Cameron Hanes - Endure: How To Work Hard, Outlast, And Keep Hammering

Full transcript: Cameron Hanes on London Real

3:04 This is London Real, I’m Brian Rose, my guest today is Cameron Hanes, the endurance athlete, bow hunter, author, and entrepreneur. You have spent the last 35 years of your life pursuing your goal to become the ultimate predator after falling in love with the sport of bow hunting at the age of 20. You are renowned for your intense preparation and fierce training, which includes working out seven days a week, oftentimes running a marathon a day, all while holding down a full time job.

3:31 Your best-selling book, Endure, how to work hard, outlast, and keep hammering, breaks down the mental and physical attributes necessary to reach the top no matter what environment you’re in. You believe that there is no shortcut to success and that everybody is capable of pushing themselves further and working harder in order to achieve their goals. David Goggins has described you as one of the toughest men on the planet, while Joe Rogan is called your pursuit of perfection and dedication to fitness, super human.

3:59 Cameron, welcome to London Real. Oh, thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here. I’ve been following you for years and love what you do Love your approach your attitude your spirit. Love it. Thank you, man I really appreciate that and you know, I’ve been hearing your name a lot lately because I’m going through Goggins latest book and you know, he’s on his audible version He does like a mini podcast in between chapters and he’s talking about you which was perfect because I was getting ready for this interview And he’s talking about you showing up at his doorstep and taking him out on a run and You know, he does the afterword on your book and he says this and again I’ve had Goggins in here in studio and Goggins is he is the real deal. He’s one of the most intense guys you ever met He’s a very introverted dude He’s very serious guy and he said quote I’ve trained with many of the toughest and hardest men on the planet and only one stands out that one is Cameron Hanes He says, I used to think I was out here alone, never thinking someone was out there working as hard as I was. I now know there is another. Those are some strong words, Cameron. I mean, when you hear things like that from David, and you’ve obviously built a relationship with him, what’s that like to hear things like that? Because, you know, that’s a big statement.

5:14 Yeah, I mean, to me, it feels like he’s talking about somebody else. I mean, I’m like, Oh, that guy sounds like a badass. I wonder if it is because to me, I know my weaknesses I know how I heard every morning when I get up I know, you know on a run I might want to quit but I just got to keep pushing and so When he talks about a superhuman or whatever it said or maybe Joe said that it seems like it’s not me because I know I’m not superhuman. I know I have a lot of weaknesses. So it’s a it’s it’s a little surreal Yeah, you know what I find interesting is when I think of the two of you, you know I think a David who obviously had this traumatic childhood and yours wasn’t a walk in the park and we could definitely talk about that You know, David seems like he’s out there taking souls He’s got all this, you know, pent-up anger and rage and you know, he’s working on things Through his physical fitness, which I think is amazing, but you’re almost a different character But you’re also both putting in similar results and I’m wondering do you you know how do you kind of explain that to people where your drive comes to just Constantly exhaust yourself to use every second of the day and just to put in the reps to just be better Well, maybe even for the sake of being better like how do you describe your version of that compared to like a David?

6:34 Yeah, I don’t I’m not really sure what David how he goes through it in his head for me though I feel like the only thing I have to offer is hard work I don’t feel like, you know, as I talked about in the book, I don’t feel like I have this talent, this natural ability, this professional athlete type skill. So I’m like, well, my thing is I can offer hard work and I just got to ride that. So I just punch that time clock every day, whether it’s, you know, for 26 years, it was at a regular nine to five.

7:05 And then I would do everything that I do on the side. I since have retired since the beginning of October, October 3rd was my last day at work. And now it’s just the same thing, same mindset, punch in the clock but in a different way. And I feel like that’s my skill, that’s my talent, is that I will outwork people. That works for most people, not for Goggins.

7:27 Goggins will not be outworked. But that’s my goal. And where did that come from, you know, with you? Was that something that was always there as a kid, or is it something that you kind of learned? That, I think, came from a kid with very little self-confidence and didn’t really know what I was going to do, how I was going to find my way, how I would, you know, everybody wants to stand out in some way, right?

7:54 It’s just really hard to do because of life, life challenges. You know, I had, I drank, you know, I probably shouldn’t have drank as much as I did. I was young in my 20s, so I made a lot of mistakes drinking, wrecking trucks, not being a good person. And it’s like, sometimes you can’t overcome even your own flaws. And so once I was able to like overcome that and be like, okay, if I can just make the most of what I have, who knows what’s gonna happen?

8:27 So that’s been my mindset. I’m just like, I don’t, I’m gonna overcome, I guess my weaknesses, do everything I can with the goal in mind of, is this helping me? Is this helping me become a better person? And so that’s just all I do every day. And at the end of the day, if I’ve sacrificed and I’ve worked hard and I feel like I’ve punched at the clock, like I’ve said, then I feel good and we do it again the next day.

8:53 That’s been my attitude. Was there something that clicked in you that got you from being the guy that was drinking and wrecking trucks, because I’m sure There’s a lot of guys like that out where you are and here for that matter that never stopped doing that. Was there something that clicked in you to take you on a new path? Yeah, I mean, some people, it’s true, never get out of their own way. I mean, it’s just, they have spurts where they’re doing pretty good, things are going good, and then we just screw up because we’re humans, right?

9:22 And then that cycle repeats. The biggest thing for me is I had my son Tanner. I was pretty young. wife I think, I think we were 22 and 24 when we got married and then one year later had Tanner and that was like okay now it’s just not me being a loser it’s I didn’t want to be a quote loser dad you know because now I’m affecting the legacy of you know my first child and I was like I got to be better I have people relying on me now I got to be a quote role model or a good dad and so you think that would be enough but it wasn’t I mean, I still, still screwed up, but eventually that was pretty much the turning point where my screw ups got a little, little more spread out and I kind of got on a more positive, healthy path.

10:14 And so that’s where I’ve been since, you know, then I had, or my wife and I had two more kids, another son and a daughter. And now I just, I know what I got to do and I just do it. Right. I want to get into the bow hunting because I’m actually fascinated with hunting I’ve never really done it But I’ve I’ve been listening to a lot of people talk about it from Rogan and I had Remy here a couple years back And I’m fascinated but you know be one thing if you were you know at the pinnacle of bow hunting Which I think most agree you are but on top of that you put in those sometimes daily marathons But then on top of that camera and you come home and you lift weights until your arms like you know want to explode and then on top of that then you go shoot some more arrows when you know you’re probably your arms are shaking and it’s like yeah it seems like you take that to the extreme why do all that man I don’t really give myself a choice I just know that if I don’t do that I’m gonna be I mean I remember there was this one time this kind of I guess encapsulates it and I don’t know if it’s a good example or not because I’ve had reservations that I said this at this time at, you know, when I look back now, but I was at the movies with my boys and you know, I looked around and I always, you know, tell the boys that, you know, our goal isn’t to be average. And I looked around and I said, I go, guys, I said, look, look

11:39 At here, but he’s standing in line to get into the movies buying popcorn and we were buying popcorn too. So it’s not like we’re better than anybody. But I said, look around here and you know look around I said this is average I said this is the average person we our goal is to not be average if you’re average you’re a loser and I was like God I just I look back and I was like that I don’t you know I didn’t want my kids to think that you know some people don’t have these huge goals to change the world and that’s okay or even to even giving your best sometimes you can you can try to justify giving a little less each day and I mean it’s okay if you’re a good person and you’re out there providing a service people need you know we have people like in Oregon you pull up to a gas station to get fuel and somebody comes out and pumps your gas you know so those people need jobs we can’t pump our own fuel but those jobs aren’t going to change the world but they’re important jobs so I was like I had reservations after I said that years later it’s like I, you know, maybe being average is okay for some people, maybe we’re all not destined to make this huge mark, and it’s okay to be a good, just a good dad and go to work every day and come home and be a good husband, that’s okay.

12:55 And so, I don’t know, I’ve tried to be, I’ve tried to push my kids to be their best. I’ve tried to give my best, but also balance that maybe some people, I don’t know, maybe just being a contributing member of society is okay. I don’t remember how this question started. I just remember that I had that example at the movies of my kids and like trying to be a good dad and say the right things and do the right things and I’ve screwed up in that too. I can’t remember what the original question was maybe you do no, but it tells us it says so much about your character I love it. I’m just curious What was the reaction of your kids when you said that at the movie?

13:41 Did they get it right away and they’re like yeah dad or did they look at you funny or did it take them a while to process it? No, I mean they’re used to me saying stuff like that all the time I mean, so it just kind of reinforced what I’d be telling them and I tell them I’m like, you know because it’s not like they’re, you know, like a LeBron James with 40 inch vertical and can run a maybe an NFL guy ran a 43 40. It’s not like they’re like that. So but I’d always say it’s like I don’t expect you to be the best in the world. I just want you to give your best give your best effort, whatever you’re doing, just be just offer the very best you can. And so I would just tell them that over and over and I don’t know. I I mean, yeah, I had reservations about some things I said, maybe I pushed them a little too hard growing up because of that.

14:32 When I look back now, I’m like, was I too hard on the boys? But man, they’ve done great. They are definitely my biggest accomplishment, not just my boys, but my daughter too. And so yeah, parenting has been up and down the road just like life. Hopefully I’m getting better at it.

14:51 Now that my oldest is 29, I think Truett is 26, and then my daughter is 19. So I think as parents and as humans, we just hopefully get better as we go. Well, I’m gonna take some of this advice because I’ve got two boys, they’re five and six right now. And so I’m putting through the bases, but sometimes I forget that they’re five and six. And we’re reading the Warrior Kids series from Jaco, because he’s been a guest many times.

15:19 And that’s worked out really well, by the way. And so we’re doing pull-ups every night in burpees. And I’m talking about positive mental attitude and like, you know, going in pretty hard. And I’m also just, I’m just sometimes wonder if I’m too intense for these kids. But, you know, I don’t know.

15:39 My dad wasn’t like that, but, you know, I still got a lot of that stuff myself. So yeah, I don’t know, but I appreciate you saying that to your kids. and I appreciate that mentality. You said once, if you’re not obsessed, you’re gonna be mediocre. And obviously that’s the way you look at life.

15:55 You look at life as this chance to give everything you got. And you know, I think David says, talent not required, you’ve got a similar thing. And I know you wear these shirts that say, what does it say, nobody cares, work harder. I love it. I think the UFC fighter Matt Brown used to wear that shirt as well, or he has it on his Twitter header or something.

16:17 So, yeah, he’s a beast. Yeah, he’s a beast. But, you know, talk to me about that expression. Nobody cares, work harder. Yeah, I mean, some people take that, they get a little triggered by it because they’re like, well, I care, people care.

16:33 You know, they try to turn it into this big thing. It’s like, my whole thing is it’s like, I look at it as nobody cares. So if you’ve had a lot of success in the past, it doesn’t really matter. You gotta, you can’t rest on laurels. You gotta keep proving yourself.

16:48 You gotta, whatever you did in the past, good, build on it, you gotta do more. Or if you failed in the past, you gotta suck it up and work harder so you don’t fail again. So whether it’s success or failure, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is how much work you’re gonna put in and what trajectory you’re gonna be on after whatever happened, the failure or success. So that’s how I look at it.

17:11 I don’t look at it like, well, nobody cares that you accomplished this thing and you should be celebrated, it’s fine. Fine, celebrate yourself, get a pat on the back, it’s all good, but it doesn’t really matter because I know that no matter what I’ve gone through or whatever failure I’ve had, no matter how bad I’ve hurt, somebody might listen to you and they might, whatever, let you vent, they don’t really care. They got their own things they’re going through in life.

17:37 They’re not gonna give you a bunch of energy to wallow in or to use or to suck from them. So it doesn’t really matter. They’ll listen it at best, but at the end of the day, it’s gonna be you. You’re gonna have to just pick yourself up and get back to work. And so that’s the point to the slogan.

17:53 Yeah, you’ve heard people say like, they give people a 30-day no complaining challenge. I’ve never heard that before. And some people try it. When I saw that shirt, it seemed just to address the fact that people like to complain. And I think you just alluded to it.

18:09 Even if you’re complaining to the person that cares about you the most, that complaining never gets you anywhere. First of all, the person that cares about you the most still doesn’t wanna hear it. Complaining disempowers you and them. So when I see that shirt, to me, it speaks to me of, stop complaining, because we’re all complaining somewhere in our head, right? Subconsciously, small, maybe it’s the pain in your ankle, maybe it’s the this, maybe it’s the this.

18:33 And for me, it’s just like, it says shut the hell up and just work harder, because if you work harder, then you won’t have that to complain about. Yeah, that’s how I look at it. I mean, you just keep putting in the work and see what happens. But yeah, complaining about anything doesn’t really make any positive difference. No.

18:53 You love the fact of just training for misery, embracing the pain, and maybe this is where we can segue a little bit into hunting because you know that when you’re out there on a hunt is that it’s gonna be massively painful. It’s completely unpredictable. You’ve got weather challenges, you’ve got unknown end date challenges, right? You might don’t know when you’re coming back, how you’re gonna get back, if you’re gonna get back, and you’re gonna be in a situation that’s potentially much more painful than anything you’re gonna put yourself through on the road.

19:26 Is that the thinking when you go out there and put yourself in pain? The thinking that I have when I head into the mountains is that this is gonna be a great challenge. I’m going to have to be on my A game basically because I’m hunting an animal. And I know hunting, especially over there is looked at differently, probably by a lot of people. But for me, hunting has always been, I mean, I grew up in this little small logging town about 20 minutes from where I am right now, lived here my whole life.

19:54 And hunting and hunters were kind of looked up to. If you could get a deer and put that meat in your freezer every year, that was a good thing. It’s like people would say, hey, did you get your buck this year? You know, that’s a male deer buck and you get your buck this year and that was like a good thing. It’s like, yeah, I got them, you know, got a nice four point or whatever.

20:15 So when I look at hunting, it’s always been in a positive light. Now, nowadays it’s a little bit different for some people in society. And even though here in America, I think it’s 96% of people eat meat. So still most people are eating meat and most people don’t hunt. So what are they doing?

20:35 The store and they’re buying that beef or chicken or whatever it is, and so animals are dying. Animals die for us to survive. That’s just the way it goes. Even if you’re not eating meat, still these fields where salads and breads and different things are made still have to be sprayed and animals get killed during harvest and everything, so life begets life, I guess, is the thing. So for me, it’s very empowering for me to say, well, I’m going to eat meat.

21:07 My family’s going to eat meat and I’m going to have to provide that meat. And I go out to the, to the mounds and I’m like, I got to be at my best because this animal isn’t committing suicide. He’s not offering himself up for me to put an arrow through. So I’m going to have to outwit something that lives in the mountains 365 days a year to do that as a human and get into bow range, which is very close compared to rifle range. That is very difficult.

21:34 So I have to be in tune, I have to be physically prepared, I have to be mentally dialed in, I have to be able to consider the weather challenges as you mentioned. Do I have enough water? Do I have enough food? If weather comes in, do I have shelter? All these things are going through your mind and but really all I need to focus on is can I get in boat range with this animal and release a perfect arrow.

21:57 All this other thoughts are going through your head about sleeping and like I said hydration and all this so it’s very taxing it’s very hard and then when you do get an animal killed then you have to break that animal down you quarter it up you hang the quarters in the tree you load up your pack you pack you know if it’s an elk there’s going to be say 300 pounds of meat that has to come out before it spoils, before it gets in a freezer or refrigerator, the clock is running. All that is so intense. That’s pretty much what my focus is and what I’ve learned is like a challenge like that in the mountains is so real, you can make excuses but you’re not going to succeed.

22:46 So if you’re going to succeed, there’s going to be no excuses. There’s going to be challenges you just overcome. When you get that kill, it’s time to work. Nobody cares about your sore, your back hurt. Nothing matters.

23:00 Hunting has definitely taught me real life lessons of I’m just going to have to suck it up, be tough, and get this done. That’s pretty much why anybody knows who I am because of bow hunting, which is crazy. You in London know who I am because I came from a tiny town where there’s 24 or 28 in my graduating class in high school and came out of that and now I’m talking to Brian Rose on London Real. Just crazy because of bow hunting, but bow hunting has made me who I am.

23:35 That’s a long answer to a quick question, but it’s definitely changed my life. So yeah, hunting has been empowering to me. It’s fascinating. all the details about what makes a bow hunter as opposed to a rifle hunter. But like you said, and all the people with conceptions around hunting.

23:54 And then you just mentioned the meat. Before we go on, how do you get 300 pounds of meat out of the wilderness? Like, and how much time do you have? But like, you can’t do that in one carry. For sure you can.

24:08 No, no, no. It’s multiple trips. So say, I mean, I remember I killed a bull by myself. there’s about 10 miles back. So if you’re gonna get 300 pounds of, that was kind of a smaller bull, so it was maybe 250 pounds of meat.

24:22 And then I might have 50 pounds a year, so it’s still 300 pounds. So if you say you make four trips with 75 pounds each, that’s four trips, right? That’s to get your 300 pounds out. But if you’re 10 miles back, you have, you went back in there 10 miles, you killed a bull, you load up 75 pounds after you get it broke down, which takes hours to break down a bull. After you kill it, get the guts out, get the skin off, get the quarters off, like I said, cut the back straps off, which, you know, the quarters are the front shoulders and the hindquarters, but still the back straps, which are right along the spine, those are like the premium stakes.

24:57 And then you got all the neck meat on a bowl. So you get all that loose meat cut off, the back straps, the inside tender ones, which are right under the spine, right above the guts, you get all that off, that takes hours. So you’ve been back 10 miles, just with your hunting gear. You break the animal down, so 75 pounds out, that’s 10 miles, so now you’re 20 miles. You go back for another load, that’s 30 miles.

25:20 75 pounds, 40 miles. 50, I mean, you got miles with weight on your back. You better be prepared. It is so much work. So to get a bull out by yourself, it’s four trips.

25:33 If you’re 10 miles back, it’s a lot of miles. If you’re two miles back, it’s still a lot of miles, but it’s just, bottom line, it’s a ton of work. and you’ve got a freezer in your truck so it can get cold right away, no. No, so if you kill a bull, normally I’m hunting my, what I like to hunt the most is bull elk. Archery season is in September.

25:56 So in September in the mountains, it can be very hot, but also nights can get cool because that weather’s kind of turning over here. And so if you get on the, so if you think of the mountains, sun comes up, the south side of the mountains is always warm. The north side is always cooler because how the sun goes. That north side timber is darker and cooler. So if you kill a bull, you look at where, okay, where’s the coolest timber here? If there’s water, it’s always cooler by the water. What would be best is along the water, north side timber where it’s thick, you get that meat in that timber, you get up in a tree where the wind can kind to blow through and the wind can keep that meat cool for a few days even if the temperature on maybe on the south side might be 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Are you guys Fahrenheit or Celsius over there?

26:45 Celsius. Celsius, okay well I don’t know how it translates but anyways 70 degrees would be too warm for meat but it might be 70 degrees on the south side, on the north side it might never get above 40 and then if you get the wind that’ll glaze over that meat, that meat will last for a few days, right? So you got a couple days at least to get that meat out. So as long as you get the meat hung in an area that’s cool where the wind can move around, you’re going to have a couple days. So that’s how that works.

27:14 And then, okay, to answer your question, you get it to the truck and hopefully, what I’ve had to do before is like, if I get it to the truck at the trailhead, I might have to drive to town with that, take it to a processor or somebody who will let me hang the meat in the cooler and then go back for more. So it just depends on the weather that essentially is how long that meat will last. If it’s cool at the truck, at the trailhead, and I can keep that meat there in the shade and then go back for another trip and get it all out and then one trip to the processor, we’re good to go.

27:47 If not, you do what you gotta do. The focus is, and a lot of people have this, there’s another misconception is that hunters are trophy hunters. They make it seem like, you know, we go out and we just kill these animals and take the antlers. I mean, I got antlers right here above me and we just take the antlers and we’re quote trophy hunters. I am a trophy hunter in regard to I want to kill an old animal, usually old animals have big antlers but that doesn’t mean that I don’t value that meat like it’s gold.

28:15 That meat is what my family and me survive on all year and so yeah, I like big antlers because I like killing old animals that have served their purpose and passed on the genes and done whatever they needed to do to keep the herd healthy. But also that meat that I work so hard to pack out, get processed and get to my freezer and then ultimately on my dinner table is as valuable as gold to me. So you can be both. You can be both a trophy hunter and a meat hunter and that’s me.

28:48 And what do you say to the people who say, Cameron, why are you out there killing these poor innocent animals? Why don’t you just leave them alone and let them live and I mean, I’m sure you’ve bumped into person to someone who is offended when they see your Instagram channel or they see the trophy. And what if it’s even a reasonable intelligent person that just doesn’t get it? What do you say to them? Have you had those conversations?

29:15 Yeah, oh yeah, all the time. I mean, that’s the one thing with hunting. I mean, hunting has always been kind of a, I guess like an echo chamber type thing, because we had the outdoor channel where you can watch hunting shows on TV. We had hunting magazines where hunters would buy it and read the story. That’s what I started doing is writing hunting articles and people would buy those, those hunting magazines.

29:39 But really you’re preaching to the choir. The people who are watching the hunting on TV are hunters. The people who are buying the magazines are hunters. Now with social media is, you know, I might, I, you know, reach millions of people And a lot of them are hunters. So now I have to think about, well, how is this being perceived by people who didn’t grow up the way I grew up, who didn’t grow up looking up to hunters and giving respect to people who filled their freezer on their own, being self-sufficient.

30:07 So now as people who were from the city, hunting has never been part of the culture they’ve grown up in. How do those people look at my page? I think about that a lot in the words that I write in the captions and the photos that I share. And yes, an animal dies. That’s just a fact of life, you know, a hunter.

30:27 I think what I like about hunting is that we will accept the fact that there’s gonna be blood on our hands, we’re killing an animal and we’re doing it. We’re not paying somebody else to do it for us, like what happens when you go buy me to the store. But I also have to think about, well, if this is being perceived by somebody who has a hunted, maybe I need to take time to explain why this is so valuable, why animals can’t just manage themselves. People like to say, you know, Mother Nature will take care of itself.

30:58 If there’s too many animals here, they die off, or if there’s too many predators, they kill the prey, then once the prey is gone, the predators will starve because there’s not enough prey to sustain them. And that, yeah, that can happen, but it takes a long time, and it really screws up a lot of what we have going. The North American Wildlife Model, which has been in place for about a hundred years, has resulted in more deer, elk and bear now than there was a hundred years ago. And that’s biology managing habitat and managing the carrying capacity of the land with the animals, predator and prey. And an example that I’ll give of when it’s not managed is the moose populations up in Alaska, if the bears aren’t kept in check, the black bears and the grizzly, they’ll follow the moose around in the snow and the moose can’t get away and the grizzlies will just kill them. They won’t even eat them all. I mean there’s been documented cases of one big boar grizzly, which is a male bear is a boar, killing I think it was 30 some moose and it can’t just killing them a letting them lay. So animals don’t think about well, what’s best for the herd? What do we need? How many animals do we need to take?

32:20 That’s a wildlife biologist that allocate those tag numbers. And a tag number will be like, okay, for this, the carrying capacity of this land in this area of Alaska, we need this many moose hunted and killed. We need this many bear hunted and killed. And then they can both coexist and both be healthy, have healthy numbers. And so that’s what it’s all about. It’s not just hunters going out and killing all they want, it’s tracked very closely, and it’s not just if you take humans out of it, and that’s another thing.

32:50 People always say, well, you know, let the animals manage themselves, you know, humans don’t need to be involved, and my answer is humans have always been involved. We’ve always hunted. There’s always been hunters. It’s only now when people are saying that, well, hunting isn’t necessary because we have a cow, a beef cow or a lamb or a pig, they’re raised to kill, they’re raised to be providing meat while an animal’s just let them be and it’s like well no, hunters have always had a place in the circle of life in the mountains, it’s only till now we’re saying well maybe we don’t really need to have that place out there, it’s like we can’t just take us out, we’re a key part of that, we’re a key part of keeping all that habitat healthy and the animal number is healthy.

33:36 And one other thing I’ll say is that hunters, all the money that we pay in the honey licenses and tags, that all goes to habitat restoration, building water sources. Like in the winter, snow will come in and if the deer get trapped in the mountains, they can’t migrate down to lower country to survive. So hunters, some of that money we pay for license and tags goes to, it’s called winter migration routes, keeping those migration routes where we’re not building houses where the deer normally get out of the mountains and go down to the lowlands.

34:13 And if there’s a big subdivision there, then the deer won’t come down and then they’ll die up in the mountains. So it’s like all that money goes into things like that. So it’s not just hunters out killing whatever they want, murdering stuff, cutting off heads like people have in their mind maybe that don’t really understand it and then leaving meat lay and not really caring about the environment. It’s the exact opposite. It’s hunters care about the animals as much or more than non hunters. And so, and we understand how this equation works.

34:46 So you can’t really have an Instagram post that says all that, but in little bits and pieces, I can put up parts of that and explain parts of it. And I know that it’s worked. I know some Some people are going to look at what I do and just be, you know, write me off and just judge me. But some people are going to look at it and be like, hmm, that actually, I never thought about that. That actually makes a little sense.

35:10 And I’ve had a lot of those encounters and actually had a lot of people that have changed their perspective of hunters because of maybe some of the captions and posts that I’ve made. Yeah, I mean, I can see why somebody from the city or a vegan that’s, you know, hanging out in Los Angeles looks at your post and says, well, here’s a guy that goes out there to cut a head off and stick it on a wall. But if they actually walk a mile in your shoes, they realize that you have a connection with that animal, almost a strange, sacred relationship with it when you kill it and it becomes something that feeds your family.

35:47 And then by being out there in the wilderness, you have this deep connection to the environment and to protecting it more so than that person in the city who’s pointing the finger at you. And the more I listen to you and Joe Rogan and Remy and all these people, even though I haven’t been on an elk hunt and I’d love to go at some point, I can see how you guys are and somehow by killing those animals are actually closer to understanding that than someone who doesn’t. So that’s the impression I get.

36:19 And I appreciate you guys taking the time to explain something when I’m sure the natural tendency is, why don’t you guys leave us alone because we’ve been doing this for a few hundred years and you guys stick to your beyond meat burgers and that are killing more animals than I am and et cetera, et cetera. So I appreciate you doing that. Talk to me about bow hunting because it’s something very different than hunting with a rifle. It’s, why is that something that’s really important to you and how is it different?

36:46 How do you explain that to people? Well, I think rifle hunting is a good, I guess, introduction to hunting. It’s longer range, so you can shoot further. You don’t have to be, like bow hunting, you’re in the red zone of these animals, which are built to survive, as we talked about, and you have to be very close with the rifle. You have extended distance where you can shoot and get a lethal kill on that animal.

37:15 So it’s a little, I don’t want to say easier, but it’s a different set of challenges. Bow hunting is a very high set of challenge. Why I like bow hunting is because of that challenge, because of that test, because I have to be at my best if I’m going to make that happen. And it’s very difficult. And the way I look at it, I’ve been, you know, I’ve killed a lot of animals.

37:36 I’ve been on a lot of rifle hunts too. I don’t rifle hunt myself. I haven’t rifle hunted since, I guess, 1989. I’ve had my kids out, I’ve had father-in-law, family, friends, I take them out and they rifle hunt. The biggest difference for me is that I like that connection with that animal.

37:55 I like being close. I like seeing that animal more, the interact. It’s just, I don’t know, it’s just a more of an intimate setting. And the way I look at it is rifle hunters, when you shoot a rifle, it’s a big report the rifle, it’s loud, every animal knows what happened, knows that there’s a big sound that’s obviously startling. A rifle will kill by shock and damage, broken bones, torn up muscle, it’s a shock type kill. Whereas archery, I’ve killed bulls, I come back, pull my bow back, release an arrow, the arrow will go through the animal. These are big animals, 800-pound bull elk that fight, jab each other with antlers. I’ve had them where they didn’t even know, they didn’t know what happened. They didn’t hear anything because the bow is quiet. There used to be a jab, so they felt something. They felt something. They may have thought a bull snuck up and hit them with an antler in the side, but they don’t really know what happened. And they’ll, you know, run off, look around, and then because they’re bleeding because an arrow will kill by hemorrhage and blood loss.

39:12 You got a razor-sharp broadhead on there, so the arrow will go completely through the animal, cause this hemorrhage, but it won’t be loud. If I do it right, they’ll never know I’m there. The arrow will go through, blood loss happens, blood pressure drops, drops and dies in seconds. Never really knowing what happened. To me, that’s what I call an honorable death that the animal deserves.

39:40 These bull elk that I hunt, I want them to be more than 10 years old, which is a long time in the mountains, and if they’ve lived 10 years and I can release a perfect arrow and kill them and they don’t, I feel like as far as in the wild, it’s about as beautiful death as you’re going to get because if it’s not by a hunter, it’s by a predator, it’s by getting too old and weak to find food and starving or if they can’t run because again they’re too old and weak then a predator basically eats them alive and a wolf or a bear will start eating generally from the hindquarters from start eating their butt or tearing out their guts because it’s soft there on their stomach. Definitely not, I mean you can imagine that’d be about the worst way to go, right? So a perfectly placed arrow to me is the best option for that animal at that age that served its purpose.

40:37 It’s not going to get any better and its life isn’t going to get any easier. And so when I look at it, that’s what I think about as a bow hunter, if I do it right, I’m offering that animal a merciful death and that’s what draws me to bow hunting. being respectful, honorable, and hunting these animals in a way that I can honor their life, I guess. It’s a beautiful thing and I think it’s important for people to realize there are other options for dying and they’re really not pretty. I know we watch those National Geographic things where they’re off galloping in the forest but they don’t show, like you said, death by eating or starvation or all these other horrible ways to go and that’s the way they’re all going otherwise yeah right that’s it i mean you can look at there’s an instagram page nature is metal i think and i mean it’s i don’t like watching those animals suffer i mean but the wild is brutal it is brutal and unforgiving and animals have no compassion i mean the only predator that has compassion is humans. We’re the only ones that that care. An animal that they’ll stand there and I’ve seen videos of Impala standing on all fours and I can’t remember his wild dogs or hyenas but tearing out their guts they’re not dead but their guts are strewn out on the ground and those animals are eating them and that and then Paul was just standing there and it’s like I couldn’t imagine I mean, it couldn’t get any worse. So it’s death is never easy. I mean, it’s never easy. I don’t

42:16 Care. You know, we can talk about humans, animals, whatever we everybody thinks are going to live forever. Everybody thinks everybody they care about and love is going to live forever. It’s just not going to happen. I mean, life and death is beautiful and brutal and sad and hard and happy and rewarding, it’s all of it. But we can’t just pretend that the bad things never happen, that death never happens. So if we can accept death, and we know for us to survive, animals are going to die. And if we can say, okay, that’s going to happen for me to survive, there’s going to be animals die. How can I play a part in this? How can I own this, so to speak, and honor life or honor death just like I honor life.

43:05 And so I think that’s just a good perspective to have. Now tell me how you get this shot off because this boggles my mind. I watched a video, I think you went out with Rogan on this incredible hunt where there were elk everywhere. And a couple of times you were real close but you didn’t take a shot. And I believe you’re looking for like the double lung shot so you get this super clean kill.

43:28 Now again, for me, I mean, it’s a dynamic situation. You’re super close. Obviously you’re worried about being detected at any moment and you’re trying to find an arrow in a very specific place. It seems to be like a really tall order to try to do that. Explain how that works.

43:47 Yeah, it’s very difficult. It is because like I said, these animals are built to survive and the biggest thing with archery is the wind. I mean, if you don’t hunt, you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t think about it like, like we do. But if that animal, if the wind is at your back and the, and the wind is going towards the animal, you will never kill it because their noses are number one, uh, I source of defense essentially. So you can, they say you can fool their, their eyes, like they can see movement.

44:18 And if you don’t move, they can be like, Hmm, okay. Maybe I didn’t, I don’t know what that was. Maybe just a bird flickering around. So, you can fold their eyes, you can fold their ears, you can break something, elk make a lot of noise, they’re big animals. So, they’re breaking things or kicking rocks, it happens. So, you can do that and they can hear something, hear something in the direction, they’ll be like, okay, I didn’t hear anything after that. So, they’ll settle back down. You cannot cool their nose. If they smell you, it is over. So, to get into bow range, first, you have to have the wind right. So, there’s wind checker. It used to be like a feather on the limb where on your bow limb where the breeze will blow the feather and you can see like, okay, the direction is this way I need to come in with that wind in my face.

45:04 Now it’s like a little puffer bottle and it’s got a little powder in it, sort of like baby powder. And you hit it and a little powder will go up and the wind will push it, whichever way the wind’s going. And then you’re like, okay, I need to come in downwind. So first of all, you need to get the wind right. Then you need to be quiet and sneak in.

45:23 And then once you’re into bow range, which for me, the closer is better. I’d like to be 20 yards, you know, which close to 20 meters. And if I’m 20 yards, I feel like I’m not gonna screw that up ever. But that’s only if I make sure that there’s a good angle. You mentioned the double lung, that’s exactly what you want.

45:46 To get double lung, which means an arrow is going through both lungs and the chest. To do that, the animal has to be broadside or exactly sideways to you, if it’s facing you, like a lot of time these animals, they want to face danger. And when they face danger, they have all, like their sternum and their ribs where they come off the sternum, all very heavily boned. Those ribs really come off the sternum, it’s very thick. The shoulders, very muscular, heavy bones on the shoulders.

46:15 And so there’s really, they got a lot of defense right there and arrows can have a hard time getting through any of that and being an ethical quick, clean kill. So you want sideways because if it’s facing straight away where it’s the butt and a lot of times the animal, he’ll hear something behind him in a look over like kind of looking over his butt and all you can see is his butt and his head like peeking over the top or over the side. That’s no shot either.

46:43 So if it’s broadside, I feel like so the shoulder blade, you wanna make sure that the near leg to you is forward because the shoulder blade can stop an arrow. The shoulder blade on a bull elk is about this thick solid bone. So if you hit that shoulder blade, the arrow will go in maybe two or three inches and it’s not gonna do anything. It’s gonna cause a sore muscle, it’s not gonna kill it. But if that leg’s forward and so that shoulder blade rotates and then exposes its ribs right here, which is where the lungs are.

47:16 And if I can get it through there, that bull, if I get an arrow into both lungs, that bull’s gonna die in 10 to 30 seconds usually. And so that’s what we’re trying to do. But to do that, it takes normally for the animal to be broadside to you. It’s gonna, it’d be best if it doesn’t know you’re there. So you’re gonna be very stealthy.

47:39 Because if it knows you’re there, they’ll turn and face danger, as I said. But if they don’t know you’re there, they’re looking away, maybe they’re distracted, but you know, elk are herd animals. So maybe they’re looking at a cow, which is a female or another bull, which might be challenging the bull. I might be trying to kill for, to run the herd. If they’re distracted by that, they’re looking away and I can get a broadside or slightly quartering away shot.

48:01 I know I’m going to dispatch that elk. If I do what I need to do and I get the arrow or it needs to be, I’m going to dispatch it quickly. And it’s going to be a quick, clean death. And otherwise you don’t take the shot. No, I don’t want to, I don’t want to force that shot because these animals, like I said, 800 there, I’ve killed bulls at over a thousand pounds.

48:22 They are tough and they live in the mountains. You can imagine if, have you, have you been out in the mountains much? Yeah. I mean, I got, my grandparents were from Arizona and so I’ve been out there and you know, I had cousins that used to hunt, I mean, but I’d never actually hunted, but I’ve been out there. So you’ve been out, so you know how hard it is to spend one night in the mountains.

48:41 Yeah, right these things are doing this Every single day so you can imagine if you spent every day in the mountains How tough would you be like the biggest beast ever? Well, they do that every day for years So they are so tough. So if that arrow doesn’t get in their lungs doesn’t take a vital organ It’s gonna be it’s gonna be tough to get that thing killed. That’s gonna it’s gonna suffer I mean, if you hit low and say you broke its leg because you screwed up and you didn’t hit here, you hit here and broke its front leg, you’re probably not going to get that bull.

49:18 It’s going to suffer. I mean, it’s probably going to survive because they’re so damn tough, but it’s going to go miles and you’re going to have to, how you follow these animals and find them is from the blood. said, archery kills by hemorrhage. Well, it’s not going to bleed much if you just broke a bone on his front leg. So that animal is probably going to survive. It’s going to be a rough go, you’re going to feel terrible because you made a poor shot. And the animals not going to you’re not going to recover the animal and you’re not going to get that meat. So I’m very critical on being disciplined myself to not force shots that aren’t perfect because I know how tough these animals are. I I mean, they’ve lived, like, if you don’t get penetration, say, and you don’t get both lungs, you just get one lung.

50:10 So the arrow goes in, say, eight inches and gets one lung instead of two, you probably won’t get that bull because even humans can live on one lung. You’ve heard of people like, oh, I had a collapsed lung. They survived. So we talked about how tough elk are. They’re definitely gonna survive on one lung or it’s gonna be a long, slow death if it gets infected.

50:33 And I don’t want that. Nobody wants to face that. So you have to be very disciplined because they are so tough. And the worst thing ever for any hunter, so for non hunters, just keep this in mind, the worst outcome for any hunter is to lose an animal, to wound an animal and not recover. That’s way worse than not killing, not seeing anything, not being able to get a shot off.

51:00 The very worst outcome is to a wounded animal because there’s nothing that feels worse. Right. And how often do you go out and come back empty handed? What’s the percentage? Maybe view versus also, you know, normal bow hunters.

51:17 Yeah, I mean, on average, so like I’m talking about elk a lot just because I love hunting elk in the mountains. But the success rate for elk with archery equipment is about 10%. It’s about one out of 10 guys will kill or that’s one successful year out of 10 years. And it’s just a very hard endeavor. For deer, there’s more deer than there are elk out there.

51:46 So deer success rates, 20%, maybe two out of 10 years. 20 guys out of 100, something like that. So it’s very difficult. It’s, you know, most guys fail. I mean, that’s all there is to it.

52:02 Most bow hunters, they fail. And that’s just a testament to not, that they’re not good hunters, just how difficult the challenge is. So yeah, for me, yeah, failure is, yeah failures I mean this is what I do is what I this is my thing so your failure is not not an option for me that’s a really low percentage yeah I know it’s tough it’s hard what does that say in this day and age when you’ve got you know guys like you going out and one in ten coming back with an animal you’re training you know 20 hours a day physically to go out on a pursuit that has a very serious delayed gratification and then you look at kind of the rest of society let’s just say America or the world where you know they’re handing out medals for showing up people want things right now I want my grande latte dad now I want my car here now I mean it’s almost two different worlds yeah do you sometimes feel like in a stranger in a strange land in that sense? No, I feel lucky. I feel lucky that I know how the real world works. To me the real world is the mountains and how I’ve always looked at it is, you know, out in regular society it’s a lot it’s a lot of who you know, how much money you have, what circles you run in, in the mountains, none of that matters. None of that shit matters. So So it’s like, you’re in the mountains, the animal doesn’t care who you are, the mountains don’t care how much money you have.

53:42 You’ll die just like anything else out there, it doesn’t really matter. So I feel lucky that I know what, how I look at the real world works because society can be, it’s not real a lot of times, it’s a watered down version of surviving, of thriving, of this and that. So I just know that in the mountains, I’m going to have to earn my breaks. Sometimes even if I do everything right, it’s not going to work out, and that’s just the way it goes. I just got to work harder the next time.

54:16 So I feel there is a, you know, diametrically opposite, you know, as far as in the mountains and in society, it could be further apart from each other, but I feel lucky to know how difficult the mountains are and to be able to embrace that because it makes regular life seem very easy. You know what I mean? The challenges that I face just out work when you know when I was out work or just it doesn’t seem like that big a deal. You know it’s just like you know whatever we’ll figure it out we’ll get through it. So I feel really lucky.

54:53 I mean I wish I almost you know I’ve said this before I wish everybody knew it was like to get out on a hunt. I mean, one of my favorite things to do is take people who haven’t hunted out and expose them to the world out there, to how, you know, just how real and raw the mountains are, because I think it’ll help everybody. So yeah, that’s, I feel lucky. What’s the usual reaction when you take people like that out? hard it is. I mean, it’s hard. It’s yeah, I don’t know. I mean, it’s different than what they expect. A lot of people expect it. Well, you just go out, you see an animal, you shoot it, whatever, and you head back. And it’s like they don’t really, I mean, it’s a lot of work.

55:39 And I talked about all the different, from the wind, to staying out of sight, to staying dry, to just general survival. There’s a lot to it. I mean, it can be overwhelming for people but it’s good too it’s like that’s how we grow you know and then it’s forgiving there’s no campsite there’s no like you just got to roll with these hard and you have a hard job and then you got weather that’s completely unpredictable and you just yeah yeah um yeah it’s great it’s uh so my my grandpa was a cattleman out of uh Arizona and my other grandpa was a farmer and so I was a city kid and we’d go out and visit them and I’ll never forget that was one of his cattlemen and I was still young like 10 years old and he came in and he used to go out for weeks on end in into the wilderness and you know go look for cows or just do this and I remember he once looked at me and he said you know what sometimes I find it easier to deal with life when I’m out there than I’m when I’m in here he’s like when I come in here in the city he said everything gets complicated and he said when out there he said he said out there everything it’s it’s more easy for me to understand is what he said and even though I was a kid and I was a city kid I still kind of knew what he was talking about you know like out there the rules were the rules and they made sense and they were constant for everybody and when he got in the city everything was

57:11 Of making a bunch of bullshit, I don’t know. Yeah, it’s very black and white in the mountains. I mean, it’s very black and white. And that’s all we want. That’s all you want in the regular world is like, hey, I just wanted it to be fair.

57:26 And a lot of times it’s not fair. Life isn’t fair. You know, I mean, at work, you might not get promoted, not because you’re not the best person, but because of whoever else, because of a clique or the guy’s buddy is hiring buddy is hiring and shows him instead of you. So there’s all you want a fair in the mountains. It’s as fair as it gets. You know, it’s black and white, you’re gonna have to earn your brakes. And that’s, that’s all really, that’s what a lot of men want. They want, hey, I just want a chance. Give me chance.

58:00 We’ll see what happens. So that’s what I love about it. Yeah, it reminds me a little bit of like the jujitsu mat. I me on the jujitsu mat, like, nobody cares. What’s your name is, where you’re from, what money you have, it’s like, it’s like, yeah, we’re gonna roll right now. And, you know, what I like about the book is, is you go, you know, kind of deep into people and even how they look at their lives. And you said one time, quote, maybe the villain in your Your story is actually just an anti-hero in disguise and I’m just wondering how you talk to people about recognizing challenges in their life and obviously we have a choice to kind of go into a victim narrative which is the complaining narrative or to read your t-shirt and say work harder or stop complaining and work harder.

58:52 How do you talk about that? Because you grew up, you had a dad that was kind of like a super dad but he struggled with alcohol, and then you had a stepfather who similarly did, my parents divorced when I was seven and I got this real dose of, I had to be self-reliant, like I got this real dose of, no one’s gonna look out for you and you better figure it out on your own. Now looking back, I look at it as a great thing, but at the time, it was, I made it hard on me.

59:23 And I’m just wondering how you think about some of your past challenges and how people can look some of the ones in front of them and maybe look at some of these things as great gifts that can forge them. Yeah. I mean, it’s really hard when you’re in it to say, Oh, this is going to be a good thing. You know, when all you want is your dad around and you miss him or, you know, I would go live with my dad that I miss my brother. And it’s just, you know, at that time it’s like, Oh, this is going to make me tough. Nobody thinks that. But looking back now, I’m glad I wouldn’t wanted any other way because it’s made me, I mean, I, whatever, I mean, of course, everybody wants their dad around, but that wasn’t the case. But now I’m so thankful that that happened because it’s made me who I am. It’s made me tough. And, but you’re right at that time, just like you, it didn’t seem that great. It didn’t seem that great at all. But I feel like it has armed us with what we need to succeed in the face of great challenge. I mean, it’s, it’s the reason why, I mean, you could say your childhood is why you’re who you are right now. It’s made you this hunger for success. And it’s like, you know, I know you ran for mayor of London, right? Didn’t you? Wasn’t that thing? It’s like, would you have had those same goals? If you had had like the perfect childhood, would you have pushed as hard? Would you have wanted to prove all those doubters wrong? Would you have wanted

1:00:49 To make your mark. If your life would have just been just happy and fulfilling as a child, maybe not, probably not. So because of your upbringing, it’s made you hungry for all these goals and to conquer the world and to make a true impact on society and you’re doing it. So yeah, at that time, who knows? But I think what we can learn from that Is that yeah, we’re not gonna we’re gonna get one chance at childhood my it might be good. It might be bad It might be awful might be decent Okay, but what we can do is like just look at challenge and be like yeah This sucks right now But I’m gonna get through this and I’m gonna be better prepared for the next one and it’s gonna make me better And it’s gonna make me hungrier and it’s gonna make give me perspective that I wouldn’t have had so you can look at challenge and be like, yeah, this is difficult now, but it’s going to be all gravy at the end.

1:01:46 It’s going to be all gravy because I’m going to be, I’m going to rise higher than I’ve ever been, um, if it wasn’t for this. So, I mean, I just think that that’s how I’ve looked at challenge. Now it’s just like, yep, it’s the way it goes. It’s, uh, not going to, it might be a bump in the trajectory. It’s not going to change it.

1:02:02 We’re still going up. So that’s how, that’s how I’ve learned. I got a, a guest has been on my show a couple of times. He’s become a good friend. His name is a Wes Watson.

1:02:10 And he spent 10 years in the California penitentiary and he always says life is happening for you, not to you. You know, and all of these things are gifts. If you can see them that way, to create this new resilient individual, the problem is sometimes it’s very hard to see that in the moment and to recognize, wow, if I can get through this, I’ll become the person that I could have never become without this villain, which is an antihero, which is a nemesis, which is maybe, you know, your greatest friend somehow.

1:02:43 Yeah, yeah, or maybe it’s you. I mean, maybe you’re your nemesis, but. Yeah, right? It’s you projecting, it’s not just, it really is your self projected on them sometimes too, isn’t it? Yeah, it is.

1:02:58 And it’s like a lot of times I’ve heard a lot of people say, and I’ve even said it myself, it’s like, if I could just get a break, just if I could just get one break, it’s like, you might not get a break. You’re gonna have to make your own break. So quit waiting for that break and just get to work. I mean, it’s, I don’t know, I don’t know. I’ve had that before where I just need something good to happen.

1:03:19 And sometimes that something good to happen is just you putting in work. And so once you, like I say, if I go to bed every night and I know I’ve given all I’ve got to that day, that’s a break to me. That’s like I earned a break. I’m gonna be better tomorrow because of what I did today. So it’s not, you can’t just wait for it, Make it happen, make your luck.

1:03:40 Yeah, this whole waiting for the break thing. It’s funny, I got challenged for running an Ironman 70.3 a few years ago by John Joseph, the lead singer of the Cro-Mags, and I was training for it, and I got a bunch of people who were helping me at the time, and sometimes when you’re in the middle of it and it sucks so much, you think, I can’t go on. But then if you can make it through that, I’m sure you know this better than anybody. Is it sometimes five minutes later, it’s not that bad.

1:04:09 It’s like 10 minutes later, 30 minutes later, your knee stops hurting and you don’t feel like you should’ve eat something and you might have a brilliant moment. So sometimes it’s just about keep going. It’s not about I gotta stop doing this or I need a break from this. Sometimes you just gotta keep going and you transcend it somehow. Yeah, it is.

1:04:28 It’s like nothing lasts. Those challenges never last. I mean, it’s kind of weird. It’s like this is, I don’t know. I don’t know what it is, but it’s way more intense than what you were just talking about.

1:04:39 But I was getting a lot of people do, they feel like they know you because of social media. I’m sure you get this all the time. I mean, I know that you break dance and I know all the stuff about you. So it feels like I know you better than I truly do. Well, because of that, people reach out to you and they want advice because they feel like they have this connection.

1:04:58 And I was getting people who were contemplating suicide And they wanted me to help them to, what could I tell them? And I’m like, oh my God, I’m just a freaking bow hunter. What the hell do I know about any of this? So anyway, I talked to people, to doctors, and I said, what can I tell? I’ve had, you know, people that reach out to me that are struggling and they want, they need some guidance or they need something.

1:05:22 I said, what can I tell them? And they said, well, the people who are contemplating suicide, it’s, that’s in that moment, It feels like it can’t get any worse and it’s never going to get better, but it always does get better and it never lasts. So if you can just help them buy some time, like say, check back with me in four or five hours or I’m going to reach out to you and I just want to see how you’re doing, then in four or five hours, everything changes.

1:05:48 I mean, you talked about how you’re running in this race and your knee hurts and you’re like, oh, you know, that’s it, I’m not going to be able to finish and then, you know, another mile down the road, the knee is fine and you feel good. Well, that’s kind of a, I guess that’s a good example of how life works too, because yeah, those people that complicated suicide, they’re at their depths. They can’t get any worse. It’s never going to get better. Five hours later, it’s like things change, perspective changes, their mental place changes.

1:06:19 And it’s like, okay, thank God they didn’t make some decision when they’re at their lowest. But that’s how it is. If you just wait it out, if you just wait it out. to me how I wait it out is I just put in work. It’s like, well, I’m having a shitty day.

1:06:34 Maybe I’ll just go on a run and it never let the shitty day never last. You always feel better. So it’s like, I think that’s just, I don’t know, the snapshot of life. It’s like, yeah, there’s going to be challenges. It’s going to suck at this race is going to suck.

1:06:49 This train is going to suck. Life is going to suck sometimes. But if we just keep grinding, it always gets better but we can’t throw in the towel when we’re at our lowest. You can’t quit your race because your knee hurt you know then you’re like then you’re like looking back as that experience like why did I quit you know it was it’s never as bad as it seems so I don’t know it’s like that’s just kind of how life is funny that way but yeah if we just write it out it’s going to get better. Yeah such great truisms like you know like you said even training like Like, I don’t know if anyone’s ever walked out of the gym after an hour session and thought, well, that was a waste of time.

1:07:28 Like, if you actually get in there and put in some work, you’re always feeling better after that. Go on that run, you always feel better. You change your state, you change your energy. And I agree, like working through it, if you can work through it, you know, it’s always what you want. You know, one of my famous mentors, Dan Pena, he always hates the Europeans over here because they’re always talking about their next holiday, their next holiday.

1:07:50 And he has a great rant where he says that the reason you always wanna go on holidays because you don’t love what you do, that’s what he says. And he’s got a point, you know, if you’re really obsessed with what you do and you wanna be the best at it, then maybe you don’t need holidays and I know you don’t do those yourself. And something I just remembered, Goggins mentioned, I think in his book on the Rogan show, he’s like, I have aid stations like eating and taking a shower.

1:08:18 When I get a little bit of a break, you know, It sounds like you look at the world the same way. It’s like, I don’t need a week off. I just need maybe a shower or a meal where I get to sit down for a while or a good night’s sleep. And then you’re ready to go, right? No, it’s true.

1:08:35 It’s like I never, yeah, I’m not a big holiday guy, big vacation guy. I mean, I did it one time. Rogan and I, we were hunting in Lanai over in Hawaii. We were access deer hunting. And over there, it’s pretty unique.

1:08:49 You go over there and you stay at the Four Seasons Hotel, which is really a nice hotel, and then you go hunting during the day, and he had his family over there. So we go hunting in the morning, and then he’d spend time with him in the afternoon. Anyway, I killed a couple deer, and we had another day, and he’s like, well, he goes, you just want to hang out on the beach tomorrow, since we’re done hunting, you got your bucks, and we can just hang out. So I said, yeah, that sounds good.

1:09:15 I mean, never really hung out on the beach, whatever. But after a few hours on the beach of just like, I guess you just eat and drink. I’m just like, oh my God, this is terrible. This is like, it was misery to do nothing. I couldn’t do it.

1:09:30 So I ended up going on a run and getting in about 10 or 15 miles. But I tried to be on holiday for a few hours and just didn’t take. And when people tell you that there’s something wrong with you, that you can’t relax, what do you tell them? I don’t know. I don’t really put much energy into that. What I like most, like last night, so like I said, I got Chandler coming today, which he’s just, he trained so hard. We’ve trained together one time, but he’s such a beast. But I was kind of preparing like one room, what I’m going to have him do when he’s here. And so I did this run last night and I ran over to the mountains is about, to the mountain that I always run is about 10 miles across town and then up the mountain. And I got over there, it was I think nine at night, pitch dark, kind of spitting rain, cold, not one person there, of course. And that’s what I love most. I love when I’m the only one out there because I’m always like, just like, it reminds me of Goggins attitude. Just like he goes, you know, one of the things he says, it’s so great to be nowadays because everybody else is weak. And so I love going over there and I’m the only one there and I’m like yeah I’m putting in work and you you guys are at home chilling perfect I’m just that gap is getting bigger and uh I just love moments like that so when I think of like my greatest times it’s never on holiday or on the beach or on vacation it’s when I’m grinding that’s that’s

1:10:59 What I look forward to most I mean it’s just that’s that’s my vacation basically just working yeah I know how you feel I feel the same way and I’m I’m now old enough to realize that I don’t need someone to tell me when I need a break and that’s usually something to do with their own stuff. And for me, like my greatest times, sometimes they’re like, yeah, mid conversation with someone super cool or I’m doing something in the middle of working or I’m on location shooting a documentary and I just can look around and say, wow, this is gangster what we’re doing right now. And like, that’s my perk and I don’t need a drink, I don’t need to be on the plane or on the yacht or in the club and maybe that’s someone else’s version but now I’m content with my version and when I try to do those other things I go crazy.

1:11:48 Like when I try to do the normal thing I’m really unhappy and actually that’s when I can get destructive and do things that aren’t good for me and so I just gave up on that and I’m just like I’m gonna keep doing this stuff because this is fun for me. I know it might look like work to you but this is fun for me so I’m just gonna keep doing it. So I know where you’re coming from. Well, we’re on the same page there. When you look at kind of the world today and you look at social media and America and just, you know, let’s be honest, we’re changing.

1:12:19 America is changing, like I was born in 71 and I had, like I said, grandparents that were, I mean, one grew potatoes and barley in Colorado, one was a cattle man, I mean, you know, these guys, they lived hard lives and it was great to be around them and learn from them. But nowadays, I still remember as a kid where we would always look up to the heroes. And then there was a point in time where I looked up and I said, wow, everyone’s looking up to the victims.

1:12:47 And I’m wondering, how do you process everything that you see going on? Yeah, what are your takes on it? And how do you think we should address it or not? Yeah, I mean, what I see being celebrated isn’t what I celebrate. It’s that weakness, that victim mentality.

1:13:08 People throw around toxic masculinity, like a negative thing. I mean, I guess toxic is always negative, but masculinity is being negative. In my world, I want to provide for my family. I want to hunt, I want to take care of my family. I want to, if somebody’s in need, I want to be able to help them.

1:13:30 To me, it’s like, that’s what men, that’s our obligation to society is there’s a role that we serve, and we’re supposed to be protectors and providers. And it feels like that some people want to change that. They want to water down what it is to be a man or weaken what it means to be a man. And I just push against that. I just celebrate the other side of it, the raw on the real side, the earning your breaks.

1:13:59 There’s, you know, I’m never going to be a victim. I’m always going to be a provider. I’m always gonna be somebody people can rely on. And I guess all we can do is try to be the opposite end of maybe where society is trying to push men or I don’t really know what’s going on. It’s pretty weird to me, but in my world, nothing has changed.

1:14:23 And the book has resonated with people. So I know my lifestyle or my thoughts, I’m not on an island. people feel this way too. But I think that what’s celebrated might be the minority perspective of, you know, like I said, watering down that masculine or anything. I think that’s the minority.

1:14:49 It’s just, that’s what’s, you know, we talk about shadow band or suppressed. My message gets suppressed a lot and maybe that other side gets elevated a lot, but I don’t think it’s real. I think there’s way more people that are interested and, you know, live in that lifestyle or the hardworking, maybe like your grandparents. They came up just earning your keep, being a positive role model. I think way more people can resonate with that than the other, but it’s just what social media, I guess, celebrates is different than reality.

1:15:29 And it’s fascinating to watch. And in 2020, we got into a big fight with the big tech companies and fighting for freedom of speech and putting concepts out there. And there was what was happening on the internet. And then I was walking around London, bumping the people on the streets, there weren’t many, and talking to everybody out there. And it was a completely different narrative of what was going on.

1:15:52 And I was like, wow, we really are in an information war where it’s not like the old wars that we remember, you know, where they send the troops in and then there’s missiles. It’s like, it’s all about information, the suppression of information and the controlling of people with information. And then when I look at what’s kind of going on with the gender stuff, and I’m not on the front lines of that, but I’m watching it happen, it’s another really kind of a strange war where on one hand, you’ve got a lot of people careful to say things in this way, but then you have people like Goggins and Pena and you and people like Andrew Tate where people are drawn to this message and they’re like, when I get stopped on the streets, everybody wants to talk to me about Pena.

1:16:35 Pena is a 77 year old man in Scotland with a castle who yells, but he gives you the truth and everyone’s drawn to that because something inside of them, Cameron, knows there’s truth there, you know? Like maybe when they see you on a hunt, they know that there’s truth there or they see you putting in the miles and they know there’s some truth there. So even though there might be this, you know, an attempt to blur genders or to control this information, it seems like somehow humans deep down inside know when something’s true, you know?

1:17:12 Yeah, I think that blurring the genders and you know, that’s a lie. That’s not real. And so as you said, people can tell real, drawn to real and they know it’s, I don’t know, there’s an agenda and I think people can tell. So yeah, I mean, I think people like Goggin’s opinion yourself, you’re always, you’re going to have that following, it’s going to grow if they’ll let it because of the suppression. But I’m hoping we’re turning the corner on that because it’s an important message that needs to get out or not be suppressed, needs to be shared.

1:17:48 So people can be, just be honest about, you know, what’s inspiring to people, what people care about. If that’s fair, then what I say, the good guys are going to win. The people who are standing for the right thing and for the truth are going to win. Of course they can manipulate it and they’ve tried. Hopefully, because the curtain’s been pulled back a little on that, hopefully we can turn the corner and get back to just fair and free press.

1:18:14 Yeah, I hope so. it has been pretty interesting to see what Elon’s been digging up at Twitter with a lot of those files. Like I said, I’m the conspiracy theorist, I leave that to the guests on my show and I let them talk about it and I let people make their decisions. But when I started seeing some of the things he was uncovering, because when we started broadcasting messages in April of 2020, across the board, at one point, we were taking off of PayPal, Dropbox, LinkedIn, YouTube, like systematically.

1:18:47 And I was just like, that’s kind of strange. But now when you look at the Twitter files, you’re like, oh wow, these government agencies were going to all these social platforms saying take down all these accounts. And it’s been an incredible thing to see unearthed and to realize that maybe we weren’t crazy to think that some of this just didn’t seem right. I hope we can turn the corner on it, but as we become more digital beings, I think it’s always gonna be something that’s in danger of being manipulated.

1:19:17 Whereas 100 years ago, maybe a little harder, maybe. Yeah, yeah, no, I think so. But hopefully we’re, I don’t know, hopefully it’s gonna get better before it gets worse. I got, I’m hopeful. Talk to me about your podcast.

1:19:32 You got Michael Chandler on for your first episode. That’s pretty cool. I didn’t have somebody that cool on my first episode of my podcast. Why are you doing it? What’s the plan?

1:19:40 Are you gonna do them in person going forward? And yeah, what’s, tell me about it. Yeah, it’s, it’ll be all in person. And, uh, my, my plan is, so I lift, run and shoot every day. And what that means is I lift weights, I run the mountain generally, and then I shoot my bow every day.

1:19:57 So my plan is every guest that’s coming in is going to train with me. We’ll lift, run, shoot, and then we’re going to podcast. So we’ll have a lot of, a lot of experiences to talk about because I’ll get to see what it feels like to run the mountain and shoot, shoot bows and, you know, train in the gym here. So, it’s going to be unique. I mean, I’m not like the professional conversationalist like you and like Rogan would be, so I need to like, okay, what am I good at?

1:20:21 I’m good at training. And then we can talk about that and that’ll interweave into our conversation about life also. But that’s, it’s going to be a live front shoot YouTube series that’s going to come out every week with the guest and then the podcast, it’ll be in person here in Oregon. And I’m doing it just because I’m drawn to outliers like Goggins, like yourself, like there’s ultra marathoners like Courtney DeWalter, Olympians fighters like Chandler who’s turned into a household name in the UFC.

1:20:55 I’m drawn to outliers and I want to talk to them and try to figure out what made them an outlier. Why are they the best in their field? And I’ve always considered myself just an average guy who worked hard. So how can the lessons those outliers have learned in their life to get to the top of their field, what can an average person like me take from that? And so that’s what I’m going to try to be that the mouthpiece for the average regular guy and talk to these.

1:21:24 I’ve been put in position because of, for whatever reason, just because of life to have connection with people like this. And so I wanna have discussions and just see what we can glean from the best of the best. That’s my goal. I love it. And you said before, quote, an outlier will never allow someone to outwork them.

1:21:43 And you say, if you’re not the hardest working person you know, then you’re not working hard enough. So I think you already kind of have an idea what makes an outlier. It’s someone who won’t allow themselves to be outworked. Right? Yeah.

1:21:56 Well, I mean, that’s how I see it. It’s every person I know that stands out for some reason sacrifices a little more, just a little more than everybody else, and that’s why they’re great at what they do. Yeah. It’s so true. You know, one of the things I learned from doing this, and you’ll learn this too, I think, as you start doing podcasts, and it’s something I should have known anyways, but you get a media bias for people.

1:22:22 You know, you see people in the media and you’re thinking, okay, well, oh, you know, She is only a pop star because she got lucky and she’s kind of pretty. And then even though I’m in the media business and I know my media bias is there, I still sometimes my subconscious brain does this, Cameron. And then I meet them and I’m like, oh, this person put in tons and tons of hard work. Like they paid the cost to be the boss. And then as I realized after 1000 guests over 11 years, they all paid the cost.

1:22:51 They all put in the work. There’s nobody lucky out there that stays at the top, You know, more than maybe an instant. Even then, that’s probably not luck either. And so, I agree with you. Like, and most people don’t realize that.

1:23:03 And when they see someone that they come in, maybe it’s a narrative in their head to justify the fact that they’re not there or why they don’t work hard enough. You know, there’s a lot of weird psychologies we do, right? But by me spending hours and hours with these people, you realize that these people face demons. They fought battles you’ll never understand, you’ll never know about, you’ll never see. All you get to see is the music video, or all you get to see is, you know, Cameron on the hunt with Rogan and the highlight reel.

1:23:32 You don’t get to see the 25 years of training that went into that. And so I’d say sometimes a lot of us, again, even me and the media, I forget that most people that are great at what they do are outliers and because they put in the work. So yeah, well, I’m excited to see the podcast. and thank you I’m really what’s next for you also are you struggling with not having the full-time job is that a little weird are you just it is weird it’s I miss the people you know I miss going into work and having challenges every day to put out fires you know I’ve been there a long time so I was I’d done I’d been the buyer for 20 years so I did all the contracts and you know there’s you know a lot of stuff bids going on so there’s always stuff going on there and then I was superintendent for about six years. So I was in charge of construction, underground construction, and engineering. And so yeah, I mean, I was busy. I love the people. I miss the people. The work was just, it’s just what I did. You know, when I was at home, I just went to work. And every day was busy, because there’s always stuff going on.

1:24:41 There’s always people that need direction or whatever. So I definitely miss that. I’m excited for this new venture on on the podcast and just be able to spend time with these amazing people. I’m excited, but yeah, the daily grind is kind of who I am and who I’ve been my whole life. So that’s taking some getting used to, but we’ll see what happens.

1:25:06 All right, and so otherwise nothing’s changing for you. You’re still up at 4.55, but you’re waking up before the alarm. You’re still running the mountain, lifting weights, shooting every day. Podcast is out. Another book in the future, maybe.

1:25:21 A world tour, maybe. Yeah, I know, it all sounds good to me. I mean, we’ll see what happens. Mostly, I want Chandler to leave here. He gets here like, what time is it?

1:25:33 So he gets here in about two hours. So I want him to leave here and be like, holy shit, that was intense. So that’s my goal. So for the next two days, if I can achieve that, then we’ll see what we’re at after that. I love it.

1:25:48 I really appreciate the time the book is endure how to work hard outlast and keep hammering They can get that on Amazon bookstores all that stuff to follow your podcast What’s your YouTube channel and obviously you’re on Instagram. Is that your social media of choice? Yeah, yeah, normally Instagram YouTube is just Cameron Hanes. I got the Cameron Hanes YouTube channel I haven’t put anything up there for a while. But this this new I think there’s 300,000 subscribers, so they’re kind of primed for new contents. That’s where the Lift Front Shoot video series will go and that’ll be a weekly post and then like I said the podcast will be weekly, it’ll be on all the major platforms and then Instagram will go, you know, Cameron Hanes you’ll be able to keep track of what I’m doing. Alright, fantastic. Well I hope you get to London at some point and man I really do want to go on a hunt sometime in the next few years, so if you have any thoughts on that? Let me know. Yeah, it sounds like something important to do. And yeah, no, thank you. Appreciate everything you do. Appreciate the energy you put out there. And it’s really inspiring. And yeah, just keep doing it.

1:26:56 Thank you. I’ve been a fan of yours for a long time. So I mean, I love I love your the spirit, your what you offer the world. It’s it’s needed. I appreciate it. And thank you for what you do.

1:27:07 Thank you, man. That means a lot. That really means a lot. That made my day, so thank you, brother. I appreciate you.

1:27:12 All the best. Follow this man. Look out for the first episode with Michael Chandler. I’m a huge fan of Michael. Please send my regards.

1:27:18 He’s like the most exciting fighter in the Octagon. Puts it all out there. That front kick on my man El Kukui and I’m a big fan of him was incredible. Came out of nowhere, so I look forward to your episode. And like I said, next time let’s do this in person.

1:27:34 Let’s do it. I’ll tell him you said hi. All right, sounds good. All right, thank you, everybody. We’ll see you next time on London Real.

1:27:39 Take care.