00:00:00 Speaker 1: Oh hey, welcome to another episode of The Hunting Collective, episode one oh four. To be exact, we're hearing Bozon Nat and the Meat Eater Studios to bring to you a very important contest. That's a contest for our poetic reviews. Hundreds of you reviewed our show with five stars and wrote beautiful pros. You set words to song, you wrote original works of art. So much, Phil, so much to go over again. Just as with the drawings, I am baffled by the response. Baffled in a positive way. In a positive way. Phil try to say before we hit record that he was telling Tracy Crane crazy Train, that don't be nervous about your performance because no one cares. And of course on your behalf listener, I jumped on his ship and told him absolutely, people care. This is the only thing they care about. I was convinced faith, family, THC. So we got that coming to you. We had like a thirty five minute American Idol style performance piece with your poems, so we put as much time as we could into the work that you submitted. So you're gonna hear that in a moment. Also, you know, we got a little scuttle but from last week's episode that we picked a turkey call winner who didn't do a very good turkey call. Did you get some response a little bit? People like what the hell man um? And as I said on the last episode, sometimes creativity wins the day. And then this case, in Greg Morris's case, creativity one that day. But as an homage to all of you who sent in audio, we have I put it together a little medley of all your best turkey calls. So stick around for the very end of the episode and you're gonna get that and hope you enjoy it because there's so many there's little kids, there's people in a car, clearly a couple of them are drunk. It's it's it's entertaining, so you're gonna like it at the end of this episode. And then we got Rob Greenfield. Rob Greenfield is a definitely a YouTube personality's environmentalist. He's done a whole lot of things to catch attention for environmental issues. But the thing we're gonna be talking about because he went a whole year without eating any industrialized food, meaning he did most everything on his own and including and including trap and kill squirrels, eat road kill, get salt from the ocean, all different types of things you're gonna hear from Rob Greenfield, So stick around for that. But it's a jam packed episode of th HC. So episode one oh four coming right at you. Hey, everybody, welcome to episode one oh four of The Hunting Collective, A very special episode. Right the Tracy gonna get your mic in front of your face. Oh yeah, oh yeah. I a lot of energy in the room, right everybody. Well, I'm feeling it. I'm feeling right. Bring that closer. Spencer, You're gonna need to get that bear tone in there into the mind. Don't worry about it. We've we've all already had influence of every letter. How many people in here you had had had the flu? We know, Phil, don't raise your hand. People can't see it present Phil Spencer and I healthy is a fiddle? Maybe fit as a fiddle, healthy as an ox, maybe a fiddling ox. We don't know. We got a lot to get to. We got absolutely a ton to get to here on today's show. But as you all well know, we we've been through two of our contests from episode one. A B. Rich One for his illustration of Phill the Engineer well deserved. Well deserved, and Greg Morris won for his turkey calling, which was kind of deserved, terrible but creative. His video really won the day. He had a picture of my dead hamster Squeakers, and that's part of the reason why he won. So creativity can win the day here for these contests. Now we're going to do Yanni Patellis, find him and grind him giveaway, and that means that the winner of this contest that we're about to decide on and vote on is gonna win a pair of Vortex tend By forty two buyos. They're gonna win a Western meat grinder, right seth find him and grind and find him and grind him. Yeah, he's not here with us today, but I'm going to be injecting some of his laughter into the show. Allah the Mediator podcast some months ago, so it's like it's Joe. Yeah, It's like he's here, Um, yeah, I'm in, No, he's in. He's alright, Yeah, the Yanni Hotels find him in grinding give we now Joe and I joking a test. We spent most of Friday going through hundreds of poems. Yes, we definitely did hundreds, and we've selected how many Joe seven, I kept I kept bringing more back in because I couldn't there. I couldn't bear to let them go. They're so good. Um. Then there's so many that are set to song, which will find out here in a minute, right, Spencer Special's gonna do. Johnny cash Mine's not like, doesn't have music. Though I can give you music, would you like it? Because it does, it's not supposed to you. Okay, do all of them have music or not? But I would like to pick a lot of them that did have a musical accompaniment. But this is a big deal. So you guys are gonna do the poem. This would be like a poetry reading, and then you're representing the person who wrote in. So if you perform well, they could win because we're all going to vote after Tracy looks discutologies in advance. I think Tracy's gonna do the best. She's been so nervous all day long. We have Katie Finch here, we have her agent or just her cheerleader, hype man Kylie Archer, also a hype man woman, hype woman, hope woman, and so you may hear them screaming and cheering in the background. Specifically for Tracy, who has been just dreading this for some time, just weeks that hasn't really been weeks, but the anxiety is real. Have you been sleeping hardly bad? She said? She listened to it on the way into work this morning. She called me over earlier, just almost in tears. Better to know that this does not matter at all, not at all. That makes it even worse, don't It does matter because this kind person sore normal, so sore no more, submitted an awesome entry, and his his winning has weighted on my shoulders because there's some good prizes. These are serious prizes. This is this is, this is binos and a meat grinder. My just my musical reputation, which is a very big deal. Yea, you know there's a lot of It doesn't matter, Phil, Yeah, this giveaway to find someone's success, this fault or you're right, Yeah, Hi didn't. Phil didn't think anybody listened to the show until he made it two days late when he got the influenza B and people were writing in like I was about to go on a hike and I didn't have THHC and I didn't know what to do, so I just walked around the woods aimlessly. I got no direction, no direction, so Phil doesn't take this thing seriously. So that's that's my secret. Though. You gotta read one. So everybody here, we got seven people in the room, we're all going to read one. Mine is or sing or rap? Yeah yeah, yeah, Now Katie, could you give me and kind of give me like an example of what a hype? Uh woman? Yeah? That was all right, I like it. Alright, everybody, we already get started. This is just to go over. Everybody who wrote their poetic reviews has given us their Instagram, Twitter, Facebook handle, whatever, so we know how to get a hold of them. So that's how we'll represent. We don't have their names most times we have their handles, but we have printed out piece of paper. Everybody shake your paper rounds so we know that we got I'm going on, going on. Um, We're gonna have these performances and then we'll take a quick quick break to let Tracy calm down, get the breathing again, and then we're gonna go back. So we have a varied slate of performers here today. We'll start off by the flip flop Flesher. Yes, sir, well, I'm feeling a lot of pressure myself personally on your behalf. So you're gonna do your poetic review. You're gonna hear a lot of cough in the background because there's somebody sick. People in out here. They're all they're all sick. Uh. You have Bismarck Keys just a friend? Is that correct? Am I correct about that? You are correct? Man, You've been practicing a little bit. Let's just play it. Take a minute to listen to the beat. Tracy, can't hear it, You can't hear it? Can just whenever you're ready seth okay? Can you start to beat over? Yes? I can start to beat out, start over. We got a disruption. I wanted. I wanted to hit it at a time at a time. We have a destruction in the studio. Didn't practice. I'm gonna be Tracy trying trying to sing it technical, hitting it, gonna hit it, all right, I'm gonna hit it. Beat tell us who this is for? Who are you performing for? Jake Schuer, Ja, Jake Schuer Give him a follow, all right, give him a follow and we're gonna do a little He's written this, yes, bisin Mark, he's just a friend. About th C here we go. H feeling it? M oh yeah, ye all right? Have you ever heard of pod? You tried to rate but a hundred episodes they made you wait before they gave away some sweet sweet gear. Now listen up, it's a pod. You need to here. Oh you got what I need? You ain't being hunting yet. You ain't been hunting yet. You got what I need? What you ain't being hunting yet? You ain't being hunting yet. That's it, folks, That's what I'm talking about. That was beautiful. How do you feel? How do you feel? Great? It's electric in nbelievally. You started off slow, I will say, but you came into form at the end. You're feeling about that? But I I just love the confidence and he backed he backed it up with his performance. A lot of confidence. That was fan That is that? What like? Is that? What stars feel like? That's like American Idol? The people that get kicked off American Idol in the early rounds rush like no other right now? Oh this is a better rush hunting? No, no, just checking all right. Karen Schneider, the producer, what will you be performing today? For US Corinth? It is by A Miller's life's life and its title is Stop, download and listen, and this will be to the Bean of Ice Ice Baby. Let's give that a quick listen, just to know what that sounds like. Just get that in, you get that groove going, you feel it? Alright? Okay, alright, whenever you're ready, h stop download and listen. Th HC is Benno's vision. Hunting is a topic that's lively bearing his guests from Vegan to Colt, Colonel Kelly. It's great. Phil is engineer's sidekick. He's a little weird, but at least he's comic. Relief is what you get, No, relief is what you get when you listen. Ben brings some sense in a world full of vision going alright. The last verse, okay, to the world of podcast is where they listen stretch out your mind while Ben is interviewing Hunting Hunting Collective, The Hunting, the Hunting Collective. Word to Ranella. Peace done, Sarry Miller's life a few times. Great, well done. That's a good beat. You can almost do anything to that, because I feel like I might style here in a minute, sons of bitches, Let's do it, alright, who's next, Joe? You want to go. NeXT's singing, it's just reading. You should probably keep the musical stuff altogether, which means Tracy's just crazy Tracy coming out with her whole Tracy Crane, Chief marketing Officer. Yeah, I'm surprised you haven't used the nickname yet. T Crane. You forget what it is, Crazy trainin the only performer to arrive with a posse. You'll learn that Spencer's a man of few words, but they're all these good words. When you get big enough set you'll have I can teach you how someday should I get a manager? Yeah? Absolutely, you're on the beaver track from that performance I just heard so far. It's gonna be hard to beat that one. So far, so we have This is a third one and final musical accompaniment. The rest of these are actually just poems. Um, So, Tracy, are you ready? Well? Yeah, but so can we just? Um, you're going to start the song? Yes, whenever you're comfortable. You started over as many times as you would like. Yeah, because this one's a little tricky because the chorus is the lead in, so I need to start in the chorus section. Okay, let's let's take a look here. You're starting, you're feeling tracy, Oh yeah, bombing, head up and down, trace t crane do with ben Aby yeah you know me. He brings joy through the yonder BP investing that PP and you say, see what all that really means the eternities. Clothe your eyes, settle in, prepare, Let Ben be your guide and the engineer your purveyor. Week sashes, miss please say a prayer, investingness chaos, trap in for the impending disaster, steel a happy hour as you'll learn that O'Brien is a master. You done with ope, you down with ben Abi? Yeah you know me? You go with benb Yeah you know men, well done representing train that so no more, no more, sorry buddy, sorry buddy you I mean it's partly because he didn't really follow the beat that was the problem. It's like he I feel like the chorus was very good, the you know, down with Benobi you know me, but the rest of the song is not like fluid. It's not really fluid. Now, as a true performer, you just yelled it and you just went you just like when you were sure how to deliver, you were like how I approached most things and just just speak Louder brought a lot of energy to the most important life lessons from the Crazy Train. Crazy Train. Just pretend you know you're not sure, just protect all right, well we're still rotten high now, Spencer, you're going to give the cremation of the creation of Benny will be because your hype teams out of here. They're not hanging around team Thanks Kyle and Katie. They are out of town, out of town. Now, Spencer, you're up next. You would you like me to play what how Johnny Cash did this one? Or you want to just I already checked it out. Okay, you already inspired. You're feeling pretty smart. Now I'm gonna give you an option for this music you want that? No, no, John Spencer's voice morning music. There just just to uh to round this up. Spencer loves a hot tub in the morning of every morning he goes. And this is a tough week because it's really windy. Wind is just like, isn't great outdoor hot tubs? So red in like five mornings this week, I'll probably do like three. You think, Okay, all right, that's a hot tip right there. That's the hot hot hot tip. All right, buddy, this is tell us who wrote it and what it's going to be about. The Instagram handle is a dad outdoors and this is is it? The Cremation of Sam Samye is a popular poem in our in our midst. If you don't know about Cremation of Sam Mayghee, stop now. We'll give you a minute and go listen to it. But instead we have the Cremation of Benny O. B right, all right, we're back. You've now listened to the creation of Samghee by Johnny Cash and the barre tone badass is going to deliver some sweet sweet velvet injuriors. Go ahead, baritone. There are strange things done in the podcast studio by the men who talk for gold. The Treasure State has its secret tails that would make your white clock cold. The studio lights have seen queer sites, but the queerst they ever did see was the night on the deck of Lake Fort Peck. Feel cremated, Benny. You'll be oh man, well done, you better beautiful? Some strong writing there something I guess even though I was getting killed strong when I went and watched h the Johnny Cash version, it's like six minutes long, though. Yeah, this is a shorten version you got an easier one, but you only got it because your voice talents. Thank you, but well done. There's from a dad his research too. If he's not from Montana for Peck Treasure State. All right, Joseph Jamie Ferinado to review. Joe is our Jamie. Yeah, new and improved, it improved Google. You have to have Google something for no reason. Okay, now we only have a couple left. This one. Tell me about this one. It's by John T. Boston, John T. Boston, and it's just a it sounds like a made up name to poem. He wrote, like, there's no similarities of any poem I've ever read here. This is an original. We tried to do. What John I tried to do is have like a couple that were originals, because the next three year about to hear originals, and then four that were adaptations of already existing um. And that's what That's where we landed these seven. That's how we landed on these seven. So I don't know why, but I'm also getting the feeling that he's from Boston. It could be all right, Joe, you're ready, you want to read music? Are you gonna go? Boston? Accident credit can't you want to go Bear Sands music? Okay, just I'm just gonna read it, Rip it out, Joseph. A show with the host named Ben O'Brien bridging the gap. You know that he's trying shares thought and opinion with hunters and vegans. Well thought out, there's no denying Runella, oldcal and the Eagle and the rest of the meat eater people sometimes show up with bourbon and cup, sharing their knowledge unequaled. You can't help but love all their work. The Colonel shares feelings on turks, geys, American model du Sean Plumb, Brandy Bottle, and Gilbert's feelings get hurt. Finally, I thank you to Ben from us Outdoors, outdoor ladies and men. You help unravel the meaning of complex hunting feelings. This show is a ten out of ten. I like the nod to Gilbert, little out there at the end, little sucking up at the end. We'll take it, though. That's the most heartfelt. Makes me feel fuzzy, and so that's why I give people do contests. I'm like, if you compliment me enough, I'll give you a cooler Alright, Phil, it's getting deep into here, man, we're five deep, and I don't know what. I don't know who has the lead right now in my own mind. Yeah, Phil, okay, buddy, I thought you would have another copy, so mine is actually on my desk outside of the studio. Go good, I'm gonna go grab it. You can just vamp right, Yeah, don't worry, I'll fill I'll do some I could feel some time. That is rookie. You just realized that just now. It's because we have to perform, so it's not used to having to have his performance. He has his own segment. It's because of the in but it's it's it's from the gut. It's because of the corona. It's because of the coronavirus. The coronavirus is attacking in mind. You know, yeah, because of a vamp. He said, vamp. Yeah, what is that? What's a vamp? What's vamp mean? Phils? That's some sort of m c U. You know, Phil times, that's gonna be a good T shirt fill time. Just the illustration feels like I think that's a musical jazz. That's a jazz term. Vamp. You want some music for yours, you want this music. That's why he's part of the podcast smooth musical jazz. Sure, yeah, oh he likes alright, tell us who this is from? Kenny? This is from B. Graves Grave. This comes in, It comes in, give it to us to wait till you get some like there we go jazz. Yeah, Okay. Imagine a round house kicked to the face, or the feeling of your grandma saying grace. That's what this podcast makes you feel, whether you like a gun bow or real Ben and the Boys bringing the heat made famous by a guy known for eating meat. The Hunting Collective is super chill, except for that one guy. Screw you, Phil. I was so glad you made him read that one. So good, well done, Phil. You delivered that last line perfect. That worked just as I had planned, and I'm glad you didn't. I hadn't read it much before. That was beautiful, beautiful, well done. All Right, for the final this one is long. I'm just gonna let you know that it's long. It's like two pages long. Je, but I'm gonna go for it. Okay. This is this came from another Ben Ben Callahan. So maybe this is a pseudonym for someone Ben Ben Callaghan Stephen Benjamin Callahan. Yeah, I feel like you might win just because his name is Ben Callaghan and he signs I signed my emails Ben oh, and he signed his Ben C as like as maybe an nomach. Anyway, the opening. We didn't write this yourself, yea, because I need a new pair of pine ship him to a p O box and Hagerstown, Maryland. All right, here we got the last one. Everybody started thinking while we're while I'm reading, to be thinking about the the artistry of this poem, but also who might you want to vote for of the seven contestants? Okay, here we go. All right, Ben O'Brien, you son of a bitch. I hope you read this and grant my wish for you created th HC and one the hearts of hunters like me. Do you tackle the tough ones day after day, pushing the narrative every which way. You are clear with your fears, but have no hesitation when exposing yourself for the meat either nation, the betterment of food and and our own very being. Th HC is how much we are seeing in the woods, on social and through the scope. Is a future of hunting on a tight rope? That is the question. The answer is along the philosophical conundrum that must go on. Is it bad to kill, to harm the beast? How can we judge when we all sit and feast. Then covers the ground and has tons of great guests. His love for the wild he keeps close to his chest. This show was good from the very start. It's intelligent and witty and has lots of heart. Then along came Phil and Skimpy mcs dash and mangle the dog with hair on his ass. Oh Phil, you're a man with a soft, sweet voice. With so many podcasts, we now have no choice to stream this each week. Grab your old number seven. The more you drink in, the more you're in heaven. Eat your smoked mouth, and try not to fart. You just might miss the very best part. Listen for it now and you're sure to hear one more minute. Have no fear. It's coming, I promise, and it's the real thing. Yep, there it is Ben's email, ding Man, Well done, Ben Callahan. That could have been Ryan Callahan writing in. That was good. A lot of time, a lot of thought, a lot of thought. Wait, wait, thank you. Let's give everybody that wrote these things around a dam. And now all of you but one are going to lose, so again, Nope, just patient Trovis. Here at the show. There's one winner, and that winner will be decided on the vote that will now happen, and it's just us voting, just us, just those of us in the room will vote for the winner. So you you guys have in your mind number one to seven. Would you like to review each one? I think it's probably easier to just um, say the person's name. Yeah, person's name, like to the entertainer, the entertainer name, the entertainer's name, the number. If you would like to recite the entire poem by memory? All right, Joe fair Night will let you go first. Who is your choice for the Yanni Patelis? Find them and grind them giveaway. It's tough. They're all really good. I really appreciate the screw you Phil. Good one. I'm gonna have to go with you, though, Ben. Alright, one for Ben Callahan, Ben Callahan, the love child of Ben O'Brien and Ryan Callahan. Oh yeah, I'm in Yanni might vote for that one too. There's no way to know. That's great every time it happens. Alright, Seth, we got one vote for my guy, Um, yeah, tough, A lot of good ones, a lot of good ones. Um. I'm gonna go with Spencer's. It was very artful. It made me feel something. Uh, the fellow who wrote it did his research. I feel, Um, I like Johnny Cash, I like Spencer's voice. Would it make you feel different if you knew that he was from Montana and he didn't do research? Maybe a little bit, But I'm not gonna think that evening. I'd like to give him the benefit of down Joe. Alright, t Crane. So I'm gonna give a winner for the for the the submission, but then I'm also going to give a performance winner. Okay, even though the performer doesn't really want anything, I still feel like it. It merits what's wide open? You can't take yourself, Tracy Crane the award for most Improved from zero to zero point one. I'm gonna go I'm gonna go screw you Phil. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, all right, and then I'm gonna go flip flop flasher for the fucking perform Yes, sir, nothing better than that. I will watch that on video many times. Yes, yes, all right, So there's one vote for Phil and me and wait there I did pretty good. I was having I was nervous, like I should have got some water. Yeah, your hand was shakings in the face. Hot my god. All right, these lights brighter, they seem the center of attention. I don't manufacture ways to be the center attention. Are you talking about? What are you talking about? All right? Uh? Baritone? I like all the music ones, but I would vote for seth yes, yes, and now we have like four man. Yeah, this might have to come down to the listeners. Give us one more, give it to us. Oh yeah, And that's the start of it. Just so solid. We're not going to do another one and done, one and done. We can't. I can't. I don't. I don't feel like what I just did. It's a snowflake. There's only one of the Yeah, but Phil has what we need. Phil. We have four different, four different votes thus far, and you and I are set to uh do something about it. So you go next, and my vote counts for ten as always. Yes, as we all know, I am crane back Karn. You gotta vote. You didn't even hear him all, did you? Oh she has to go. She's miming. We'll cut this all out, all right, Phil, yeah, all the pressures on you. I'm torn. I'm torn between two okay, the shortest one and the longest one opposite the spectrum. Yes, I relate to the subject matter of Spencer's obviously murdering me. Yack, you keep inviting me and to go ice fishing, even had ice fish. I got sharpening a knife. I looked it up in this author's from Pennsylvania. Another double a double vote for you. Yeah, I'm very happy with my decisions. A question about yours band ahead. I'm looking at the paper and it looks like it was emailed to you. Was this a part of a five to our review or was it just emails? He said, my damn review is not showing up in iTunes. Emailing you this because I spent a lot of time on it. I haven't double checked. I bet it it showed up over time. People A lot of people send in like, hey, it's not showing up, but it takes a while. Sometimes I do appreciate phils thoroughness. We had to go through a lot of emails too, though. Yeah, there was a lot of people. A lot of people were being because they work a lot, spent a lot of time that they wanted to make sure I saw and like I said earlier, this is very important. So I'm just trying to spend as much time as as is deserved. Um, Ben, what was the author of yours? Ben Callahan? Oh, that's right, that's right. Middle name, be honest, Ben, Ben Callahan. You had the best moment with the email ding. Yeah, but I gotta give it to Spencer, and then nice got a leader. We got a leader in the clubhouse, which means all I can do is make a tie and then we'll have to go back and round and vote, and because we always need more content, just this about thirty minutes right now. I gosh, I gotta say my favorite performance was the flip Flop Pleasure. Absolutely, it was amazing. My least favorite performance, just kidding, yeah, freaking bring it on, man, And when you asked me to do a favor again, you know what the ad is gonna be. My least favorite performance was my own Ben get safe man, Well, can you get put a drum roll in there? I'll put in the drum roll here. I usually need at least two because I keep talking. I got a vote for myself, which means it's a tie between Spencer yeah, trying to milk this for all it's worth. Baby. So there's a tie between Spencer and myself, Ben Callahan and a dad outdoor right, yes, what's his name? Scott Scott care of Land. So we're gonna do one more lap around the table, more lap around the table between those two, between those two, seth make it quick, Scott Scott, Scott Scott, Send Scott Scott, Ben Scott Scott wins. Welcome, Congratulations, I said, welcome him, you found him in your ground him, But well done, well done. That really didn't make me feel so like a shiver went up my spun. Beautifully written, well done, well done to everybody. We got hundreds of these things. I don't know. I couldn't even count them all, um, but you guys took it seriously. I wanted to make sure we took it seriously. So we did. And here we are, so thank you for everybody. Round of applause for all our performers as well as our winner, Scott. And he's what's his instagram? A period day at period outdoors Boom, get in there and follow that. See what's up, creativity. We were gonna do some other We're gonna talk about some other things. But we're what forty minutes in Yeah, almost Yes, skip that and we're gonna get right to our interview portion of the show, which has absolutely nothing to do with this at all. As as has become tradition, has become tradition on TC we have Rob Greenfield. Now. Rob Greenfield is a man that lived off only food he grew uh and produced himself. So he didn't eat anything that came from the industrialized society of America for one whole year. So he thought, we're talking about getting salt from the ocean. Wow, anything you can think of. So he was formerly a vegan, did this and decided he had to eat some road killed deer, trap some squirrels. Um. So it's a pretty interesting look at how we consume and also just like the cool things you figure out when you have to do it. So there's a lot of cool tips and tricks in this interview. UM. So hope you enjoy Rob Greenfield. Hey, Rob, how's it going? Many good man? How are you? I'm pretty good. I was just telling you it's snowy and bows me in a snow squall this morning, but you are somewhere I don't think it's snowing right. No, Costa Rica, it's been n I I need degrees every day for the last three and a half weeks. That's I guess that ain't bad. We'll take it here February around these parts gets get to be tough. But what are you doing, Costa Rica. Um? I'm on a speaking tour for the year right now. I left the United States three and a half weeks ago, and I won't be back in the States until about the first one So I'm I'll be giving talks in about thirty countries around the world. UM. And then of course enjoying the natural world everywhere I go, hopefully, and you know, meeting people and just learning, learning everywhere I go as I as I share information as well. Yeah. What what are your generally your topics when you traveling and you change it per country or do you always have kind of a refrain? Um? Basically, my number one theme is how to not destroy the world and also common sense. I'm just trying to bring some basic common sense back into our society that this earth is This earth is the only one that we that we have as far as we know, and there's seven billion of us and we've got to work together too to make this all work. And you know, we've got to understand the earth and the natural cycles of it and work with it rather than work against it. So I do give talks on many different things, but it all comes back to that basic connection to the the world we live on, into the people that we share the earth within the other species. That's great I had. I've had multiple listeners of this show. UM prefer you and send me links of stuff that you've done and and so um, I can't remember the names of the folks that have sent him, but thanks to that, because I started watching your videos and reading your stuff, and then it's it's little short of inspiring. And we we've in the last couple episodes started bring people on that that don't necessarily sit you know, say nothing wrong with a professor or an intellectual, but try to bring people on that are not only talking about these issues, but they're out there living it and doing something about it. And I think, Um, I think what you did over a year's time, uh fits totally into that. So can you briefly say, tell tell everybody kind of what the idea was by forging all of your own foraging and growing and I guess also been killing all your own food for a year. Uh, where the hell that idea come from? Yeah, it's kind of funny for me to be on the media podcast because I was. I was actually vegan, you know, for two years from two thousand, two thousand and sixteen. And I'm sure I'm not the standard. I'm not the standard person for the media the podcast because I also I haven't done an incredible amount of hunting. I wouldn't consider myself a hunter. Actually, however, you know, my recent project really immersed me in that for one year, I grew in forage of my food, So no grocery stores, no restaurants, you know, nothing package or processed or ship long distances. And when I say growing foraged of my food, I truly mean it down to the salt, down to rendering the oil. Um, you know, gifts. You know, I couldn't eat at someone else's top or party. No, you know, a little scraps left over from a meal, or like literally a hundred percent of my food for an entire year. And of course that meant immersing with animals too, because the reality is that, you know, so many of us are so disconnected from our food because of our current global industrial food system that makes it it makes it easy to be disconnected it to our food and and actually it wants us to be disconnected so that we'll just buy whatever they're trying to sell. But the more you connect with your food and you actually procurate yourself, you know, one of the things that you see is that that these systems are animals and plants and there is no separation. And it's been an amazing immersion of just you know, just just connecting in a way where you start to see things that the average person just never sees. When they can get salt at the grocery store, they can get their oil at the very least, but in the reality, almost everything is coming in a packet shipped around the world. Yeah, it's it's a I think that we've been we've been covering this on the show in a lot of different ways kind of because my philosophy, or it's at least how I feel and what it has done. My hunting is kind of bled into all these other things that I want to do. Started with gardening, and then it started looking at you know, how I consume and what comes into my house and what goes out and composting and all these different things that honey was the starting point for me, is obviously it wasn't for you. You kind of were a little bit reversed before we get into all the things you did in that year and all the i'm sure crazy stories that came from it. When did you first realize that that hunting could be some small part of what you did or or was an option for you within within this project. Well, it's kind of interesting because you know, as I said, I was vegan for two years, and I was influenced by some documentaries like Cow Spiracy for example. And I'm generally very much a critical thinker and problem solver. You know, I'm an ego scout. So I spent seven years of my of my life really practicing resourcefulness and and the basic skills and um, and I'm not generally a very black and white thinker. I realized that things are very much great, that there is no black and white on this unearthed unearthed and but some of these documentaries were so well made that basically like how Specs, it caught me in this place where I saw how how messed up factory farming was, and they pitched it in a such a way that it actually made me go from the extreme of eating the factory farm meat to the extreme of saying, no animal products. You know, no meat, no dairy is okay at all. And well, I can't say I was never that extreme. But the thing was, I was living in the city San Diego, seventh largest city in the country, so I was mostly shopping at the grocery store. Hunting was not really a thing. I still occasionally went and caught a fish at the pier um, but but basically I did go into this short period of sort of black and white thinking where it's you know, this or that period. And then and then the more that I looked in the permaculture, and the more that I actually went to the farms that produced my vegetables, and the more that I really immersed in our food system, the more that I realized, oh, actually, there's nothing that is good or bad. Most things have their you know, their detriments, and and and so then I started to learn about regenerative agriculture. And then, of course, you know, with this year of growing and foraging my food, I've been researching, researching the humans connection to food for you know, close to a decade now, and I just don't see examples of humanity ever existing in harmony with the earth in a way that didn't involve animals. And so to live off the land, to live without grocery stores, to live without industrialization, UM, I see no post ability that that can really be done except for some maybe very rare circumstances which I still haven't found um at all. So that you know, for me, that was just one of the reasons why, of course animals were going to be a part of this year of growing and foraging all my food. Yeah, and I think for for that's, like I said, the journey that I've kind of going on, and folks that listen to the show of going on is really that we've we've talked about regenerative agriculture on the show. We've talked about a lot of these. We talked about monoculture, crops and our impacts and our disconnection from food UM and hunting being kind of like personal medicine. When it comes to that, it certainly isn't. UM. There's no way that we can all hunt and fish for our food. It just wouldn't work. There's too many people, not enough animals, and we can never maintain. So we know that honey, is this like incredibly personal thing that does solve a lot of those problems? Is that kind of how it felt for you during that time, during that Yeah, Yeah, And you know what of interesting things is you look at anything and you say, well, everybody can't do this. Otherwise it wouldn't work if everybody decided they wanted to go hunting today, and in North America, of course it wouldn't work. But you look at the alternative. Every everybody, most everybody right now is on the industrial food system, and what is that doing? Well? Ten thousand species are going extinct per year. The thing about hunting and fishing and foraging is that now we actually see our relationships to the land and we see that if we overharvest that there's depletion, and that you know, you can have not just depletion, but extinction. However, nobody ever says, well, what if everybody eats from the industrial food system, we continue to get what we're already getting, which is literally ten thousand species going extinct per year, far more than hunting is actually doing. So it's just been a really interesting thing. Is that you know, again, like we often we often look at things in black and white, but and we think that we look at when we do decide to take responsibility, then we actually see that the downsides. But when we when we don't take responsibility, then we actually don't see that. Well in that way, that's not sustainable either. Yeah, for sure. When you so, when where were you in your life and kind of what did your life look like when you decided to Because I know you've done a lot of other projects to bring attention to the issues you care about. Where were you exactly in your life when you decided I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna take this year and I'm gonna I'm gonna completely disconnect from industrial food. Yeah, so it's it is something that I was fascinated with for quite a while, since the beginning of realizing the realities of our industrial food system. I had that question, you know, would it be possible to actually step away from this and actually produce and forage and and hunt a hundred percent of my own food. But I was a traveler at that time, um I lived in When I lived in San Diego for five years, I traveled for about six of the months per year. So actually doing it was just not something I was going to be able to do because you have to you have to have a somewhat stationary life. Um. But finally it was in two thousand and seventeen when I decided I'm gonna do this. You know, I have to see if it's possible and not. You know, I wanted to see if it was possible. That was my big question. Can it be done? Of course it could be done in the past, you know, humanity did this for the majority of the existence of humanity. But it's it's two thousand twenty now, it's the twenty one century in the world is a different place. So I wanted to see can it be done in the society, and also wanted to use it as a way to get people thinking about about food where it comes from. But then, of course the other big thing is that I just love this is what I love. I loved I love connecting to the land. I love you know, growing and foraging and however sing my own food. And so for me it was also just gonna be a big break from the computer and the business and the moving to just just you know, you live the simple life and and connect deeply with with every bike that I ate, and so what did you have to do to get stable and get settled down so you can start to set this all up. It was a lot of work. Um. You know, most people who would do something like this would already have probably their hunting grounds. They might have a you know, an acre of land where they're growing their food. Uh, you know, maybe they have they know the area really well because they've lived there for years or decades. But for me, I arrived in Orlando with everything that I owned fitting into my backpack, owning no land, and actually having no place to live. So I started from absolute scratch, and I started by turning front yards in the garden. So I took sandy front yards because Florida used to be under the ocean, so it's it's basically straight sand in a lot of areas. So I turned front yards into gardens, and I started going out taking foraging classes. There's a local multiple local foragers, but there's one named Green Dean whose website is eat the Weeds dot com. And so I went out with foragers. I went to local gardening classes. I picked up all the local books that I could find on foraging and growing. I plugged into basically all the local resources, the people that had been doing it in this area for years or decades, and I had those learned from scratch because I had done very little growing or no, I had never grown anything in the state of Florida. I had foraged nothing or almost nothing. And the only thing that I had done is in the past. I would go to Florida to fish growing up with my dad, so I had fish to fair bit in Florida. I was familiar with the Intracoastal Waterway and fishing for stiech out and redfish and mullet and things like that. So I had that experiences going for me. But besides that, I was very much starting from from scraps there. Yeah, I can't even imagine. I was reading the thing that said you grew in fords like three different types of foods or somewhere in that number, and you had to I can't imagine. You've got salt from the ocean, coconuts from the beach, you caught fish, you had herbs from your garden. Um. I imagine that has to be a pretty weighty enterprise, just trying to think of all the things you actually have to do. Yeah, I mean just trying to figure it out in itself was a deep level of research and time, just trying to figure out, Okay, how do I get my calories, how do I get my fat and protein? How do I get my nutrients, all my vitamins and minerals because I wasn't taking any supplements of vitamins and medicine too. I you know, grew in for as of my own medicine. So looking into the medicinal plants in the area. Of course, I'm a big believer in the saying, you know, let the food be die medicine and medicine, but be that food. Everything that you eat from the land is a form of medicine. Putting help the food into your body is a form of medicine, and not putting process junk in your body and itself is a form of medicine. Um. But yeah, it was. It was so much work to learn all of it and um to get it going. And my goal was that it would take me six months from the day that I arrived in Florida to when I started so go from zero percent to six months, and it ended up being ten months. So I arrived in Florida on December sevent and I started on November eleven, so about about ten months after I planted my first seed, I launched into it. It and you know, that was my first actually my first meal ever that I grew in for. It was my first meal of the year on November eleven, So I really launched into the deep end on that first day. You're lucky you had the Florida growing season and not maybe not the Montana growing season. It would have been tougher. Um. So what during that those those months where you're trying to get this, you have any crazy stories or you know, huge failures or are things you just didn't anticipate while trying to set up a sustainable life like this. Yeah, I mean I ran into all sorts of hoocups. I'm actually writing the book about it right now, and so I'm reading my journals. I'm just seeing, wow, was I going through it? I Mean, there were just so many many disasters and you know, destructions in the garden um and just it's amazing, you know, looking back on it. Part of me looking back kind of feels like, yeah, it was kind of easy, like it it doesn't feel like a big deal. But after reading my journals, I was just seeing that I was just going through one challenge after another and just making it through because I had no other options, because I said I was going to do this, and I was gonna do it. But a couple of things that come to mind. In Florida, we have wild yams and they're an escaped species of cultivation. The species, the genus and species is Diascoria a latta. They mostly come from Asia, so they're they're very much a normal, you know, standard Asian cuisine. And these aren't the like christ and Thanksgiving yams that that are orange and looked just like sweet potatoes. These are these bold, you know, big bulby looking things that at the store can be ten or twenty pounds each, but in the wild they can get up to a hundred fifty pounds. I had learned, so I was just after these yams because I mean, just think about that. That's a hundred fifty pounds is the equivalent of thirty five pound bags of potatoes. That's some serious sustenance from one yam. So I actually found a spot where I dug one up and it was twenty five pounds. It was the first one I ever dug up, and I looked at the vines in the area. It was this little sort of ravine, and I figured that there was probably a thousand pounds there. So I figured I had found my calorie gold mine. I had my you know, calorie bank right in this one spot. There was only a three mile bike ride from my house, and so I was excited about that. And it was a couple of months before the project started. I think I bike passed it and I see the whole thing has been bulldozed, and I was like, you gotta be kidding me, Like, there goes something that I was not fully banking on, but it was. It was a potential for there was a potential for hundreds of meals. Um. Now, luckily the ms were all under the ground and and I didn't notice at the time, but they all ended up coming back so they didn't damage the MS and my calorie sources there. Um. That was definitely one of those, you know moments that I felt a near disaster, but but nature came through well. And I imagine just just on that point, relying on your you're relying on what surround you, right, relying on nature. And if you're relying on it, how can you not come like have a better value of it, and actually a tangible value of it. Not just I really love this place, but I really love this place for what it's doing for me. I imagine that among the many things was was something you learned. It is a whole It is a whole different way of looking at things when you're when you're truly dependent on the land. I mean as a as a some man who's fished since eight years old, so you know, for twenty five years. I really gained a different connection with fishing now because in the past, you know, when I was growing up, I mostly fished for fun. We ate some fish, but we mostly fished for fun um. And I never needed almost never. Of the thousand times that I went fishing, probably I never needed fish or would go hungry um. But during this project, a lot of times when I would travel, I didn't have fish with me. I didn't have a protein source with me. I depended on being successful at fishing. Otherwise it was eating lots of sweet potatoes or sometimes not having enough food at all. So the interesting thing was now when I was dependent upon it. It seemed that I considered myself a pretty good fisherman before and during this project, I really questioned whether I was a good fisherman at all, because it's it really it really changed. It really changed things because now you needed more consistent success. And what I saw was that I think in the past, I remembered the good days of fishing, and I didn't remember all the days I got skunk. But now I remember the days that I that I got skunks because it mattered. And then one of the one other really interesting thing, you know, one of the most one of the most challenging days of this whole year. It was about halfway through the project, and I was actually kind of deficient and fat and protein because I wasn't being successful with catching enough fish. And I it was the area where I was lacking, and I was up fishing with my friend in Wisconsin. I took a trip up there and I caught about it twenty pound lake trout, so I think that would be considered a trophy lake trout. It was maybe thirty five inches. It was it was like that it was the lake shout of a lot of people's dreams as far as trying to catch a trophy. And I wasn't after a trophy. I wanted to catch the food. I desperately needed some fat and some protein, and this lake shout was the perfect source of fat. I mean, these things are just like tanks of fat swimming through the water. And I asked Ben, I say, what would you do with this fish? And he says, I would let it go? And for me, that's generally was my thought too, because this is a fish that can breed. It's it's it's to that size where it's a you know, it's a mega breeder. It can put out so much fun. And so I let this thing go. Even though I was I was literally like so in this was the this was everything that I needed to solve my problems. And I let it go. And then two hours later Ben looks at me and he's like, you know, you asked me what I would do with this fish, and I said let it go? But did you mean were you asking me if you should let it go? And I was like yeah, and he was like, oh, man, I never would have said that you need that. If you need that meat, you should have kept it. And it hurt for days because I really did need it. And it was just a whole different way of looking at fishing. And of course I you know, my goal is to release the big ones and keep the small ones. But that at the same time I learned that the fishery up there nets them indiscriminately, and most of the people that are buying Lake Chart at the store, they're all eating those big fish. And so for me to have eaten that one fish to solve my problem would have been would have been totally justified. So that was another one of those painful that pain last and for a few days I just had a pit in my stomach for a few days from that. Well, and it's I've always thought that I've always in hunting camp, be the guy at the fire, like, man, what if we really were hungry? What if we really needed to kill this elk? What would we be doing right now? Um? And always thought about that, And then that interests me, like in indigenous cultures and in some of these hunter gatherer cultures that still exist around the world as few as there maybe, and always it's interesting to have that feeling. Man, and you it sounds like you had it that if you didn't get a fish, or if the crop didn't come in, you're gonna suffer, and you're gonna suffer along with with the that natural landscape. Yeah. I remember, um, when I was up in Wisconsin, it's a city with so many deer in the northern Wisconsin is a pretty dear popular state, and um, it wasn't deer season, and I would ride my bike past the deer and I would just I would want I was like thinking about trying to run into him with my bike and I was just looking at this deer like, Oh, I need to eat you so bad, but I um, of course that's ultimately that's I did end up eating a few deer that were hit by cars. Um, and that ended up being a very important form of sustenance for me, was harvesting car killed deer. Well, that's that's interesting. Is there any like, what were the hunting or the killing of animals that you actually did? Did you get Did you kill any deer or squirrels or anything like that? Yeah, so squirrel That was an interesting start for me. Um. I I was in Florida and I was it was I was growing some plant based plums of protein. I really wanted my own to grow my own peanut butter. I wanted to, you know, from scratch, make my own peanut butter. And um, also I was growing sunflowers. I can make sunflower butter as well and eat sunflowers, and so this was something that I was really excited about. I just also love peanut butter. It's comfort food for me, so to be able to have this was kind of a big deal. And honestly, the squirrels just kept getting the best to me what they would eat the sunflowers before they were even developed, so there wasn't much I could do about it, and they would go when I planted the peanuts, they would just go from peanuts to peanuts and grab them. And so I was having a hard time with these. So for you know, in permoculture, there's a thing and that's you know, let the problem be the solution. So I got myself some trapped and I ate my plant based start the protein. So I turned them into my protein by eating them. But this was tricky because it's not technically legal to trap anything in the city, so you know, I had to be a bit on the sneaky side about about trapping the squirrels in my garden and meeting them. But um, so squirrels were one thing, and then fishing. I did a lot of fishing. Um and then harvesting those deer. And that's the only I don't I never, Oh I did. I did shoot a gun. Um when I was in Wisconsin. I was practicing I was gonna shoot some rabbits. That never got around to it because I ended up getting deer. And then I was actually thinking about a raccoon because I didn't have oil. I failed at making coconut oil, and so nine months without oil, uh to cook in and so I had. Yeah, it was just that was difficult. And I talked to someone who said they got a half gallon of fat from one rack, who um by rendering the fact because they have so much. And so I was gonna get a raccoon and um, but actually I just I set the trap and never happened either. So yeah, I certainly ate a lot of eds Benson, but never actually had to hunt for them. And for me, there were so many deer that were hit by cars twenty deer are killed by cars in the state of Wisconsin alone, that I just didn't end up having a need to when I could just harvest them. You're coming out of this, I think we'll go back into some of the more details. But coming out of this what did you feel like, um, that honey would play a bigger part in your life coming out of this, or did you were you inspired by kind of like the connection there or or what was the feeling well in the long term, I am going to I'm actually planning on doing this project again, but in the northern climate. So many people have said that they want to see this and in a place with winters, and enough people have said it that I just they've convinced me I absolutely want to do it. And so as of now, my top choices, uh, Northeast, probably like upstate New York. And I'm actually, for some reason, I have the idea of the Ithaca area in my mind, and so when I'm in the northern climate, I'm certain that hunting is going to be much more a part of the project. In Florida, it just didn't work out. Um. And I don't know to me personally if I feel much more connected to it. I grew up in Wisconsin, and I feel much more connected to it in the in the multi season climate, in in the you know, decisious forest. I didn't feel really strongly connected to it in Florida. Um, But when I do that up in in a temple in a cold climate, I'm pretty confident it will become more apart um. But you know, honestly, the other thing that's kind of just personally interesting for me is I'm very I'm a very resourceful person, and if there's deer that are perfectly good that they've already been killed and hit by cars, for me, it just makes sense to pick those up rather than go and hunt. A whole lot less energy on your part to go and do it. You don't have to sit at tree stand for three days. Yes, it's less energy, and um, it's a good usage of resources. Um, So it just makes sense to me. Um. Now, the other thing that really made sense for Florida that I really wanted to do was hunt wild pigs. Yeah, that was my next That was my next question, Like do you had to thought that I was? It was something I was definitely gonna do. And here's the reason that I never got around to it. I had multiple people who are going to take me out hunting, but everybody baited them. And the rule was if I was gonna hunt, if I was gonna bait, I had to grow or for its debate as well, because I couldn't get industrial corn to use to feed the animal or to bring the animal in. So even with fishing, I couldn't buy words, I couldn't buy food to catch my food with my squirrels in the trap, I put my own homegrown sweet potatoes in there for example. UM. So that that's what held me back from the hogs, is that everybody that I had connected to was using baits stands where they you know, they had them on a schedule, and so I couldn't do that. So I was trying to find someone who didn't bait them, and I couldn't find that didn't happen. I know there's people that do it, but I couldn't. So that's what prevented me from getting a pig. But but for me from the get go, I was definitely planning on doing that. Um. The other thing is iguanas I did. I did hunt iguanas prior to the project because they're also invasive in South Florida and and I we ate some of those. But during the year when I did go to hunt iguanas down in South Florida, I caught three of the three days of straight rain, and the iguanas come out when it's sunny, so I didn't get any So so I attempted that you could say that I failed multiple times, multiple times. I am not an experienced hunter, and I failed multiple times at getting myself an animal. It's funny enough, Yeah, I mean, I'm we're at the very tail end of the what they call the shoulder season here in Montana for elk can I haven't filled my elk tag and I'm just thinking my family is not gonna have as much elk as we would want. Now. I'm not in the situation you were in, but it's just a strange feeling because we're just not going to go buy beef. We're not. So I'm thinking I was thinking road kill the other day. I was thinking, um, travel in other areas world. We were just talking about going to Texas for access to So It's a funny how when you start to rely on this, on this resource, you can't really screw it up. As a hunter, you kind of gotta get get what you can get. The trash can be on when when you're Yeah, whether you're completely forced to or whether it's a matter of ethics and principle, UM, it really plans of things. What did you like you know, obviously everybody's gonna ask you what you learned from this, But but while you were in it, um, how many times did you have to shift your own did you shift your own structure? Because obviously you made up your own rules, you're following your own rules. You have kind of a north star that you're that you're guided by. Was there times where you had to had to give into something or or give up something? Well? Originally, yeah, I mean I will say that the project did go pretty much as planned for the most part, and although it was challenging, it did go about as smooth as I could possibly hope. I mean literally giving up grow stores and restaurants completely and every morsel coming from the land, having never done it before or met someone who had done it before, It did honestly go about as smooth as I had hoped. And I knew there was gonna be challenging and that that was a part of it. Um. But the things that went differently is I definitely burned more fossil fuels than I had intended. I had originally hoped to do as much of this as possible on my bicycle and trailer. I even originally planned to bike to the coast with my you know, sixty miles and rode up on mullet and get you know, fifty or a hundred pounds of mullet and come back. But honestly, the fishing didn't go. I never did as well fishing as I had expected, So it meant I had to go much more often, and um so I ended up definitely driving more than I had intended. And I definitely broke the rules a few times. Like one time, uh in Wisconsin, my friends were doing really well with nightcrawlers and I was spin casting for trout and I just I gave in and I used the nightcrawler and caught a trout that I ate. And so that was one time that I broke my own rules. Um another time, you know, nothing in itself is that hard. It's not that any one thing is that hard, but it's when you're doing everything the amount of time that it takes and energy. That's when you know, people online would often say, well, why didn't you just do this well? Because I was doing a hundred other things. So another rule that another time that I broke was for me. I had to harvest my own wood to smoke. UM fished because the smoke imparted the flavor. And it was also that I, you know, I had to harvest my own flavors, growing harvestrown flavors there. So there was twice where I didn't har This would where a friend where I wasn't a part of that. One time a friend harvested it without me being there. So I that was another example of me breaking my you know, my self guides that I had made. So there was some minor things like that, um. And but other than that, like I didn't really have to besides minor mistakes or minor things like that, UM. The only time I ate something that that that did come from the grocery store was I think on day sixteen, I took all the food over to my friend's house, um to make dinner for both of us. I brought mullet for the fish. I brought cassava or yuka it's like a potato. I brought the greens and the veggies from my garden. I brought um the salt, the herbs, um and pumpkins needs. And so I had everything and we made the meal together. And then she didn't finish her plate, so I ate what was on her plate and after like one or two bites, I realized she had sprinkled her own salt on the plate on the pumpkin seeds, and so I probably had like ten grains ten grains of salt. And that was my big mistake. Happened on sixteen days in and so so technically I didn't make it through the year without an industrial food because of that one mistake. Sounds like you're being hard on yourself. Give you pass on a few grains, few grains of salt. It happened. It hurt when it happened, but ultimately it is what it is. You know what. I got a lot of just a lot of questions about the mechanics. I guess I'll start with where A lot of folks be interested when you when you got your row killed deer? Were you making stock? Were you um using the organs? I guess with the road tell might be a little harder for that. But describe how you kind of like utilize the whole animal. Yeah, so if I'm if I was hunting, then I'm going to try to utilize as much of the animal as I possibly can. With fish, I made fish stock with the heads, I boiled the you know, the heads and made fish stock. I ate the eyes and the brains a lot of times of the fish, you know, with the lake trout, I ate the liver um. With one lake trout, I found that if I slow cooked the lake trout, they have really soft bones. I literally could eat the entire head skeleton. So I did not know this, but I ate the teeth, the jaw, everything like melted the entire thing. Now with the deer, it was a different story because because this is an animal on the side of the road that was already going to waste, I didn't feel a need to use every part because I felt like whatever I was doing was already a service. Um. Whatever I could harvest, I would, and then the animal that what I couldn't use, I just dragged into the woods where it would be eaten by other animals or degrade and not get picked up. In some areas they're actually picked up and take into the landfill. So whatever I left was actually going to biodegrade and you know, re enter the system. So I didn't harvest the organs with any of the deer hit by cars just because you know, a lot of times they might have a ruptured you know inside Now that's somewhere that with sure if they get if you hit it yourself and it's a you know, it gets hit in the head and you do it right away, there's I'm sure a lot of people probably have harvest organs, But the scenarios I came across, and also my lack of experience, I decided to go with. Basically, what I would do is I would set the deer up on its uh joints and then so that it was basically, you know, sitting with its back upwards. And then what I would do is I'd harvest the backstraps um and then I had harvest whatever quarters weren't damaged. Sometimes i'd get all four quarters, sometimes two, sometimes three um and then I would generally and I could do that without hanging it and without ever touching the organs, just going for those quarters. And then I would generally harvest the neck as well, and so that's what I would utilize. The first year I harvested was just a little fawn and I got nine pounds of meat out of it. UM. I would also take the bones and I would make bone broth, and then then you know, towards that was in August and the summer was rough, you know, there's the deer moving as much, and I wasn't seeing many. But once it got to be like September, on one drive a hundred twenty miles, I found seven or nine deer, and I harvested meat from three of them. I think I harvested like sixty seventy pounds um. And you know, in the fall season, it's amazing. I mean, if I lived in Wisconsin, I feel like I would just harvest those and feed everyone in my neighborhood with me. It's an amazing resource and an amazing resource of quality, healthy meat that gets you know, wasted, wasted, and just driven past by so many people. I think it's just I think it's just an amazing resource of quality meat. Yeah. We did that recently in Michigan on a want to shoot. We just we didn't kill a deer, and we want to do some butchering demonstrations, and we picked up a road kill deer and it was the first time I've ever done it. But it was the first time I ever butchered one fully, and it was and I'm sitting and I think, I, why don't want to do this more often? What am I doing? Who was that one good enough shape where you could like with the oregons intacted. All. Yeah, it sat long enough where I just wasn't they were intact. They had some some trauma, you know, they had actually had a bunch of trauma on the front shoulder and had was starting to turn green a little bit. So we just peeled that away and peeled off part of the front shoulder. But um, it was a pretty small deer too. It was just a year and a half year old. But it's just just a process of of going through that being able to take what you can and feeling like a scavenger rather than a hunter because the hunter, you you really take ownership of of the thing. So it makes total sense what you're saying about about that. But I know you you probably had bee hives. I can't even imagine all the things that you had here, you know, getting salt from the ocean or what are the like the the things that surprised you that you learned, like things that you didn't know you were going to be calorie resources that became essential. Just those little idiosyncrasies. Well, I would say for people that really have the desire to live off the land as people would say, and you know, never have to go to the grocery store. I think one of the main things that holds that prevents people from being able to accomplish that is calories. Um. Most people buy their grains and their flowers, and a lot of grains are not easy to do on small scale, and they are something that is much more efficient at large scale. Now for me, in Florida, grain it Florida is not a grain state. You know, it's grain. It's just not a place where grains grow well the heat in the humidity. Um. But what grows amazingly is is tubers so sweet potato, yams and cassava or yuka. And I spent so many hours crunching the numbers for calories and everything. I mean, I crunched the numbers for for for for all of my forms of food to figure out how much I would need. Um. But calories was one of the big ones. I was often making spreadsheets UM figuring out how many calories I had either planted that day or harvested or had store it away um. And I was amazed at how many calories I could grow in a relatively small place in a front yard in Orlando, and I calculated that on an average size lot, you can comfortably grow all of the calories for one person for a year from sweet potatoes and and cassava, yuka, and yam. And I think with a like with a house on a half acre, you I think you could grow the calories for a you know, a family of three or four using those calorie crops in Florida. I don't have experience elsewhere, but for me, that was you know, when I was just crunching those numbers, I grew seven. I grew about five pounds of sweet potato out of an area that was about fifteen ft wide by about twenty so that's three hundred square feet. And I got about five hundred pounds of sweet potato out of there in one season. So that was pretty revolutionary for me to see that you indeed can produce their calories too, Uh, when you have the right calorie crops to be able to do so, you know what you're talking earlier about kind of like producing flavors. And I imagine I was thinking, like maybe he had hot sauce. If he made hot sauce out of peppers or something, what were the flavors were there? Honey hot sauce, Like what were you able to cook up? Yeah? Well, you know, honey was a big one. I had four colonies of bees, and all of the colonies were rescued rescued colonies. So I made friends with the local be rescuer where if bees are you know a lot of people if they get bees in their said or you know, in their house, the honey bees, they'll actually have them exterminated. And so this guy what he does is he actually goes and does a live rescue. He removes them and then he finds a new home for them. So that's where I got my four colonies, and I would not have been able to make it through the year without the honey. I mean, the honey was my moral, like my it's what got me having that sweetness because I have I have a major sweet I love chocolate, and having that honey to go to for a quick pick me up. Mentally, it was so huge plus calories. I mean a spoonful of honey is like a hundred calories I think or something like that, so you know, I could get so many calories to that as well. So and working with the bees was just so incredibly special. I of the top five things that would make me jump out of bed in the morning, bees are one of them. Just just being surrounded by tens of thousands of bees and and working with them and seeing them every day, going out collecting vector, bringing it back, knowing that that's going to turn into honey. Is it was pretty special. I feel like I got a little sidetracked on them. No, I like we've been exploring that around here. We're thinking about doing some metator honey. Put some bees on our place in Michigan and need and need is definitely one of the most special things. Um it's just it's literally just water and honey. You mix that together and you have one of the most special drinks to humanity. And actually, I remember the first time I ever saw it. I was in Kenya ten years ago, and these guys took me out to their shed. There was a five gallon plastic bucket. They lifted off the lid and it was just boiling and it was just honey and water and some sticks that added different bacteria in there. But there was so much bacterial life in there that it was literally just fizzing and boiling. And you know, it's one of the earliest forms of alcohol, I think, to humanity, and it really is just such a special thing. It tastes amazing, it's healthy. Mine was really low alcohol content, like literally just a few percent um, but the boy did that just add so much value to my life. Um. And then as far as flavors, yeah, I grew about thirty or forty different herbs and spices, and then I foraged a lot of them too. You start to look into the plants around you and you realize that there's so many leaves and um, you know, and greenens and different plants that are just great natural local herbs and spices. And then of course peppers. Um. Peppers are one of the easiest things for beginner gardeners to grow, and so I I just always had an infinite supply of Serrano peppers. The one that did the best I took a seed from my friend's garden, I planted it, and I got over a thousand peppers from that one one seed over a period of a year or and a half. Yeah. Man, I love surrounding pepperst I've grown them over the years, and they are They're super easy. Even in this Montana climbate, you can get them going um, gosh, man, so many questions about like the mechanics of what you did? Did you ever? I mean for me, you know, food and drink, it's still an indulgence, right, so you sit down, You're like, oh, how's some cake and I'll have a whiskey. Uh there, And there's so much that we're Food just isn't sustenance. It's not calories only, there's no mathematics in it. Sometimes I can sit down just enjoy um, different flavors of different ingredients without you know, really take you just taking a break, don't have to understand where it came from. Did you miss that? Were you able to find that anywhere within this year? Yeah? A little bit of both. I definitely what I really missed throughout the year. I didn't miss anyone particular food so much. I didn't generally crave any food that I didn't have. But what I really missed was convenience, you know, having Like one night, for example, I had my my cassava in the pot. I was cooking and cooking it up, and I went into my house. My kitchen was outdoors and I wasn't paying attention, and I come out and I I I opened it up. And I've burned these potatoes so bad that there's literally cold in the pot, like they are glowing red. I have burnt them so bad, and I and and and I didn't have convenient foods in my pantry at that time. I hadn't had dried fruits or or things like that. So that night I just went to bed hungry because I burnt my dinner so bad that it was inedible, and I didn't have other foods, and I was starving, but I was also exhausted, so I just went to bed hungry. So there was definitely just that yearning for convenience and ease, like coming home after a long day if I didn't have leftovers. A lot of times I came home at seven and wasn't eaten until nine o'clock because I had to gather it off from the garden um and you know, so that was really challenging. Now, the better that I got and the longer it went on, though, the easier that became. For example, at the end, I had like thirty sports of can venison that you know, I could just pop the top off and add that to any meal, and it was just easy as can be. And I had dried fruits, and I had beans, and I had flower. I had probably thirty pounds of different flowers that I could make tortilla and bread from, and so the you know, towards the end, it became easier. And you know, that's for me, an interesting and important point of all this is that I went after ten months and being very minimally experienced in any of this. I had never made flower, I had dehydrated very few things. You know, I had never made most of these things from scratched or stored a lot of food. I was so new to so many elements, bease I've never kept bees before. Um, I had never harvested a deer before. You know, I was so new to so many of these things. And the fact that I was able to go from zero to after ten months, to me is amazing. And I look at so I look at it and I say, well, if you're established and you've been doing this for five or ten years, then the hardships that I went through wouldn't be nearly as strong. And I do really believe that we can get to a point where we can be doing this and we still can have that comfortable, that comfort and convenience as we build up the pantry that's you know, full of the multiple last years of preserves and such. And of course the other big thing is that I did this to the extreme of percent for the personal exploration and they have to learn how to grow and forage everything that I would need to see if it was possible to do something extreme to bring attention um And but the reality is is that there's no need for us to do are and for me, it's really about you know, if we can do um and still buy those some of those treats and and some of those things that make things easier, especially as we can start them locally, then absolutely I think that we ought to do that. UM. So that extreme was really it was never about doing it forever. It was always just about immersing and seeing if it was possible for a period of time. Yeah, it's interesting. It's like with with monern technology. Always thought like if I want to become a beekeeper, I can do it. You know, it's live in the best of times, like if I want to you know, if I want to learn something, it's at my fingertips, which is unique in our humanity. The other a lot of the things you learned you probably would have had to learn from in a communal sense if you would have been a couple hundred years prior um to what you tried to do, So that that's an interesting angle too. Did you feel like, do you ever come to a point now where you go to a restaurant and have a meal and you missed the work? Yes? Um, so I've finished on November eleventh today Stebrary fourteen, So because it's almost exactly three months ago and I miss it. I mean, the grass is always greener on the other side. You know, life is always hard. I truly believe that, no matter what, life is hard. But right now I missed that deep connection with the food. I am staying somewhere where I actually have hard um. This place of staying at in Costa Rica. I am harvesting a lot of my own food right off the land. Some some days of my food is coming off the land here um, and that feels good. But for the two months prior, I really I felt a lack of connection and and it doesn't feel as good. The meals aren't a special and um, and I've I've felt a disconnection from the earth because the reality is is that When things are convenient, it's hard to resist them. So if you can open up a fridge and everything you need is right there, it's a lot harder to go out into the garden and harvest those potatoes that are under the ground, or you know, if you have a if you have all the beef you could possibly need in your freezer, for most people, it's a lot less likely that they're gonna go out and they're gonna harvest that, dear. And so I've definitely fallen for the convenience um of having a refrigerator accessible, or having some restaurants or grocery stores accessible. And I will say that in some ways I have more time to do other things. But also I would say my quality of life as decreased um because I think a connection to our food, the deep, deep connection is for me, that is one of the best forms of a high quality of life. And something that I've personally learned is that a quality existence takes time. So today everything is based so much around convenience, But for a lot of people, I don't think this convenience creating a really high quality of existence. I see so much depression and so many people just always wanting something more and never feeling satisfied. And I think that real quality of existence comes from work, and comes from having to harvest our food and hunt and connect with our food. And and it's work. But you know, everybody who's who's hunted and grown food knows that, yes, it is work, but it's not just work. It is it's passion, it's pleasure, and it's just a deep form of satisfacts and and and I I will say, I've definitely lost some of that deep sot form of statisfaction. And I know that I'm going to be traveling for the next year, year and a half and it's going to be difficult. And I'm already thinking about wanting to get back to the land and you know, set up a new spot and again try this, possibly in the state of New York to I'm already already craving it. I only finished three months ago. Yeah, it's funny how that how that works, right, we can kind of get that lolled into this sense of what satisfaction is and what happiness is. And like I said, when when food becomes and I've slid into this a lot, you know, where food becomes an indulgence, it becomes a form of like you run to it to get pleasure it it becomes too convenient. Um, And that hunting is the first thing that taught me. That the first thing that taught me. Like my wife gets annoyed every time we sit down. I'm like, let me tell you a story about this deer. Let me tell you that the hunt that I had, what I had to do to get this animal to the table right here. And I think my wife just rolls our eyes another story about another deer. But um, that's done more for me than I could probably articulate. It seems like you've you've got that in spades with this. Yeah, definitely. Just it's and the salt, you know, just like you've got up the salt multiple times. So I might as well say how that works? Um, because I had no clue how the heck. I never met anyone who harvested harvested their own salt at the time. Um, And I just didn't know how the heck it works. And I didn't know what what about like contaminants in the ocean. I knew the ocean that had salt in it, but how do you actually do it? And it literally was just as simple as Eventually, what I did is I just went to the ocean, filled up a bucket of salt, took it home, put it in a pot, boiled it, boiled off the water, and I was left with myself. And it was it was just as simple as that. And you know, I always everybody who came over always wanted to taste the salt, and I would always ask them how it tasted. They would pretty much always say it tastes a little bit saltier, and sometimes they would say it tastes like a little more ocean like, um, like you can taste the ocean, whether or not that was true or it was just a mental thing. That was what pretty much everybody said, that it's saltier than than the average salt um. But it was, yeah, definitely really as simple as that. And now, of course I never The thing that worried me at first was well, what about contaminants, because if you boil five gallons of salt of water, that means you're going to concentrate the five gallons of contaminants in there. But and people always ask that question, like aren't you worried about pollution and contaminants? But those same people I usually ask, well, how do you know what's in the food that you're buying at the grocery store. Actually, I mean even if you look at organic, when you really look deeper at at most organics, they are not ever what you would imagine. Like if you go to almost any organic farm that's supplying on the mass scale to the grocery store, it's not the picture of perfect farm that you would imagine. And so I just kind of came to realize that when you're connected to the food, you're gonna realize, yeah, there are possibly some contaminants here, but it's because you see it, Whereas at the grocery store you can just easily ignore that and put your blind faith in your blind trust in that system. But we all know that that blind faith and blind trust in that system is a is a form of delusion and and and that these food companies are those foods are are not perfect and by any means. And so you know, sometimes some of the foods that I might have had some contaminants from being out exposed to the world. But I don't believe that when it when it all comes together, that it's it's more than the food that I would get wrapped in plastic at the grocery store. Yeah, I've had people ask me that before. How do you you know when you're when you kill an animal, how do you know what's healthy? It's like when you look at it and you look at its meat, you look at it, you know what healthy meat looks like? Does it look healthy? Um? There's a lot of other you know, other factors obviously, um, But that's it can be that simple. And like you said, the containments that we're put in our body from other from other process places, um, would have to be equal, if not more, to whatever you found, whatever was in the ocean that you were pulling out. Yeah, and and it's you, I mean you just said basically it comes down to common sense. A lot when when you don't know something, you don't know it. And if you've never hunted before, you don't know how to look at animals and think about whether they're healthy and and and understand those things. And the same with plants. But once you once you walk out in the woods and you're actually paying attention to those things, you start to realize that a lot of it's just it's basic common sense. It's common sense that's been completely lost by our current society where we read labels at the grocery store, But once you start hunting and fishing and gathering, you start to see that, Yeah, this is just basic common sense. And you could call it intuition or whatever you want to call it, but it's just that human beings have been doing this for the history of humanity, and we still we haven't lost it. Like we we can. We have these cues that we don't necessarily even have to put words too, but we just generally understand when something is something that we should put in our body, or when something is something we shouldn't. Something that's sick. Possibly, yeah, no, and it is generally like you said, it's it's it's there. It's common sense. You look at a deer and it looks sick, it looks skinny, you can see its ribs or a lot of times, I mean, I always find it interesting to cut the paunch open on a deer, or cut the crop open on a turkey and just look at what it what it was eating normally, you know, because you're you're watching it eatum at some point before you kill it, or you're in in the same ecosystem where it lives. So you kind of know what it feeds on. But it's always interesting to kind of explore that once you've killed that animal too, just to kind of know and get a different perspective on on what's there. So I imagine you know this this you call it an experiment? Is that? Is that a way to call it? It was? It was? Yeah, you can call it an experiment, an experience, immersion, Yeah, absolutely, any of those things. So this so this immersion, Um, I imagine it's so much for you just from a gathering perspective and knowing how you want to move forward and interact with the world. Um, what did other people think that we're close to you? Um, they think you're crazy that they want where they inspired by you. I know you did a lot of content around this as well. What's what's been the the thing? You were surprised by the interaction after we're during Yeah, so, and I should clarify I also would just call it life too, because it isn't it is an experiment. But my life is an experiment, Like that's what I'm just always whatever was something like just seeing what's possible. So it's experiments in life. Um, but yeah, aspires people's response, You know, I've been doing this sort of thing long enough now that I've built a general and a standing around that I know what I'm doing. Like when I first started, a lot more people thought I was just crazy because I hadn't proven myself yet by any means. But launching into this project, I had already done quite a few other projects that prove that when I set out to do something, I do my research. I know what I'm talking about. Um, I know what I'm getting myself into, and so now my I don't have nearly as many people who think I'm crazy. Now with that being said, still a lot of people think I'm just an absolute lutatic because the way that I put it is that I'm extreme. Like there's no question about that. The way that I do things is extreme. I take on extreme things. But the reason that I'm extreme is actually because our current society is extreme. Now, our current society seems normal because when you see the same thing around you day after day after day, month after month, year after year, it becomes normal no matter what it is, no matter how extreme something is, If pretty much everybody around you is doing it and that's what you're used to, then it's normal to you. So the United States, that's five percent of the world's population, but we use twenty percent of the world's resources. That by definition is not normal. That by definition is extreme from a global standard. So what I like to point out is that that the United States current way of doing things is actually, by definition extreme. The only reason I'm extreme is because I have to take the counter balance to that. I go to the other end of the spectrum to point it out. And what it's really about is it's about coming back to a place of moderation about and you know, a place of moderation to me would be actually knowing where our food comes from, knowing what it is that we're eating and eating in a way that we are not death estimating the world around us by doing it. To me, that would be moderation. The extreme would be, you know, not having a clue where anything comes from, how it got to us, and the impact that it has. So so you still have people that are they're still they're completely disconnected with their food. Where they think food comes from the grocery store. It doesn't come from the land, it's from the industry. So because of that extreme, there's no doubt there's there's tens of thousands of people who have been exposed to my work this year who think I'm just just crazy. But overall, the main response I get today is that people are people are inspired because people are waking up by the millions in the reality of our food system and the reality of the many, many of the ways that our current society does things, and they've they've woken up to the fact that this is not normal, and this is not the way that humanity has always been doing it, and it's not the way that we can keep doing it forever. So because of that, honestly, most people when I see me, seeing me take it to the extreme, they're inspired. They're just excited. And a lot of people the responses that they've never grown something before, and they just they just absolutely are dying to get the first seed planted, and they do. And so a lot of people they're just they're just inspired to go out foraging for the first time or to grow food for the first time. And then the people who you know are already hunters and gatherers and growers. For a lot of them that have already you know, I've been living this lifestyle or or have made that shift ten years ago. For a lot of them, they're inspired just to take things a step further. You know, maybe they've had the dream of of you know, going a month without the grocery store and seeing this this project I've done, is I have given them the motivation and the example to see, Okay, he's done it. There's an example. Now I can do this. And so so generally like inspired it and and motivated um to take things a step further. It's been I would say what I what I feel surrounded by the most and their sponse I get from people the most. Yeah, now, I think it's that's a beautiful thing. And one thing I realized having these conversations on on this show is that there's this version of you know, environmentalism or just caring about the earth that seems and you wrote this in one of your posts. I don't pull it up and read it because I think it was great. The way that's like the mainstream environmental message and even the animal rights message is always you know, it's it's it's broad. It's like factory farming, monoculture, crops. These are the things we're battling, and that's a big task to take that all on and eliminate factory farming. But well, it's not a big task. It's to step back from that and make changes in your life, and just make those changes in your life first before trying to tackle this giant ideological cultural thing that we've got our our arms around, which is the way that we eat, especially in the industrial age. Um, oh, here it is. Yeah, you so you wrote, so you posted a picture of the fawn that you that we've already talked about, and um, you had a big, a big post and a bunch of good interaction here. But you said, um, at the end, you said, if we truly, if we want to truly change society and change the world, we must think intricately and embrace diversity in all manners of life. We must go beyond the mainstream environmental message of thought patterns, the greenwashing and labels. We must go far, far deeper. I thought that was very well said, especially when you're we're looking at harvesting a deer off the road. Yeah. Yeah, that was an interesting day for me. That was my first time doing it. Originally I wasn't going to post about it, but I just thought as a great lesson and interestingly enough that deer was probably my most liked and commented on post of the entire year. Actually know, the most was the next post where I expressed that like a thousand people unfollowed me because of that post, and I expressed that that same thing, I doubled down that look, we have to go deeper. We we have to look at the reality of our situations, and we have to go to uncomfortable places, because yeah, I mean the reality of our current environmental movement is they like not they, but people like to make things black and white. They want easy answers, they want this is the way you do it, this is the way you don't do it. And you know, meat eating is and this podcast Meat Eater is kind of at the very center of that because it's been made so black and white by the two sides, where you know, in the environmental movement, meat has been portrayed as the absolute destroyer of our earth by by so many people, and but you look deeper and you just realize that it's not that simple. It's not that case at all. There are ways that animals are raised and hunted where it is extremely inhumane and it is one of the great veins of humanity. But when you look a lot deeper and you realize that that's just one part of a destructive food system, you realize that just like you can step out of the factory farms food system, you can also step out of the system of factory farming animals. But there are ways that you can work with animals that are actually beneficial to the environment and not destructive. And thus the opposite of opting out completely that would be veganism, but you can actually opt in to regenerative agriculture or sustainable hunting or fishing. And that's the reality is is that there is absolutely no easy answers. There's absolutely no black and white. There is no one size fits all solution to any of these things. Every state things are going to be different, every region and biom, every climate, you know, every different culture of people around the world. It's always going to be different everywhere. So it comes down to critical thinking, problem solving, uh, you know, looking deeper, understanding the environment, working with it no matter where we are, and and all of that is intricate and complex. Now it's I love it. I love it for for many many reasons, but I but essentially because you're saying, you know, factory faring becomes this really, it becomes vitriolic, it becomes a strong man. Really you can set it up and knock it down pretty easy. And a lot of people are being convinced to go vegan because of that. And you're like, man, this is that's not going to do what you intend, um if you just stop eating meat. And but that's one option. The other option is to to eat meat responsibly and source it ethically and do it um in the way that you were able to do it. It's during that time. So it's great to hear you have that message. This is a hunting podcast. We're we're supposed to not we're not really supposed to talk about this stuff. Um, We're I think we're kind of supposed to talk about big antlers or what kind of gear, well, those things like that's tructually what I grew up with. Um, not that as we're not supposed to talk about it. But that's just not really what in the hunting community we've talked about. It's like how we actually consume and how much of a benefit this is to us. It's kind of always been just a part of our community. You eat what you kill, and that's what it is. But now um it's open and people are are loving. I think this conversation that you can you could be an environmentalists and still kill animals or eat eat animals you harvested off the road, and you can be a hunter and still appreciate the natural world and still want to protect it. So those things are they are they can be mutual and they and they are, They're connected absolutely and and studdy, what are the I think the top comment, like the most liked comment on that post is I'm a vegan and this is the most vegan thing I've ever seen here from the side of the road. And that's an example when who who sees the outside of the black and white thinking. And and it's an interesting thing because obviously I'm extreme, But the reality is this whole conversation is moderation. It's about bringing the two sides together and just talking about the basics of of the reality behind behind our actions, just you know, understanding those basic things. Yeah. No, And I think it all goes back to like I think you boil it down, well, I mean it goes back to people one simple answers to these really complex questions and Um, we live in a world where where the media and then there's a lot of voices out there that are willing to help them do that and willing to push an activism you know act people fall into activism so quickly without really understanding what they're what they're on the stump for. So it's good to see people like you and other folks who were trying to reach out to that are doing it, that are taking the time to explore the stuff on the ground what it means to them. I think it it you know from a redneck kid they grew up in Maryland and started hunting and move out west. Like I can appreciate this. Holy I think it's it's fantastic. Um. One thing, one thing I didn't ask you is like how healthy did you feel during this? And after? Do you feel it less healthy? Not on the diet or what did it do you nutritionally? Well, A year is a long enough time to have his up. You know, it's ups and downs. If you if you took on any diet for a whole entire year, you know, I would imagine you would have you would have days that feel great and days that don't. And it was a long enough period of time where I've had that, um now to start with, interestingly, UM, you know, it took about ten days and then my digestion was the best that it's ever been because it was ten days without a single package process food, ten days of straight from gardening and foraging and just not having any package processed foods. So the change was so rapid with just my digestion becoming so much better. Prior to that, whenever I sort of like poked my intestinal area, my lower stomach area, it always kind of hurts for years. And then I realized just about a week and a half in that I poked him, it didn't hurt, And I think that was um, that was uh what's it called sweating, not swelling, um, inflammation, sedation exactly. I think that was information. And it went away not eating processed foods anymore. So I quickly felt way better. Um. I definitely felt a little more alive and energetic. And so the beginning, you know, I felt way better. Then halfway through the year, that's when I became the fish it and fattened protein. I was not able to catch. I was not catching enough fish. I hadn't gotten a deer. Yet I was eating some squirrels, but not nearly enough, and I was, you know, just failing at fishing. Oddly enough, I was so surprised that that was the case. Um. And so I became this efficient and fattened protein. My my my skin was feeling loose. Um. I was definitely feeling a little weaker. My my thinking didn't feel quite as clear. I felt like I wasn't getting some essential fats to my brain. And I don't know if that's a reality, but that's what I felt. But no doubt it wasn't getting enough fatter protein than my body. And so there was that was a little bit of a rough patch that was probably like July August. And then once I started, once I started to catch enough fish and once I got those deer, it took me about a month and I weaned myself just back into you know, peak conditions. And I went to my university to give a talk and they happened to have a body fat composite sin tester um, and I did that and I had a body fat of So I worked my fat backup plenty and I started a hundred fifty three pounds and during that time I was going. The lowest I ever got was a hundred forty nine pounds, so we're talking about about as little fluctuation as possible and weight. Um And by the end, I ended at a hundred fifty two point four pounds, so almost the same amount as I started, which is actually honestly a feat to maintain the weight without any process pack of food. H And at the end, I was definitely in the best physical condition that I could recall in the last mostly in like the last ten years, you know, most of my you know, adult life, twenties in the thirties, and I felt you know, excellent at the end. Um. And one of the main things for me is sleep needing. I I need to get enough sleep, and whether I'm eating good or not, if I'm not getting enough sleep, that throws off my digestion and everything. And I was well rested at the end and take care of myself. So I would say that, um, there were definitely hard times, but it's safe to say that I came out of this feeling healthier and happier than when I started. And also I didn't get sick once through the entire year. I certainly had my times indigestion sometimes, but I never even got a cold to the whole year. So for me, this was an amazing little personal testament of the idea that can take care of us if we if we let it, and that you know, food can be our medicine. And I'm not saying that this is a diet for everyone or anything of that sort, not remotely. This was my own personal experiment. But for me personally, it was great. It was it was It was fantastic, and I want to get back to it. I can hear your voice, man, it's it sounds like you're ready get back to Will you let us know when you're going up to the northeast part of the world. We'll get you in on some bear maybe for some fat and some good meat and a bunch of other stuff up there. I you know, people so many people said that that I could do this because I was you know, so many people said, we'll try doing this where it's cold, And so many people said, you can only do this because because you're in a warm place, because the year on growing season. And I will in no way downplay the benefits of the year on growing season and some of the comfort comforts and conveniences that that provides. But I have this feeling that it's that I'm gonna do better in the north than in the south. I just I just I experienced northern Wisconsin where I'm from, in the bounty is there. It's just a matter of harvesting it at the right time of the year and preserving it. And you've got to be on top of your game to the summer and fall. Um. And if you're on top of your game, you can make it through the winter. And I truly feel, my guess is that if I do it, when I do it in a northern climate, I think it's gonna be I think it's gonna go better, and I think it's gonna be easier, and I'm gonna maybe even come out a little fatter. I think you will do. I can think of a million thing. I think of having a pile of Morrell mushrooms. Uh, I can think of man a million things while de sparagus, I can think of all those kind of forging things. But also just turkey bear a deer two you'll be You'll be swimming in it. Yeah now, yeah, So hopefully when I do it in the north, you could actually maybe you take a trip out and come out and you can do do the next podcast in the forest. Dude, I'm down. I'm down much much better than this. But well, man, thank you for taking the time to go through this. I know I know who you're busy man, You've got how many countries? What's it that you're gonna be speaking in here? Coming up up thirty? I like it. I like it, like it's a well good luck with that jet like being what it is. Um, But where can people find all this content that you you gathered up during this time or one other projects you're working on that people can get excited about? Yeah? So, um just my YouTube channels Just YouTube dot com slash Rob green Field. Just type in my name you'll find me. Instagram is at Rob J. Greenfield and then uh Facebook, Um just facebook dot com slash rob Greenfield. My website is um Rob green Field dot org. And then I'm writing a book right now. It'll be out in December of this year, so a little ways off. And once that book is out, I'll be doing a US and Canada tour. I'm gonna travel through about thirty states of the United States and I'll be up in parts of Canada with that book, and so um, I hope to see you know, a lot of you, uh what can come out and meet in person, ask questions. And that book. You can go to Rob Greenfield dot org slash Food Freedom Book and you can preorder that. And the proceeds from that book are being donated to nonprofits that are working on creating a more sustainable and just food system. So my purpose is really just get me information out there and supporting those projects through that book, and very excited for people to read that when it's out. Yeah me too, man. I think it just feels like you're helping to redefine what environmentalism is, you know, as as a as a more on the ground practice as opposed to the more ideological thing that it has become over the years. So that's something it really excites me because I I feel that way too with with my hunting life and the things that surrounded So congrats on that and congrats on everything. Hopefully you come through bos on that so where we'll get you out and we'll go we'll go chase something. Absolutely the plan is to come through um Montana on the AM track because I'm mostly gonna be doing it via am track. And I know that Bozeman is well good three or four hours, so so I'll have to get a ride down there to make it to Bozeman, not come pick up. I'll bring some first light gears, some clothes, some binders. We'll go. We'll go. Depend on what time a year we'll have something we can do it. Don't do like February, Well we'll we ice fish a plan. Well, thank you, Rob, good lucky, Costa Rica, good luck when your travels. I really appreciate your time, man. Thanks for having me on, Ben and keep it up all right, man. Thanks, that's it. That's all on in Collective episode one of four in the books. Thank you to Rob Greenfield. Thank you to Tracy Crane, Seth Morris, Karine Schneider, Joe Fernando Spencer New Heart, and of course Phil the Engineer for putting together another great episode of the show. We have yet one more contest to go over if you can imagine it, and that is for the podcast kit, the podcast starter kits. So we're gonna pick for next week's episode one oh five, we're gonna pick our top three podcasts. We're gonna detail why those folks want to be a podcaster and we're gonna let you choose, so be tuned in next week for that. Hey. Also another thing, Phil, Yeah, let's say something to the microphone so we know you're there. I'm here. Um, I guess what's coming back? Officially? Dr Phil? Oh no, okay, no, work sharp, Yes, it's coming back. We have reached an agreement. This is news to me. Excited. Yeah, work sharp, not sharp moments. It's coming back at some point this spring. You'll be hearing more work sharp knots sharp moments. So please right into TC at the mediator dot com if you want to get you know, on the fun and possibly win something really cool. So that's gonna be coming back. We're'll be doing a bunch of those in um and uh, thanks to as always work Sharp for getting back in jumping in the pond. I hope I'm not like breaking news like maybe the contract was just about to get signed. He's probably runned by the people up soon. Yeah, okay, this has been pressure, putting pressure on everythid you usually do things and it hasn't. It's worked out for you so far, I think so. Yeah. Mostly I'm feeling pretty good anyway. Good episode, man, I really and blowing away. Honestly, we say it ingest a lot here, but am blown away by all of you that are taking this time to draw things and record things. I know you can win stuff, but it's a little bit more than that for me and for Phil, right, Phil, yeah, yeah? So and Phil's going to Disney Wor aren't you. I am, yep, leaving in two days, going to the pod podcast Convention, pick up some hot tips and tricks. But it's across the street from Disney World. So I'm going to Star Wars Land. Well, we are not going to have a full report at all. I'm in a recorder of podcast remotely from the land, and it will be its own episode. O. You can wait for it, uh in the feed, the th HC feed. It's gonna be three and a half hours long. I'll be drinking blue milk live and you can hear it alright, February thirty, first next year, Okay, I can't wait. All right, It's gonna be great. All right, Well, thanks again for everybody for listening to this episode. Stick around with us. We got some fun stuff in store for I have been working away on some new guests, some new music. We got like some musical guests that we might have in to play some music for us. Man, we got a lot of really cool coming, so stick around peace all right. I think we're gonna we're gonna call in a big, big old tom here. Just give me a little bit. Oh, I think I hear one man, Oh the man, Oh man, we got a big time. I gotta go. Oh, I don't now you want to entertain me? Oh? Oh, here we go. Oh u u u u u u u u u h m hmm. I'm a turkey. Ba Hey, who's that sexy lady? I'm coming your way, baby. We could take our time, you know, I just want to Oh, come on, Jake, I'm doing a thing. Man. Hang on, baby, hang on, I'll take care of this. She's not interested in you, Jake. Why don't you take your nub and spurs and your skimpy macwheak beard out of here. No, you shut up, Jake, because I'm the man. I'm the man. Bertie good here are you? All right? We're giving it a shot here at the Shelby Household with Tori and Wayne, my nine year old son. We're gonna do the turkey call. First one is the hand Wayne. Now we're gonna go with the gobbl who and then we're gonna hit him with the famous Ben line. O man. Okay, this is the recording for Ben O'Brien at the Hunting Collective. You got Grant, Carter, Josh, and Taylor Ray, and we're gonna give you our best turkey call, starting starting with Taylor y. Taylor Ay, take the mic. I don't know either. All right. This is Josh and I think I think you called one in. Okay, this is Carter, dang, so that's pretty good. Alright, this is Grant and here's my my turkey call. It's pretty good. Signing off, I hope that this brings you much enjoyment. Be careful that you don't listen to this in the woods. You might call in a turkey. The turkeys are coming.

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