Joe Rogan Experience #879 — Steven Rinella Transcript

Transcript

0:00 No, no, go ahead. Of Meat Eater. Look at the size of this buck, man. I'm glad we got to this plug-in part right away right away yeah because if i turn people off and they tune out they'll remember this man this is great i can just walk out the fucking door right That's a lot of weeks. Instead of starting with season one, you know, they put up season five and six on Netflix,

2:02 That was, you know, the editor, one of our editors, kind of one of our core editors that's been doing it for a long time, a guy by the name of Guy. we just did one where there's no narrating and i think a lot of times it comes down to how talkative but it's all music maybe I was looking for like excitement to register on Joe's A garage garage band.

4:07 You're usually using library music or licensed music. man, you're not going to feel like, this isn't making you feel how we wish it made you feel. right? I mean, cause you're already accepting. There's always this acceptance of like, you're Like a movie so sad it could earn to have The Day Texas Sank to the Bottom of the Sea A-H? Yeah, there's something about music

6:20 OK Computer has a song called Oh, yeah. I see it. I'll know that I like it, but I can't tell you what I like. And when we're doing it or not There's a great compilation of hawks. I always kind of like it to be not obvious. And then I don't like it to be like electronica to deer hunting. That's not out of place for outer space. I think a diggory do would work for space.

9:57 And it's funny because you make a show about hunting, and in your head you're like, people that like to hunt would have found it. They show these people like, wow, that looks cool. Or you could stumble upon, like, I always say about Uncharted, the Jim Shockey show. It's about a really curious, open-minded guy who loves to go to different cultures. They had a hole in their head.

11:52 And one day, look at this. there was a teacher named Mr. Wright, You strip it, and then it's like a chemical treatment, bluing. What? Give me that. Is that in Michigan? Times have changed pretty radically. Wow. If we could answer that. It was a huge issue. There was a game called Postal. I know, of course I remember that, I mean, this is like the original Grand Theft Auto.

15:54 I think it's a murderous thing. Yeah. I mean, how many postal? Yeah, and then it came back strong in 2006. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They came up to him right before the shooting. That'd be a good guy to have on your show. But it's a very confusing one to people because there's so many factors involved, you know. And the amount of mass shootings in relative, obviously they're all horrific and terrible,

20:00 Yes. people that are pro Second Amendment that go, no, no, no, it's not guns. And then the people that Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot less now since the election. Clinton was going to win. Because people weren't worried about stockpiling. A buddy of mine, one of our camera guys, he grew up on a ranch. won, no one's going to use a And not being able to find it, like I used to just buy these little boxes of.50, right?

23:17 I felt in this thing like there's this thing that I've always had access to and now I won't have access to it. But a lot of people have to be worried about private land or public land. mean you know i'm like now i'm like okay talk's over now like what's gonna what's gonna happen That shit makes no sense to me. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service manages lands through the refuge system.

26:04 Yeah. I didn't mention that one. and the reason that is is generally the feds are pretty, I mean, they want to see people able to more readily make a buck off the land, over the refuge, the Malamere Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, one of their gripes was they run cattle on public property. So there's people that want to dump lands. it's one of the planks of their platform.

30:21 No, they don't. like how you look at the sun and be like the sun's just there you know so i think that even people who are public lands users don't often don't take the time to be like how is it that i'm able to be But as an American citizen, you hold deed to hundreds of millions of acres of land. these things that came about, like they came about Roosevelt, right?

32:47 During the Reagan administration, during the time where he was actually president, he was a massively polarizing figure. It's debated whether he actually won. Yeah. Because if you've got a deer standing on your neighbor's And that's when he had his line. Dude, he had a thing one time where he had a timeline. Midnight Forest, where he had a deadline

35:43 them all. Wow. But I'm saying all these big decisions, like, these decisions happen. GMP, because they want to be able to do stuff. you should go once in your life. And I took my kids there this summer. Coca-Cola machine, there's a vending machine, and right next to the vending In my perspective, as a fellow that does what I do for food and enjoyment, which is to hunt, I look at it from a grand wildlife thing.

39:17 But I've identified this sort of thing, Oh, like, for instance, a thing that's been very difficult and very vexing for wildlife managers is what happens to Buffalo when they leave the Yellowstone National Park. Wow. Like it was, you know, went there to applaud it. one of the few places But buffalo. Yeah. No, you know, I'm going to call him bison. There's some in New Mexico that don't.

43:04 which is one of the primary entrance points into the park, but it's a non-native disease called brucellosis. then the producers got to pay the testing to get them tested to make sure they're not brucellosis positive. You know, some folks eat their own. Yeah, I wanted to cook some, man. Jesus. I'm trying to explain Yellowstone syndrome. if he walks into Montana, now it's not even fenced, right? It's like he doesn't

46:40 the administration of the National Park Service So coyotes, fox, wolverine, grizzly bears, black bears, bighorn sheep, elk, mule deer, white-tailed deer, moose, they leave They killed like 2,000 of them. And as far as we know, there's not like ironclad cases of cattle, It's like the animal is becoming a player again that we now have. let tens of thousands of them cut loose across the landscape.

49:19 you know, a century, not quite a century, they gore stuff they just go into the horse' stable and fuck them up? It's happened. but animals have gotten habituated to humans. The lack of being habituated to humans is unusual. Indians, or the Native Americans, when and, you know, I have a book, American Buffalo, about, you know, the history of the animal.

52:00 That even if, that one of the points, he makes many points in this thing. So you trace, and Flores explains all this as well, like it did not last long between the introduction of the horse and the indian wars into tremendous gatherings during the breeding season, they would do trips. the places where they talked about seeing the greatest amounts, So you started to see these regional extirpations

55:13 it seems like the resource would not So when the Spanish, the Spanish would go through places and they would name wildlife. So there's sightings in what's now New Orleans. My home state of Michigan doesn't seem like there were any. Now, the mound builders, so you have all these Mississippian cultures along the Mississippi River and Ohio River valleys called the mound builders.

57:36 That's an estimate. But I remember a lot of people criticized that number as being high. buffalo. So that's why Okay. That's another thing people look at is slash and burn agriculture. You hear 32 million, you hear 40 million. So if you get to the end of the Civil War, So the last big slaughter happened around Miles City, Montana, Wow. Hooting and hollering, dancing around like a hunting show.

1:01:59 He caught one, killed it. and he actually took a lot of images of those hide hunters working the last big herd, the last big shoot. And some of these guys actually went out and caught a couple. And how'd they get to Mexico? Hmm. The city of Tenochtitlan. from throughout their domains. Some people accept the idea that there's subspecies. still in now in Canada.

1:05:23 I can't remember what the hell we got, what even got us on the subject. Bruce Losis. We haven't lost, we might have damn few of some things, With the buffalo in particular. I think that extinction, like human-caused extinction, it's terrifying. where, you'll notice the woolly mammoth, you know, and preying on mastodons. 4,000 years ago. issues randall carlson is a guy who i've had on my podcast before and he argues that it's due to

1:09:34 It's the same exact glass that they get on sand when they have nuclear explosions when they do test sites. And the site is marked by a large, like an easily recognizable escarpment. which is an expensive, laborious process to get datelines, And it wasn't just big stuff. far can you throw an atlatl how did people kill stuff out 40 yards i think that's a real crazy that's a reach to be like

1:12:37 the American cheetah, giant ground sloths, Right. You know, there was many glaciations. well, how do we know this isn't just another warming trend all these issues because interglacial periods and glacial periods mark moments when wildlife could have come into the new world when wildlife at moments when there was an ice free corridor to come down in.

1:15:29 My buddy found a jaw with the molars in it, but it went to a museum. I'm talking about a dinosaur. He looked around. He found a tooth or some sort of chip, a piece of bone. fossilized you can't touch it yeah that's interesting but do i agree because i don't And I knew the technology, like let's say the technology was just fail safe. Really? The antelope are ridiculously fast for any predator.

1:18:30 Because they're, I think there's a dumbass reason and there's a taxonomical reason. Animals carry their horns for their whole life, like a krat and a sheath. term. I don't like it. Really? Right, the mountain goat being those beautiful, white, fluffy goats. I don't think it's derogatory to call it a goat. I was in Hawaii and goats are everywhere. Man, you want to talk about wildlife politics.

1:20:48 Like Hawaiians, indigenous Hawaiians people carry native rights. But you're telling me that the thing I like to hunt is non-native and needs to be gotten rid of. their grandfather hunt pigs, And we've already lost a dozen, you know, speaking of regional extinctions or extirpations, Papayas, mangoes, breadfruit, none of that stuff's native. They're hunting everything there, but none of that shit's from there.

1:23:00 life, and there's people who that they brought with them on the bottom of their shoes. yeah and they some people brought goats over there like some sailors brought goats over there as a Well, they take one goat and they sterilize that goat. And he goes and finds the other one. I think he's alive. brought in fox to deal with the rabbits the fox started eating ground n nesting birds. Yeah. And they brought in cats as well.

1:25:55 passenger to find well i was looking at it on an airplane and i got to the part where the guy was that's weirdly contradictory. Yeah. it now. Something. in 2016 thought X? What the fuck? You're not. point where it no longer supports growth of plants unless you add stuff to it. When you picture that we have, I mean, much vaster than this, but that we have entire counties that support a single species.

1:28:48 Sort of. I don't even know. It's like, I guess, like, the lineage of corn is hard to track. Sometimes it was sort of an accidental domestication. It's just so bizarre what kind of a foothold it has in American culture. and he teaches animal ethics. I'd have this dude over to dinner. I am the gentle, kind one. But his point is that if we agree that we should minimize suffering, right,

1:32:04 he uses the term speciesism yeah i've heard that one yeah Any idiot could tell you that that slave is not. You know, I asked him about that. not that I was trying to stump him he has a reverence for indigenous hunting cultures, right? and were trying to, as they called it, stop go hunting like you give them a chance and these sons of bitches take off to go hunt and

1:35:48 He says, but the animal doesn't care about your ethics. say it's okay for them to hunt, way does any of that make sense yeah absolutely it's a very messy situation if you want to try to You can feed your cats a vegan diet. The problem is the cats go blind. i mean why you you're you're you're taking this cat and you're putting this cat above the animals

1:37:59 I've seen that. You used to live in an ashram? what the fuck are you doing? well, we don't like to, I think that he would have some interesting stuff to say about this conversation we're having where we're like because some harm happens You've killed thousands of life forces. you're probably eating hundreds of chickens. They never turn that high-powered vision of the consequences of their actions on themselves.

1:40:47 Well, that's preposterous. And I agree. I almost have, I'm almost having a personal, I'm almost, I'm taking a couple year long break from discussing wildlife in Africa. did real good and heating and cooling yeah winds up going to Africa a lot, Oh, yeah. and the next day Rick was like in that area between September 1 moose parts. You talked about this on your podcast. Yeah. It's a great story.

1:43:15 you know, we all know. Traditionally, park to this are like, we all know. It's a hollow hair, but I don't know what it is about it that it resists frost. He's stealing your moose. Motherfucker. They'll have a home range, you know, they'll go 250 miles. It's like, yeah, but cover so much ground. They'll have a home range. They'll go 250 miles. can find out who invented charismatic megafauna you always attribute it to you so i'm gonna leave

1:45:43 The one mouth that it first came out of. I know that guy, someone, you know, pedals the bear. There was a bear. population of black bears. I'm always reluctant They have a shitload of bears. That's fair statement they had a hunting season turns out some guy comes into a I read that. They're crying. we had a biologist on who works for the Kalispell tribe,

1:49:13 Right at this moment that we're talking right now, there are a couple miles from the U.S. but there's an active recovery area there so we got about a dozen caribou that are contenders to Wow. I don't know what it is. No matter what you do, you can't get it out of there. They look at you, they're electric. You know, there's like a weird sort of relationship that people have with bears.

1:52:15 takes some getting used to yeah now I'm like when when we going let's go get some blueberry bears Because people want to use the Endangered Species Act to save things from any threat of exploitation at all. numbers, population objectives. Wolves, same thing, right? Who's eating wolves? Oh, he's a psycho. He was hardcore. but hadn't met any yet and what was funny about this dude is how frustrated he would get

1:56:12 And this dude's like, yeah, that's cool. I know a guy I know a guy that's been to the moon and hunted there. they would bring it home and put it in their lodge. And I often point out about the animal skulls and hides in my own home Why was I talking about stuff? Yeah. Are they a hominid? But when I was in Vietnam, they described dog as a hot food. To eat dog.

2:00:01 one of the guys I interviewed Now, he says, I will not eat dog again for fear that i would undo I say it was probably maybe two feet by three and a half feet. And the dog just goes apeshit when we come in. here they have like a basically there's a system there where the you have very poor farmers who don't and peppers and various things. And he had a bunch of dogs

2:03:01 and the dog buyer will give you comparing like this guy's pet to this guy's livestock you sort of got into this thing as on beef stomach, beef trim. send to a rendering plant at the market. understand when people come to me and they're looking they're like hey man a bear like and but pigs are probably as intelligent, if not more so. When pigs are feral, they generally avoid people.

2:06:18 Yeah, it was a very early form. I think it's some kind of, it's a dog breed. You'd probably find Adam Green Tree holding one up by his ankles with a fucking bow hole, arrow hole. domesticated animal. Man, I don't feel like I'm wrong. subspecies of wolves. However, genetic analysis indicated that a much earlier domestication. I mean, I've told you. Yeah.

2:09:05 If you want to go, I would love to go along. Because I've described even to my friends about hunting bear, A bear has a very beautiful, very usable hide. Daniel Boone was, much of his life Carhartt? Yeah, same thing. So they used to make them out of buckskin. I should steal it. It's like, yes, you can do stuff with it, but it's not really, in today's age of other

2:11:48 Anyway, when you get a bear, it's like no one in their right mind gets rid of a bear hide. a bear there's an expense to getting the hide prepared but you feel wasteful not using the and I'm not excited about it anymore. Likes to eat moose meat. Yeah. Yeah. Like if you saw a mature mule deer, 180-inch mule deer. If I'm out and I glass up a bear, you know, when I say I'm out glass up,

2:15:24 watching, watching to the point where sometimes we'll spend days and I'm I don't know. That's what I'm talking about. Deer, they're very interesting. just by what it's doing, Yeah, and then once you see it, you go like, oh, he knows about it. and I can just go look in another direction. that really because of that yeah i even said right then and there i said i'm not gonna shoot the

2:18:56 So if you see another one, yeah, I'd reconsider. It was just one of those things. And he's like, is this good? Maybe. I was, yeah, I mean, it's very safe to say he'd never run into a person and I'd never run into a lynx. 25 like five fucking minutes before we said it. And this big, mature whitetail walks through. And there was this intensity, like immediate intensity in his eyes that i'd never experienced an animal looking at me like it was it was very tuned in he knew exactly that i shouldn't be there and i just froze i was wearing

2:22:38 Even at that time, you start hunting squirrels September 15 in Michigan. off, you know, but being like conflicted between just being scared shitless and doing the thing the other one that was younger deer walked by me didn't look my direction at all the old one they're dealing with is bow hunters. you eat but i always eat my shooter bucks it's not like you like course you know like shoot big

2:25:24 I like to go after the big one. But a really big buck in an area that has a lot of lions, a lot of coyotes, wolves, human hunters, he's big because he hasn't messed up. He was traveling with a bunch of does, and they all go into an aspen grove. Y'all scared of those coyotes. That's all he's thinking about is breeding does. Wow. Yeah. couple of coyotes at that time of year isn't going to drag down a healthy fine mule deer.

2:29:06 I respect it. Right. why you're challenged getting meat that will be there until I die If you have a job and you have a family and you have some sort of hobby, Of course it doesn't. you look at your uh you look at your facebook feed or any number of things like we surround who come up to me and be like, what does that make you? Because this is one of the few places

2:33:48 a nice invention. have where they define themselves by their knowledge. They, they think they're smart or Yeah, no, I'm with you. It's a tribal inclination that I think we have to support one side or the other or to and you have to be able to recognize those. especially with a well-read person like yourself. I loved that movie. He's in the Middle East somewhere.

2:37:28 Man era, which ran, a way to define the Mountain Man era, it began kind of like the moment By taking the most famous story from the mountain man era, was just a distortion of, It just struck me to the core. crawled his way back to Now in the movie, he does forgive Bridger who cowers, but then he has to go after the guy that uh, I can't remember. That's all fake.

2:41:08 but he started out crawling. and starts sending messages to the rest of the world. then you would shoot it they had like a captive moose well it's just it was an early conversation and you'd say well i'd take this really small little knife and i'd very carefully make a really delicate little incision they've just allowed us to make a just allowed us to do our own thing um there's a lot of trust

2:44:20 They're comparing spotting scopes and they started talking about walkie talkies. It's ending with drones. in your or is becoming, nowhere, man, Montana, Alaska, you can't use improving the pump, with increased efficacy like if we get it where technology it means that every hunter is always success rates. So you give Yeah. And guys that radio hunt, me is i'm like you know is it something that you kind of tuck away when it's all over is it

2:48:14 Who knows? And takes a photograph of it. 32. Let's make something happen. Bye, everybody.