00:00:00 Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Welcome to episode number forty six of The Hunting Collective. I'm Ben O'Brien and I'm joined today by Donnie Vincent. Donnie Vincent is a biologist, slash filmmaker, slash world adventurer who creates some pretty awesome films. Has a new film out called The Other Side, which is an hour and twenty minute long feature film about his bear hunting adventures up north. It's a great conversation. Donnie is is sneakily smart dude, and and has been around the world and done some amazing things and collected some pretty awesome perspectives in doing so. So it was a pleasure to be joined by him in Las Vegas, durning shot show hang Out to talk shop to learn a little bit about his story and his perspectives. So enjoy episode number forty six. Donnie Vincent, Hey, Donny, Hey man, what's going on? Man? Just enjoying your awesome hotel room? Are you impressed by it? The Mediator? The Mediator budget is apparently doing well. It's doing well. I just noticed there's a phone in your toilet, So there's no phone in in my toilet. Yeah, so this is well listen. You never know what's gonna happen in there. Yeah. Yeah, your legs could fall asleep. I was in there and I thought, what would you need a phone in the toilet? And then I thought, hey, you know maybe falling you can't get up? Yeah, because you've ever been on there, you're you're doing your business and your leg might fall asleep. You got a call for help if you compartment syndrome, Yeah, yep, he's falling around you don't know, or you got order a pizza. Things you could do, and then I bet it's been done. I'll bet you a large sum of money a pizza has been ordered on this. So you think, yeah, I mean, if you if you're if you've never been in like the Venetian sweets, like we're in right now, um, and you come in when you feel pretty you're like, it's going pretty pretty well. It's nice. You're you've done something different, right, you're making feature length film which which um with the rivers, divide with your new film on the other side, like these these are this is a different way to do it, right, yes, and we um you know, and I can sit here and say this in this chair and and nobody's the wiser other than my crew. But you know, we film everything with absolute truth. Right, If I miss we show it. If I wounded animal, we show what. I went through several years and I didn't talk about it on camera at all because I didn't understand it at first. But I went through several years of target panic, and I went through years and years and years of being an archer, and I'll absolutely i'd I'd sit with a group of guys and they'd say, hey, if you haven't, you know, if you haven't missed an animal, you know you haven't, you haven't hunted enough. And I'd say, oh, yeah, absolutely. But it's funny because my first several years of being an archer, I never missed. I never not just absolutely slam dunk shot animal. It went a very short distance and fell over dead. It never happened to me because I was taking close shots. I was taking very measured shots because I was unsure of myself as an archer. So I've come to full draw and I'd literally find my anchor point, which I didn't even know what that was. I'd look at the deer, I'd put my pin behind his shoulder or whatever it was. I was shooting bear or whatever. I put my pin behind his shoulder and then I remember when I was younger several times, and obviously this isn't being filmed, but I would literally back my face off of my bow and just look like, okay, release my arrows, knocked on the rest strings on the camp, everything okay, and I leaned and shoot the deer and it'd run off and died. So I'd sit with these guys and they'd say, oh, yeah, I mean, if you haven't wounded, you haven't hunted enough. If you haven't missed a deer, you haven't hunted enough, you know. And I'd agree with them, oh yeah, yeah, But really I was the guy in the room that hadn't done that yet yet. Then it happened to me once, and then it happened to me twice. Then it happened to me three times. And then I was shooting in an archery league and my partner got target panic, and I'll never forget he asked me one time, Um, we were just shooting at twenty yards and he said, hey, um, when you're bringing your pin up to the bull's eye and it's blow the bull's eye, what do you do you know, I'm thinking, you raise it up to the bull's eye and then shoot the bull's eye and he's like, yeah, I can't do that. My boat gets really heavy, and I thought, is this a joke? And then fast forward I got it. And then of course I'm trying to establish this career, not not to be famous, not to sign hats, not to do anything other than I wanted to hunt. And when I would hunt, people would ask me stories about what happened. And I love telling the stories about what happened. And I even loved even more so when I'm hunting. I I love long form hunting. I love going places for days, so I love telling people about And then and then this is all the river fro is up and it was cool. You know. I got up one morning in the rivers, just covered in skim ice, and there's a bull moose and he was grunting on the other side of the river, and I can see steam pouring out of his nose. I wasn't even hunting moose, but here I am ten minutes into a story about this moose blowing steam out of his nose, and people just sit there and I looked around the room and I'd see people just sitting there kind of wide eyed, you know, and they're like, you're a great storyteller. And I said, oh, oh, thank you, you know, and I just move on and and I would do these things. And then and then as I started doing these films and and developed into having target panic, I just ran into uh mess. And so we just started did you ever have a time or you had to? You had discussion with your team, you got a talent, the team of guys around you that film and edit, like should we show this wom Yes, just conversations like you know, what do we do now? Yes? Too. I'll give you two examples. One in The River Divide. In The Rivers Divide, Kyle nick Light, who's my producer and editor, very gifted storyteller, very gifted filmmaker, film film school graduate. Um, He's like, okay, I want you to write. We're writing voiceovers for The Rivers Divide. And he said, right, I need you to write. I want you to write about this, this, this, this, Because he's building the spine of the film. So he's like, I just want to see what your verbage is going to kind of shake out as we progress through the story. Just really quick scribble so I can scribble stuff down handed to him. And he reasons, He's like, I've literally never heard you talk like this ever. And I basically wrote, um, you know, like TV scribble, like I wrote things that you would hear on some of the more writing this for TV. And he said, I've never heard you. And then I was in the office one day and I was talking about how when I killed Steve. Um. I was like, man, Steve, yes, I'm sorry, I'm not not my neighbor, but yeah, Steve the deer when I killed him. Um, I was just telling calm. One day. I was like, man, it really I had a heavy heart, you know, I was really filled the star And I said, you know, it's funny because every animal I've ever killed, it's really left me with a heavy heart. Uh. I. I just was always aware that that animal would still be alive that minute. Maybe not the next day, maybe a mountaine would ki him where you get hit by a car, died from starvation, whatever, but that minute, that day, that second, right then I'm I'm the executioner, right, I'm the hunter, predator and prey, and um, there's no no backs to that. And so I just I've always realized that that is such a big deal coming to full draw, such a big deal clicking your safety off your rifle. And so I told it to him. He's like, that that right that. And I was like, I can't write that. People are gonna rip me up like the guys that jacked their pickup trucks up. And we're baseball caps and have a big chew in right now, those guys are gonna rip me off. Perfect, And he's like, who cares? Who cares about those guys. Let's make the film for us, how you would do it, how we would do it. Let's make it for us. Let's be selfish, make this for us. We'll put it out there for people like it. Great. If they don't, you know, we'll move on with our lives. You'll go back to being a biologist. I'll go get a job at another company and high five piece out. So that too fast forward to you know, when we knew we were going to show me missing Steve at seventeen, we knew that we knew we were gonna show me shooting him in the shoulder at UM thirty four. The one thing that I wish we would have shown is after I wounded him. We showed a little bit of sorrow in the tree stand, and we showed a little bit of sorrow that night. But there were days days of that sorrow. There were multiple trips where we couldn't even really get out of the sorrow. Like we'd go there, we'd hunt him, he wouldn't show up. We couldn't find him with bionos. That the places a very visual ranch. We couldn't find him with bios. We couldn't find him. We had not It was just I wish we would have filmed all that, but we were so in the dumps about it. Not true tragedy here, right, I'm not talking about it feels I mean it's not. Yes, you're not being hyper violic like it feels shitty. It feels really bad. And we were feeling so we're having such a pity party where you know, it was spilt milk everywhere that we just kind of never even turned the camera on. So I didn't have anything to good say, maybe nothing to say at all, But I really wish we would have harnessed all that fast forward that too, the other side and the engagement that happens at the end of the Grizzly Bear. You haven't seen the film yet, correct. I watched the first ten minutes before you all right, UM, don't, I won't. I won't. But there's there's a piece at the end that is very volatile and um, it's very difficult to watch whether you're a hunter and non hunter and anti hunter, a barre biologists. It's very difficult to watch. And there's additional footage to that piece. And we played with a bunch of different pieces. There's nothing that's secret. Everything bad that happens you see, but it's just we just move things around. It's still truth one percent of timeline, um, but we just moved things around that we thought would We didn't want to linger there for too long, and so we shortened some of it up, and we and we played with it to where what we did is we had some young ladies come in our office that were I'm not gonna say they're anti hunters, but they're definitely not hunters, and they're definitely not proponents of hunting, but they're they're good friends. Came and watched it and we watched their body language, watched there and they were you know, we played it the first time and and uh, it was really cool because we had a long form. We played it for him. They're like, um, we totally get what's happening here, but um, this was extremely uncomfortable to watch. So then I had a couple of friends watch it. Girls. I don't know why we lingered there, but um, I had a very dear friend of mine who's a woman. She watched it, and she's a her and she watched it, and I watched her get angry. And so she watched it and she just crossed her arms. She's like, oh, yeah, okay, this is yep, you're gonna put this out there. That's how you're gonna put it out there. And I was like, well this, yeah, this is what we're thinking. And then you could tell her response was visceral. She was upset at this. What how this all went down? And um, and I explained her, you know, and and she had never hunted bears or whatever. So we played with some placement there. Everything is I shouldn't even say we placed. We played with placement. The placement is the same. We played with lengths of time that we showed that. It's interesting that you did that, you know. I don't know how many folks in the hunting you know, in our content world, would would have someone who doesn't hunt or or doesn't understand it, watch a film like and then read their body language and try to understand, like how that the psychology absorb, you know, and absorb what they're watching, because man, we got a lot of bubble mentality in our world, you know, where we don't. So I think it's really cool way you did that, and that was it's important. And I didn't know this, but when we started coming out with these films, when we started writing for Instagram and writing for Facebook and whatever else, I started getting more letters from anti hunters than I was from hunters, and not not f you, letters, letters with questions like I don't like hunting, I hate hunters, but what are what is? What do you? What is this? You know, like I really appreciate how you killed this caribou and you caught it up and backpacked it out, and and so they had questions. So then I started thinking, I still wrote the film selfishly for me, still did, but I did so in a manner that might help answer some questions or elicit better questions, And so I did. I told this to rogan Um I know he's a friend of yours, but he he made a statement one time. I think he did in a joke, but I took it very serious. He said, we are shaped by outside, by our our influencers. So if I you know, if I come into your hotel room and put my fist through your mirror, you know, we might still do the podcast where you're gonna be like, okay, super never ever ever going to have that guy here again. And so then you know, we do things that that you know, how you behave at a party might might reflect if you get invited to a party later on, or how you behave yourself fishing, or always say it's like a choose your own adventure type of use your own adventure. Every decision has a tree, and every tree, every secondary decision has another tree. That's how you get yeah, And so that's basically what it was is. Even though I wrote this thing selfishly for myself, the fact that I started getting a lot of letters from non hunters and anti hunters made me think like, okay, I have to write this so again. The same woman that watched the same woman, the friend of mine, her names Crystal. She watched this um the the snare at the end that was uncomfortable. She also, this was really good because she's a hunter, but she watched these different scenarios and she didn't realize some of the differences techniques of like hunting brown bears or hunting grizzly bears, and well, why are you doing this and this and this and this and so then I thought, oh, okay, so here's a hunter that understands she's a deer hunter. She understands deer hunting, but not having ever gone to Alaska hunted these different species of bears, you didn't know. So then I so then I realized, okay, we have to be a little bit more blatant in some of our voiceovers and some of our guidance to carry people along that may have questions or may have never done these things. So it's really good. It's it's an interesting thing. It's almost like, you know, it's writing a book. If you're presenting a book to two different people, then one person has already read it, has already read the first six chapters, and the other person has to still read the first six chapters. You know, hunters, you're like, I don't if I'm watching you hunt Steve in a tree stand. I'm not wondering why is he in the tree? Yeah? What's he doing in the tree? Why is this bo hanging there like that? Why is he looking that way? Why is he set up where he is? Yeah, I know what you're doing. It's inherent, just based on the being a hunter and have shared experiences like yeah, I know what Donny's doing there, but so I'm looking at something different. And if you've never something and appreciate something different, if you've never done it, then you're you're you're reading all those things like Okay, what is this? What is this? What is this? And it seems just it's a more And I've done this too and talked a lot of nine hunters about a lot of different things, and it comes up in podcasts, but you know, it's hard for us who are hunters to see how somebody absorbs that information, who has a million questions before we even get to the drawing your bow? And the cool thing is that you being a hunter. You know when I missed Steve, Like at first, you'd say, why would you show you missed a giant deer at seventeen yards? Why would you show that? Well, because maybe you've missed a giant deer at seventeen yards. So then when you see that, you're with your body and you're like, oh, do you remember when we're in Texas and my my arrow hit that branch and deflected over that deer and you you know that emotion. It's why books are successful, It's why movies are successful. It's why Joe Rogan is successful at as a comedian because what he's talking about on stage, we're all like, yeah, I've done that. It's I loved listening to comedians talk about that stuff because especially talking to Joe and how they like craft, you know, the craft, their sets and craft build like because nothing they say until gymnastics, nothing they say is funny. It's just that we sit there and go, I have done that. I've been I've been with specifically Joe. He's the only comedian I fucking know, so it's like I've been with him. We were to hunt in Texas one time and he wrote a bit about you ever been to a Bucky's gas station. It's like this giant gas station in Texas with like a thousand pumps and it's the you know, it's like a Walmart with a gas station and we went there like two in the morning, and I just remember Joe was like bouncing around, He's writing stuff on a piece of paper. What the fun is he doing? And then he went We went and hunted, and on the way back he did his show in Austin and he had a bit about BUCkies in the show. It was the first time I had been a part of I'm like, holy sh it, Like he I watched and he developed it over like a day, a three day hunt that we did for BIGS, and I was like, it's unbelievable how he took what is normal, what was a normal stop to get some like beef jerky, and turned it into this like hilarious experience for the people of Texas, because there's nothing funny about BUCkies other than the irony of the size and the complexity of this gas whole thing where there was like some Texas oil tycoon doing cocaine and be like, we need more gas pumps, man, more gas pumps. And I was like, god, it just you know, that was the first time I was like truly had been a part of that process and seeing somebody turn normal life into comedy, and uh, I was just I was amazed by it. And that's what we attempting, our attempting to do. And I'm not gonna say we're good at our craft, but I worked with an exceedingly talented group of guys and we we do put our best foot forward like this is right now. We get better all the time, but this is all we've got and um, and it's cool from everything from the writing that I do to the editing that Kyle does, because he'll bring in you know, he's taught me things where you know, we'll be editing something, he'll be editing something and all of a sudden, our minds do everything left to right and then all of a sudden will come into a scene that is going to feed you some contention. And you'll see this in horror movies. All of a sudden, all the scenes will start moving from right to left, and instantly your brain doesn't like it. So instantly you know you'll be in the movie theater and you don't even realize that, but you'll sit up and be like, you know, what the hell is going on? And then the music changes, you know, and you're like, okay, great, now something something's gonna happen, and you know, like you're hyper aware. And so we'll do the same thing in our films. And then we have a musician, Casey Olsen. He goes by Rodriguez. He'll like, yeah, Rodriguez, I gotta get I gotta get like a name call names. Yeah, he don't have a name. I don't, but I wish he would. I wish he was a fighter pile because I know, yeah, so he um, but he'll score the music. He knows nothing about hunting. He don't, you know, other than he eats, like I give him tons of meat and he just loves it because he doesn't spend money on anything. And so you know, he's messy hair and covering tattoos and he's skinny and super super talented musician. But he'll come in my office and say, hey, I gotta get him for the podcast. So writes music. Oh yeah, he'll score music for you. He's super dominant. But he he'll come in my office and say, hey, when you saw that grizzly bear, you know, were you afraid? I'll say, no, you weren't, No, well, you know what were you feeling? I was just hyperwary, you know, like everything fell quiet, and his oh okay, and then he'll run back to his office into our little we have a recording studio which is basically h ice fishing house with sound equipment in it, and he'll go play his violin, as cello, his bass, piano, whatever, and he'll create music but his sat So he's following the emotion. Kyle's editing to kind of drive your guy's emotion to how we felt in the space to bring you along. William is filming the little tiny birds and the leaves and the frost and the sunshine, and the clouds in the rain, the mosquitoes, so that because if you're a hunter, you've been in all those places. Even if you're not a hunter, you can appreciate those things. Even and even if you live in New York City you never leave New York City, you see this stuff and you're like, wow, I never thought I was going to see the artic circle. This is pretty cool to kind of experience. This guy took us there. So williams bringing you there. I'm writing to tell you what's going on and how I was feeling in it. And then the animals in the wilderness and wildlife are all doing their part naturally, and we blend it all together to try and tell a tale, right, talk about a craft man, talk about as like I'm always interested in those things like craft. How you know me too? It's it's and you guys have developed over the years. I mean, oh, I want to get into the kind of like how you how you came along in hunting and eventually here. But it's this this selfish because interesting to me just because you're talking about, you know, not the manipulation of a story, the telling of a story, telling of a story. You know, how do I craft? Um? What happened to me in such a way to make compelling to interest folks and and for them to be able to take something away from it? Um. And when you and when you're looking at you, you have a wide people, a wide array of folks that watch your films, and they'll all take something different from it, which is which I'm sure is the challenge, you know. Yeah, and it's it's been really rewarding. We just did um premiere in Fort Collins, Colorado, a very artsy theater and there's a very diverse group and there, I mean mostly mostly people that were got invitations from most partners of ours and things like that, and um, so that was a really good group of people. But there's several people in the theater that I have never hunted, do not really know hunters. Because that's the funny thing if if you think about it, not to digress, but you know, the people that we came from our parents. Like if you asked your dad and your mom, Hey, did you guys grow up annoying hunters? Oh yeah, yeah, of course. But you get to our generation and you ask some of your friends, say, yeah, you guys know any hunters. No. Our parents all new hunters because it was a mainstay of society. And now, unfortunately, as some generations are moving along, you don't really know hunters. And we hunters used to be, you know, statesman if you will. They used to be like upper classman guys that knew everything from um it was kind of the guy that knew how to navigate in the dark. He knew how to live off the land. He knew how to break down an animal and get it back to his wife and kids, and he knew how to forge and have space. And he also was strong and tough and um, honest and true. And these are these are things that kind of followed that. Yeah, they have a lot of important jobs, right, a lot of a lot of important jobs, which makes them exalted in the community. And yeah, yeh. Had a guy on the podcast that us told us um he game from Czechoslovakia and he was telling there they have a term over there, and I always fuck it up. I think it's like mechlovic or something like that. Mesovic Um it means hunter and thinker and that's you know over there coming up they had to um learn about that. They had to go to class to be a hunter and learn about the flora and fauna and there, you know, their model of conservation, if you will, was to the more work you did outside, the better opportunities you had to go hunt. So if you worked all day, you could go hunt red deer. If you only hurt half the day, you could only go and then hunt a squirrel or a rabbit. So it's interesting like that, like the idea in that community that the hunter was this you know, yeah, thinker and someone who had to make like the most important decisions when it came to wildlife. And it was funny. So I was in several years ago, but I was in Nepal. I was in southern Nepal and the Royal Chitwan National Forest, a place called death Up and I was studying tigers for UM, the local biologists. They're working in conjunction with them, and they are very much against hunting. Uh in this region, the guys that I were working with and uh, um the native people very much against hunting. UH. They do some hunting, of course for themselves, and some fishing to supply meat for their families, but I'm mostly uh talking about the tiger right there. Everyone's there to save the tiger, other than the poachers that are trying to sell their skin. But UM, so they quote unquote hate these guys that are killing the tigers. They're not hunters or poachers, but they hate them. But it's funny. When I came into camp, they asked what I like to do, and I told you, let's back up about how you find yourself. Let's not skip over how the fund do you find yourself working as a as a It's actually pretty interesting. So I I graduated from the University of Minnesota with a degree and wildlife biology and scientific biology. And UM, you hunter, then I was a hunter, then you're in fact, That's what led me to I was hunting and and and had no idea what I want do for a career. I was really unsuccessful in high school. UM basically remedial classes all the way up through high school, just challenged as I'm not gonna necessarily say challenged as a as a student. But teachers didn't believe in me. I certainly didn't believe in me, and parents didn't believe in me, and so I just was Monday became a Friday, became a Sunday, turned into a month, into a year, and uh, you know, ninth grade of serious, tenth grade it was we were supposed to be more serious. Eleventh grade was supposed to be really serious and get ready for life. And all of a sudden, like, I'm just a high school student. What am I supposed to do? And I saw the other kids around me that were really smart and talented. We're taking post secondaries classes, and they weren't getting in trouble, and not naturally that I was getting in trouble for trivial stuff, but I was getting in a little bit of trouble. And anyway, flast forward and I went to the University of Minnesota, and UM, I ended up seeing a cow moose on a brochure. Uh kalmo standing in a pond eating vegetation on a roster. Yeah. Um for the UH School of Natural Resources. And I thought, and I loved wildlife, loved I loved wildlife and I loved hunting. To me, those two things were synonymous. There wasn't zoos the outdoors. I'm also a hunter and a fisherman like guys now are like, I'm a bass fisherman or I hunt white til deer. I did this to me that none of that exists. Still to this day, none of that exists. To me, I'm all of those things, and I'm a zookeeper and I'm a wildlife biologist and I'm a steward of habitat like that. To me, being a hunter, your job is all of that. You own all of that. That's a responsibility. And so um, I was hunting and wanting to hunt more and more, and so I saw this brochure and I was like, oh, you know, I'd love to do this, And and the school was ranked really high, the program at that you was ranked really high. So when applied and literally the ladies like oh no, absolutely, like you are so far from getting in this program, it's not even funny. So I said, no, she was awesome. Actually she was awesome. Yeah, but she said basically like, you are so far on the plate, it's not even funny. But why why do you even want to do this? You know? And I said, well, I and this is I'm not telling you this story to as a as a proponent of like yep, somebody told me I couldn't do it, and I just buckled up and did it. No, it was just I was so afraid of failure, so afraid of I watched tons of people around me flounder with drugs and alcohol and and as young kids. I mean, I'm talking middle school on up. You know. That was like ment alive. I'm not very smart anyway, I'm not very bright to begin with. I'm in remedial classes all through high school. I bet her, damn buckle down and try to learn as much information as I can before I move forward and try to do something with my life. And I have a brother and a sister both are severe drug addicts and uh, and so I watched them just a constant. I were a lot of control and in and out of jail and stealing from my parents and they get kicked out and then they move back in. It's just this ship show. And so UM, this lady said, why do you want to do this? And I said, I just love wildlife. I'd love to do this. She said, I tell you what. You take all of these classes. And it was all of the Algebras. It was pre calcuant in two. It was a freshman English. It was a second language because I never had a second language in high school. Um. Basically, it was two years of classes. And she's like, you do all of these with absolute regularity, and you'd get good grades and I'll let you into the program. So it's great, went to school for two years. She let me into the program, went through the program. It sounds like you just needed to care it. It It sounds like you just need something. Yeah, I just needed to care and some support, I guess maybe, and and maybe an ounce of believing in myself. And then um, and then at the end of that program, you have a fields course in which we would go to this place called Douglas Lake in Lake Michigan. It sat on Lake Michigan, um in the northern part of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. And and we go through this course and learning, you know, how to really classify plants in the forest, right, not textbook stuff, but like we're doing actual vegetation work here. We're looking at trees, reading a lot of stuff. And one of the one of the courses was run by this guy named Dr David Smith. He's a world famous tiger ecologist. So he in the beginning of the summer, the University of Michigan would radio caller raccoons and then they let them go and so we'd study their movements with radio telemetry all summer long. And then at the end of the summer what are you looking for there? Oh, just literally learning how to use telemetry equipment. So like, oh, he's in a dumpster tonight. And then here's what we frowned. No, raccoons are a little asshole. Literally, we'd locate and be like, oh, he he's in cabin for tonight, and or he's up on this hill, you know, and why is he up on this hill? And then we go up there and be like, oh, so somebody dumped a sack of apples up here and he's been sent up here eating so all these different things, um, and then at the end of the summer, the University of Minnesota would basically try and capture those raccoons to get their radio collars off of them. So there's this friendly little bet between your University of Minnesota University of Michigan. So the guy that I was working for, David Smith, the professor that I was studying underneath, he had me and another guy. He's like, why don't you guys take first crack. You go out tonight, triangulate the raccoons, set up traps, live traps, and see how many you can capture. Three of them now a radio color and the most anyone had ever caught up to that point, I believe was one and um, and long story short, we ended up catching all three in the first night. So then we started talking and we were at this basically a celebration party at the end, and he just said, uh, He's like, hey, I'm going over to Bangladesh and Nepal to go do some tiger stuff this summer. Um, would you like to come along? And I said, man alive, I would love. I was early twenties. Nobody says no to that. No, And then it was really cool. This is this guy's David Smith again. His basically Indiana Jones literally basically Indiana. He did wear a hat, yep, and he had white hair, and he he'd have glasses. He let his glasses slide down to the end of his nose, almost like Santa Claus, and he kind of suck on his bottom lip and go yeah, Ben, yeah, yeah yeah. And so he do these things. Oh, it's awesome, and then he um. One time he got gored. This is I was not there, but he got gored by an Asian ryin on one time with his son. Him and his son, Guy scooped up all of his intestines because they're everywhere. His intestines are all over the place in the jungle, scoops them all up, carries them and his son back to the camp and wanders in, peels out. They fly him, They put him in an airplane. They fly him emergently to Catman. You and the doctors and Kamin who were like, we're not touching this guy, like he's seen Yeah, I've seen the hospitals in Kevin. They're not you know, you're not there to you're not there to get a cavity fixed. And so they flew him to Bangkok and the guys at Bangkok, just crushed and put him all back together. But his stomach he looks like you know when you have your apendix out, he looks like he's had nineteen appendixes out. So that's the type of guy that this guy ever written Any books we gotta do, I'm sure this guy. I'm sure a film, yeah, where we recreate that. He's he's a sick dude. Man. He's just he's one of those guys. When he are around him or you know him, you're like, oh, I'm I'm and I feel this way today, I'm I'm in Amiba. Compared to this man, he's ten times smarter than I am. He's in his sixties, And when I was in my twenties and he was in his sixties, he was ten times tougher than I was, ten times smarter than I was. It's just you're around somebody like that and you're like, you're you really you realize what human beings can be. Yeah, you're laughing, You're basically he's basically superhero. Sure, Sure, it was good for you and your twenties to be around that. It's always incredible to give you and so it's remarkable to see what he would do. But he gaining this piece of paper and he had his glasses down on the end of his nose and he took his pen out, and he's like, uh, you know where you know where Bangkok is? You know, I'm like Thailand. It's like, yeah, yeah, So you're gonna fly. What I want you to do is I want you to fly from Minneapolis. You fly at the Minneapolis right. Yeah, you fly to the Minneapolis and you're gonna fly down to Atlanta, Georgia. From Georgia, then I'm gonna have you fly to Bangkok. I'm gonna have you overnight in Bangkok and uh and then from there in the morning, you're gonna go back to the airport. You're gonna fly through Tokyo and then um, I'm gonna have you land in uh let's see here. I'll probably have you land in uh in Dhaka. Yeah, how many landing Dhaka, Bangladesh. And then and then you're gonna go out there's a big metal gate. You're gonna go out this gate and then you're gonna walk over to the domestic airport and you're gonna a charter an airplane, probably a twin prop or something and you're gonna fly that down to just shore. And then when you get down to the shore, don't talk to anyone because just there's some people down there. Just don't talk to anyone. And and when you get off the airplane, you're just gonna walk into town. It's talk going to be dirt and jungle, and don't don't talk to anyone. And then you just sit there on the street corner and I'll find you in a couple of days, in a couple of days, a couple of days, a couple of days from because it took me like three days to fly there. So you see this piece of paper and that's that's all it says on So I fly to Bangkok and through Tokyo to DCA and and then I go to walk through the metal gate that he told me to walk through, and there's a guy with a machine gun and he's like hey, hey, hey, and he's pointing his gun at me. And the guy going through customs in in DACA, guys point at a K at my chest safeties off pointy. I don't know if he had one in the chamber, but he's pointing the a K on my chest and he's like passport. I handed my passport. He drifts the mull's love his gun off me a little bit. It looks at my passport and go no no. He slides it back and he goes back to his weapon. I what do you mean? Knowing he's like, no, this is not not a good passport. Where'd you get this? Like Washington d C. He was no, no, no, no, no no. And so he's kind of bickering with me. And I saw there's another military guy over here that's a little bit more decorated. And I called him over and said, man, I'm here from the university and studying tigers and and um, I gotta get in here. And and he's like, where are you staying? And I said, I'm staying in the jungle. Man, I don't have an address. And he's like, you need an address. And I'm like, I'm staying in the sunder Bonds. It's the world's largest main grove swamp, living on a boat in the jungle. There's no address, Like, man, you need an address. And I was like, okay, So I go to the next guy, and here's where you're staying. I go Hotel sunder Bond and the other guy looks at me like, you didn't just tell me that, And he's like, okay, you're staying at the hotel sunder Barn, which doesn't exist, and so he writes and so he So they finally let me in and I go to walk through the gate to go to the domestic airport, and the dude in the machine guns like, hey, if you go through the gate to shoot you, that's a no no walk zone, Like if you go through this gate, I have to shoot you, you know. And I'm like, oh, yeah, well okay, so I'm not I won't go through the gate, And so where do I How do I do this? He's like, you need to take a cab. The only way you can get over there is if you get in a cab and go over there. So I go over this cabby parked nearby and I said, can you give me a ride to the domestic airport? And he's he just goes no, he just sucked on his lip, kind of sucked on his tooth, and no, I go, please, can you know? So all the sime, I see this police officer and he's kind of noticing this guy's given me a little gouff. So he comes over and he says, excuse me, what's you know? Who are you? I need to see your papers. I showed my papers. He's like, what are you doing. I said, I'm American. I'm here study tigers. They hold their tigers very, very high, you know, A they're all afraid of them because there's a lot of man eaters there. So the fact that you're coming to find tigers, they oh, okay, so you're going to the jungle, like you're going to go look for tigers, and you're here to help us with our tiger are poaching problem. So he looks at my passport, looks my papers like okay, he's like, what's going on? I like, he just won't take me to the domestic airport. He walks over there, smashes the guy in the head, smashes him with a right I mean smashes him. Then the guy his head kind of pops back out the window. The cops smashes him with an elbow. The guy is now bleeding profusely from his left temple, and then he goes, okay, he'll take you now, no charge. And I get in and the guy's bleeding from his head and he drives me over the domestic airport for free. Yeah, so he lets me out. And then so I get in the airplane and fly down to just Shore. I get off the airplane, grab my bag, go down this gravel strip sitting on the street corner. It's midnight, one am, and this guy comes over in a rickshaw when those little three wheel bicycles got a little ring ring. He comes in. He goes, hey, where are you staying? And I said, I don't know where I'm staying yet, you know, I'm waiting for friends. And he says, no, no, no no, we're um where he's staying. I'll take you there. And I said, you know, I don't know where we're staying. You know, we're gonna be living on a boat. And he goes, well, there's a hotel right down the street here. Why don't you let me take you there. You can relax there. They have bottled water, because you don't drink anything out of the tap. There they have bottled water, the fresh food you can get, bite the you know, relax and and then i'll let your friends. You know, you know where you went. And so I said no, no, I was told to state here and not talk to anyone, remember, So that guy keeps coming by, and then finally, at like three thirty in the morning, I see a land rover coming on the street and open end, open air land rover and there's Dave and I'm like, this worked. This whole half a page of scribble notes worked. So he rides up. He's like, hey, how's your flight and everything. I'm like, everything basically how you described it, other than you almost got me killed going to the airport. And he's like, what do you mean you can't walk to the game. And he's like, oh yeah, yeah, that's right. You gotta take a car over there. Thank you, thank you for that. So then I get in the car and I go, yeah, I most was gonna wait for you guys at a hotel. And the driver goes, what a hotel? And I said, the guy there on the rickshaw and you could see him. I'm like, he said, he's gonna take me the hotel. He's like, oh no, It's like he was probably gonna murder you. It's like what they'll do is they'll get you in their rickshaw and then they'll just ride you over somewhere. They ring their bell, you know, guys jump out and slit your throat, take all your goods and off the races. And so he's like, yeah, there's no hotel around here. So yeah, So then I jumped in a boat and went into the jungle. So that's how I got to there. But back to my original points, they are against hunting and hunters there, but they hold hunters in very high regard because all before um, late nineties, late nineties, and so before they became kind of a recognized society the civil War, to all of their elders, if you will, were all hunters, and so they hunters were revered there. But um, no longer do they do any hunting there. No, But it was quite an experience, it was, and I never saw a tiger the whole time. How long? How long are you there? Um? I was feeling people are like finished the story, Donny, Oh yeah, I know. I was there. I was there. I was in Bangladesh for several weeks, and then from there I went to Nepal for several weeks, and um, it was so close to seeing a tiger, Like I was in this room with tigers, but I just couldn't see them because the jungle tracks and yeah, i'd see tracks. So every time the tigers stepped. It's called a pug mark. Every time the tiger would step, the track would fill with water. And so you could take your hand or your foot, put it in a mud and pull push it to the same death of the tiger, pull it up and measure how long it takes. And so we had tiger prints for that were just dimpling with water, which is you know, four or five seconds, and so he was right here she or she was right here, but you can't see them because the jungle. These are what kind of tigers? Tigers? Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well, nowadays in Nepal, hunting has become They have one hunting district which I hunted in Um with Cool Kramer mutual friend Um. And this is you know, I want to say it's only been open for about four years, Okay, I always get that wrong, four or five years. It's called the Rokum District. And they they'll do uh each year, they do uh what we would call a tag draw, but they do like a tag auction and the outfitters, I think there's uh two or three outfitters that they lie up. Yeah, they just buy them up in an auction and there'll be a certain amount of blue sheep tags, a certain amount of um tar tags for things like that over there. So we've we got We were, you know, one of the first folks to do that. But we went to western Nepal, which, um it was pretty damn remote. We were, you know, the little the hamlet, the little village that we flew into. It was like six days walk from the nearest road. And which I I said a lot on this podcast, but that that like those dudes were, They're telling amazing stories in that part of the world. No tigers around, but all kinds of it's just completely different, right, unbelieved, completely different. You have no concept um and I say that in this latest film, this idea of I have this notion that I live with, and one of them is that we always must hunt well and good, no matter if you're on camera off camera. Just how we carry ourselves. And I don't mean so we don't get caught poaching, but even we need to leave the habitat better. We need to be conservationists. We need to educate those that don't know. We have to educate ourselves. We have to constantly keep asking ourselves difficult questions. Should we even be hunting these animals, should we be here, should be doing this that notion, and then also this this other notion of that. Um unless you go, unless you live there, unless you participate, you really have no opinion on what is going on. Like we love to sit back, particularly in the United States, and say, oh, I you know, this is how I would handle Nepoll or this is how I would handle Iraq or Afghanistan or Cuba whatever, and and from its wildlife to its habitat, to its people too, you know. And then but really, unless you're there, you know, what would people in in Manhattan, New York, how much do they have to say about, um, you know, the wildlife in Montana. You know, even though they're probably watching CNN. I'm making this all up. But even though they're probably watching CNN and seeing some you know, lands becoming privatized or becoming remaining public or becoming privatized, they might sit in New York as a you know, a big fact can be like, well, yeah, this is my opinion on it. You know that. But really, unless you're there Nepal, unless you're listening to these stories, unless you're walking the six miles to the village, unless you're listening to the people there. You you really have you don't even have an opinion then, but at least you have some wisdom in some That's what I say. It's so hard, Like I think my biggest challenge with going over there for a brief time was like being stressed out about learning enough. My stress was like, I want to learn, uh um, what has happened to here? What will happen here? I want to learn the culture. I want to learn their practices for hunting, if they have any, which they really you know, they have some traditional hunting practice, it's not they don't have any modern hunting practice other than kill animal if hungry. It's become a trophy, right. They try to provide that Western experience that we all I should say we all that I loathe, we participated. I say that all the time. Like one thing that bothers me about it is because you'll see and I've seen this happen. I'm not been around long enough to see it kind of like bloom, but I've seen it. I could see it. Where is it where a country like we there's a lot of dollars in these in this country, and another country is looking to to replicate that to like to kind of extract you know, who has the money, what are they spending it on? And can we create an industry in our country to extract that money and have have people travel and come hunt here. And so these industries pop up, and man, I'll be flat honest, places like News Zealand, um, where they're basically just catering to a certain type of hunter, and that's because that hunter has dollars. Then they created a tourism industry. It's supply and demand, it's economics. And it's funny because this goes back to some of my original hypocrisy that I was telling you about. I don't want to go to New Zealand and Hanatar or Shammy and be a tourist and all this stuff. Not Now, if I went to New Zealand for sixty days and I was living in a little village or camping or hiking or doing whatever it is, it's so funny because it's just semantics. But to me it's serious. If I was enveloping myself into the culture and then found myself in the mountains and some guy was like, Hey, I'm going on a tar hunt this weekend to go get a bunch of tar meat for my family. Do you want to come along and help me backpack the tar meat off the mountains? Yeah? And then when I'm up there, he says, hey, do you want to shoot one? You know, you don't need a license for it. You can use my rifle or whatever. Do you want to shoot one? Yeah? And then all of a sudden, that whole experience, to me is me living my life in New zealand participating with a local or participating with the wildlife in the habitat and going about my days and learning the culture and really having this barrier entry of belonging, which is a complete opposite of a ten day hunt in the Mabia where I'm trying to say, hey, I shot eight planes games. Yeah, it's a depth, depth of perspective, you know, like I've always you know. That's why I think storytelling is great, because you can tell a story, right, You can tell a story about your experience without without coming by, without you know, coloring it as an expert, like this is just my experience. I was only there for ten days. Yeah, I can't tell you. I can tell you what I experienced, and hopefully you know if you've never been to that area, of the world experienced that it gives you a little bit of a window into what might be happening. But what you're talking about is just purely a depth of experience. You know, like the more time you spend, the better UM you're able to, you know, take that experience across other folks. It adds up to so much more. It adds up to so much more in and UM. I learned this from a pilot. One time I tried to do this. I was fly fishing in Alaska. I was up there doing research for the US Fishing Wildlife Service. I was doing a bunch of fly fishing, and I had maybe six or seven days before I had to fly out too before I had to go home because I had another project I had to work on. And I talked to this pilot friend of mine, Doug Brewer, and I said, hey, dog, this was back when, um there was a herd in western Alaska called the mold Chatten, a herd of caribou. So I said, Doug, he can fly me there and in a day, not even a day, a couple of hours. So I said, Doug, will you fly me and drop me off? Um and by myself in the middle chatten herd or by the mold chatten herd. I just want to camp. I have two and a half days to hunt and then I'll meet you fly back. And he said, no, man, he's like, I'm not going to fly you in there and for two and a half days a hunt. I said why not. He's like, because the animals deserve more than that, and and he said, if you can stay for five days, it's it. That's that's the beginning. If you can stay for seven days. And the math doesn't add up here, so don't don't your listeners, don't hang me on this. But if you can stay seven days, that's ten times more than five days. If you can stay ten days, that's ten times more than seven days. If you can stay fourteen days is ten times more than ten days. And he's basically saying like every two days that you give this, you're gonna have ten times the experience that you would have had. And so he's like for two and a half days, no, No, I'm not flying you in there. You might with a high part rifle, or you get lucky with the ball, you might smash a big bowl um before I have to com pick you out. But He's like, that's not hunting, you know. And I was still learning my own wisdoms and learning my own ropes and even what it meant to be a hunter then, and so you know, to me, I was like, yeah, zip in there, shoot a giant bowl. Quarterm up, carrying back to camp, get back in then plane, take some photos. Great hunt, I go home. I go yeah. I killed the caribol and one of them for two and a a half days, expert, patting myself on the back, you know. And then Doug's like no, no, no, And and it was funny because fast forward several several years. I spent twenty five days in the Arctic and the guy picked me up pilot pick and it was really cool because they dropped this off as basically summer. Everything was green, the bugs were bad, it was warm during the day. Picked me up. Twenty five days later, the river was frozen solid and no attack was frozen solid snow on the ground. The moose had went through their complete rot cycle, and we're moving on with their lives are in the breeding cycle now, and and um, you know, we went from watching black bears and grizzly bears lazily loaf around the tundra, eating grass and nipping in this, and nipping in this, going into hyper hyper um feeding to get ready for hibernation, and watching them cross ground squirrels and blueberries and all this stuff trying to get ready, trying to and so literally watched the evolution of this landscape over twenty five days. And when the pilot picked me up, you know, we're flying back and he's like, uh, did you see any seeny wolves. I'm like yeah, I got surrounded by two different packs twice and he's like, oh cool. He's like seeing grizzly bears. I'm like yeah, I mean I saw ten different grizzly bears, two giant boars. One charged me. And he's like, did you see any black bears. I'm like, oh, I saw twelve big, plump black bears and and stocked a couple of them and took photographs and you know, you see any moves. Yeah, I saw fifty moose And he's like, yeah, I seen any bowls over sevent I'm like yeah, most of them. Like I saw moose fighting, and I saw them, you know, breeding cows, and I saw them with giant harems, and I saw them form these harems and everything. He asked me. I was like, yeah, do you hear any wolves? How? Oh? Yeah, you see the northern lights? Yeah, all this stuff, like, but it took twenty five days to do all that stuff. And still it's just I mean, you think about it. I watched it go from summer to what you could nearly confuse his winter in twenty five days, and uh god, that's all I want to do. Ever. Now it's just like if I can go, why to hunting and I wa for days or thirty days or yeah? Great? Well and as a traveling hunter, right, I I recently moved to Montane and a big part of that for me was I got to thinking, and this is a fucking first world problem if there ever was one. But I got I got to thinking. I do a lot of traveling, right, travel around the world hunting and done all this and the one thing I feel like I'm missing in my hunting life, and moved around for work a lot, you know, Illinois, Texas, different places, Like I want to plant my flag somewhere and not not only go travel the world and like get and gather perspectives and meet from these places and experiences and bring them back But have you know, have a place where I live that I have such an intense relationship with that could be informed and informed by these other places I go on hunt because I felt like I had all these great traveling hunting experience, But when I went back in this just in this context of Texas, it could have been anywhere. I'm looking around like, man, I don't have any relationship with this place, and that it kind of disconnects everything else, because what am I really trying to build upon if it's not to go home and be better at what I'm doing in my backyard and your backyard is I told people that all the time. If you being in Montana. Now this is not a very grand statement to make, but I currently live in Hudson, Wisconsin, and if somebody told me, I love it too. But if somebody told me, hey, for the next I'm forty four years old, that they said, from from today to the day you die, you can only hunt within twenty five miles of your house, Okay, no problem. I love the things that I go do, I love the place that I get to go see, but I will be like a kid in a candy store within twenty five miles of my house, catching little itty bitty trout, shooting three pheasants a year, um hunting white till deer nearly every day of the season, rough grouse, huge Canada geese, docks, catching walleyes, moski smallmouth bass. Like, there's so much. I'm not talking about the people live in New York City, but there's so much in your neighborhood. People say, oh, man, I wish i'd go sheep hunting. I say, I wish you could go sheep hunting two. And I know it's really expensive, but you want to know something. The first seven sheep hunts I went on were me backpacking for friends of mine that were going on sheep hunts. And I paid my own airfare, I paid for my own hotel, and I paid for my own food. And I walked in their footsteps on the hunt, watched them kill a sheep, helped them cut it up, filled my backpack two and hiked it out. And I consider those sheep punts every bit is. I don't the horns sit in their homes, but every ounce of that sheep hunt was ours. You didn't send the bull, but he's still You're still there, He's still a part of it. Yeah, and so that's what I mean. Like when I was a kid, um, I was in Alaska one time. I don't remember. I was there fishing, and I was in the hotel and anchorage. And if you've never been an anchorage, it's so amazing because you can walk out of your hotel room and the chewcatch mountains are right there. I mean, you walk out of your hotel room be looking at a gas station and also looking at some of the finest all sheep and moose habitat in the world in the same view. And so I remember I came out of I was staying at a hotel called the puffing In. It's a little crappy hotel in here. The it's really nice, actually puffing In. I'm sorry, I said that, it's actually really nice. But I'm at the puffing In. I might get a coupon, but I'm at the puffing In. This guy comes walking out of his door on the outside, and he was wearing blue jeans and a flannel shirt and kind of looked like Tom Selleck. And he goes, hey, how are you doing. I said, I'm good. He's what are you doing? I said, I'm here fly fishing. He's like, cool, So what are you doing. He's like, I'm doll sheep, just like, man alive, Are you serious your dolls sheep? And he's like yeah, And I'm like back then a doll sheep and was like eight grand, Like, oh my god, you bought a eight doll dollar sheep on He's it's like, I'm going before as soon as you purchased it. Yeah. And so I sat there and talked to that guy like he was king in the world, and I I wished, I wish we could have coordinated our trips to where I could hurt his stories afterwards. But I was so enamored with doll sheep, with Alaska, with the things that I was doing. And on that particular trip, I packed using candle light because my electricity was shut off and I couldn't even shower before I head to there approached my water was also shut off, and so but I was I wasn't paying my bills necessarily on time, but I was still going to Alaska because that's where I wanted to be, And so talking to this guy, I was just like, it's just such a dream, Like I can't believe I'm talking to a doulshep onter. I can't believe I'm talking to a dollshep onter right now. And and that stuff is just always enveloped my life always, and so I whether it be Bozeman or hot some Wisconsin or whatever. Like you look in your yard, sincerely, have this idea of adventure in your head. Sincerely, embody what it means to be a hunter, whether that be a gray squirrel, on antelope, a mule deer, a white till dear, a pheasant. You embodied these things. And whether you're breaking down a gray squil, you're breaking down an antelope, it is the exact same thing. It's the exact same thing. Shooting two snowshoe hair, walking out wearing wool slacks and a flannel shirt and your dad's jacket, and you have an old shotgun and two fat snowshoe hairs in your knuckles. Yeah, you might as well be holding onto a fourty inch dollar ship as far as I'm concerned. Do you feel like that's I always think about that. It's like, is it? It's I feel like it's a perfect hunting life to have that at home. But then also be lucky enough, like you have been, and I have been to go out and travel and see those things and be able to you know, have both those at the same time. And that's fair. Yeah. I hear guys all the time. They talk about and we all do. They talk about, Oh man, this guy like owners the Eddie, like, oh my god, they sold their company for hundreds of millions. WHOA, yeah, okay, like that's really cool. But I don't even know. If I was a billionaire, I would still do this because I still want to go to these hunts. I'd still want to see these places in North America. I still want to tell you about him. I'd still be hiring guys that are as talented and I could find, which doesn't even matter how much I pay the guys that work with me, because I can only pay him so much. And there's such soulful individuals and such craftsmen that I'm not gonna say it wouldn't matter what I pay them, because you know they we're all in this together. But it's it's what we love to do and in the craft that we love doing, love doing it for other companies. You know, we've never worked with Yetdie, but like working with Shields or we're gonna like love what we do, love going to these places, like it doesn't matter necessarily that you have all this money. That's why I like. If I run into a guy at the show and he's, yeah, yeah, I'm a grand slammer man when I got all four sheeps, like, oh okay, that's great. Well, um, that's cool. I don't know. But if I run into Chuck Adams, if Chuck Adams says, hey, Donny and trust me, Chuck Adams has no idea I'm even alive. But if I run in, it's I got up and he says, hey, um, let me. If I had a cup of coffee, I'd like to sit down and tell you about my four sheep hunts. I'd like to sit down and tell you about what my grand slam meant to me with my bow and the equipment I was using, the bows I was using, the places that I went, and the shots that I took, and the things that I saw. I would freak out what I would freak like coffee, but I will chuck some seriously. I would if I had the opportunity to sit down with him and hear him tell me his hunting stories, what the gear he's using his approach why he shot the one he did, Like, yeah, there's so much flip out, man, there's so much respective in that. Yeah, And I think truly when you talk about the Grand Slams and now you know, I was thinking about the Grand Slam in Dolls Dream this year. I thought, I want to get the Grand Slam in Turkey, Yeah, in one year. And I thought, is that Am I wrong for this? Fucking doing it for the wrong reasons? But I was like, no, I'm not. I don't think so. Then I was like, fucking, I'm doing it like I tend to. You may be like me. I tend to overthink all types of ship when it comes to hunting. Now, there are there are a number of people that I have in my life that if they listen to this, will be shaking their head yes, because I will. I got a lot of listeners who are like, listen, call the funk down. Man, it's just a picture, Like I don't know, see if you on the same way, and if you say something to me, I'll be like, did you see the way he was standing next? Like no, yeah, Like I don't know, but yeah, there's this somebody like that. It's like it got a little twisted in that the Grand Slam for somebody like Chuck Adams. I don't know Chuck, obviously, but it was more than just the collection of it, and right it was. It was his life's experiences in his way to um, you know, to express his hunting expertise and his hunting life. That's that's what it was. It was him taking his craft two different places, like, Okay, I've solved this maze. I heard they have a really cool mazing idahole um, So I'm gonna go out there and see if i can solve that maze. I hear there's another cool mazing Massachusetts. And so, like you said, it would be a mistake then to take that, take the number or and make that the achievement, right, because the achievement is honing your craft and using it and to be successful in that way. That the achievement is not the collection of the thing or the numbers. You know. The achievement is is finding respect from your peers through this, earning it. Yeah. Yeah, And so that's such a nebulous thing to figure out, but still it's there. It's still there, and if you're doing it right, I feel like, you know, you're doing it right. Yeah, and there's no question. Have you ever read um Aldo Leopold, Oh yeah, yeah, I just like that guy, Sands County. Yeah, I mean like I I I travel with the Sand County Almanac in my backpack every day, and I'll it's just so perfectly written, so perfectly lived. He knows why he's a hunter, he knows what it embodies to be a hunter because of the craft that he is, of the steward that he is for the land, and he realizes the relationship between the plants and the berries, and the grouse and the woodcock and the songbirds and the white tail deer and the dock. And it's just it just I've learned so much from that, man. I know, you know you talked to guys like Steve Ronella. I'd say the same thing. Read that and it defined me. Do you want to know what I'm embarrassed. I've never talked to Steve. I've never met Steve. I've never listened to a single podcast of his. It's gonna change, It's gonna change, and I have. I was given recently. I was given his book The American Bison, American Buffalo, American Buffalo Um so somebody just gave that to me, and it's very high on my list of my opinion. And I just and somebody who's into the history of these these wild creatures. You will love that book. I'll live for it. And so and then, um, somebody just got me his cookbook for Christmas. Good good. We said a lot of those things. Um yeah, it turns out people like to go to stuffy. In fact. Um so I have one, two, three, four, five, six guys in my crew, and four of us got the book for Christmas. That's all from different people. That's like, yeah, no, that's a product of like this, this product of And Steve says it all this time, and I think you're me and Steve have that's not an argument, But I come, I I fall on the y side, right. I'm always asking why are we doing stuff? Why are we doing stuff? That's why I have a podcast, because I just want to like find everyone's why and explore it and use that the paint a picture of kind of maybe they're collective. Um. And the point Steve may we did him and I did a podcast last week in Mexico, and he made the point of, like some people just want to have a good time. They want to always be saying like why why why? Some people just want to enjoy their time outside and enjoy nature and not have to be saddled with this you know, pretentious why why why? And you put out probably the first time I ever really thought hard about it, you put out a video called why we Hunt? Who we Are, Who we are? We are who we are, which was about why we hunt. And um, I've listened to the story of how that kind of came to be and how you did it, and um, I think that was one of the first times that I thought like this, non hunters and people that don't do this need this. It's it's we can you know, all of us is in the hunting bubble can criticize what Donnie might have said there, or we might not agree exactly with the why he said. It was not for us, man, this is like, this isn't medicine for us, it's medicine for for the illness outside of And that wasn't glad you said that, because that wasn't well orchestrated. Yea, you made that temper tantrum. Yeah, you made that for Nagio. Correct that that's correct, because yeah, because this this girl from l A. Her name is Naomi, but she sat down, really stunning African American woman and vegetarian. But she said, yeah, Natio wants to know why you hunt, you know, And I was like oh. And then literally I couldn't come up with an answer, you know. I was like, oh, yeah, I hunt because I'm trying to come up with, you know, ecological reason. I'm thinking about like the North American Wildlife model, and I'm trying to think of really a y, a single y the base of the pyramid of wise and I couldn't really come up with one. So then we were in the Northwest Territories and and Um, William Altman, the guy that was shooting me on that triple he shot me on all the trips, but he was there and he's like, hey, let's just answer some of those questions as to why, you know, in a big rainstorm was coming and and um and so he hit record and I was talking in the camera and I'd lose my way or I talked to the camera and I fumble over my words, and I'd see this rainstorm coming and I just keep talking. I was looking and had the anxiety of the rainstorm coming and just getting piste off at myself that I kept fumbling over my words and my ideas and I didn't orchestrate anything out. And so then it got to where the rain was right there and and and Williams kind of like, dude, you gotta like we gotta do this, like the rain is coming, and I was like, cover off the camera, get out of my face, walk away, and I just had, you know, seven minute temper tantrum. And then that's what. So we talked about it a number of times that I would love to apart two and actually flesh out, like come up with an outline, flesh it out, really talk about it, um and do it still in an off the cuff manner, because that's how things are delivered the best for people to absorb. In my opinion, Um, but you're right, like that is that was just a poorly orchestrated temper tantrum. But answered a few. Yeah, And it was fun for me to watch, you know, not I fell non endemic. It's just people who don't think that we think it's it was fun for me to watch, like Outside magazine pick it up and other places to pick it up. And it's fun to me to just you know, just like you watched the person, the non hunter watched the other side. You know, something that I like to do is just watch that reaction and try. You know, you're you're always going to get the murder or murder. You're gonna get it, like we know you're gonna get it. But every once in a while, every ten comments or so where every you know, you'll get somebody like huh interesting. And that goes back to in my very first podcast with Ronnella, we talked about out of Loophole in in the Sans Cainli Almanac, the San kind of Almanac, and he said his brother read it and had a conservation epiphany and the ideas that were presented in that writing, and that in those writings like it was just not even through us, most was like directly affected his life. And that that exchange of ideas the person he's never met, changed who he was. And I think that's probably what we're all trying to do it and I and yeah, and I could say the same, like it changed. I fell into the hunting. I fell under the hunting umbrella that I see here in this room and that I see at the a t and I see in the hunting camps while around the country, and I felt this way a long time. And I don't mean this to be disrespectful or to make to elevate myself, but I'd go to all these hunting camps around the country and I talked to other hunters, and I would think, I have nothing in common with any of these guys other than we're we're both here hunting the white til deer in Illinois or whatever, like I and so. And it's just that I I assimilated with Aldo Leopold, like his connection to the land that he had, and I didn't really put two and two together. And I just kind of when I first started hunting, it was kind of that cause and effect, you know, Like I remember one time I shot a either shot. I think I shot a black cat chickeny once with a twelve gauge when I was a kid, just boom off this limb, you know, and it hit me hard, like I you know, I shot at this black capped chicken ee um, shot at it missed like it fluttered away before it shot at A miss shot at a miss shot at killed it. And then I went over there and saw its dead body, and of course had nothing to do with it. It's a black cap chicken. I just shot at the twelve gage. Yeah, so here, I literally just was. I popped a balloon, right, I flipped the light switch. But this animal lost its life, and I did so as an egotistical, little monstrous kid sayings or something, and it was terrible. It's horrible, And I was like, this is nothing of what our lives are to be or what this animal's life was to be. And even when I started hunting instantly, I was you know, you'd see these guys out are doing things greater than you were in the outdoor space. And for me, I was lucky enough. Like you said about my beginning, I started reading guys like Jack O'Connor that was very well written. Knew exactly why they hunted, although they didn't always tell you why. They knew exactly why and how they hunted, and they talked about big, plump, hearty animals. Is funny when those guys talked about trophy animals. When those guys talked about trophy animals, there's all about their body condition, about their horn condition, And the reason they were liked is because of premier habitat and being left alone and being and so it's really fantastic, whereas we have made the transgression now into yeah, look at his and his bases for this and this and this, and those guys wrote for a completely different reason, and so I felt it. I grew up reading those original guys, and I had a very good understanding of wanting to go and do the things that they did. But once I started hunting, actually hunting and running into hunters, they kind of sucked me into that shallow field of Hey, let's just kill a big box. This is how you kill a big box. You need you know, you don't, I'm making all this up, but you dump corn on the ground, or you do this or this, and this is the shortcut. You're you're gonna need a slug gun that shoots this far because this is instantly came a gear. Then you're hanging on your wall. You put the pictures up, and I remember like, dude, you gotta get a wall hanger, and that you need one, and then you need two wall hangers, and this is how you do. And if you have two wall hangers, then when I introduce you to a buddy of mine is like, yeah, Hey, this is Nick. He's got two wall hangers, you know. And and so I fell into that trap. And then once I started actually hunting on my own, getting away from these guys, I started enveloping myself with the chicken eas and the birds and the weather and the animals, and I slipped right back into the writings of all the Leopold and Jack O'Connor and all these guys. And so then I started realizing, like, oh, I really am different. Either I'm different or these guys are putting on the facade, just like I was putting on the facade and never really got out of it. Yeah, when I was, when we were talking about that on the on the last recording, it got got I got me thinking, I'm like, man, this is gonna sound pretentious if I say it in the podcast, but funk it. I'll say it anyway. Like the guys who just want to have fun and go hunting, I got no problem with that either. I want you to have fun. I think you need me, though, and you need people like you that are thinking about the why, that are thinking about different ways to do it, that are examining like the tough issues and trying to tell stories that promote the right things, like if you want to just go and have fun, you need you need people that are questioning these things. And he and he like the front line of defense for anyone that might want to take away your privilege to do this. Yes, and I agree with Steve. Some guys just want to go and have fun. But you need and this is a big idea or easy idea to compartmentalized, but you need guys that are thinking men and women are thinking about Okay, so you just want to go and have fun in the outdoors, Okay, that's great, but you have to have fun under these parameters. Because we went out in the outdoors and we all just went out and had fun around the turn of the century and we shot the entire continent out of animals. It was it was fun, a lot of personal gain we shot you know whatever sixteen million bison or whatever was that we shot. And like, yeah, that's what happens when you out and have fun. So we need regulatory we need seasons, we need licenses, we need habitat, we need you know, with ever increasing people we now have, this drives me nuts to again another rabbit hole. But this whole private land public land. Right on this program, everyone wants to talk about that, and and and and what annoys me is I'll kill the big sheep, or I'll kill a deer, I'll kill a gray squirrel. And everyone goes first thing, Hey, is that public or private land? Used to public? Private? Public or private? Yeah, so I'd get at and I say, I, uh, you know, I hunt of everything. I hunted on public land, as with most of us, because if you hunt anything in mountains or anything that you're generally hunting on, if you really like to hunt, you're going to go and do a whole lot of things that are accessible. First. Yes, absolutely for the gate open, that's right. And so you know, we kind of have this idea of this, the fence being built between the two. I had a great conversation last night with Lee Chose about this. The problem is that we have so many people right now, and we're obviously making more every second of every day, and the wealthy and the poor, the span is growing, and so the private sectors growing more powerful than the public sector. And so we need these two types of land to talk to one another. So you need the fat cat rich guy that owns this ten thousand acres to start talking to the state wildlife biologists that owned own this tenth represent this ten thousand acres, and we need to start talking about how this ten thousand acres can talk to this ten thousand acres and we can do things together. And like Lee and I are talking about last night, he was talking about in in the Degradation of water following and waterfall hunting, and and the thing is that he's like, all these wealthy guys are creating these hunting clubs that are beautiful hole, but they're all creating hunting clubs for killing ducks, not raising docks, not creating habitat for ducks, for killing ducks. Like we have these bunkers, we fled flood, this rice field, this cornfield, and so you it's just as hunters, you know, we want to know did did you shoot on public land? You shooting on private land? Did you hire an outfit? Were you guided? Because if you're guided, you don't have many woodsmanship And then you know, I see guys ripping other guys all the time like oh you're guided, Oh you have no woodsmanships? Like no, man, I was hunting in Alberto, which is illegal to do with so you know, these are these are the things that we have to do. But I do believe that as we populate this the mothership Earth here, that we need to protect our public lands, like I mean, to the point of war. We need to protect them. Um, the fat cats are not going to have our best interest. And a few of them that are building beautiful hunting properties, kudos to you. I would do the same damn thing if I was a billionaire, I would buy up as much land as I possibly could. Would I keep you out? I keep some of you out. But what I was gonna say, like, yeah, I really want to get risk, I can buy land. That's right. That's right, I mean literally, that's that's that's the next door that opens for me. Because everything I have right now is what I want. I can't grow anymore as a person. I can only get better as a man. I can get more kind, I can get smarter, I can I can work with people more. I can mentor people more. I can get mentored more. I can grow my own wisdom. But I can't. I have everything at my fingertips really that I want in life, and and there are other things that I want to chase. But but I'm not looking at them as a goal to say, hey, I've accomplished this, Now I can retire. I'm never going to retire. We all know I'm gonna die in a small airplane, and so I just want to keep chasing every day and getting this point. But I really think that we have to start, you know, like these two sectors are going to have to start talking. And then I was talking to a fellow. It emailed in about um he's works. He's a professor UC Berkeley and he studies land use. His name is Luke McAuley. I believe his name is. I want to have him want to talk about it was doing a land you study. I don't believe he was a hunter, and I don't I don't believe he ever hunted. What he it was doing land you study, and had was looking at the best habitat the best land, the best chunks of private land for wildlife. And he was telling me he stumbled upon this trend that big chunks of private land that were um leased up or or or at least by outfitters or had outfitted hunts on it, that had hunting that was for sale basically was some of the best managed habitat in the country, you know, and so at somebody who I'm just like, you know, public lands, public lands, public lands, public lands, you always have to like spin it come back a little bit super trendy to say to say public lands. But it's like lands, just like healthy ecosistants lands. Whoever, I don't give a ship who owns it and managed it. I just wanted to be owned and managed well. So let's you know, so there's perspectives out there. We can't sell our public land to the private guys because they earn us down. Because certain guys like um, you know, if you if you sold it, if I was a billionaire and you've sold me, Let's say you have acres in in Illinois and you sold me that acres in Illinois, I'm gonna I'm gonna turn it into the best quail, wild turkey, songbird, white tailed deer, gray squirrel, fox squirrel habitat you've ever seen in your life, because I like to see that perpetual idea or even notion of harmony, because there's a hand in value and like you value the animal for the animal, and that's what this guy with this this private land you study like they value the animal for the cash money. Yes, it's work that works though as we know if that works, But the problem is if you sell that to the wrong billionaire, he's gonna say, oh, man, there's coal, there's coal ten feet down, and I heard there's maybe oil here, or I could sell off all this top soil for this development over here, and so then he starts. You know, then the thing just gets raped in pillage and you can't get burned down. So we have to keep the public land public. We have to encourage the private guys to do um um, to do good work on their land. I have a little hunting lease just east of my house in Glenwood City, Wisconsin. It's a hundred fifty three acres. The dead center of the properties a twenty six acre cornfield was a cornfield and when I was a cornfield and a bean field, it was just a chunk of raw, muddy, crappy ground. And I went in there and I planted all warm season grasses. I do do. I'm not totally self righteous. I have a couple of food plots that I plant that that for animals that I hunt and provide food for the deer over the winter. We have harsh winters, of course, but the majority of it I planted a warm season grasses and um and then let natural vegetation like big blue stem and gold rod and all this stuff come up and and repopulate. And it's funny because when I leased the land for several years, it was a cornfield or a bean field. I never saw snakes, I never saw rough grouse, I never saw pheasants, never saw turtles, saw very few songbirds unless I was in the woods. And even when I in the woods, there's a lot of noxious and a lot of nonindigenous plants that are really choking out the forest floor. So really like it was a really sterile property I put in all these grasses, and it's just remarkable now, I was telling this to lead last night. Remarkable the grouse that I see in here, drumming all. It's not pheasant country at all. And I'll still I'll bump three or four roosters when I'm going out to bowl hunt deer, wild turkeys. I'm seeing a ton of my favorite things. I'm seeing a ton of snakes, and I'm seeing just all this stuff, and I just like all I did was work on twenty six acres did I change the world, not one drop of it, but that neighborhood is better because of it. Yeah, And I think I've changed, I know, I don't think I know that I've changed. Over the last year or two, was talking to ecologists and folks like yourself, biologists and people that really care about wildlife. The answer to like, what's the main purpose of your hunting? And I would just say like being a part of this community, doing this and making the efforts that that I do, and trying to live the lifestyle the best way I can and hold myself accountable. I think the answer right now is is I'm for healthy ecosystems. That's what I'm for. Like even if that means you can't hunt, yes, And that's been I would never have said that before. I would always have said that, oh, you know the meat, you know, that's great. I like the Meat Conservation Show was having a seizure last night over feel the table. He was so angry, like it's I always like, I'd love to get your reaction to this I came up with. In fact, I was bear hunting with rogan Um as soon as you going, and we were just talking and he was challenging me and calling me an idiot on some stuff, and well, she he does and always does well. And I just came up, like I said, Okay, meat eating, meat and conservation are byproducts of hunting. They're not the reason I go hunting. They're they're things that I know are happening. They know I know the result of the thing I'm doing is is these two things. But they're not. I'm done saying these are the reasons I hunt. I'm done with that. You know, I can't do that anymore because I don't think it's true. I don't mean it's not true. Because you're just examining your own actions, you would almost immediately come to find that it's not you know, like why do you hunt with the bow if you're just there for the me you want? Like? What are you doing if you're just there for conservation? Why do you do this? This, this and this and so? If you would just examine your own actions, you would find that the reasons we often trot out as the reasons we go ye, and and that's really it. But the thing is is that a few of us, uh you, myself, other guys have the outside. Um, it's very this is more complex than I'm making it, but you might get somebody in let's just say l A right. Um, I've done a fair bit of work with William Morris Endeavor, the large talent agency out there, and they've flown me in there to. They always want me to find bigfoot or find gold in Alaska. Yeah, they want me to trap beavers and and uh so all this stuff, right, they want me to do all these TV shows that are popular right now and and um. But they're always trying to And it's the same reason I did Who We Are for Nacchio. If they're always trying to pin up why as to like there has to be just a singular reason, and like you said, it's tough to articulate because multiple But when they hear oh, yeah, I hunt for food, then they go, Okay, you're hunting for food, so you like organic food, that's why you hunt. You're hunting for organics. This is organic Donnie, Donnie the organic hunter, that's right. So then so then you get guys in this hunting show that have no idea why they hunt. They don't necessarily have to have an idea why they hunt, but they certainly have no idea why they hunt. Other than they can say, man, I like killing deer. I like hunting deer, which is nothing wrong with that falls into a little bit of the Steves like I just want to have fun. It also falls into a little bit of like what you just said, where I'm not hunting for food, I'm not hunting for conservation. I'm hunting because I'm because of our Really it probably comes from our ancestors right where really we step from hunters, so we have this innate piece of our DNA that's like you should go outside and do something hardy. For me, it was like this for me. It was a derivative of I can't. This podcast is a derivative of I can't figure this sh it out. Yes I can't. And so but you continue to ask the question, which continues to bring you wisdom, which continues to run you into interesting people and having fun stories and doing fun things and staying and really nice. But um, but the truth is is that it's not for food. It's not necessarily for conservation. But guys that don't have a good tagline as to why, then they'll say, oh, yeah, I'm you know, white. There's nothing more organic than a white till deer. And then you say, well, you sprayd all of your food plots with round up, and so there's like cafe in your deer's meat, and so really it's not very organic and so buzz words. Yeah, there was a man. It was like a Wall Street drillers. An article I read the other day hipster hunters. What was the headline? I want to look this up because the headline. I was just like, the article is not bad, but the headline was like ship. Yeah, I just put they put down their kombucha and pick up their crossbows. That's what it was. It was hipster hunters. Colon put down your camp but they put their putting down their combuch. The cross a terrible a turn of phrase, like and it's funny because I know guys now that I've met that would I would categorize as I want to categorize them. But if we're going to categorize them, I would say they're hips or hunters there lack of a better term. Their cover and tattoos. They wear skinny jeans. There had stocking caps much like my owner, hanging off the back of their head. They're wearing trendy little flannels much like myself and but I do. I do it because this is what I've basically always done. They're doing it, um a bit more out of fashion. Right like going to a Filson store in any city in America right now, you're not standing amongst hunters. You're standing amongst hipsters. And these guys have not realized that they can go and buy a bow and go to the Parks system in Minneapolis and get a Metro area hunting permit by take asking a test, and they can go and shoot organic food. Man. And they can buy a hatchet, and they can hang the hatchet on their wall, and and they can talk about the stuff at their dinner parties and you know, and and it doesn't mean there are any different from us. It just came means they came to hunting in a different roundabout. It's like it's for them. They're you know, adults, most of them. When they're doing this is like this easier for them to do, right that it's easier for them to explain in the beginning. But I guarantee them somebody would say like, man, I'm an organic hunter. Um, I just go out to get organic meat and that's it. I'm like, well, listen, I bet they come back in five years, hunt for five more years, and I bet you when you come back and five more years, you will tell me that it's more complicated than just the meat. Now, you may start out thinking it's just field table, but you're gonna learn and be enriched by so much, so many different things in those experiences that you'll you will find it impossible to say that's just from organic meat. Then, and even when we were in an original society, even when it was about starve Asian survival, I'll guarantee you those people, our ancestors still hunted for a different reason, certainly hunted for me. And then some people hang their hats on that and say, oh, those people, you know, I'll get that's the I don't get very much hate mail. It's I feel bad for people that do. I see some of the I see some of the um. You know, people in the industry just say, oh my word, I get lit up. And luckily I don't get that lit up. But um, I don't either from like you mean, like from anti hunters. But I don't either, which I get very little. It's every once in a while bare photo will go up and then some two or three people will say something, but you just write it off and go on. But yeah, you're right, I don't. I don't need here and I don't I don't think that says anything about me or you. It's just like, how do you how do you get exposed to it? And I think it's kind of what you're doing. It's the same thing because when I posted, when we posted about hunting mountain lions, like, that's the easily the most I've gotten ripped. And it's still continues, and I don't pay attention to it because most people are they're so far off base, right, But um, but yeah, I think it's Um, I kind of lost my train of thought. But um, we're just talking about that so many different things. I can't believe I just lost my train of thought. But anyway, so, but it is this, It is this digression of hunting for me or we're hunting for a particular reason and and uh, and we give ourselves this this notion of of that we have to prove why we're hunting. And I'll guarantee you even though our ancestors were hunting for food, certainly that they're still wash you know something like I'll guarantee you lions and hyenas and cougars and black bears. I'll guarantee you they get this. You know, when a when a black bear is able to sneak up on a snow shoe hair and chase it down and pounce on it and bite the back of its head, I'll guarantee you there's more than just this is a meal. I'll guarantee there's a euphoric feeling to them of of their you know, their hardiness. And and so I just think that I think even back then when we were certainly hunting for food and ins and tools, they're probably still was you know, probably still got goose bumps. Yeah, something in the age. And I think this whole conversation we're having is modern luxury. I mean, we have the modern luxury to like choose to do it or not do it, and choosing to do it is somehow um requires a why. But you go back to your parents. My parents, My dad never had to walk in a room. But like, I'm a hunter, and people like that great, And what you know, I I walk into a room in a lot of places, and I spent a lot of time and places where they're not a lot of hunters around and I walk in the room, They're like, what do you do for living? I'm like, while I'm in the hunting industry, I have to almost immediately then explain, Yeah, what why why hunt? So that's what caused me to kind of break into this whole um song and dance around why we do what we do and try to figure it out because because not because I really wanted to, but people kept asking me, and I'm like, have a good answer. I guess you know, same for me, and and and I enjoy it because I'm happy that these people have asked me these questions what I've been Because then I started to ask my self these questions. And I always asked. I always sought out the adventure. And also Jack O'Connor's going to the Yukoni hunting dollar sheep. So he had to you know, he had to wear his pack, and he had to go through here, and they got some weather and they ran into some grizzly bears. So always looking at solving the house and the wise of the hunt. But really, when I started asking myself, you know, when you go to the Yukon and you go hunt, and you go pay to hunt and you're now in the Yukon territories. You paid to hunt a dollar sheep, and now you're in the mountains, honey doll sheep. What are you leaving that place better than when you found it? And obviously there's a footprint, you know, because we're using up av gas to the airplane wasln't fly if we weren't there, And we're obviously leaving maybe a bit of litter or something like that on accident, or even the litter of our footprints and the litter of stepping on tundra or whatever it is. We're leaving our marks certainly by being present. But really that also falls back on what Steve was saying that, you know, there's this idea of fun, and so my idea of living my life, my ride on this earth is that. And I want to go to the Yukon. I want to see dollshep, I want to see moose, I want to see grizzly bears. I want to feel the burn, I want to be in the rain, I want to see the mosquitoes, and and that that's this, This is my ride that I want to do on the earth. But I don't want to be so selfish that I know my candle is going to burn out when I'm fifties, sixty, seventy whatever, And then I I know I don't have to worry about the conservation of this mothership, this earth that we have. I don't have to worry about that after I die, So I get to just freaking go through life like a comet, just burning and destroying everything behind me. I don't want to do that. We want to I want to leave it better. And because the intrinsic value of being a hunter, you know, exactly what we talked about in the beginning, what what being a hunter used to mean. I want being a hunter to still mean that. And if it doesn't mean it for everyone, I certainly wanted to mean it from me. Yeah. No, that's that's man, That's that's well put. And then I've you know, I said, recently, we've had these conversations. I've had some people right in and I don't know if you're like me, but I read all the positive comments and go right to the negative one, and I'm like, yeah, okay, And I've had some people right in like you're you know, listen, man, I appreciate the conversation, but you're overthinking it, and you know, it comes off seeming pretentious, and I'm like, listen, maybe it does. I'm willing to admit that it is or might be. I'm not better than you. I don't want to be better than you. I want to be one of you. Um, but boy, there's some real heavy stuff here that we gotta work out. We're taking a little bit more work it out together. It doesn't mean we have to come up with this hierarchy, and it doesn't mean we have to speak intelligently and be articulate at all times. We can still hoot and holler and be village idiots and in the process, but we should probably ask ourselves big, differ go questions, and as we approach eight billion people on the Earth and growing, we should probably keep asking ourselves with difficult questions with greater frequency. Yea, how do we get here? How do we get you? How we get where we are? Yeah? Well we got here in to Vegas with via airplane and it's kind of weird. What else? What other shots shre stuff you got going on? Nothing? We just have, um a couple of meetings that you know. We own Sigmanta, so we do a lot of production for other companies. And we're here meeting with Shields. We have some projects that we're doing with Shields, and UM meeting with some other companies that are interested in in hiring us to to shoot production, do commercial work, catalog work, things like that. Where can people will go see the other side and and you know, obviously if you haven't, if you're listening to this, you can need to go watch the Rivers divide. The Rivers divide, Terranova and the Other Side are our three now and and so then go to don Evenson dot com UM and we sell it as DVD and Blu ray and uh mobile download is not a true download is kind of more like a streaming UM and we're working on that. Everyone always wants us to put on iTunes, but iTunes is way way too expensive for our type of platform. It's way it's just people are like put on iTunes because everyone wants it at their fingertips, but it's it's impossible. So Donny Vinson dot com and then we're We have played the Other Side in three theaters so far, once in four Collins Colorado sold out as Awesome sold out to theaters in Minneapolis, and we're gonna do. We'd like to do like a ten, twelve, thirteen fourteen theater tour across the country and just to bring it into in front of other people. But yeah, well good, I can't wait to watch it. It's good the first ten minutes. And then you showed up. I'm like ship, yeah, so you'll have to watch it and then and then Texas later on. I will appreciate taking the time, man, what you do, and I really appreciate it. All right, thanks, thanks boss, all right, brother, that's it. That's all Episode number forty six in the books. Thanks to Donnie for hanging out uh in Vegas with us, for taking some time from the shot show to tell us his stories, to give us a little bit about his life is and what he's done with it, which is pretty amazing. So go to the Downy Vinceent dot com. Check out what he's done, check out his work. His latest film was talked about, The Other Side, is out there for you to watch, and it's a feature length film, which is not all that common in our space, So give it a watch and check out time. What else? What else we got we got? Yeah, hey, we got the meat Eator dot com. You go over there to the metator dot com and you'll find while you're there the newsletter subscribe button. And when you subscribe to the newsletter, you're gonna get gifted from us to you all the great articles and content from our crew every Wednesday morning and your inbox. Ryan Callahan just sneezed. That was a good one. Bless you. Um what else? What else? Currently? If you? If you, if you're listening to this currently, I we're in our hotel room and shot we're recording, of course the oltro to this current podcast. I'm in my underwear and Ryan Callahan is sitting across from me and he just sneezed into his breakfast and ruined and ruined what was a wonderful hot pocket that he's eating. Um, anyway back to but yeah, it's about growing up. Back to uh what we were talking about, which was the meat Eator dot com. If you got your newsletter, then you're gonna go to want to go to the shop and you're gonna want to You're gonna want to buy stuff there, right, you wanna buy T shirts, You're gonna want to buy hoodies, You're gonna want to buy all kinds of stuff. That's there, Hunting Collective logo, you get your pro Nuance anti bullshit shirt, you got Eddie tumbler with our logo on it, all kinds of stuff. And if you don't like us for some reason and you want to buy meat eatter gear, there's a lot of meat eater gear there. And if you don't like meat eater for some reason, there's Ryan Callahan's smell Us Now Lady t shirt and all profits good a conservation on that one, so you should check that out as well. And if you have a little bit more time and energy and you don't have a lot going on, then you're gonna want to look at the events page on that website and you're going to see all the places we're going on the live tour um, most notably where I'll be, which is Reno, Sacramento and Boise and hopefully it'll be announcing in Austin stop soon, which I know I'll be taking part it. So all you need to do is go get the newsletter, buy some gear, and then sign up for an event. That's it. That's all. That's that's nothing. Uh, there's plenty of fun stuff from the Mediata crew. Proud to be a part of it. Proud to put out this podcast and thank you all for listening to it as always, And next week we're gonna get back to you with episode number forty seven with a man named Ian Harrison who is the editor of Recoil Magazine, a native of England and has a great story about why and how he came to this country. So enjoy that next week on the Honey Collective. Bye

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