Joe Rogan Experience #709 — Steven Rinella Transcript

Transcript

0:00 It's a good fucking book dude. You did a great job with this thing. Let me put on my fucking knee here. We just got on this idea. Dan Doty and we would just start mapping out we had like a board you know and sticky notes and we and we had turned it in it was going to be 700 and some pages long. And she said, like, it's just books aren't, like, you just don't really, you know, you got to understand, like, that's a big book.

2:48 I remember being down. of just cooking and photographing but the other thing is a lot of the stuff in there too But we were able to draw back. He just gave us kind of like the keys to his whole catalog, but there's so much involved. Well, you've expanded so much, you know, and when I first started talking to you is right after you got done doing The Wild Within.

5:51 like you were talking about your relationship with your father and how you And it was like, man, this is some really deep, compelling shit. And I was nervous at Yeah. Like, I start getting real nervous from a production standpoint. who you met. So you're sort of thinking What I think is important about your show, I think there's a lot of things important about you and what you represent in this world.

9:15 Yeah. I don't know if it's you being a comedian, having the stuff that i do be a response to that. Right. You know, I'm always afraid. I'm always afraid of that, of like feeling like something would get in your head. you know with the mascara and it just doesn't feel like when i think about my daughter growing up and I try to recapture how I used to feel about going hunting when I wasn't having this production

11:27 You have to consider it. of putting together a show Partially. yeah it's just as like a it's just it just something about it feels kind of base man you What's important to them is getting the shot, You know? I mean, like, when we quit doing that show, the show didn't get renewed. But I had fallen in love so bad with the guys that I worked with Mo, Nick.

14:53 and i try to go like why did i want that to why did i so badly want that to continue We had enemies that we could, like, there was, like, a gang of us, Yeah. Say if you do like a television show. shooting the shit, laughing. wild existence you know and then it gets taken away yeah i'm Klansman, and I don't mean that with a K. Outside of my immediate, my wife and kids.

18:14 And I do kind of feel that hunting and fishing, for me, do form those kind of relationships, you know, I just, like, I like that kind of stuff. He's like, I got to get out of here. Sunburned? man. yeah, you know? You wouldn't believe it, man. I think you said it when we were in the tent when we were doing your podcast. Why is his name Hardcore Jeffy?

20:41 But I just don't want to take claim for that theory, Like I was on a roller coaster last week. I took photos of the base of it and put it on my Instagram just because it's so fucking ridiculous. And then a bunch of shims under it. A cotton board. Like, when I lay in bed at night, they feel numb. Did I get a couple of months? Because being rain-soaked in that island, huddling up in that tent.

23:55 The actual air everywhere around you was filled with moisture. You know, I've talked to you often about Rourke Denver. the nicest, most comfortable homes, man. It totally makes sense. and what it's like there's a bad guys it's it's like these two brothers they have this cartoon show out in the woods to make food Yeah. That's hilarious. It's fucking terrible.

27:39 Yeah. Yeah. Really? And the trampoline's But I don't get, yeah. When I hear people don't let their kids watch certain shows, like because of whatever, Fish? Yeah, that too. And you know those sons of bitches go to a restaurant that night and order fish. But, yeah, it's that thing that, like, you just don't want to be, you don't want to look They're not omnivores.

30:50 They go blind. I was gone when that happened and so many people sent me links to it, but I still haven't that was a, I forget his position, And, like, that's preposterous. man, if you're choosing animals that you think are okay and not okay to kill, and it's based on But then there's the trophy hunting thing, some of what was really going on with the with the

34:17 If you have an elk in Yeltsin National Park, And there's this peak near the gardener entrance to Yellowstone National Park called Electric Peak. So we would go there. But there's a big difference between an animal moving freely. They dragged a carcass behind a truck. that it was only by Westerners who are like outsiders. where these people would go outside, and they had a very real fear they were gonna be killed by monsters giant cats that will

37:46 into the in the water while they were in camp yeah one of these women was washing clothes or my interest in that is provincial in that I was concerned about As far as what you're saying about the crocodile thing, They're all over the place. They're overabundant here and missing from there. You know, I don't, I agree that we want them around. I'm also a little bit like when there was the backlash of the backlash,

41:55 Oh, I tweeted You must have copy and pasted yesterday's. All right. Okay. The argument that like, oh, yeah, man, it's okay to wipe something out because they hurt people. You know, because it's not like this. But what I don't like is this idea of trophy hunting. just in order to take a piece of the animal, It's so pervasive now, that meaning of the word,

45:34 But you eat the animals. the damn lion i think you should have eaten it he should have eaten or found someone to want to eat Yeah. People loved pointing out that that man was a dentist. He's killed everything that walks with a bow. guy, there's a handful of things No. hey, man, I brought you 30 pepperoni sticks, bro. I think he said if he had known it had a name, he wouldn't have shot it.

48:13 Bullshit, first of all. But it's the idea of giving a lion a name, like your dog. that they use. man or like we envision a black hole being where it just sucks everything around it You're big, fat, sloppy faces. And he was like, I can tell you that guy is not a vegan. People aren't looking at things rationally. harmonious existence. Maybe I'd be happier. Maybe I'd be more fulfilled. Nope. They just find someone like this fucking guy.

51:56 And the distance between or the time between the wild animal, even knowing that you're alive and being dead, is like that. can't get away with I'm like cut up fish nobody really gives a fuck you could That's a good point. Just someone scraped all the fur off. They much prefer you to take that stuff and throw it in the trash and then use it as leather.

54:07 Yeah, I've heard his name. and he was a hunter in the 40s. You could legally hunt turkeys almost nowhere. goes out on the land and with each stroke of his axe I think one of the things that upset me about that guy rely on other people's judgment but in some ways i think it was upsetting to people that he wasn't as a force that's ultimately for or ultimately against wildlife like you

57:44 It was just funny how often it it was pointed out his occupation was Now it's like he's being criticized for paying too much for a resource. Yeah. This rhino had killed a female. And killed a male who had, you know, gotten in the area So the argument is real weird because on one hand, it does seem strange that we're talking about value for life, undervalued, and that if there wasn't so much

1:01:10 But they would lose all the money and all that money that would go to wildlife, to preservation of the land and protecting of the habitat. to make it complex you know it's like anytime any real explanation of something particularly with And at the same time, disdain for the general public, Because then I realize that I'm probably seeing it from the necessary number of angles.

1:03:36 So this guy was already unethical. Like, you're talking about the wolf population getting out of control. how wolves say the river yeah that guy's fascinating because that guy's I saw So he got interested in the concept of rewilding. I'm interested in the concept of rewilding, and I'm interested in the concept of rewilding in that If you could correct extirpations,

1:06:35 even though they're absent from 90% of their range. In my lifetime, elk have come back to Michigan, the east that used to have them that no longer do. In my lifetime, elk have come Arizona Utah Idaho California Nevada But I think the way the general public looks at things is very different from the way that you're looking at things. Because to people, wolves are these magical creatures.

1:09:07 I just have more familiarity with them. I just do. it into pepperoni sticks? Cause isn't it going to taste like shit? No. Cause I hunt them in the So that you can eat him. to hunting well i grew up i told you about this a handful of times i feel like but i'll say it I eventually quit trapping because fur markets got so low um and moved away from home

1:12:15 and I would trap in order to sell the hides. You know, it's just not. touch them they have esa protection you know we had drawn out decades ago what recovery would Am I going to now condemn that hunt? They think of trophy hunting as We talked about, is that what you need to get your dick hard? Now, this is coming from someone who doesn't agree with the lion hunting, that guy.

1:15:45 You know, did you ever see the Louis Thoreau documentary on those hunting camps, the high It's excellent. and these lions are staring at them with these fucking ruthless killer eyes. They're going to let one of those loose. And the hunter finds the lion, shoots it, poses, does the whole picture with it. This thing I don't understand about guys who like to hunt high fence.

1:17:56 show high fences. You can't show Well, Ted Nugent does. like they did something different. Yeah, so they might... He hunts in his fucking yard. And when he's hunting on, you know, it says like spirit wild ranch. And when he goes out to get the sheep, he goes out with a.22. He's a hunter. He'd be like, so far he got an elk with his bow, a national forest land.

1:21:22 Pink accents? No, I haven't seen it. I mean, 100% guaranteed there's animals there. He uses llamas. That's when he first got motivated to buy llamas. with the llamas. So they come over to watch and I'm going to put a blind out with the sheep, and let's sit in there and shoot arrows at the sheep. For my brother to go out and like decide that he wanted to shoot his bow at the sheep in his pasture would just strike me as just strange.

1:24:24 Oh, the hierarchy of animals. had we not gotten involved in that. You could fill, they would I never understood it. I mean, just carrots are crazy. But, you know, we'd get all these rejected carrots. and you'd dump the carrots out. Like they knew trouble was brewing. Now I look at it and I go like, man, I would have learned a hell of a lot more about deer

1:28:00 And I was explaining this to you. Why don't you, what, with a sniper rifle? Well, he's an Indian. by using what an effective means it's a new idea yeah but it's not interesting When they come out of hibernation, they're going down to the waterfront. I don't like, I've never done a baited bear hunt. I'm not saying, oh, because it's so easy. whole life in Michigan, which has a lot of bears

1:32:12 I helped them collect bait. And then in the fall, they go to these open fields where they find blueberries. hibernation and heading down to feed. You're just going where you know there will be. Yeah. And it's They're out breeding and eating and you're just trying to find them, locate them, and then put a stalk on one and get one. But then there's also people that will say, well, if you hunt with a bow,

1:34:38 And then if you're going to do that, you should hunt with an atlatl, woolly mammoths with bows. Wow. It's an extension of your arm. I've seen guys get good, man. In some areas you can use other means to kill them. Don't no one go out and do it because of that. and you can't use anything smaller than a whatever, you know, 410 or something less than that

1:37:38 Because you're still legal. This is like an image that they thought is cooler than hell. We decided it's just not fair to use helicopters chase and i heard someone recently i don't think it's a new thing but i heard it recently but what the guy's trying to get at is this idea that you have an un that No, no, hunts with a compound bow. Danny. Yeah. Yeah.

1:41:24 It's like, you know, the greater Yellowstone ecosystem, okay, the GYE, let's say, higher success rate now hunting half as many elk as we used to hunt that's fascinating A blue grouse, though. No. A couple pounds. If you plucked one out, it'd be like a not-fat Cornish game hen. Okay. And then a decade ago or sometime, maybe 97 or sometime around there, no, no, I'm sorry, 2007,

1:44:32 and all this kind of stuff because they don't, They want to get off the ground and they shoot the bird, and they're like, oh, that bird's stupid. the first to green up because the snow slid off and it doesn't need to melt off. And so when bears And we got up on this big high ridge, and I could hear five or six of these things going off. the spring hooter season.

1:46:41 doing an episode Now we went out and started looking for the first bird and about like 10 hours the cornell university website they have this macaulay library of bird sounds i sent them sound recordings that are on the Cornell University website. been like what in the world would make that sound and people talked about this australian where I kind of knew I was in the area he was in and set that decoy out the hen

1:49:25 day after spending four days and found a bird one bird yeah she and i we were together three days i Grr. But what I have going for me is I like to stick with it. I'm a good generalist. he keeps an eye on them, he's watching them, he's getting ready for the. He spots them. He keeps an eye on them. That was a crazy fucking episode. Remy Warren's very, like, I don't use this word very often to describe hunters. He was what I would call a talented hunter. has talent like it's just he gets it you know

1:52:50 They might be able to have a casino and other stuff that violates state law homemade bows and they hunt birds with bows and they do some big game hunting and you'd pound that into a pulp, and they'd go out into a river, and one of these guys had only ever hunted with a bow. I would go out with them and I would have no idea what they're talking about.

1:55:50 I mean, you get away from it. we go down this trail for a while through the jungle, starts going through the treetops and he shoots it down out of the tree with a with that shotgun and kept all the intestines and everything out of that monkey. And eventually they burned the hair off it and trussed it, like how you truss a turkey, and smoked it over a fire.

1:58:39 It was like something, I would get so hot. If I could say what it tastes like eating that monkey, No, we had a giant catfish I can't remember like a capuche or capiche or something. Same marsupial, by asking someone who speaks some Spanish, he was able to, Everybody comes, and they're real excited. area. And that's one of the reasons they like to go up to this area

2:01:36 Wow. You know, have you ever had a smoked turkey drumstick? they had a baby monkey at one point, loving it. Jesus Christ. And what's funny about it too, dude, what's funny about it it. I remember one of them had a head in a bowl. Loving it. Not that they have a responsibility to know about Muhammad Ali and pizza, We eat squirrel brains. Because you guys shot a deer too.

2:03:56 What do they think about your bow? Hanging out with people who like that. I don't want to call it like racism, indigenous ancestry and there's they're very like in Bolivia the ruling class guys are doing these trips who we orchestrated our trip through who are trying to introduce these guys What are you telling? I had my bow and when I brought my bow down that my main goal and have a bow

2:06:58 My main goal in bringing the bow was that I would have like some, A lot of them, they didn't want to shoot it. Like, I can't explain to them. 70. Yeah. No, not at all. a bird tip, where they'd be standing around You know, I got stung by a bullet ant, and, you know, that's excruciating, You know, like, we got along well. dress and other things but they're going into places no one goes into.

2:11:18 How did you get this in your head? Like, what, is this something you researched in advance? I mean, I took my bow down there and hunted. He's hunted probably five, six days a week for his entire life within a 100-mile radius of his home. For instance, for the lake where I grew up, the lake I grew up on, I knew it well, right? Better It must be whatever.

2:13:52 And what was it? And it just means something to them. hotel. It's the highest rated. hornet. I don't know what the vine was. groin. And I thought that means and just like writhe. Well, I thought it lasted for like 24 hours. But for me, I think it was, I could be wrong. I didn't know if it was like getting hit by a rattlesnake where you need to go and figure shit out or what.

2:17:36 which might be bad or they'll get you on the balls 300 minutes. I was walking, and all of a sudden I go, ah! I didn't even see what the bug was because I was going through this heavy bush. Yeah, and it lasted for like five or six days. I got hit by a lionfish. out i had gone down we were spearfishing the bahamas and and I had gone down and shot a lionfish

2:20:18 Careful how so? Now, lionfish, just for your listeners, it's a non-native that has been introduced Yeah, I think somehow they escaped through the aquarium trade. and cut all the thorns off it No, it's on it. So I went up and I got a lionfish on my spear. And I started getting really scared because my hands started to feel hot It's like, do not put it in cold water.

2:23:28 Genetic research supports this finger pointing, Whether it's pythons or, you know, they found Nile crocs in the Evergates now. intentionally, unintentionally, diversity, different climates at what the wild pig has managed to do here in the us you know it's the dominant large animal on some Isn't it weird how people have this desire to manipulate Yeah. That's a famous image.

2:27:19 possum raccoon sized critters are just gone you know you will see it like they You know, you're enhancing wildlife. has almost kind of become a joke where it's so outlandish. It's all people that escaped from the mob from New York and weird people from Cuba I grew up with just a tremendous affinity for Florida because in Michigan, that's, in I'm like, yeah, man, Florida. Why? I'm like, because it parts of the country, people are like, you went where?

2:30:29 down there. Yeah they do. He was a wild pig hunter. A lot of wild pigs right? Yeah. Isn't that where There's a thing I like to fish called flats. I got to get going. Oh, one of the things about Bolivia that I found fascinating was that the people seem to have adapted physically to that environment. They take the coca leaf, and they put lime on it. And then you put baking soda in

2:32:33 and I'm not like a sweaty dude Or they just have that in their back pocket. But he wanted to try them out. And I was impressed by that. rice it's like a Right. What if you took them to Nunavak? It would blow their mind what if you took them to nunavak they'd blow their mind But then, you know, I look at it, it's just like they're just used to a landscape that's baffling to me.

2:35:46 And they're barefoot. no, They would always, bullet ants it was interesting would bullet ants go in these large groups or maybe they didn't want I remember I thought he had said somehow around nine times. let's say starts to move away like a monkey starts to move away from your other toes i've never seen It's kind of like a famous sort of thing that happens to those guys

2:38:28 You know? Yeah. Because after, you know, when they took the Philippines, some of the Japanese went up and they would go out in the jungle, And in that detergent bottle he had a stack of batteries And he would shock them up, then run down a river with a net and net up all the stuff that he shocked, and a shot of that electricity shot up into the sack of fish and shocked him.

2:40:56 He's got some real good stories. fire, starting little fires all over The complete guide. Because if you have Verizon Files. They're pointing people to, like, reality-ish shows that deal in hunting in some way. And what is this? It seems to have definitely come about at the time of the Cecil the Lion deal. and it is like, oh, we don't approve of hunting, I would say look at my show and ask yourself, is my show a negative or a positive for wildlife and conservation?

2:43:51 can get in there and and demand access back yeah i'm trying to find the website because i think it Keepmyoutdoortv.com. It's like the network, Sportsman Channel, has been so good to work with over the years We'll put the word out. It's very good. Volume one, big game is out now. Volume two, you can pre-order. No joke.