it resonates the people I've interviewed who are adult onset Hunters you know and from my own experience that's a pretty common

13:54theme there's an ethical Drive involved whether it's practical for a huge portion of the population to really do that is a different you know sort of statistical question it's just not but uh you know it's also not practical for the United States to feed every country in the world it's not practical for everyone to exist off all the crops grown in England it's not there's a lot of things that aren't practical exactly 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 your food from that it is still possible 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 it's like no you know like saying is it possible to write a book yes it is Guess How few people write books you wrote a book how many

14:40people write books I mean you could go all day without meeting anybody who's ever written a book sure you know sure um this book that you wrote the mindful carnivore um I don't think I've ever uh even seen a book written by a guy who started off as a vegetarian and a vegan and was compelled to uh to become a hunter 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 crazy um 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 I don't know what people are going to make of this over time I've met more and more people who have actually had a pretty similar experience other vegetarian who became hunters and there's a there's a logic to it like if you were that concerned about animals that you decided to be vegetarian or vegan

15:40and then you changed your diet animals are still a pretty serious issue for you unless you just abandoned 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 the sorts of issues seriously then there's a interest in engaging directly like confronting it right instead of just saying oh well just go to the supermarket now and just buy some CR Chuck right um so for those of us who still have of animal ethics and Welfare in mind when we make that transition out of being vegetarian there's a there's a way to confront it you know I know some folks who were vegetarian young couple um and when their diet changed um they decided they're going to raise their own animals instead of hunt started raising chickens and uh now they do it full-time they're chicken Farmers

16:49chicken cows rabbits they run a a CSA you know Community sport of Agriculture they Supply meat to these two ex vegetarians Supply meat to this you know whole area you up where we live so they wanted to confront it directly you know the same kind of thing they're if we're going to do this we're going to do it ourselves now you say your diet changed like like it used to be spring and now it's summer you know I mean what what what does that mean your diet changed and why did your diet change like what was the compelling reason yeah I mean for me it was that my health was iffy you I wasn't in you know on death's door but my immune system was kind of depressed and and that sort of thing and several people including my wife and my doctor said you know maybe this is part of the picture you know think about your diet and start adding some other things in and so when I started to add in you know

17:49some eggs yogurt some local chicken that kind of thing it did change it really did so for me it was a it was a nutrition issue is it possible that you just weren't doing vegan ISM correctly that's always the question yeah you know that's always the question um could I have done some things differently possibly what were you what were you eating for your 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 there 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 I've had with a friend of mine who's a vegan who says you know you really need very little B12 and you can get plenty of B12

18:42from your diet M I'm like boy that's um that's controversial like for you to be real uh confident about that I'm not I'm not sure that's necessarily correct because I've seen both uh 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 and I don't know believe yeah I mean I'm no nutrition expert either but it's primarily from animals though B12 correct as I understand I mean flax seeds and there are ways to 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 and you know there's a huge difference nutritionally as I understand it between a vegan diet and a vegetarian diet you know if you're eating some eggs you're eating some some Dairy that's a different ball game we have cultures and traditions of

19:32vegetarianism around the world mhm that have sustained themselves I don't know of any communities and cultures or Traditions around the world where they've been vegan for Generation after generation I don't think I don't think it exists isn't it possible though that it requires more education and more understanding about what the nutritional requirements are like as far as like mixing your proteins and making sure because we had some guys on from the documentary cowspiracy and we t talked about and I I really wish I'd read a little bit more of uh the arguments against what they were saying before I had them on cuz uh one of the things we talked about is like complete proteins and uh the complete amino acid profiles well there's very few complete proteins in plant form it's very few and if you're getting like if you're trying to get all your protein from broccoli Jesus

20:21Christ you've got to eat like pounds of the stuff in order to like and so I don't think it's one of the things that becomes comes with a lot of people it becomes almost like you're talking about their deity it's almost like a religious argument because they don't want to be objective about it one exception to that is Rich Ro Rich Ro is very objective and uh I don't know if you know who he is he's a I know the name vegan endurance athlete very good guy and has a great podcast and he's been a guest on the podcast a couple times here really cool guy he's he's very non-dogmatic and also not a judgmental guy he's not he's not a he not preaching um but for a lot of them they just don't want to admit the difficulty in getting complete sources of protein and and then there's a few vegan bodybuilders these are these people are hilarious you find out they're doing steroids like

21:17vegan steroids yeah I don't think so but like vegan bodybuilding is is is fraught it's infested with people that are doing steroids that aren't being honest about it that are getting gigantic that are you know eating vegan food and like vegan power and they're they're flexing power you know meanwhile they've got synthetic testosterone which by the way is made with yams you can make synthetic testosterone Mexican wild yams yeah in a in a way but it's it's just hilarious they're attributing all this the scientists have made your body man right right scientists in a wait room but you know there there's you know that's neither here there there but I think it's for some people it's it is very difficult if you're if you're going to be vegan to get everything your body requires you know you know who Travis Barker is the drummer from Blink 182 really cool guy got in a plane crash and

22:13uh was burned really badly had a bunch of skin grabs and stuff and uh it wasn't taking until he ditched his vegan diet he was having a real hard time healing and I hear things like that I go man what is going on because how come some people can tell me that they're doing so well they heal quicker they recover quicker on a vegan diet they feel better on a vegan diet and then other people are telling me you know it's just their body just wasn't healing correctly their immune system was floundering like right what's going on I mean I think part of it is probably that we have you know our bodies are different we have somewhat I mean we're the same species 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 so it may be that we process and need things in different ways U and

23:05there's for many people I think there's a real change in over time 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 because you're suddenly eating in general healthier cleaner food um after 10 20 years for many people I think there are depletions and consequences in the body of being strict vegan for you know for that long period of time did you attempt to talk to a nutritionist and find out like are there any foods that I should like quinoa or things on hemp protein things that I need to mix in that are more complete proteins 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 and it's attachment to my identity you

24:07know that had started to blur and loosen enough I was like you know I live in this world not in some fantasy world I live here and even the local farmer who grows our strawberries is smoke bombing 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 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 right not in this like physical natural world that I actually inhabit I'm actually an animal that inhabits this place I have a footprint here you know not just my

25:16carbon footprint because of the car I drive or whatever but I have a a physical footprint no matter what I eat right I'm impacting it's a whole network of connections you know through Agriculture and all kinds of ways I'm not separate from this right 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 and so I just started to experiment with it and see both how it felt physically but also sort of emotionally ethically spiritually philosophically how does it feel to start to to do that and it was strange I mean it was a kind of a bizarre experience to start to eat especially to start to eat meat again it was weird even before I was hunting I can only imagine I think what's going on is all connected to what your friend calls the superar what do it call it agent of forgetfulness yeah I think it's

26:10connected to that in that we are so disconnected from our food that even people that are are vegans that you know they think that they're causing no harm because they just eat plants if you're eating commercial grain you're you're a part of a massive widescale death in fact it's probably there's probably more dead animals per acre in if you're getting commercial grain than almost anything when they when they grind up that grain to chew it up and to turn it into like if you have uh corn or wheat and they chop all that stuff down those combines are indiscriminate they kill everything right I mean they've 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

27:05where it's a a monoculture right where you're just growing soybeans or you're just growing whatever whatever the hell it is I I think that by not participating in it by not participating in any aspect of the Gathering of the food you get this Detachment from it and you say you know hey I can remove myself from any cruelty any ethical concerns but just establishing a cruelty-free vegan diet right and it becomes a lot easier to to think in those black and white terms right either 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 it's all this whole system that everything including us is part of yeah and we as a culture as a society for for you know decades centuries have been very ways separating ourselves from that through industrialization um through you know

28:03just our ideas again this is culturally specific not every culture in the world thinks this way but we do uh think of ourselves as very separate and uh there's a environmental philosopher uh who who's now passed on but her name was Val plumwood 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 sort of like protect ourselves from death and the idea of of us being part of that world in a physical way we actually you know ending up being food eventually yeah she thinks that we and I think I think she's right that we reject that as a culture we just we don't have room for that right well that's one of the things what we do to our bodies when we embalm them we sort of remove ourselves

29:05permanently from the cycle right which is really kind of up have some from Malahide buddy like why do we do we really need to stare at our dead bodies like sitting with perfect clothing on and you know you're de it's just so up that we I've only seen it a couple times but I remember when it was my grandfather and uh I was really close to my grandfather so when I went to his funeral and I saw him sitting there in that box and I realized like how bizarre it was first of all he's not there I'm like this is a shell this is not my grandpa he's gone like this is some strange thing and like they've pumped him full of all this stuff to 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're supposed to put them in the ground and the bacteria eats them you fertilize the soil and make it better for everything

29:55around right and when we don't do that what do we do we burn our ourselves to to turn ourselves into powder so we're totally useless we're real weird with how we treat our bodies the concept of death yeah yeah that's totally true one of the things that I love to do with people that have uh too much of a Disney view of animals and like they get you know I can't believe that you would hunt I can't believe you would kill deer I do you know that deer eat birds and they'll go what yeah deer eat birds they just probably a bizarre uh I've seen a couple of those videos I mean probably pretty darn rare but they've chase them they've been known to again very rare but they've been known to like in the shallows like whack fish and eat them I pretty unusual behavior most of the time they can't pull it off but when they can pull it's like deer are designed essentially to graze it's real simple

30:46the way they are but they'll take their food any way they can get it and that is really hard for people to believe Like Cows as well like cows eat ground nesting birds all the time there's videos of cows do it and when you show that to people they're like what the is going on maybe what we're doing is we're ruining the Earth so much that the animals themselves are killing each other and eating no they've always done this they just don't do it a lot right because they're just not designed for it and there's plenty of vegetation where the deer live especially like white tail deer who live primarily around agriculture 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 sure I mean up our way in the north and in some other parts of of you

31:34know Northern us and and up into Canada where you get into mostly forested areas and you get overp populations of deer they wipe out their winter habitat if they have too many deer and whe their starvation time is winter right they're because of the deep snow they're compressed into tiny tiny fractions of their usual usual range and they can in fact you know starve to death in in vast numbers but around agriculture in more moderate climates yeah they've got no shortage of food yeah and deer it's really interesting how they're set up it's uh it's almost like uh it's making sure that they don't last through when they're the older strong mature bucks cuz a mature Buck will go from the prime of its life to on death door within a couple months during the rut and it's it's really crazy they drive thems I mean they just they use all their fat reserves they just burn it and they're

32:27doing it right when the Winter's coming right and sometimes a bad design yeah it's Terri but it's almost like it's on purpose because for people who aren't aware of the process what happens is the deer will uh eat all throughout the summer they you know they'll they'll fatten up they look great their antlers grow and uh as soon as the air starts getting crisp around the fall they get ready to party um The Velvet falls off their antlers their antlers start to get hard um and then the the females go into heat and then the party starts and they just run around rutting for so long that they sometimes forget to eat they burn off all their fat and they get skinny and scrawny and then by the end of it it's cold and when it's cold that's when they die so they'll go from being like a stud Prim of their life deer to being a dead starving to death frozen to death deer within a couple of months it's

33:20really weird yeah and especially in you know in those kinds of harsh climates where it's where it is cold deep snow limited food it can be really risky yeah like the like mu deer in particular right because um I know I don't know I know what happens with white tals but it may happen with mu deer as much or more well it's just uh nature almost has like these Fail Safe Systems set up to make sure that these mature bucks only have their time in the Sun for so long you know you you get your party on all the all the females love you you're having a great time you father a lot of Offspring and then that's a wrap yeah one of the things that I find fascinating is that different groups vegetarians hunters and others who often seem diametrically opposed on on an issue like hunting um often are motivated by really similar values I mean a concern for Environmental Conservation a concern

34:25for even Animal Welfare I mean in haunting the ethic of the clean kill the the idea that you should only shoot once and it should be virtually instantaneous you know and even the concern that you expressed y g i got this crash course so fast I could have wounded an animal you know the concern about wounding an animal is a concern about you know not causing suffering you know undo suffering not um violating essentially an animal welfare e right um and the there's such different languages being spoken Often by you know folks who are on uh sort of an animal rights or animal welfare activist side and folks who are on sort of a hunting and hunting conservation activist side of things and and often they're speaking very different languages and don't realize that they have some things in common um you had uh back at the beginning of January you had is it Phil Demers the

35:26guy with uh Marland exactly you know and so he's an animal rights activist doing really important work related to you know orcas and other captive um captive animals um and he has a real respect for and gets where you're coming from in your interest in hunting yeah you know and so there are people who do get it across those you know those he he's different first of all I'm pretty sure he eats meat didn't he say he eats meat I think he does he may be yeah but also on top of that he's we're talking about marine mammals that are super intelligent and I have I have a deep appreciation and respect for those things and I think they're basically like water people I really do I just think they don't have fingers they don't have a language that we can really accurately interpret but when you pay attention to how insanely smart dolphins and orcas are to me locking them up is akin to a slavery

36:28it's almost like slavery it's Insanity I I just despise it I think it's sick it costs me money cuz uh there's the best comedy room in Vegas is in the Mirage and I I won't work it I've done it in the past and then I was told that the Mirage has dolphins and I was like ah man I I can't work there I just can't I can't I can't I can't do comedy I can't have a hehe and a haha show above a slave ship and that's what it feels like sure but that idea that they're water people yeah is interesting because in many traditional hunting societies they speak of animals as people you know and of them as and even deer you know they have they have a society it's not the same say as a dolphin pod or a wolf pack it's a different but they know those animals really intimately as a species and sometimes even as individuals but the language the idea of them as as other people as as animal

37:30people right uh and yet they're hunting cultures you know and so they're they're taking lives uh but they also have a deep respect it's not that oh well we'll kill the ones we don't respect right but we'll kill the ones that are kind of ugly but the ones that we respect or 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 and I love her to death she's awesome but she loves animals she's vegetarian she loves animals Butch doesn't mind if I hunt wild pigs cuz they're disgusting they're ugly and disgusting there's this arbitrary aesthetic that that some people say well you know it's an ugly kind of fish or it's an ugly kind of mammal or any kind of fish really there's very few people give a if you kill a fish they just really don't care right it's and it's a different experience yes emotionally

38:21it's totally different and it is but it is it is weird and moving I mean there's a tangible sense of a loss of life I I was big into fishing when I was a kid when I was uh 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 fish every day I used to live in this place called Jamaica plane and they had this uh Lake there called Jamaica Pond and uh they had bass and trout and I loved it I'd go there every day and I'd catch fish there all the time and whenever I killed one and ate it it always felt weird like I just killed something right I mean that was the experience that actually made me decide to be a vegetarian I fished all my childhood growing up loved it my my uh fishing Mentor was a guy from Boston who grew up in the Bronx and he was a he was a Furniture builder in Boston and he'd come up and visit us in Southern New

39:09Hampshire and we'd you know we'd fish all the time 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 and I went fishing and I caught this trout and I killed it and I was like I didn't have to do that right I didn't have to kill that I could have had you know rice and veggies or whatever right well that I didn't have to was one of the big arguments that people even say against hunting even if they eat meat you can go to the supermarket you don't have to kill it right it's a voluntary participation that for some people is hard to Fathom yeah yeah now do you get all your meat from hunting all my red meat if if we have red meat I mean we'll buy local chicken you know um but if we happen to have red meat in the house it's because I was lucky the previous November and you won't go to the these people that

39:57you know that raise chickens and cows and I I could and there's just there's no really good rational argument for it I just never got back into the habit of like buying beef right right right ecologically and ethically it probably makes pretty good sense you know and I have I don't have a big argument against it I just never got into that back into that habit um so the experience of taking a deer is so Prof profoundly different obviously from going to the grocery store yeah or even going to a farmer you know um and having that is so valuable to me um 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 venis out of the freezer and you remember that deer that you killed I mean there's no forgetting yeah where that comes from oh yeah you know it's always present yeah

41:00it's Indescribable to someone who hasn't experienced it it's very very difficult to uh 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 and overused and watered down but there is a weird spiritual connection between your meat or a a tangible um 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 it was a a living being and now it's food on your plate and you're watching your family eat it or you're having friends to come over and eat it it's it's I I just think that cities are something really unusual and alien 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

41:59group together millions and millions of people and you just ship all the food in but in doing so we've created this really convenient way of looking at things 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 there different people that are trying to ethically Source their food I'm trying to get a a sense of how the hell this happened and how it's so pervasive and there's so much resistance to understanding and appreciating what the the the overall what the really big picture of where our food comes from uh what it actually is sure instead of this utopian view that I think like what we were talking about you had this idea before separating yourself from this world of animals MH and it's not just food obviously I mean every material that a city that a city

42:50uses water huge issue here in California right huge issue in Atlanta Georgia huge issue in many places that water is coming from somewhere else every material that that City uses very little is being produced actually the raw materials coming from that location so we're constantly drawing on rural areas you know farflung around the globe sometimes but certainly the immediate surroundings and cities are utterly dependent on that yes and um plastic and then waste products and then you know I have a friend who's a surfer he's a yoga teacher and he he loves surfing he's he's a real interesting cat kind of a free spirit um but he told me uh he's lived all over the world and um he's got a very bizarre accent because it's like a combination of like a bunch of different places where he Liv for 10 years here in Argentina for 10 years and and he surfs everywhere well he went

43:44surfing in Los Angeles he went surfing in uh Malibu after the rain and didn't know that you can't do that like you can't because there's so much waste that comes from our cities when it rains it pours into the ocean and it's like you're bathing in a toxic soup so he was sick for days just from surfing in the water right off our Shores just from all these chemicals and pathogens and sloughing off the everything all the oil all the the the residue break dust residue that's on the roads all that when you have a pouring rain it comes down that LA River and it just goes right into the ocean I mean just they say for like five or six days you're supposed to stay out of the ocean it takes a while filter all that stuff out and get it back to the where the state that it normally is at but you know we live in this really dirty gross polluted city that's right next to this beautiful

44:37ocean and there's consequences yeah yeah when you took your first year was that what was that like as an experience shocking strange um a definite tangible feeling of loss you know the loss of this life but also uh an incredible feeling of exhilaration this weird Primal connection when you're actually eating the meat over a campfire cuz we did it you know hardcore Back Country yeah back country public land in Montana off the Missouri River camping like the whole deal we did it the right way and uh 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 it's intense MH and it's it is the male bonding experience you know I mean there's like there's there's like football games oh yeah this is fun but hunting going out and hunting parties together I I had a conversation with my

45:41friend dunca Trussell yesterday about this that I think that there's some things that we um 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 our bodies are set up with these certain reward systems it's rewarding to gather up your own food and anybody who's ever grown a garden completely outside of hunting gardening is super satisfying it's amazing 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 you fertilized it and you added water there's this amazing feeling like the exuberation this like weird exhilaration feeling when you're eating eating food that you grew yourself and these things I think are these reward systems that are in

46:33place 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 from helping others you know in your community absolutely helping and also um hunting I think is in there so is but there's a bunch of weird things that are in there too um you know being uh sexually attractive is is in there too having someone think you're attrative like that's AAL Primal reward system that we all love and even uh 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 they do 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 in our bodies and I think archery is in there too and and I definitely think

47:24hunting and eating your own uh meat from an animal or from a fish or something that you've gotten and pulled from the wild one of the things about you know you say it's a male bonding Experience One the thing that's fascinating is that in so many of the old mythologies the the deity of hunting is a goddess well the the Earth itself right I mean Artemis and Diana you know they're women and and I know many many women who haunt and they you know have a just like men have a wide range of experiences and Views and values and attitudes toward it um but you know they of course also have this experience of of giving life of you know whether they're actually mothers or not they have this potential um and and the combination of that um plays out differently for different women but to to both be a Giver of Life and a hunter and a taker of life you know talk about being sort of

48:19spiritually connected to the world and to life and death yeah The Giver of Life thing excuse me is something that men will never really truly understand there's no way I mean I have this whole bit I'm doing about it in my act cuz we 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 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 I it totally makes sense women Hunters it's a very interesting thing because Steve Rell wrote this really interesting article about sexism in uh the way we perceive Hunters because uh there was this cute girl who was going on these uh African safaris and taking photos with these animals that she had shoten and uh all

49:19these people were so angry at her and this was pre Cecil the lion MH 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 Kudo 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 Kendall Jones Kendall Jones oh Kendall Jenner is like one of the Kardashians right probably I don't know so you know who I'm talking about yeah and she you know she had death threats and got hundreds of thousands of Facebook likes I think she probably got

50:05more Facebook friends than I do um and it was all really quick and really fascinating how many people just turned out and and attacked her and you know the hunting community supported her in a lot of ways but the the 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 if you want to eat meat you can go to a store I saw all that stuff sure the fly and there's a there's a lot of really good Arguments for that first of all not 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 that's there's no eco friendly that what 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 we're having fun right and I mean I I think the you know like Steve r i remember

50:56that article by Steve and I think that there are a whole bunch of different things going on in a situation like that there's the perception um of hunting particularly so-called trophy hunting or so-called sport hunting and the language is really problematic right um that it is about us you know and I say us you know the hunters who do that who like know fly to Africa I don't I never done that and I don't intend to but 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 right right so that ethic of respecting life and therefore you take life for a serious purpose including food that's an ethic that actually not just in those who are criticizing trophy hunting but in hunting tradition you know there are many want waste laws in many states you cannot kill a deer and just leave it

52:02there right even if you have a hunting license it's illegal right that's understood as wrong right and there are many traditional hunting prayers from hunting cultures where it's you know I took your life because I needed the food the hide Etc you know um so that basic respect for life and also like in the Cecil case you know there was the fact that he was shot and and then 40 hours later killed M you know the animal suffered it was not a clean kill right uh and there was outrage over that that that ethic also is part of hunting culture you don't do that well you also don't leave you know you don't take the head and leave behind the rest of the body that's one of the things that renell has said about lion hunting he's like if I shot a lion I would eat that lion and you can eat a lion I guess right I guess you know I guess they're edible but well he has this I'm sorry go

52:54no I'm just saying that there are these values about respect for life and about Animal Welfare um and suffering and so on that are seen as being violated by a situation like Cil or by you know other Hunters Kendall Jones or others who go over it's like you didn't need to do that why are you doing that you're not you just you're not using it yourself you know that to um put it Africa is one of the problematic place but to um 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 it's still ecologically you're flying in a plane you know it's you know it's really kind of but it is an ethical way to acquire meat in fact a lot of the lamb and most of the elk that you buy commercially in America comes from New Zealand so they import elk from there right I didn't know that yeah interesting deer elk Red Deer a lot of

53:47venison comes from New Zealand lamb comes from a lot of lamb comes from New Zealand they don't have any Predators so have you ever been over there or have you ever I watched a video about it last night I mean they have enormous herds of sheep I mean you've never seen anything like it it's insane and elk and uh well not elk Stags um Red Deer something yeah 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 there's no Predators there and all the animals have been imported there so New Zealand is a very strange place because it's almost like a paradise it's unbelievably never been there but I've seen I've seen footage of it I haven't either man I've only seen footage uh I want to go just not even in hunting just as a vacation I want to take my family over there and just check it out cuz it just looks so

54:32cool 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 in the case of you know Kendall Jones and others there's also a gender issue also an issue about women as killers right you know and I think that is even more disturbing right I don't I don't agree that that's the only reason people jumped on it because people jumped on the dentist too right I agree uh but but I think it also it is troubling in a different way well the dentist killed a lion that had a name and that's where things got really weird because the anthropomorphization of these animals that we've experienced in movies and in televis shows and commercials and what have you that's it gets real weird with people cuz you name

55:33something and all a sudden they think that that that thing is like someone's pet or something yeah I think the naming has a it you know certainly adds a dimension to it the fact that you know turned out to be you know a famous lion um but you know there have been other cases um you know Donald Trump Jr or you know one of the Trump sons was you know several years back Trump junor and it wasn't a named animal no but still the you the whole trophy right the image of trophies and you know you've got these you know these skulls of of deer and and Elk you've taken and I have some too and they're for me anyway it's not a trophy in the sense of oh look here's what I did you know it's not some you know some kind of Macho proving you know that I'm going to hang up in the living room and and show off it has some sort of totemic or symbolic power you know it reminds me of that

56:38hunt right and it you know I don't want to not to throw it away it's something that i' I value and and and respect 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 it's there's no stuffed things because they're not real 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 but the the bodies when you see those things it's a foam body and they tan the hide and they stretch the hide over it and it's it's so much it's fake these skulls are this is the actual skull of the animal and to me that is it's a beautiful piece of art it's fascinating to me when I look at I mean I that that's the mule deer the first animal I killed over to your left right there I look at that thing every

57:26day and I look at it and every day I find some new area on it the 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 aners but I wouldn't ever leave it behind either you know I I would want to keep that too right and so you know the the idea of Trophy and the language of Trophy and the symbols like you know cruelty is you know that's troubling for people and I think important for hunters to get better and and Stell has spoken about this too to get better at uh expressing what's meaningful about the experience of hunting what's meaningful about the meat as youve as you've spoken about a bit what's meaningful about a skull or something you what is it that is that is Meaningful and I I think people can actually understand that if we can move past just black and white hunting is

58:26good or bad trophy hunting is good or bad and that kind of thing no I think they can too I 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 I got in this conversation with someone really recently about it where I I found a bacon lettuce and tomato sandwich on their Instagram page after they were talking all kinds of crazy about hunters and um 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 every everything about it was like like it must be done you must stop this is we're killing you have a BLT on your Instagram page like what's happening here like what is this that causes that well it's almost like when you get into something for the first time you can't shut the up about it and uh I've been guilty of that many

59:15times in my life if I got into race car driving or something like that people in the podcast probably like will you shut the up about race car driving and it got to the point you know with hunting there's a lot of that like to this day like I'll put this podcast up and people go oh great another hunting podcast ZZ z z z right I get it I don't care I'm 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 a digital form and I think these conversations are important right now I think this conversation the conversation about where do your food come from what made you make these choices I think these are important conversations because I think the disconnect and recognizing the disconnect that we have between where our food comes from and and these

60:02attitudes that we develop and have uh that we really don't don't have any problem with or we don't 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 at oursel there's a blind spot there and then I think this is this is a very important conversation because like I said I think we've created something really weird with cities with cities and with with supermarkets we've created this really weird thing where for our entire history the as long as people have been people we knew where our food was kind of coming from you knew you went to a butcher you got the food that butcher killed that animal you knew you go to a farmer he grew the vegetables you knew that were they came out or you did it yourself or you thousands of years and those were that it was real clear and

60:49now it's not anymore now it's real weird 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 the whole the whole process takes a minute and you're eating something that's already cooked right and you're drinking this vat of sugary liquid with ice cubes in it like how the the ice cubes it's 95 degrees outside where'd you get the ice there's this weird sort of removal from nature that we have and the natural process of collecting and um Gathering and then enjoying the food that you've gathered right and for me the interest in reconnecting those things and being aware of where things come from and how they're 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

61:52turning away when people willfully like I don't want to know mhm 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 yeah at what at how things are connected and look at what's going on one of the first reviews of of my book that was written was by a vegetarian and she said that the book actually made her think about going back to being vegan because she was Disturbed you know and she also said that she thought that the author she didn't know me um would consider it a compliment to know that it led her in that direction and she was actually right because I wasn't trying to convert her into being an omnivore or being a hunter I was asking look at these issues think about these values think about animals think about nature

62:48think about our relationship with these things and you decide what you're going to do in your personal life you know and the fact that she could respect me enough and anticipate that I would respect her decision was great cuz she wasn't doing that willful ignorance thing right you know I think we're lucky that there's so much confusion I really do I think this is a fascinating time to be alive and I think we're lucky that everything is so bizarre CU it makes these conversations so they crackle because there's some something so weird about it there's something so weird about uh a civiliz an animal a life form a species that has developed for whatever hundreds of thousands of years we've been people eating meat MH I mean that's essentially when you look at scientists when they discover the the the difference in the size of the lower hominids brains and humans brains

63:40they're trying to figure out what the went wrong or right rather where we we developed this gigantic brain or wrong or wrong yeah I mean could be wrong you know we got to get back to the Garden right um if it if it was what they think it is it's because we started eating meat we started hunting we had to develop ways to be more clever and capture these animals we're soft and spongy and we're very weak animals right so we had to get smart yeah compared to sabertooth tigers we're really we're crunchy yeah we're ridiculous we can't outrun anything well I watched a video pull this video up that I tweeted yesterday cuz if any anybody wants to know how hard it is out there there's a video of a Martin which is a uh an animal that a lot of people associate with uh fur trading and people go oh how could you kill a Martin weasel weasel family big weasel yeah and it's chasing

64:32a rabbit and I don't know why I never thought of them as carnivores I probably should have thought of them as carnivores there's a Martin chasing a rabbit it chases this thing for hundreds of yards and this is a Sprint look at this look up the screen you right over here you look to your right you don't have to look behind you look at this thing so this Martin is chasing after this rabbit unusual terrain Open Road a open road and ice and it's a dead heat for a while but the Martin is just slowly relentlessly closing in on this rabbit I don't know where these people are but they were speaking a different language um and the rabbit's trying to Zig and trying to zag but the Martin is just one step after one step just an inch closer a little closer a little closer and they're hustling and this rabbit is like bam and then he gets some but look look at this evil

65:29little 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 Jack that rabbit we had essentially the same thing happen 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 and there's a a young Snowshoe hair you know little little rabbit it and a tiny weasel like an man I mean things like as big around as a hot dog I mean it's a tiny little thing much smaller than rabbit killed that rabbit they're intense they're amazing right there right there I was I mean and I'm a Hunter but it was it was still horrifying yeah to see and it's totally I mean happens all the time yeah plants getting eaten animals eating animals yeah insects birds I mean everything's

66:22eating everything all the time and we don't see it most of time most of us unless we are out you know out in the outdoors a lot or paying attention in the garden you don't see it happening all time in Alaska and a brown bear killed a moose in his driveway and they had to shoot the bear the people that you know whoever the wildlife management people they had to shoot the bear because it decided to bury this moose in his garage his driveway yeah or in his um his lawn like like this is his territory now you'll be coming back for that and there's a 600 lb bear who just killed a moose in his driveway and that's not even a big bear which is really terrifying bears for for brown bears yeah yeah they're so big and to to think that and he loves it there and to think that he's watching out his window like a little piece of glass little thin piece of glass the family's look oh my

67:15god look oh you know there's a video of the same thing happening of uh of one H there's a video of a bear killing a moose in this family's driveway way where they're looking out the window 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 you know when I was up in Anchorage we would just drive a little bit oh here's one right here here's another one it's like common up there there's a bear that's dragging this moose and this moose I've seen this one this moose is dead right or is it still alive looks dead this one's dead there's somewhere the there's a another video we don't need to see a lot of these videos is enough but there's one where it's still alive and it's killing it in in the driveway things screaming and trying to get back

68:04up and the the bear drags it away and and mauls it and yeah I mean it's 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 and we do as Hunters as Farmers you know as as pet owners you know they have companion animals we have this moral compass of some kind well we're conscious entities aware of ourselves we have compassion and and a moral code built around these these sorts of impulses to protect right animals from suffering kind of thing and yet we see what happens in nature on occasion at least we get to witness something like that and we have to integrate you know what's real in nature the way animals do things you know our our moral Frameworks aren't terribly relevant in that world but we still evaluate them like say it's evil you

69:09know what I mean even you don't literally mean the Mart's evil but we we have we think in those moral terms about animals yeah we do well I think this is the the real argument that vegans have that we're trying to move away from any suffering and this is what they're trying to do by trying to take a cruelty-free path by trying trying to choose what they think is the most ethical lifestyle what they're doing is they're sort of answering this call of evolving this this call that they have of the evolving species 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're we can no longer do this we have to evolve socially beyond that and the argument which has you know some legitimacy to it in a sense is that we have to evolve Beyond yeah eating meat

70:03and so on well that's why I think this conversation is so fascinating is because the the argument does have a little bit of Merit to it it is not a black and white issue and neither is what you would call quote unquote trophy hunting that's not a black and white issue either because Zimbabwe just announced they're going to call 200 Lions because they've outlawed lion hunting so now they have a surplus of lions they have a problem with the undulates are getting decimated so they're like all right we got to kill some lions and each one of those 200 lions that they're going to call would have brought them $50,000 of Revenue towards conservation that would stop poaching that would uh keep wildlife habitat it's it's really complicated and the people that are on the outside conveniently ignorant to all these facts that are incredibly complex um they they're not they're notare Ware

70:55of this big picture like I'm not saying you should go to Lion to Africa and go hunt lions I don't want to do it I'm not going to do it I don't have any desire to kill anything like a lion 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 uh that balance is kind of screwed up now that they've taken out hunting of Alliance which is hard for people to imagine you know cuz you'll read about Africa that some areas the lions are threatened you know there's this um really interesting page that I follow on Instagram called save the lion they have all these really cool photos of lions and you I think lions are amazing I'm glad they're around I I like looking at videos of them I would love to see them in real life other than a zoo you know but you get too many of

71:47them you got a real problem and the only animal that can figure that out is us that's it there's you know the the the goats aren't going to get together and go hey man we've got to do something about this mountain line population we're just there's no more goats we got to we got to we got to help you know no it's it's only people that can count the number Wildlife biologists that can figure out what's the the right amount 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 yeah I mean the pred Predator is predators are really complicated in all all over the world I mean here they're complicated in Africa they're complicated in many parts of the world um ecologically in relationship to prey you know if if we had a very large area and we just weren't part of the picture it's not as though Predators

72:37would just completely Wipe Out the prey they will run out of food as prey gets harder to catch prey is not going to disappear entirely just because of a lion you know group of lions or or Wolves uh or any other kind of Predator they will EB and flow they have different sort of states of equilibrium high density of both low density of both changes and those sorts of things happen in relationship to us and our different interests agriculture livestock you know ulet that the local human population values then it gets really complicated uh and you know the issue you're bringing up about while they're culling lions and it could have brought in so many tens of thousands of dollars from hunters and I I've just been working on this essay about these sorts of issues there's all these practical issues about money conservation and those sorts of things that are happening in Zimbabwe for

73:36example or other countries uh or here and then there's the the moral and ethical issues around animal welfare and is it respectful of life to kill an animal just for the head or do you have to eat it and right so there's there's a language of practical what does the Zimbabwe need to fund given programs how do you fund that and then there's the whole discussion in language of of the morals and ethics of it which is you know those are active discussions among Hunters too yeah they really are and and they should be because again this is not a black and white issue it's very complicated you're talking about a country like Zimbabwe which is incredibly poor which could have benefited from $1 million in in money that would Aid conservation if they allow owed these hunts to continue so each one of these 200 lions that were killed would be worth $50,000 you know that's uh that's

74:34fascinating because it is it is it's because it's not it's not really that simple and also Africa is enormous and this is something that a lot of people don't consider either when you think of Africa you hear well lions are in danger well they're in danger in some spots but you know that's like saying I I looked out my yard today there's no deer okay well go to Upstate New York there's a shitload of them they're everywhere to the point where they're they have to hire assassins essentially to go in and call the deer cuz they've got so many of them they've got to go in and shoot them I mean this is this is a a big problem in a lot of places on the East Coast like uh there's areas in Pennsylvania that don't have a hunting season for deer and in people's neighborhoods you can just shoot them all the time they want they they bring in archers there's this television show this bow hunting

75:25show where it was in the the middle of the spring and uh they they brought in these archers to set up tree stands in these like residential neighborhoods it's crazy yeah 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 you know the animals that used to be symbols of the wild and still are for many of us yeah are hanging out in people's Lawns not only that they're giving people lime dis that's a big is concern about that that's a big concern ticks that carry Lyme disease they say something like 60% of the ticks in New York state have Lyme disease there's some insane number like that I might have just made that up MH check check but it's some really bizarrely high number of ticks in certain areas of Upstate New York where there's a a giant

76:20uh prevalence of De both deer and um and Lyme disease that they they have a huge issue and they they really don't know how to stop it yeah because Lyme disease is devastating if you get it it's horrible on your immune system it's rough yeah can get into your nervous system do all sorts of things to you yeah and that's also a problem that happens when you have overpopulation of deer there's all chronic wasting disease a bunch of different diseases that come through overpopulation and you know and it's a 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 and well they're doing these this is part of the whole trophy hunting thing that's so

77:15bizarre they're doing these fenced in establishments where you go and hunt and you're hunting these animals that have been grown just for their enormous antlers we covered a couple of days ago with my friend Doug Duran and uh we showed some photos that animals that don't even look like deer no they're bizarre they have like these weird sculptures on their heads yeah like like bushes right like a bush growing out of their head like just so much so much antler material it just doesn't make any sense yeah oh it's a huge industry the the Indianapolis Star I think a few years ago did a really good long form expose on on that whole industry and it is are isn't that just how it's always going to be though I mean if you have any sort of uh a discipline any sort of a Pursuit you're going to have people that are unethical you're going to have people that are uh you know race car

78:06drivers that are using just stronger engines than 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 across the board in life sure you can have people who want to do that yeah whether it's legal or not and how much industry is allowed to be built up around it right different question and so you have like the hunting industry or The Hunting Community the hunting world you're going to have people like yourself that are doing it to provide their family with sustainable meat 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 he could show everybody you know like this is my Zebra Room you know like you ever seen those guys it's it's strange man I was watching the television show once and this guy brought these people into this room that

78:56looked like a High School auditorium and he was just like this super wealthy guy who hunts all over the world that's all he does and it was just like a stuffed Zoo it was the strangest thing birds and baboons and all these stuff things I'm like this is the weirdest guy this guy's like a serial killer of animals right like some weird thing that he's attached himself to you know one of the things that's tricky is because such a relatively small percentage of the population here in the states hunts you know it's how small is it you know it it varies depending on how it's it's millions of people though it's millions of people it is um but you know it's on the order of 10% give or take what percentage of vegan fewer than that but again it's a small number right you in La I bet it's higher vegans to Hunters I bet the hunters are way outnumbered this goofy City could be I would imagine uh

79:59but 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 right you know and the analogy I sometimes draw is you know because such a huge percentage of the population drives cars we can disting between good drivers and bad drivers people who get into road rage and people who are polite we can distinguish these things and we have understandings of it because we experience it and we see it and we don't judge people for being drivers or lump them all together you know but any minority Community runs the risk this true for vegetarians true for hunters true for any minority Community we run the risk of being identified as a sort of a monolithic singular group so you get you know a hunter who portrays a certain image of

80:59hunting and if that gets oh that's what hunting is right boom yeah you know this this identity gets attached to all hunters and not I'm not saying that always happens but there's a risk of that um and I think the part of the gift of of this time particularly in relation to the food movement you know Michael pollen's work and is that people are asking questions people are thinking about agriculture people thinking about wild Foods people think about their relationships ecologically and ethically with what they eat yeah I and I think that's great I think uh I think it's a good thing I think these weird sort of um stereotypes that we have about hunters they're really easy to do in this day and age it's really it's they're attractive you know from the time Bambi was released it's attractive to lump Hunters into this evil like if you see hunters in a movie they're

81:49almost always these cruel like did you ever see the movie Wolverine m Wolverine got mad because there was a bunch of hunters and they poisoned a bear and he beats them up in a bar they're all mean people like meanwhile Wolverine what are you eating dude look at the size of you you you know what are you eating Hugh Jackman it ain't lentils you know you're eating a lot of meat I bet it's 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 we just get to the give me a piece or even more disconnected we go to a restaurant so disconnected it's it's it's like we're 18 steps removed sure and it's it's real convenient to look at Hunters like some horrible evil thing you know you like I said one of the my

82:43favorite is the people that eat meat and say you don't have to do that because you can just go to the supermarket why would you want to do it you only do it because you're cruel like 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 is this what you want to do you know I mean I think you're right about the the movies excuse me uh from Bambi on having that kind of um cultural impact and portrayal of hunters as you know a force of evil and being sort of anti-at right you know the the sort of disruptors of of this eden-like natural world um and I think that a lot of times hunting industry and and Hunters today and the media around hunting forget how the rest of the world perceives like the the trophy photo even if it's an animal you're going to eat you know you're smiling with the picture

83:45you know it's like what is seen in that from someone who's not experienced that and doesn't you know is that a image of respect for the animal what is the if if a hunter is expressing joy in that picture is it Joy is it Joy at the death what what's going on you know and those sorts of images in you know TV shows and just photos posted online I think it's hard for and and it's even hard for me you know but I think it's hard for a lot of non Hunters like what what does that mean it's uh it's kind of disturbing well yeah is it that you're happy that you accomplished this very difficult thing or is it that you're proud of yourself that you're a killer right you know are you uh are you posing with this thing because it's your trophy and you win you know are you cruel are you happy because you're happy that you k you smiling because that's what you do for cameras I mean you know and I've never

84:48been terribly Comfort I've taken photos like when I've haunted and succeeded in in the first time I did it I you know took a photo minute because I wanted to be able to send it to my uncle right but I wasn't smiling I just for me it was like I had have to force a smile I'm actually not I I don't experience the same sort of rush that some people do in it um I find hunting meaningful and I find that moment incredibly powerful um but it's never been only until just this past fall I I finally took a photo that I actually felt I really that I really felt good about you know and I was what what were you doing in the photo it's actually on my Facebook page I think um 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

85:49camera 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 there 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 poy 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 live in 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 it doesn't take away from the reverence that I have for the animal you know uh especially elk elker in my opinion they're like almost like a mythical creature I'm very very happy

86:46when I when I've killed an elk especially the one that I killed with a bow cuz it's so hard to do it's insanely difficult amount of pressure and it's over when you've accomplished it like if I if I get ready for a rifle hunt I sight my rifle in um I go to the range I 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 I'm I'm good to go MH if I am thinking about hunting in uh September I will start preparing in October for the following September I'm not b yeah cuz once I started hunting with a bow I realized like this is insanely difficult this is not something you can kind of dabble in and I know some people do and I don't know how the hell they do it um maybe they just don't maybe they're not they're not worried about the consequences as much as I am or maybe maybe I don't know maybe they're

87:47just bad RIT than me I don't think so though I just think I think archery is something that you have to do all the time 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 most of the people that I know this is me with a an elk that I shot MH I'm happy right there and people got mad at me for that picture but it's it's hard I think for people who you know you've experienced that you were there you know what you felt yeah you know what your reverence was for that animal you know what you were happy about you know I'm happy it died quick too right you you know what all the things that went on there but as a snapshot to someone who's never experienced anything like that mhm it doesn't they don't know any of that you look like a a mean person who's happy that you've just

88:37killed 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 everything went great all my training paid off all the hard work all the thinking all the preparation all of it paid off but that's not just for me that's for everybody else too right but that's also why it has a really long paragraph attached to it where I went into and usually there's not that context yeah well for me I think it's very important it's uh it was very important it was important to thank my friend Cameron Haynes because without

89:23his help and without his teaching me I it would have taken a lot longer to learn how to get good with a bow MH and to understand uh how what a difficult Pursuit it is and just to keep your nerves together when this thousand PB tree Forest horse is coming up the hill screaming at you and you have to shoot that thing with a bow and arrow you know there's a lot going on there man and there's consequences if that thing decides to kick your ass there's not a whole lot you could do you know that's a a have you ever hunted elk before I never I was I was out in New Mexico this fall for I had a writing residency down there for a month and I I had a a mu deer tag for a few days at the end of that I did not end up shooting uh didn't shoot at all when I was down there at an animal um saw a few deer um and but saw a few elk up close um I wasn't hunting them but they came through we we heard them

90:17coming and looks like wow they're awesome that's almost like a moose up where I am that's a big animal they're pretty close they're pretty close to the size of a moose yeah they're awesome man they're amazing they're so cool there's I heard and I heard at least one bugle which was wild I never heard him I'd heard you know i' heard tape of it but I never actually heard one bugle what what time of the year was it when you were there I was there in October when I go um I'm going to go hunting again in September and I'm going to bring my kids and on one day I'm 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 cuz it is amazing man I for someone who's never been like in a canyon while they're all around you screaming as the morning light is coming coming up it's it's one of the weirdest

91:12things in all of Nature 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 outside of hunting just take the hunting out of it just just be there and hear this this huge Barrel chested thousand pound animal screaming at the top of his lungs there's really nothing like them yeah and you know the fact that we have these populations of these animals these amazing amazing animals and the and the places you know it's a big debate that I know Stell has been involved in you know the politics of public lands mhm you know there are a lot of people who want to turn you know Federal lands over to the state and privatize a lot of that sell a lot of that off and well that's a big issue with a lot of Republican politicians it's one of the reasons why renella considers himself a political

92:07unic he's like the Democrats want to take your guns away and the Republicans want to take your land and it's uh it's real interesting right this land that we have in this country was established this these wild lands these public lands by Theodore Roosevelt and he established it because he was a hunter and a conservation you realiz like you've got to lock this stuff down you you had you know John we founding the Sierra Club who who had a lot in common with Roosevelt disagreed with him about hunting but you know equally important you know equally committed to preserve you know y preserve these places we need you know not everything is going be public but we need public land and even Yos is an issue man they're they're calling Buffalo now they're they're shooting bison yeah somebody or Yellowstone Yellowstone I'm sorry I always those to those wi you know

92:55it's just a yeah a why yeah I guess um but Yellowstone with the Bison they're having a real issue you know they they have to they have to call them now and people that that want to be able to hunt Yellowstone are kind of angry about the whole thing they're eventually going to have to call some of the Grizzlies are saying because the Grizzlies are getting too crazy and they're getting too comfortable with people yeah they have real issues even in yed I think with bears not bears get you know getting in people's cars yeah open open your car like a can opener taking a can apart yeah they smell food you're good night I know even a smaller black bear I just can't believe how strong those things are they're amazing we because we live in the woods I mean we have them come investigate our house sometimes you'll see their prints or I've seen them on the back porch you know through the

93:48screen right it's like hi I mean and they're pretty skittish I mean where we are they're you know they do not hang around people um and so all you have to do is make noise and they take off you know they're they're not really dangerous to people at all but it's pretty neat to be that close to them and you see even a small one you're like that's a pretty good siiz powerful animal Ran's friend um took this young guy uh like a I don't know if it's one of his relatives or whatever took him on a black bear hunt uh while they were sleeping took them on some kind of hunt I don't even know if it was a black bear hunt but while they were sleeping was a attacked by a 500lb black bear in his tent um big melee and sues everybody screaming 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 yeah the the whole thing is

94:44chaos they wind up killing the bear 7 foot tall 500b black bear that had come to kill this kid mauled him cut him up pretty bad but yeah bears are they're 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 you'd 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's like that's pretty hardcore oh it's so crazy yeah well you have to do what you have to do to stay alive and that's again we can't appreciate that yeah we we are 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

95:47I'm thinking about these s traditional hunting cultures too there's this great film documentary called diet of souls that was done by this guy uh up in the the north up in like Alaska 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 you know hunting cultures they're your equals they aren't just animals you know they're powerful and and yet they're also your daily bread they're also what you eat every day and how does that get you know integrated in these Traditions that's it's 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 as you know yeah right we have these this sort of hierarchy and we'll eat the lower ones or the ugly ones as we talked about but the ones that are equal to us or

96:48higher or better or maybe there's nothing higher or better than us in western civilization in in our imagination unicorns right unicorns exactly rainbow unicorns um so we've had this convenient way of creating this hierarchy and and and thinking of ourselves sort of being at the top of this pyramid in some way um but in cultures that see themselves still as very much part of a more of a a circle of peers you know in the community and yet also are eating these animal people all the time is a different world viw well vegans would say well why don't you start eating people then if you want to be all spiritually connected to your food right how about hey friend you're going respect you I'm G to eat you now you're going to feed my whole neighborhood right yeah well you know there's there's something that we appreciate about these Native American cultures that had a deep

97:44reverence for the animals they or ancient European cultures for that matter what like what ancient European cult well I me pre you know before agriculture before for um Christianity 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 the caves of of Lasco and France you know were painted by ancient European people who had probably a somewhat similar um sort of shamanistic spiritual and hunting relationship with these other animal people you know well the first time I went deer hunting I I really do believe that like locking eyes on that deer and about being about to shoot it I I felt like it was some weird psychedelic experience in some sort of a strange way it almost felt like I had taken a drug cuz I felt like there's some strange connection or some strange

98:44frequency that I had tuned into that had never been a part of before I'd never experienced that before now I could you know I had a protein bar in my my pocket I could go back to camp we had a cooler full of food I was still pretty detached even while being interconnected but those people that painted those paintings on the walls in the caves in France they were desperately connected intensely connected and they were without the burden of our our our these 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 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 um you know Ceremonies for for sending the hunters out and ceremonies for welcoming them

99:45back in because you are out there doing violence to another large mammal and those ceremonies and those sort of uh religious or spiritual practices are different from but also kind of similar to how we've dealt again in in Big Time history uh in the large scale how we've dealt with Warfare 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 to other hum to other humans in that case which is is different and yet they're also you know if you're doing to other animal people so that you know the Buffalo people the deer people right um there is still a similar you know moral ambiguity about this you know it's they were free in a sense from some of the baggage we carry now sure I think you're right yeah but was there still moral ambiguity about taking life and needing to respect that Animal by using it fully and I

100:48think so I don't know if there was ambiguity but there was certainly probably a deeper reverence um and an understanding 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 um I mean what year do you think it was where the first vegan was invented I don't know was it the 80s oh probably probably earlier than that 60s could be I have no idea yeah but it's had to be within 100 years right I mean vegetarianism it's been around for a long time it's been around for a long time even here I mean since the 1800s yeah came over as part of this Christian group from from England um and has been around in other parts of the world for for much longer you know in

101:41India and other parts of the world um veganism is I think a relatively new invention jy's got an answer the vegan Society 1944 okay a couple decades off first modern day vegans in November of 1944 Donald Watson called a meeting with five other non-dairy vegetarians including elely shrigley to discuss non-dairy vegetarian diets and Lifestyles all right and he died of a common cold a week later 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 I probably had very little little idea what they were doing nutritionally yeah well that's a weird thing too people like they show a picture of a gorilla and show the gorilla only eats vegetables you can do it too um we're yeah we're not gorillas

102:46try feeding a cat on E vegetables they go blind yeah they do not they do not do do well although people still do it I know I heard you were talking about that on on one of your shows I was reading about it today I was reading another article about it today this morning about vegan cat owners yeah like God that's tricky is they go blind yeah it's not they are obligate carnivores they must eat me yeah well so much so that they actually have to add torine to cat food because a lot of cat food just in the process of loses that yeah loses torine like they're brutal they are the cleanup crew of nature the cats anything with a limp gets taken out you know and I have these two cute fluffy ragd Doll cats they're the sweetest cats in the world but they're vicious man they're vicious to each other and they definitely vicious they catch something outside MH I had this my cat

103:40was 18 years old and she killed a bird in the courtyard 18 the estimates on the number of wild birds you know song birds that are killed by cats both both domestic and feral States it's like a billion a year I'm not kidding you they think it's the the biggest threat I believe it's estimated to be the biggest threat to uh wild song birds in North America is cats they are Hunters they are hardcore and there's way too many of them there's so many of them and you know people love them as pets here it goes 3.7 billion Birds annually oh my God 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 US each year each year 3.7 billion birds in the continental United States yeah that's amazing so your kitty cat and that bird feeder bad comination oh my God that is amazing yeah that's amazing yeah that's

104:53amazing what a crazy animal a cat is they're just these little killers that allow us to take care of them and you pick them up and they purr because they just can't eat you you're just too big that's right that's really the relationship that's my friend is a cop much better than saber to Tigers you know yeah my friend's a cop and he said one of the craziest things was they would find people that had died in their house and they had cats they cat just go right for your face just eat your face off so they'd find this person who died you know a week ago and they just ran out of cat food the cat just uh eats your face what is this domestic cats 6.9 billion and 20.7 billion mammals mostly mice shrews rabbit squirrels and I don't know what a volle is V it's like it's like a mouse little bigger each year according to a study published last year in nature Communications that is insane between

105:501.4 and 3.7 billion Birds and 6.9 and 20.7 billion mammals well I'm not a big fan of mice so them I like cats not not big into mice right I I pick sides we all bigid we we do you know and that's you know when we have a cat that's part of our family or a dog that's part of our family and obviously they're 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 humans or whether we have you know wolves that become dogs you know that hunt with us or or cats that we that we adopt for various reasons and that you know that group uh becomes you know family you don't eat family no well have you ever watched

107:02that um pen and Teller show uh they had an episode on animal activists and the people for the ethical treatment of animals like like what the roots of their argument their their ideas are they don't want pets mhm they don't think we should have any captive animals no pets no pet dogs no pet cats everything's free to roam and do as it will um and no eating any animals which is like what kind of world we going to live in then well there was a there's a fascinating I think it was uh Cleveland Amory who was one of the founders of the fund for animals I believe I have this right um had a vision you know of you know the future world and it was separate predators and prey separate them like in the in the wild like so how do the predators eat Magic magic unicorns I mean yeah I mean that's hilarious so he wanted to stop any sort of Cruelty even in nature right right well then you're going to get

108:03cannibalism done I mean there's already a huge problem with cannibalism in the bear Community like Bears when male bears come out of dens they actively search for Cubs they want to eat Cubs it's one of the first things they do they do it to try to bring the female to Estus and they also do it because they're hungry and they they're cannibals right when I was um 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 um the female chased the male off the carcass and then the female finished it off her own baby she just ate it once it was dead she started eating it and they were like whoa and they said they had been I mean these people they live in Northern Alberta okay they've been around some animals and Wild their whole life and they're like for even for us that was like whoa yeah because there's

108:58really 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 believe or have good evidence that they're really intelligent um 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 right um 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 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 like animals have feelings not

110:01just they can physically suffer but they have emotional you know they have emotions you can see it in your dog you can see it in wild animals sometimes they have emotions and that's tough and often on the hunting side it'll be oh that's just so-called anthropomorphism we're we're you're just projecting human well there's pretty good research on a wide range of species that they have emotions um as well as the ability to physically feel pain and suffer uh 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 yeah or acknowledge where you know Peta you know or other animal rights groups at least not acknowledge where they're coming from you may not agree with their arguments that are conclusions you know same as some people might not agree with you hunting you know but at least acknowledge there's a

110:58for you hunting there's a a valuable experience and an ethical impulse to you know confront what it means to eat meat for example for vegetarians and and animal rights activists of various kinds there's an Impulse to prevent suffering and respect life 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 yeah I think and I think it speaks to what we were talking about earlier about reward systems that are in place to ensure survival and ensure certain types of behavior and activities I mean it only makes sense that an animal would feel remorse if its child got killed that's that's why you take care of it and protect it I mean if you've ever seen a mother cow around its Calves if you go near those calves the mother will go crazy and it's there's built-in systems that are established to

111:52make sure that these animals continue to procreate and continue to stay alive and make sure they have healthy populations it's just the same reason why our emotions are in place I mean it's all really kind of a grand scheme to ensure breeding and ensure community and ensure all these I mean we we 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 and I mean it's I don't want to break it down as cruel and say like you know all all romance songs and every every book on on companionship is every movie that shows an awesome relationship is just a ridiculous biological trick that's established to make sure that you

112:47continue to stay alive long enough to make more people right but really that's kind of what it is you know I mean I I don't want to break it down so much to that because I think there's beauty in all of it you know there's Beauty and love and look there's in a strange way there's Beauty in watching that grizzly bear Maul that moose in the middle of the driveway there's Beauty in watching that Martin chase down that rabbit I wouldn't want to be the rabbit I'm not really sure I want to be the Martin either you know I mean I I don't think I have to identify with it to appreciate the spectacle the amazing spectacle that natur is providing and you know the we we throw the word awesome around a lot now you know the last 10 20 years yeah but the old word awe yeah you know the power of that and there's Beauty but there's also sometimes borderline horror fear

113:39but but nature is awesome in that I mean life and death and our own lives and deaths the you know the creation of Life The Taking of life watching it happen around us doing it it's there's awe and there's Beauty yeah there is undeniable undeniable awe you know I watched this documentary on kodo dragons and they're intense oh my God they're so gross but they're so awesome in 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 toxic they're so toxic with bacteria and their saliva so funky that just one bite and that thing's dead so they just it wait around yeah they wait around a couple of days and slowly but surely all the toxic from their mouth like yeah no thank you yeah that's not even like 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

114:39mean what a crazy animal and that's another thing that I think is amazing and and beautiful is just the biodiversity of the world that these and I think again I I hate to keep bringing up the same theme but I 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 what a creep that like Jurassic Park or something creepy monster kodo dragons are the funky slime coming out of his mouth but we've done ourselves I mean we've made an incredible thing you know it's incredible that we we don't have to go out and Hunt our food so because of that we could develop iPhones we could figure out how to make 4G LTE and better laptops and cars that drive themselves and all this cool that we have it's amazing it's great because without without our easy access to food none we

115:34no one would have the free time to develop all this stuff so I think it's imperative that we do have cities imperative that we do have an easy supply of food because you're not going to get all this electronic equipment and all this stuff that we have we just not going to get it if everybody has to forage M so we've we've enriched our lives in this way but in doing so we've somehow are another forgotten that there we're a part of this wild world we're a part of wildlife we we are wildli we're just not wild anymore right we're 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 but 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 you know hunting Gathering societies would spend you know four to five hours a day

116:31quote unquote working hunting and Gathering and they had lots of time for you know ceremonies and all kinds of other things 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 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 exhaust costing you know and you really don't have enough time to develop a car no no cars yeah after you figured that out after you've got done your hunting and Gathering then it's about cooking and also there's no days off because you don't have any Refrigeration right depending on you know depending on your climate I mean they could they could dry things and do certain certain things but clearly clearly not not a friger air around the corner uh but you know what you're

117:16talking 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 uh 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 concretized you know good word you know like the pavement you know beyond the pavement into nature and whether it's a little garden patch in your backyard or you know hunting around the Missouri

118:20breakes you know there's a sense of wanting to 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 well is it or are we clinging to the past and trying to ward off the inevitable right are we trying to ward off this yeah inevitable symbiotic relationship we're going to have to computers we're going to be well know have you read Richard Lou's work at all no he um he was a journalist I believe for many years his first really famous book was called last child in the woods and then his follow-up book was called the nature principle and how long ago does this guy um let's see last child in the woods came out what 2006 I could be wrong about that date we'll know in a moment I think um but you know his argument is in part how do you spell the last name l u v

119:25right there he looks very serious look at him he's a he's a neat guy um and his argument is that we all need nature for our mental physical emotional spiritual health first he focused on kids and then he moved it to focusing 2005 I guess is the first book um and he says that actually the more high tech we get the the more we need these sorts of experiences and he he's not a hunter but he does fish and he you know spends a lot of time outdoors and that we need that you know neurologically I mean not just um in some romantic sort of throwback fantasy but we deeply need it because we are wild and what does he used to establish that argument that we need it I mean he's got all kinds of you know research and you know eene citations of of different sorts of of studies and cultures and and different things that happened to kids at first in his first book and then and then to

120:32adults 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 um we certainly evolved in the real world you know in nature not in cities right um and our you know we're hardwired for that three-dimensional textured um I mean I guess there's Textures in the city too but but that kind of natural surrounding um 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 um as a to whatever aggree we're still saying yeah that's the argument are we Saye and is Saye even a a rational request or uh just a hope is it is it what is sane what is sanity and our sanity's heal 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 not sayane you people are crazy

121:43like you've been crazy for 2,000 years yeah what are you doing you know like I don't know who's right cuz I don't want to live in the jungle right you know I mean I think they're crazy you have TV St 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 yeah no and L Lou is not some kind of romantic throwback oh we should go back to the Garden you know it's not that but that these experiences that 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 right it's all Supermarket it's all drive-thru but Big Max you know during the time that we're not hunting and we're not Gathering and we're not farming there's time for philosophical

122:43Pursuits creation of literature all sorts of writing and different communication and wonderful conversations over meals 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 sure absolutely uh they could be and I think the the 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 no that's not you know or to say that's just ancient history given up stop having these fantasies about the past just live in our cyborg future right 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 you can have some experiences of connection with the you

123:38know the Earth right in La yeah you know you can have some some well I I always wonder and this is like a reoccurring theme with me like what are we what are what are we doing as a race as a species 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 and information and all the behavior patterns that you're seeing exhibited by this bizarre species what is this thing doing well this thing is creating technology that's what it's doing it's it's it's involved in some sort of uh 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

124:36that therefore fueling the creation of these things while longing for the past while longing for some little house in the prairie type situation where you know everybody died of polio and like that was a terrible time to be alive but you look at it on TV and you're like oh it was awesome back Thena yeah we we longed towards a simple past we long towards you know people that would hold hands in front of the dinner table and say our prayers and and everybody was a good person except for the few bad people who were black hats you could spot them a mile away you know I think in this ever more and more complex life we we along 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 Prim enriching because we do we do reward our our system we we give

125:35ourselves the opportunity to participate in those reward systems that are set up and they've been established for thousands and thousands of generations yeah and it's one of the only ways to do so and that you know that experience that you talked about like locking eyes with that deer and and having that intense experience of seeing that dear Al the intense experience of taking a life and how my sense as you were describing it is that the the Primal of that in part is a sense that this is really familiar yes this is really old you know like a cellular level memory this is old old stuff and you know for me when I when I took my first year it was so shocking emotionally um I a shocking I finally succeeded I was surprised how many years did you try for um I did not succeed the first three years um how many days are you going out it's a it's on the the main season we

126:34have in Vermont is a twoe rifle season and I wasn't able to hunt the full two weeks um usually it was you know less than half of that time probably um a little bit in other Seasons but mainly it was in the rifle season so it wasn't really years of hunting weeks of hunting right um stretched out over years but the the deeper shock was you as you say sort of that sense of loss of life MH you know the for me it was a sense of grief that this beautiful animal is dead right and do I ever want to do that again I really wasn't sure at first and you were by yourself this entire time when I took the deer yeah yeah I was by myself um and it was the process over the next few days of of butchering that deer that felt really familiar you know it was almost like a ceremony you know I was doing this the knife and the you know skinning and then in the kitchen with a leg you know

127:42and 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 and I'll probably do this again you know wow in another year maybe not next week but next time deer season rolls around I'll probably hunt again um and that sense of of deep sort of Primal familiarity um is common 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 um uh George mbio or Mia I'm not sure how you say it um he's from the UK and has advocated for veganism and against veganism at various times and really U what a conflicted guy yeah um but but a very much an ecology environmental advocate he has this passage that he wrote about having this experience of I think it was being with a like a spear going after fish like flounder in shallow water and his his account of it

128:54is 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 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 like when I locked eyes with that deer and that deer was bouncing around on this the side of this hill and it saw me and I saw it and I I locked eyes with it and then I'm looking at it through the rifle scope there was like this light bulb that went off and this area of my

129:46mind that was illuminated for the first time it was like check out this part like you don't even get in here here without doing this and it was like oh this is what the hunting thing is like it illuminates this ancient genetic variable MH this ancient genetic pathway and it felt psychedelic it felt like I was on a drug and I'm not not like a lustful I must kill and no it was like this weird sort of it's an altered state yes animal spiritual connection this very strange strange experience which I was I was shocked I expected the sense of loss I expected the the sorrow I expected all these different the sorrow never really came there was a sense of loss but there wasn't a sense I did something wrong there wasn't a sense like I shouldn't have done it and part of it was also because I was seeing bones everywhere and Mountain Li I'm like this is a goddamn war zone I'm

130:43in you know when you're in the breaks you you find these ropes of and I say ropes because yeah that was filled with hair these animals were just jacking deer and whatever the hell else they got a hold of you know we're in a war zone it was a nature war zone so I didn't I didn't for a bunch of reasons and also because I knew I was going to eat it I didn't feel bad about it but I did feel like wow this um this is intense this is intense but the surprising part was the altered state M and I I feel that still I mean it's changed over the years Ian I've been hunting for like a Dozen Years or so now and it has my experience has changed it's not wasn't it's not as shocking or quite as intense as it was the first time but it still remains powerful and I'm still in an altered state for like hours or days yeah afterward and a a state of thankfulness too which is also

131:38like there's a warm happiness to it a thankfulness that you successful and now you have this meat and you're G to provide this meat to your family you know like uh my friend Duncan sent me a photo of some um elk meatballs that his girlfriend had cooked for uh for them and their friend from an elk that I some elk that I gave him 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 yeah I mean great you're grateful to the animal to the land and then grateful to be able to provide I mean yeah I'm grateful that you you you have this established Community feeling Bond feeling with your friend you give them meat and then they're cooking this meat and he takes a photo of it and but it's all bizarre you know like this digital representation of this thing and it's sent to you through the air can't smell

132:31it it rises on your phone you're like hey man we're in the woods bro this is this is nature well it's kind of sort of weird you know yeah it is it's all it's all very odd it's all very odd and I 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 it's possible yeah it's possible but I sure hope it's not really dying do you do much hunting outside of your home state of Vermont or is that mostly what you do that's mostly what I do I mean I've haunted a little bit down in Massachusetts where I have a friend and my uncle um I've haunted out of state a little bit do you go on trips you say like on a moose trip or I haven't I mean moose technically do get hunted in Vermont in small numbers um is it hard to get a tag it is yeah cuz it's such small numbers um but I haven't really except for when I was in New Mexico but

133:30I was in New Mexico already for something else I mean right and I've never really gone on a a hunting trip somewhere far away and I don't know I I might at some point I have a friend who's been trying to get me out to Colorado um and I have I have a friend who lives in Colorado as well for deer or elk either either um and and I love you know this particular friend in Colorado I'm thinking of I'd love to hunt with him you know he's a guy I'd love to hunt with really enjoy his company um but it I don't have like these fantasies of big you know big western or Alaskan hunts or whatever I mean so your hunting is almost like um you're doing it almost entirely for food you know yes but if I just wanted food there are much more efficient ways to produce that I could raise chickens MH right sure it's a guaranteed thing you you unless the they get taken out by Predators or

134:31disease or something you you raise these chickens and then you have meat or you raise chickens and have eggs or yeah so on um 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 that's essentially why I hunt 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 to hun you enjoy hunting you know whether you call that sport hunting or recreational hunting or whatever you call it and the problem with that is is that one for most of us they're not separate 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 that's why I hunt both of those reasons traditional subsistence hunting cultures those people love to hunt yeah

135:43they also totally depend on the food yeah so it's both it's both you know it's not really a separate thing I don't think it really ever has been for any hunting culture yeah um so or fishing or fishing exactly right so it's for both yeah uh it's enjoyable and there you know if it wasn't enjoyable you know it we'd probably find other ways to we wouldn't do it and that's probably why it's enjoyable because it provides food I mean it stimulates these areas that we're talking about these Primal need areas right so yeah yes food is my primary sort of motive in terms of a a product materially materially food is my motive it's not to have a big set antlers on the wall if I end up with a big set antlers I'll probably keep that skull and antlers like you do but it's not the point right but it's the experience of it and as I got into it more as I started to have more relationships with

136:45other 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 so there's social and you know natural experience motives that are very much just about the process and the experience and then there's the food right but they're all you know they're all interwoven yeah I think there's some people that want you to feel bad about it so they don't want to they don't want you to be enjoying it sure and if it was I sadistically enjoyed killing right I would find that disturbing in yes and I do find that disturbing when I see people talking about or acting about hunting or anything else that way 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 right that's that's problematic which is one of the reasons why that's the number

137:42one 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 and when 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 what the way you enjoy that moment is sadistic right 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 this altered state some people might describe that as exciting or pleasurable I guess yeah it's not like a as you said it's not for you a lust to kill no it's it's not that but there's something that is magnetic and Powerful about it yeah there's something insanely Primal about it but one of the weirder uh things that people lobby at you um that that people insults that they send your way one of the big

138:46ones is you can't get an erection so you go kill animals or you have a little penis so you kill animals like it it gets brought to this weird sexual lust thing that's I right I'm really confused about I always get confused like what is the root of that because so many people go to that one like they go to that one when I whenever I watched you no matter who the hunter is that people are attacking like whether it was the Walter the the Dunst guy who killed Cecil or whatever it's so many of them go to that that it's this person is sexually inadequate so they're going out and killing animals there this bizarre connection I don't understand that one no maybe we should just blame Freud for that I don't know I mean maybe right I mean part of it is we have a tendency to to in our society and culture maybe since Freud to to link any kind of like aberant Behavior or or motive or Desire

139:42with sex yeah which is crazy um but there's also been a longstanding story that's been told uh by critics of of hunting um that you know violence toward animals through hunting is the same as sort of sexual violence toward women right 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 and then Mary Mary stange wrote this fascinating book called woman the hunter uh back 25 years ago uh and part of her argument she's very much a feminist you know and and and a hunter uh 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

141:12you know men as as violators and women as victims you know which has happened certainly historically that relationship exists right right but the parallel to to Nature um as man the hunter as a cultural my myth which is very strong in 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 uh and her argument is let's break this down let's also have women as Hunters being honored and respected and accept that strong women and hunting can be compati ible and women are not inherently nurturing always they can be LIF takers they can be Hunters you know they can provide for their family through through taking life and hunting does not have to be motivated and isn't motivated for most

142:39hunters by some bizarre Twisted sexual thing yeah you know whether it's women or men that's not what the real experience is I don't think they really mean it I think it's just it's just a a simple go-to criticism they like to latch on to it I don't think if you 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 the actual process that's going on in a person's brain when they're hunting an animal mhm I guarantee you they're not going to go with get it up they're not cuz then they want to get that million bucks would they would try to figure it out and they would try to be objective about it it's a it's it's a cheap go-to insult you know I think I think it is and I think that when it's something that's when people

143:36hear 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 you know right most non-hunters who have no experience as long as they eat meat most likely they even some vegetarians I mean right and some vegetarians will make exceptions for meat that's been hunted right I mean they can really respect that in general it's when there's no experience of someone speaking about it that way and it's just some picture of some guy with some zebra or you know it's so incompr hens it's so removed and there's no there's no story that can be understood right 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 uh and having having had very strong feelings and still having very strong feelings about about animals I

144:46get where that hostility and outrage comes from you know right and I can understand why someone would even come up with that sort of bizarre Theory yeah I can as well in a lot of ways with with you know without again like if I wanted to win a million dollars they left me alone in a room and I'd never hunted before and if I wanted to come up with a motive that wouldn't be on the list right because I I don't really believe it I don't think anybody else does either 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 that was what this experience when I first went hunting I was saying well one of the things going to happen either I'm going to shoot this animal I'm going to be horrified with myself I'm GNA be like I'm gonna eat this animal and then I'm done or I'm G to become a hunter um I

145:35just i' I feel like this is one of those things that will not be solved this is one of those things that the the debate will continue to rage on and I see both sides I I absolutely see and admire the motive that the ethic vegans want or are attempting to pursue M um 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 and amongst my friends I have a good friend waitress at The Comedy Store she's got a bunch of cats and she's a vegan she gives people a hard time about meat like you're feeding your monsters you have vampires you live with you bringing them home dead things they're probably bring in her home dead things if they get out probably if they get out yeah um I just think think that the this is uh this is sort of a stage um that human civilization is going through that's going to take a few hundred years and in

146:33that 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 Grandpa didn't even have an email you know right and he was happier for it maybe he might have been you know I don't know I don't know I don't you know is is there anything that's been surprising about this process and and creating this book and all this stuff you know it goes back in a way to where this conversation started because you asked you know how much grief did you get how much FL did you take and what's been most surprising in a way and and most rewarding uh is that I've had opportunities

147:29to talk with such a wide range of people you I've done seminars for Hunter education instructors and I've talked to you know rooms full of non-hunters including some vegetarians and the conversations have been Remar remarkably respectful and civil across those different and some's in the same room some's a mix of those people in the same room um I went um 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 Hunter education instructors and I was a little uncomfortable because one of the topics they asked me to speak on was uh ethics and I thought I'm a new Hunter I mean I just started a few years ago and here all these lifelong Hunters pretty much in this room 75 guys mostly guys and I'm going to tell them about hunting ethics

148:36oh my God how am I going to preach to them right um but it went well 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 I was like wow two days later I was just outside Boulder and I'm sure you know Boulder Boulders the butt of every joke in Colorado and vice versa you know Hipp exactly you know so they say you know all the the all these Hunter education instructors were actually joking about Boulder we were 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 well you go to the edge of reality and you turn left and it's always left always of

149:30course yeah it's probably one of the most liberal places on Earth right yeah and of course Boulder that stereotype of Boulder is telling the same jokes or different jokes but jokes in return about Evergreen yeah well no I mean about the Rednecks yes and the hunters yeah and you know these you know all these hunting jokes and redneck jokes I was oulder because I was being interviewed by this ex- vegetarian who ran this uh show for gam TV this online TV station it's all Eastern spirituality and you know all that kind of thing exactly the people who would make fun of each other right Hunter education instructors and gam TV as soon as we got into the conversation we're talking about you know the emotional and ethical dimensions of taking life she's an ex vegetarian she's now eating meat but she's not a hunter she's thinking about these issues about confronting life and

150:27death and when I got done the trip I looked back I was like wow those two conversations were really similar complete different communities who normally would think they had nothing in common especially around hunting and yet the very basic human questions the basic moral ethical emotional issues around taking another creature's life especially a big big mammal it was a similar conversation and so that's been I guess in a way one of the most rewarding and surprising things about about the whole process and the and the journey since is that you get to see and talk with people in these places where you know there's Common Ground yeah in different cultures you know radically different communities there Mo there most certainly is and one of the things that I'm hoping is going to bring common ground or bring some common ground or at least bring an understanding is the emerging science

151:25behind 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 we and they slowly grow and we 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 they're carnivorous there it's a strange type of life and as we grow to understand that life deeper and deeper and have more respect for it and really understand what what exactly they're doing when they're making calculations what exactly they're doing when they're communicating with each other how this network of uh intertwined life forms similar plant life forms that exist in this top soil which is also some sort of a very bizarre ecosystem of

152:22life that these electrical impulses that they're sharing with each other are some sort of form of communication and and this whole tradition the spiritual Dimensions not of animals but plants too yes yeah and that this is this is an unshakable undeniable truth that life eats life right and we are and we and every animal on the planet is utterly dependent on Plants yes yeah all of them none of us are none of us are photosynthesizing yeah 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 I don't know what the way of getting around that is but I do think that people like yourself and uh other people that are proponents of at least removing your own existence from it in as as clear away as possible by

153:22doing some growing and gardening by doing some hunting by experiencing the wild of this world and going out there and and getting into it understanding it this is this is this is a real environment that coexists with the city during the same time frame on Earth and you you we all I think I don't think there's a person that looks at those factory farm videos and goes oh yeah awesome those cows yeah I'm glad those chickens get stuffed into those boxes I don't think there's a single person that does that and I think that's also why those AG gag 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 they make choices that reflect the horror that they experience when they're watching those videos sure I don't I don't know if we can all collectively as a group get out of this but I think as

154:15individuals we can start moving away from it you know I think think what you're doing when you're or what your friends are doing when you're talking about these people that used to be vegetarians and now they're they grew their own chickens now they provide food to these other people like that's ideal you know finding the people that are involved in in growing and butchering this meat and getting it from them like it's a a cleaner easier way of of existing MH I don't um I don't I don't know if we're ever though with the the amount of people that we have stuffed these cities how else my people have stuff on the globe yeah that's insane how else are we going to get them fed we up yeah if you were that objective being hovering say wow what a mess yeah it's almost like um uh an insurmountable student debt like what did you do you're not going to pay this

155:13out how are you going to pay this what did you do you can't feed all those people the real way you know oh you've got to keep stuffing chickens into factories you know you've got to keep stuffing these pigs into warehouses and then or or something I don't know what that something is you know I don't know what the other alternative is you know I don't know um anything else before we wrap this sucker up no it's been great been good fun thanks for doing this I really appreciate pleasure um tovar's book is the mindful carnivore and it is available everywhere it's on Amazon printed by Pegasus Books and uh Tovar ceri thank you sir appreciate it man it was a lot of fun good night everybody