#102 Derek Wolfe - NFL Super Bowl Champion
Derek Wolfe - NFL Super Bowl 50 Champion, former defensive end in the National Football League. He played college football at the University of Cincinnati and was selected 36th overall by the Denver Broncos in the 2012 NFL Draft, playing his first 8 years with them before signing with the Baltimore Ravens in 2020. Outside of football, Derek is also a true outdoors enthusiast, conservationist, bow hunter, fly fisherman, father, and sports radio commentator. He joins Bobby Marshall in studio to discuss hunting, MMA, high leave training, NFL football, Super Bowl 50, life lessons, mountain life, and so much more.
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Derek Wolfe - NFL Super Bowl Champion
Our guest for this episode is Super Bowl Champion and former Denver Bronco, Derek Wolfe. It was great to finally sit down with Derek and have him in the studio. He’s a great person to be around and is truly passionate about everything that he tackles in life. He’s a true outdoorsman, conservationist, and an overall good human. We had a great conversation now. We drove all over the place. Not only talking about football much more. I hope you enjoy our conversation.
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Finally, I have you in here. Shout-out to Coach Mark of Connecticut. I love that dude. We were talking about him before we hit record here.
I started training with him a couple of years ago. I started boxing in 2013 because it helped the hand fighting in football and pass rushing. It’s all about finding angles. I was a wrestler too, and I loved being around the sports. I started working with Mark and he took it to a whole other level. We were working passers moves, we were hitting mitts and stuff, and he would crush us. I was bringing other players in there, and nobody ever came back the second time because he would kill us.
I think I saw photos of you and Von in there.
Von would come in there with me because Von would train in that. Some guys don’t like training like that.
That’s how I prefer to train. If somebody is trying to choke me out, hit me, or hitting mitts because you don’t realize what you’re actually outputting. For being a big dude, I don’t like to work very hard. That’s just me. On the contrary, you’re probably not though. I’m used to it.
Even now, my training is high intensity. For an hour straight, we’re going to try to kill ourselves. It’s the endorphins I get from that.
If I don’t work out daily, I’m not in a very good mood. I prefer to do it first thing in the morning, so it’s out of the way because life catches up with you. You never know what’s coming in the day sometimes, especially when you have kids.
The best thing about school starting is now I can get my afternoons back.
You know where they’re going to be or where they’re supposed to be for a few hours. I hear that. After playing ten years in the NFL, you’re retired now. How is that feeling?
It’s good. The level of anxiety that you have as a professional athlete all the time, you didn’t even realize it until it was done. I didn’t realize how much anxiety I had because of the constant worry of somebody is trying to take my job and the constant drive. It drives you every day and then you push until you can’t push anymore. That’s where I hit that wall. I was like, “I don’t love this anymore. I’m tired of being miserable.” I had two hip surgeries. I was like, “It’s time to call it and get on with my life.” I love to hunt.
I have seen some of your posts. We’ve been following you on Insta for a little while. You’ve been on some epic hunts. You recently started posting about that. Is that something that the NFL encourages you not to do?
What happens is you get shadow banned. When you start posting stuff like that, you can start getting shadow banned.
You posted that now, didn’t you?
Ivy and I went to North Fork Ranch.
That’s a nice trout.
That was a 25-inch trout. You see the size of my hands. If you look at the next picture, my wife ripped a nice one there.
She’s into it too.
She won’t hunt but she’ll fish. As long as it’s catch and release, she’s alright with it. She likes hiking, snowboarding and everything, but she won’t hunt.
That’s a beautiful spot.
It’s pretty down there. It’s weird when you’re catching 14 or 15-inch trout and you’re like, “Get rid of that.”
That’s a nice trout. I love fly fishing. It’s one of my favorite pastimes. Back to getting shadow banned for sharing certain things.
If you look at the football picture and the picture of my wife and me. If you look at the engagement, it’s so much higher than a video of me hunting. It’s because their shadow banning it. They’re meeting the story on other people’s stories. They’re making it sell. It’s the far-left bullshit that they do.
I couldn’t agree more. I think a lot of it happens with us. It’s because of the content and stuff that we put out sometimes. All of a sudden, we’ll have something that should go viral. You got Cam’s hands up there. Shout out to Cam too. He’s been a big supporter.
That shows you right there that they’re shadowbanning. Cam Hanes has been cool as hell. I did a bear post in honor of him because I was like, “I saw Cam doing this. I got to do it.” That was a 300-pound collared bear. It was 26 yards from the ground. It was a fun hunt. That was up at wagons house up in Douglas, Wyoming. It’s an awesome place. I’m going to be up there at the end of September for General Deer Tag. I’m looking forward to that. It’s going to be fun. There’s so much bear.
Cam has got a whole thing. Have you read his book Endure?
I haven’t read the whole book now, but I’ve read snippets of it.
He dives into that a little bit. I think some of this might have been in Backcountry Bowhunting too, which is another book of his. That was pretty awesome. He calls it counting coup like the call in the Native American culture. It was putting yourself in danger, and then you would basically get whatever status in the tribe for doing that counting coup. Sometimes, there was feather representation or war paint that correlated. I know when he shoots a bear before it expires, he runs up to it and pets it or something.
That’s the thing when an animal is dying. I did that with my bison. I stuck a bison at 77 yards with my bow. He laid down 20 yards from where I hit him, but he was dying and I went over there. You want it to go out in peace and feel peaceful.
I’m a double tap guy. If I can get to it in a month, I'm going to. As soon as I shoot that first deer, I’m knocking another one. It’s ethics.
You want the animal to die quick. You don’t want to see an animal suffer.
No, not at all.
It was with a whitetail, too. You stick an arrow in one and their will to live is incredible. You’ll sing along and they might live. You got to go try to find them and give them an hour or two to let them lay down, and then sneak in there and try to get up on them. You always got an arrow to knock, just in case. I’ve been in those situations where I had to draw back and stick another one.
I’ve done it with elk deer. I’ve learned the hard way. This is a good habit.
It’s because you get up on them, and they could jump up and leave. You never see them again.
Tell me about your bison hunt because it’s a bucket list for me. I’m actually looking to maybe get it done. Did you go to Colorado?
I went to New Mexico. I did a free range down in New Mexico. It was private land, but it was free range. It was a management bull. He was an old bull. He was ready to go. It’s 12 to 15 years old.
I saw the picture of you holding the heart. Both of those coffee bags were put together.
It’s on there somewhere.
That’s cool. It’s free range. There are not very many places that they are. I’ve been putting it up in Wyoming outside of the Grand Tetons there on the other side of it to see if I can get in, but who knows? I think that’s a lifelong tag-type deer.
The weird thing is that they’ll introduce wolves back into the population, but they won’t let people go hunt them. They’re trying to introduce wolves back into Colorado. Why don’t you let more people hunt? People are dying to go hunting, but you make these tags so unattainable, especially people that live here in State. It’s easier to be on out of state or to get a tag here.
There’s a whole bunch of ethics that go into that too. If it’s really about anti-hunting, there’s no more ethical way for an animal to die like we talked about than getting eaten alive. It is way different, getting in and getting stuck by an arrow.
With hunting, you want the animal to die quickly and peacefully. You don't want to see it suffer.
If it gets stuck by an arrow, they run 40 yards, lay down and die.
They like to stick their head up and they’re like, “What the fuck was that?” They don’t even know because you’re using a razor-sharp broad head straight through them. If you don't hit them in the rib or something, they don’t even know. The next thing you know, they’re on the ground.
They die peacefully. People think it’s a savage thing that is going on. It’s not that way. It’s very honorable to the animal. That’s why I love bow hunting because you’re up close and personal with them.
I prefer it myself. I haven’t hunted with the rifle for 27 years for the sheer fact. I prefer the ethics of it and the challenge too. I enjoy shooting my bow. It’s one of my favorite things to do.
I get reps every night and in the morning. Anytime I get a 30-minute free time, I’ll go to the backyard.
I hear you like, “I heard you got a range. I’ll bring my bow up. I’ll bring it for sure.” We got to get up there and shoot sometime.
We should go up there. I was up there with Luke Caudill.
We had Luke on too. Shout out to Luke. He’s a good dude.
We did a podcast with him. We were on it for four and a half hours.
We’re not going that long here.
My wife was pissed. She’s like, “You said you’re going to be home at 8:00. It’s midnight.” I was like, “I’m Sorry. I don’t know.”
It’s crazy because he does it a little bit later. It’s a marathon over there. When I was on, it was at least 3 or 4 hours, and then we were there for another couple afterwards playing craps or whatever. I heard you took his money.
That’s my gambling. I did take his money because I took his money the first time. He thought I would just pick the bow up. He didn't know I had been shooting a bow since I was 13 or 14 years old. He thought I would just pick the bow up. He was like, “Bring your bow and bring some money." I was like, "I'll be there." In the first round, we played for $50. I took it from him. In the next round, he beat me by one point, so he got his $50 back. It was pretty funny because of the shots he was trying to get me to take down on our knees and under these trees. He was like, "You could shoot.” We then went to the Western hunt thing over there at the American Bow. We went over there. We went up there and I took his money there too.
How was that event?
That was cool.
That’s a cool course.
I come from Ohio. They don’t have stuff like that in Ohio. They don’t have it.
It’s pretty unique for Colorado to find a course like that. The targets are pristine.
Those targets are expensive. That’s why. They’re $2,000 to $2,500. For a big elk, it’s $2,500. That is expensive.
They got probably 6 or 8 of them out there like 3 on each side, I think.
They had all kinds of cool stuff. They had platforms to shoot whitetail off of.
Did you do that cliff shot? I think it’s on the blue side.
On the gram, yes. That was tough. It’s a tough shot because you feel you’re going to fall over the edge. You start hinging at the hip. You feel like you’re going to go over.
With the angles, it’s so good for you to have the cam right there. I try to go up there twice a week if I can. It’s part of my ritual because it’s only 30 or 35 minutes from here. I’ll run up there and 9 times out of 10, I’m the only guy out there too. It’s pretty awesome. It’s a good connection. It’s a good little workout. Throw some weight in the pack. I try to keep it as a real hunting scenario. Some of the targets I’ve been running between just to get some extra conditioning stuff in. It’s so good shooting up and downhill.
Think about the mistake that people make when they come out here to hunt. I’m from Ohio. I have friends that are avid hunters and they hunt every day. Every day of the season and in the fall, they’re out there in the woods waiting for the 150 to 160 deer pass, waiting for that 180 to 200-inch buck. They then come out West and they quit. They go for two days and quit because they didn’t train. They just drank beer. They sit in a deer stand, drink beer all day, and think they’re hunting.
The altitude will fuck with you. If you’re drinking beer in camp at night, you’re dehydrated. Ninety percent of the animals I’ve taken have been at first light or last light. They’re getting ready for an all-nighter either way. Whether you’re getting up at 3:00 to try to get to where they’re at. That’s honestly why I backpack hunting because you’re there.
You’re living in there. I want to be sleeping with the animals. I’m not waking up and hiking 7 miles to get in. I want to wake up, hike a mile or two, get in there, and make that first day, the day we do the hiking. Be fresh when you wake up because if you put 14 miles on a day, you’re going to be hurting.
A lot of times, in archery season, if you’re hunting elk, they are above the tree line.
It's not easy. You can't breathe, so you need to acclimate yourself. It takes a couple of days to acclimate, and then by the time you're acclimated, the hunt is over.
I used to see you guys on the sidelines a lot using oxygen and stuff. I noticed with the whole COVID thing that they did away with that.
It used to be that we had the oxygen thing. I would hit it, hand it to the next guy, and he would hit it. You got to think the offense is out there for three. If they go three and out, it’s like, “I need to get that oxygen now because I’m going straight back to the field.” I went four years in Denver with no quarterback, so you’re throwing out a lot. When COVID hit, they weren’t letting us pass it back and forth. It had to be cleaned and sanitized. I’m like, “I’m sitting right next to this guy. Who cares? If he’s got big Rona, I already got it.”
Not to mention they’re basically spitting in your face.
Spitting and sweating all over each other. It was so ridiculous.
The stuff that you guys had to go through. Even in my industry. I’m in the entertainment industry, rock and roll and that sort of stuff. The testing and the protocols were insane. I’m starting to tail off a little bit.
They test us every single day.
Do you guys do the brain tickle, the PCR, or whatever?
Yeah, every day.
That can’t be good for you.
It’s first thing in the morning too. I got snot rockets all over there.
Put that in the test. That’s crazy. I’m glad that you’re doing what you love and you’re able to do some of it. You mentioned that you might have something in the works with a hunting show or something.
Derek Wolfe: As a professional athlete, you get a certain level of anxiety all the time. You’re constantly worrying about somebody taking your job, and it drives you every day.
When it comes to branding, my name is going to be called Wolf Untamed. It’s going to be all the outdoor shit that I would like to do. I love to fly fish as well. I like to snowboard. My wife loves to snowboard, so I have to love snowboarding, but I do enjoy it. It’s a lot of fun. I like being outside. Anything outside and being active and getting adrenaline pumped. I love it. That’s probably why I love bow hunting so much because of the adrenaline rush that you get from them. Even if you don’t kill something, but being in on an animal that close. There have been times when I thought they were going to hear my heart beating, and they were going to run and take off her.
It’s crazy how they can sense it too.
We’re working on some stuff here. We’re trying to do a mainstream show where I bring guys like DeMarcus Ware on the show. I’m actually working with Hoyt right now to get them a new bow so he can start shooting.
I didn’t know he was a bow hunter.
He’s not a bow hunter but he wants to. I’m bringing somebody into the fold. He’s a fisherman but he’s like, “I’ve always wanted to bow hunt. I always thought that was cool.” He sees me doing it and he’s like, “Let’s do it.” I try to get him in. He’s got a big long draw like I do so he needs a Highline.
What kind of bow are you shooting?
I’m shooting with Highline right now.
What's your draw length?
It’s 33 inches.
I’m at 30, so I’m quite there.
It narrows the bow that you can shoot. It’s supposedly going out to 31 inches or 30 inches. That's too short. I don't want to dilute it to 2-inches long. I don’t like that.
I feel like I’m shooting javelins, but your arrows must penetrate.
I was actually talking to Aaron Snyder about it. I was like, “What kind of broadheads should I use?” He’s like, “Use a butter knife if you want. What are you pulling?” I’m pulling 70 to 75 pounds. It’s flying 345 feet. You can put a butter knife on there but it could probably come with a field tip.
That’s a lot of energy behind the arrow too.
We're working on a show. We'll probably do something with YouTube, for sure. We're starting to upload videos. I got a bunch of footage from the spring already from turkey and bear. This fall, we're going to start filming and put some stuff together because I have three big hunts in September that we're going to have a lot of footage from. Not only do I have the deer and elk tag down in New Mexico but I got the bear tag on there too. Both times, I'll get an opportunity to chase a bear.
That’s great. Are you hunting in Colorado?
I didn’t draw anything here, but I did buy a bear tag here.
No over-the-counter elk or anything.
I don’t have the time to get it. I’m doing sports radio as well. They’re giving me the month and September off. I’m pushing the limits there if I start taking any more time off. I’ll do an over-the-counter elk for sure. It’s something I can slip up for the weekend, especially because all of that sprinter van built out. I’ll already have my camp set up so I can get in there deep. It’s not a big problem to get out of there. Most guys can’t get back there and sleep. I’ll be able to get back there and sleep. No problem.
Tell me more about the van. How do you outfit it? You said you might be doing a show out of it.
When I bring these guests on for my show, I want to be able to interview them and stuff before and do a podcast out of it. What I'm going to do is put a topper on it, so it raises up, and it doubles my sleeping space. I could sleep up there, and at the bottom, I can have a mobile studio. That way, I can pre-record stuff because obviously, we're going to be in areas where there's no service, so it won't be live.
That’s awesome. We’ve done it with this. That’s how I originally set up this whole system. We’ve done them in parks. Where else, Jeremy? I can’t remember.
You go mobile anyway. You can take it on the road with you.
That’s perfect. If you need any help with recommendations on gear or anything like that, we’d be glad to share what I know. I had to learn the hard way a little bit.
That’s the best way to learn. Make mistakes. If you don’t learn from them, you’re probably fucked.
What kind of spinners did you get?
It's a Mercedes 174 x4. It’s up in Loveland in Colorado, Campervans. They have this patented topper that they put on it. It is rock solid. That’s what I was worried about. I don’t want some flimsy ass thing up there. It’s dope. It’s going to be cool.
It’s nice being able to roll into a mobile like that. That’s how I have my base camp set up now. I used to pull a little pop-up camper, and now I have this badass canvas tent. That’s base camp. Wherever I park my truck and go from there. I have a backpack and hopefully, I don’t ever see that canvas tent, but if I need to come back and crash, there’s a nice cot knit. That’s badass. Are you going to take your family out in it?
My wife is already sending me videos of different vans that are fancy. I’m like, “There’s going to be blood and mud everywhere.” I can’t have this white wall. You’ve got all these white sheets in here. What is this? I told the guy that’s helping me build it out. I was like, “I want to be able to take a hose and spray the whole thing out.
You should do it if you can. Just have them put a hanging cooler in the back.
They are. We’re working on some things there. I actually talked to Yeti about it too. They sent me some coolers that I could try out. It was those big 250s. You could fit two elk in those. I plan on hopefully, having at least two shooters in there, keeping that tank full. They sent me some coolers and I was like, “This could work because then you could put them out of the way when you don’t need them. If you put a freezer back there, it’s permanently there, and then send the way. The back of it is like a garage. You want the back to be like the garage, and then it goes into the living room, the kitchen, the front, and then sleeping up top. That’s the way I’m setting it up.
You headed down to New Mexico in September.
Yes. From the 5th through the 10th. I got a mule deer tag. As I said, I got the bear tag down there too. From the 14th to the 20th, I’m going down to unit 34 elk. It’s going to be sick.
That’s great. Do you have some land you’re hunting on down there or is it public land?
It’s public land. It’s all public.
You’re getting into the radio game a little bit too, doing some commentary. Is that locally?
Local stuff, then I’ll do some national stuff as well, then eventually work into TV and stuff like that. If it was me, I would just hunt. My wife said I’m too young. I’m only 32. My wife was like, “You’re too young not to work.” If I monetize this hunting game, then maybe I can get out of all that stuff and just hunt full-time. That would be an awesome dream. We talk about making dreams. I already made one dream come true. I can make this one come true too.
Let’s talk about that a little bit. I know you grew up in Ohio. You played ball in Cincinnati for college. How did you dive into football in general? From a young age, was that something that you always played? Did your dad play and demand you play?
I started playing when I was seven. I was in full-contact football at seven years old. The first time I stepped out, I loved the violence of it. I loved how aggressive you could be. My coaches were like, “Go hit him. Hit everything.” I’m like, “All right.” I was naturally good at it. The thing about football is you have that ability to be the hammer, not the nail or you’re the nail, and you don’t like it. That’s the way it goes. I got into it when I was seven. From the first time I played, I was like, “This is what I want to do. I don’t want to do anything else.”
Until now, everything I did was for football. Anytime I went to class, the only motivation I had to go to class or school from that young age was to be eligible to play football. Everything I did was for football. I focused all my energy on this one thing. Hunting was a passion of mine as a kid too. I love to hunt but I couldn’t do it in the fall because I was playing football.
The thing about football is you either have that ability to be the hammer, not the nail, or you're the nail and don't like it.
Those two do not align.
I wrestled too, so I've rolled right into wrestling. It's tough to get into hunting here and there, but I never got to do it full-time. All my buddies were out there killing these giant bucks. I’m like, “You got to sit the prime times. I’m at a wrestling tournament and you’re out there sitting in a tree stand. It’s not fair.” He’s like, “I get it.”
I played football a little bit in high school. My complaint is I could never hunt because it's every weekend. It’s every night after school.
It’s a demanding sport. I went to college and it was like, “There was no time.” You get two weeks off a year. I’m from Northeast Ohio so I would slip back home and I would get a quick little archery on hand and shoot the first buck that came in. I shot the first deer that came in. It was like, “Don’t shoot any buck but if you see a goofy-looking buck, I shoot them myself. My buddies would stick me in an area where their cameras are showing goofy bucks that they wanted off the property. I didn’t even get to hunt.
That’s not even hunting if you’re only gone for a couple of days. Part of it is getting out there, connecting with nature, and having that time.
There’s nothing worse than rush time, where you’re rushed. It’s not fun. I want to be out there and enjoy it for a little bit. That was the other thing about being here in Denver. I got drafted to Denver and people are talking about draw units and this and that. I was like, “What are you talking about? What is a draw unit?” I would go to Walmart to buy my deer tag and we go hunt. That’s the way it goes.
Are there a lot of public lands?
A ton of it.
Some states like Texas have zero public lands.
It’s all private ranches.
You got to have permission to go hunting.
Your paying. The charge is $4,000 to kill a whitetail. It blows my mind. I thought I don’t know. I get it because there’s a lot of money that goes into taking care of those deer and getting those deer to grow and managing them. It’s a lot of money that goes into it. Some of the prices for these hunts are making them inaccessible to anybody.
I’ve never been a whitetail hunter. I guess because I haven’t done it enough.
There’s no whitetail here.
There’s some out in the East, but not very many.
If you go to Kansas, it’s the best in the country. That’s where you want to hunt. It is down in Southeast Kansas.
I love hunting elk. That’s the one thing.
This is going to be my first elk hunt. That’s why I’m so jacked up about it because everybody I’ve talked to that elk hunts, especially from back East. I got buddies that pile up in a rig and come all the way out to Montana and stay for fourteen days. They’re like, “Once you elk hunt, you’re going to never want to whitetail hunting again.”
That’s how I am. I don’t want to leave Colorado in September ever. That’s probably why I don’t go to Alaska and some of these spots. I know you can go a little bit earlier and later in the year and stuff.
You can do some cool stuff in Alaska in August. You could do a drop camp and caribou hunt. I’m working on one of those.
The bucks are up there right now. We’re there the other day to see if we can get up there. That’s wild. It’s going to be sick. I can’t wait to hear that story.
I'm looking forward to getting in one of those hunts. Hopefully, I’ll be able to do that.
We were talking about in the previous episode, what was worse, shark attack or grizzly attack or how to get eaten? Those things scare the shit out of me.
Sharks scare the shit out of me. I’m more comfortable with the bear because if you posture with a bear, you got a good chance of them like, “I’m not messing with this guy.” A shark doesn’t care. A 20-foot-long great white shark is going to come in there and take half your body away real quick and spit it out. They’re taking a nibble and they take half your leg off.
I don’t know why this keeps coming up, but maybe it’s going to be my demise. It would be rad to get up into Alaska or something and do a brown bear hunt. That would be epic. I would love to do that. It would be awesome. I think you’re going to have a blast on your elk hunt. That’s truly why I don’t leave. The only other hunt that I want to do is a bison hunt. I might have to talk to you after this about what you did down in New Mexico.
It was pretty cool. You’re driving around on county roads pretty much all day, spot and stalking, and putting a stock on. They’re not stupid. They’re not going to just let you walk up to them, and they run 40 miles an hour. You get close and they’re like, “See you.” They get out of there. I’m not going to shoot out at 100 yards, but 30 to 70, I’ll shoot.
How hard was it to get that tag?
It was a private land tag. I don’t know how my wife got it, but she gifted it to me. It was a gift from my wife. She gifted my elk hunt to me too. That was another private land tag because I tried to draw. She was like, “You can try to draw, but I’ll buy the tag for you if you don’t get it.” I was like, Sweet.” She was like, “You just retired. You can have the whole month of September to go home, but you ain’t doing that shit ever again.”
Look at those claws. That’s crazy. That’s what it’s drinking right there. A huge bear. Look at the size of that thing.
Look at the head on that thing. One swipe and your face is gone. I always think about that Tim Wells hunt when he stuck that grizzly in the forehead and dropped it. You got to watch that.
Let me see if he can look that up. Was it Tim Wells?
It’s Tim Wells Grizzly Hunt. He shoots it right in the forehead and drops it. It was coming right at him.
I think there’s an old story. It was either Pope and Young, Saxton Pope or one of those guys who shot a grizzly through his eye. It’s the same deal. It was charging him and hit it straight to the brain, which is insane.
If you want to talk about an adrenaline rush. I think it’s right there.
How long ago was this? This 2020 is when the video is posted. It looks a little bit older than that, doesn’t it? He’s got a long bow too.
This is him. Look at this. It’s chasing him. He dropped him. Do you see that thing looking at him like, “What are you doing?”
That is crazy. In the blue flannel too.
If you miss right there, that bear is coming after you. He was already looking at him like, “What the hell are you doing here?”
Go back for a second, Jeremy. Does he have a pistol on his hip? Still, to draw your pistol out fast, good luck.
He’s got one on his hand.
Derek Wolfe: Many so-called hunters come out west, go hunt for two days and quit because they didn’t train. They sit in a deer stand, drink beer all day, and think they're hunting.
You have to if you’re that crazy.
Wearing that flannel is hilarious.
He’s got a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.
He’s nuts. That guy is crazy.
It's red for sure.
The guy is wild to me. He does wild shooting. I’m glad you told us about that. I’ve never seen that before. That’s nuts. I wouldn’t get that crazy with it.
I would do it.
Do you see his buddy smiling?
Von is a big hunter too. I’ve seen some of his deer.
He kills a lot of axis deer. There’s the best meat.
I’ve had it a couple of times and it’s incredible. I would love to get out to Lanai and do that one out there. That would be a good list for the show.
Hawaii is so cool because they said they’re loaded with them. Nobody hunts them there. People that live there don’t hunt. It was just the locals.
There are no predators there either.
You can actually spot and stalk them. I’ve tried to spot and stalk axis before. It’s off. You get 70 yards. They have this 100-yard buffer where they can sense you. It’s weird.
They’re super fast too. Where are they from originally?
I think it’s India or Asia. One of those.
They’re fast enough to get away from tigers. I would imagine they’re pretty fast. You’ve mentioned having DeMarcus Ware on. Do you have some other guys?
I got a couple of other guys that were going to try to get on.
All from the football world?
Football and country artists. Michael Ray said he would come with me. Brantley Gilbert will do a whitetail hunt with me for sure. Let me think of some other guys here that we got.
Don’t give away too many spoilers.
I’ll get Cerrone to come to do one with me. If you want to do a bison hunt, he said he’ll let you kill it. He’s got a bunch of bison. He was like, “You should have come down here. I’ll let you kill him for free.”
Maybe you’re off to hit them up then. I might take you up on that. That’s crazy. I think that will be a great show with the people that you know and your connections. I’ll watch it.
I get a lot of flack from people that don’t understand hunting. They don’t understand what it means. They think we’re out there just to kill like we’re some kind of sociopath that wants to go kill. I want to get a kill. I want to harvest an animal, but I’m not just killing the first thing that walks by me. I’m going to harvest an older special elk. I’m going to harvest an older bull. It’s the same with a whitetail. I’m not killing does and babies. I’m killing the big buck that’s been there for seven years and he’s chasing everything else out of there. We’re going to take and eat him. Everything we kill is getting eaten. It’s the same with the bears. If you don’t manage these bear populations, they come in there and start killing the cubs up to two years old to get something to eat.
We have had enough problems here in Colorado ever since they outlawed spring bear hunting. Colorado parks and wildlife is basically giving away tags to any unit. You see that bear upon the rigs. It's crazy. You can get a bear tag about anywhere now.
I bought a bear tag so I can try to slip up to some private land here and somebody wants to bear taken. For anybody out there, if you’ve got to bear and need to be taken, let me come get him.
Being a hunter and the way that you’re explaining it, I’m sure that you’re eating the meat or giving it away at least.
I’m eating it and giving it away. It’s both, like that bison. It was almost 700 pounds of meat. I would use it for trade even. My pole guy comes in and keeps my pole running. That's the other thing about a pole. It’s always breaking. I’ll be like, “Have some bear meat or bison meat.” He’s like, “I don’t have to go to the grocery store now.” You know where your meat is coming from too.
That’s the biggest part for me. You grew up in a farm community. We didn’t go down that path just yet. Diving back into your background a little bit, you’ve seen how animals are processed. Sometimes it’s disgusting. It’s not the cleanest thing. I like to know where my meat came from. Lately, I’ve been on this crazy diet where I’m eating pretty much nothing but meat. My freezers are dry at the moment. I’ve eaten through what I killed last year. It’s urgent for me to get an animal this year because I don’t want to go to the grocery store and buy stuff.
Even if I am buying meat, I’m doing it from a third party. It’s a reputable thing. I use Colorado Craft Beef. They’re awesome. They’re out East. Shout out to those guys. You can drive out to the ranch and buy a half cow if you want. They are good people and super smart on the agricultural side of it and the way that they’re raising the animals and stuff. I feel comfortable about that because they’re doing 100% of the processing and everything right there at the ranch. If you go to the grocery store and buy that meat or bread or whatever, when you get this beef, steak, tenderloins or something from them, they’re purple. It’s how it’s supposed to look like. It looks like elk or deer.
That blows my mind what they'll do. It's with anything mainstream. I was down at Dutton, Hot Springs, doing a wine on the fly with my wife because she likes to fly fish. She was like, "Let's go fly fish and drink some wine." I was like, "Let's do it." We drove down there. It's an awesome place down in Hot Springs. Their fish camp is incredible. It was expensive as hell, but it was worth it because I had a ton of fun.
There was a small winery from Napa that was telling us about all the chemicals these big box wine companies are putting in their wines. It’s 200 different chemicals to keep the viscosity, texture, taste, and smell. It’s all chemicals. That’s why you feel so shitty the next day. If I drank half a bottle of their wine, I was up in the morning fine. It didn't feel like I drank. I was like. That shows you right there that they’re not lying.”
They’re putting chemicals and preservatives in everything. That’s why I’ve pretty much strictly gone on a wild game diet.
I would rather eat wild game. The problem is you’ve got this chronic waste going. That’s scary. You harvest the animal that has got chronic waste, you can eat it. You can eat that stuff. You can but you shouldn’t.
You shouldn’t, and the way that it’s spreading too. It’s not getting any smaller.
That’s all due to too many animals. That’s the crazy thing. These so-called conservationists. Hunters are conservationists. We’re funding the entire thing. The hunters are funding the entire show.
I don’t think that anybody cares more about animals than hunters either.
If there are no animals, there’s nothing to hunt.
We’ve had Colorado parks and wildlife, several game wardens, biologists, and stuff like that. A big part of it is from people feeding deer too. If you’re feeding deer for hunting purposes, which is illegal in the state of Colorado anyways, that helps spread it. A lot of people are feeding these deer by hand off their porches. It happens around here all the time because they don't know any better. I think that they see a cute animal, but we've had a couple of instances. I live over here not far from the golf course. I’ve had a buck come up to my sliding glass door looking for food.
The mule deer around here come right up to you. They don’t care. It’s wild. You never see a whitetail do that.
Some people don’t even want to learn about hunting. They just think you're a murderer, but then go down the street to a restaurant and order a cheeseburger.
I know that that helps spread it too. It is a big factor in it. Salt licks and all that stuff are bad for that chronic wasting disease. We never used to have it here in Colorado. I guess it has been transmitted in through other states or whatever. I’m hoping that they can somehow get a handle on it. A certain way that you can do it is reporting. If you see animals that are looking they might have it, they want to know pretty much right away. Also turn it into your hunt animals so they can get a real grasp like, “it’s spreading faster here. Maybe we need to thin out.” The herd needs to be thinned down or something.
Let’s give away some more tags. They’re trying to introduce the wolves back here. I’m like, “Why.”
The whole thing is that went to the ballot box. If you talked to any biologist, and we did three full episodes on it, and they’re like, “It’s not a good idea.”
They will destroy the herd. They will decimate it. We don’t want to decimate it. We just want to thin it.
There are multiple ways to destroy. They also carry wolf disease. There is this other disease that has high data that we learned about that’s even more frightening than CWD. It’s a parasite. It ruins everything, and it’s transferrable to humans too. Even if you’re out mowing your lawn and maybe a wolf shit or whatever, you got a high data on that. It’s crazy. It is a nasty ass disease.
It’s pretty gnarly. I know that they’ve had some confirmed cases up in Montana and stuff like that. It’s very similar to CWD, but it’s nasty stuff. I think that there are some great organizations out there that actually will give you education on what these are. I urge people to get educated before they vote on something like this, especially when it comes to biological stuff and wildlife.
Think about when they do these votes. Where are the most people located? Denver and Boulder. Do you think any of those people even want to learn about hunting? They don’t even want to learn about it. They think immediately that you’re a murderer, but then they’ll go down to the street, go to a restaurant, and order a cheeseburger. They have no idea where it came from and how it died.
It’s not good stuff. Basically, the meat is ruined. If you shoot one or something, you don’t even want to be around it honestly. Field dressing it, you can get this thing. It’s not good. CWD, I don’t think is transferrable to humans or they don’t think it is as of right now.
This is a bit more scary to me. Neither of them is good. Back to your point about the population that's living in Denver and Boulder, even if those people are living in Denver and Boulder and they want wolves here because they think that they're cool or they think it's a better way to manage wildlife, they also need to understand the ethics for the wolf in general. Is it fair to them?
They’re being pulled out of a place where they have no human interaction and thrown into a state with seven million people and highways running all over it. I can guarantee you. I don’t care what protections are in line. If they’re running onto a ranch and killing cattle, at some point, those animals are going to be put down, whether it’s by the rancher doing it illegally or Colorado parks and wildlife having to do something with it.
That’s somebody’s livelihood that they’re disrupting. If you can’t keep your cows alive, you can’t. There’s a big argument right now going on whether these ranchers should be allowed to shoot them or not. If it was a coyote, they wouldn’t say a word about it.
Right now, it’s completely illegal because they’re on the endangered list. It keeps going back and forth too. There’s that whole confusion. We already have wolves here, to begin with. They’ve already migrated out of Wyoming into Colorado.
It’s not that far for a wolf to travel that. That's not at all. They introduced them in Yellowstone. I'm pretty sure they introduced them up there because the ecosystem was getting destroyed because the elk herds were eating all the grasses. It's because they weren't being hunted. Why don't you let people go hunt them? You can manage this. Not only are you managing the herd, but you’re getting money that goes back into the conservation of the wildlife.
Here’s a crazy thought. Humans have been around maybe not as long as wolves, but we've been hunting for thousands of years. In the last hundred years or not even 100 years, it's totally unacceptable now in a lot of people's eyes. I understand why there have to be laws in place. You don't end up in a market hunting situation that happened in the 1800s. We can all agree that that’s bad. That's not good, but that was also how people were surviving. They weren't raising cattle and stuff as we do now. There was no factory farming. They were trying to feed the population.
If you look at those old pictures, they go on an elk hunt for two weeks and they come out with 50 elk. The same with the bison. They were smacking bison, leaving the meat, and taking the fur. It’s like 100 bison dead in the field.
There’s the iconic scene from Dances With Wolves with all those skin bison and all the meat rotting. That’s horrible. That’s not good. There’s also that photo of a mountain of bison skulls. Have you ever seen that from the 1800s? Jeremy, let’s see if we can find that. It’s a pretty iconic photo, but it goes to show you how they were being wiped out. Look at this, Derek. This is insane.
That’s impossible to comprehend.
How do you stack it perfectly like that? Have you ever been to the catacombs in France?
No.
It’s pretty wild.
Have you been down there? I’ve been to France. We were going to go do it but I’m claustrophobic. I don’t like being in a space. I wouldn’t like it.
It’s human remains that they’ve built catacombs out of it. It is pretty creepy.
I bet it is. That’s so creepy to me.
I wouldn’t say it was a good time because you start thinking about that. Behind every one of those skulls is a family, brothers, sisters and kids. Who knows? That’s pretty frightening. Market hunting is definitely not good, but I think humans have been involved in hunting since there were wooly mammoths running around. They’ve proven that. We’re an intricate part of the ecosystem, whether you agree with it or not. It's honestly the best way to manage a population. You have to follow the rules. You have to go and get a tag. It's creating revenue. It pays for 90% of these national parks.
The trail building and all that stuff are paid for by hunters.
The Pittman-Robertson Act, I don’t know if you know about that, but a portion of every hunting rifle, bow, broadhead, or backpack from Cafaro that you bought goes to a national fund to help fund conservation and wildlife and parks.
Why not let people hunt? Why do they want to stop people from hunting so bad? I don’t get it.
I don’t understand it either. I think it's miseducation and there's a little bit of sinister shit going on behind it too. It's not going to be good for the environment, and that's always the argument that it's good for the environment. It's going to destroy it even more. It's destroying the environment.
Elk Park, too. They’re chewing on grass all day in Elk Park too. They want to kill all the beef cattle, but they don’t want to let people come hunt elk. It makes no sense to me. You got to ask this parker or something like that. They’re down in Colorado Springs. All these places where there’s no hunting allowed. They’re overrun by animals that are going to get sick. Nothing dies naturally in the wild. Nothing gets old and has a peaceful death unless they’re shot by a hunter, which blows my mind. Why are you fighting so hard to stop it? I understand if you’re vegan. Go ahead. That’s your choice. Don’t force that on me. Don’t try to force me to eat plants like you do and bugs and all other bullshit that’s going on.
Stuff dies for that too. Stuff dies to make a loaf of bread. Think about what those animals and stuff that live in those fields. There’s a big argument there. I wish it wasn’t such a debate. I wish that people would leave each other alone.
Leave me alone. I’ll leave you alone and we can go live our lives. I’m not affecting you at all.
These assholes are going into grocery stores and pouring milk out onto the floor. Have you seen that?
Now it was all in vain. Now that cow was milked for no reason, so you could dump it on the floor. That does nothing. The company that you’re trying to make a point to, now they’re like, “Great. They need more milk. They’re going to buy more milk from us.” Fucking idiots. Totally dumb. Super glue your hand to a counter. Now, our taxpayer money is getting wasted on some guy that has to go take that off.
That’s retarded.
I know I can’t use that word either.
This political correctness bullshit.
We’re not on here. That’s why I have the podcast too. I think that that’s a great part of your show that you can have. You can say whatever you want because there are no producers or anything involved. You and I can sit here and bullshit. That’s all we’re doing right now.
That’s why I love podcasting because there’s no bullshit behind it. It’s two guys having a good time. A couple of dudes in a studio are chopping it up. That’s what it’s about. That’s what people want to hear. They want to hear the real shit. They don’t want to hear some story that you made up or some sugarcoated bullshit that you come up with. They don’t want to hear that.
I don’t want to hear that either. Most of the ones that I listened to are all about real people and real conversations. I’ve had some people before hit me up like, “Can you send me a list of questions?” I’m like, “There isn’t.” It’s going to be organic. There are going to be some positives. We’re going to go look at grizzlies. We’re going to look at bounds of buffalo. The conversation could go anywhere.
Speaking of the R-word. Did you see these guys put their feet in cement? They were protesting outside of Starbucks because the soy milk costs more than the cream or there’s enough charge for soy lattes.
Derek Wolfe: When you’re hunting at 10,000 feet, it’s not easy. You can't breathe. You need to acclimate yourself, and it takes a couple of days to do that.
They cemented their shoes to the sidewalk. That was smart.
I’m telling you, I think that the soy and the seed oil shit is making people weird and soft. I have a hard time filling it. I don’t know if we’ve got any transgenders reading this, but I feel that has something to do with this huge influx of people being transgender. It’s got to be the food, the vaccines, and all the other bullshit. You have a perfectly normal kid. They get stuck with all these vaccines. A year later, they have autism. They’re like, “It wasn’t from the vaccine, chem trails, and all the other bullshit you’re putting in our water, the fluoride.” All that shit matters. We’re not supposed to have that shit in our bloodstream.
You don’t know probably for hundreds of years until something is affecting a population. You’re like, “Cigarettes are bad.”
It’s like ancient Rome. They’re like, “Thrown dead bodies in the water probably wasn’t a good idea.” They didn’t know.
You can’t even drink rainwater. Forgot about it. It’s over.
I think it’s illegal to store rainwater in Colorado.
I think they lifted that. They get rid of it. You guys can drink all you want of this stuff.
You’ve decided to stay here after your career.
My wife is from Cheyenne, so she loves it here. Colorado is her thing. I love it here too, so it works out.
Denver loves you. As a football fan, I know that you were well received here. You probably felt some of that love.
Yeah, big time. I love this place. That’s why I stayed here after my fourth season. I signed a new contract here to stay. Why would I leave here? It’s awesome. The fans are awesome here. I get shown so much love everywhere I go. Still to this day, when I go out, people show me a ton of love. When we go to a concert at Red Rocks, people are like, “Let’s party. Let’s have fun.”
Some guys get a big ego about this shit. I've had teammates whose egos are through the roof. We play football. You're not some super scientists that cured anything. You get good at football. People idolize football players and to me, that's a great honor. That's such an honor to me. If somebody wants my autograph or a picture of me, I'm like, "Why do you want a picture of me?” It blows my mind that people want to listen to me talk.
That's a great outlook. With that outlook, you'll be a lot happier in life than dealing with you getting pissed off every time somebody wants to talk to you or something.
Why would you get mad? Why would I get mad, especially with kids? When I was a kid, if I got to meet somebody that played in the NFL, I would be like, “This is cool as hell.” If he’s a dick, I’m never going to forget that.
I was fortunate where my grandparents live. Tom Jackson, who used to play for the Broncos, lived right down the street. I used to go bug the shit out of him. He probably was like, “This fucking kid again.” Do you remember the old brick cell phones? He was in a hot tub in his house that was in his living room. He was on one of those brick cell phones. I would knock on a sliding glass door. He'd be like, "Come on in.” He was cool as shit. He came to a Little League game. One of my uncles was in high school playing football at the time here at Evergreen. He went to a couple of those games to show some support and love for the community. He’s super cool. Most of the guys I’ve met had been super humble.
That’s the thing. If you get a chance to meet him, that’s why he got a chance to meet him because they’re humble. These other guys are inaccessible. They’re not doing anything for free. They’re not going to show up anywhere for free and all that shit. I never understood that. I understand monetizing your fame. At some point, be a human. Interact with the other humans.
I’ve been around a ton of rockstars too in my line of work. For the most part, most of them are genuinely good people. If you treat them like a human, that's the other thing too. How many times do you have somebody come up to you that's in that star-struck mode, ask you a stupid question, or asked you to do something stupid?
People come up to me in a grocery store and they’re like, “Can you give us a howl?” I’m like, “I’m not going to howl in the grocery store. I’m in Sprouts or King Soopers or something. "I'm not going to howl in here." That's the other thing. It's grown men that act weird. These grown men that are weird to show up, they'll come to follow you around and show up with a bag full of shit for you to sign. It's like, "I'm not signing all this shit. I'll sign a picture for you. Take a picture with you, and we'll move on with our day." I got my three-year-old with me and they're like, "Can you do this and that?"
Do they interrupt you during meals?
People do stuff like that, but it’s not a big deal to me. As I said, I’m honored that people even give a shit.
We’re happy to have you here in Denver and I enjoyed watching you play football. What was it like getting that call from John?
It was weird. Here’s a little story. I was a Green Bay fan growing up. I was a Packers fan. Brett Favre and Reggie White and that ‘97 Super Bowl team.
There were a lot of people. I think there were people in Denver too.
That '98 game when the Broncos win, I was pissed. I was devastated. I was like, "No, I can't believe it." It was from '97 to '98 because Green Bay won in '96. I was a young kid. I was devastated. I was crying and pissed. I was like, "This is bullshit. They're supposed to win the game." It was probably how it was in Super Bowl 50. They were talking about how Carolina was going to stomp us and we ended up kicking their ass.
I was listening to the announcers. They were talking about Green Bay, “This game easy. It should be a good game for them.” Nope, John Elway out there with two ACLs is not going to make it happen. I cried and then he called me. I had no idea Denver was even on the radar. Jack Del Rio, I had a lot of talks with him at the combine at the Senior Bowl and stuff like that. I didn’t know he got hired to Denver.
When I see a Denver number call me on draft day, I’m like, “What the fuck is this? Who’s calling me from Denver?” I answered it, “Derek, it is John Elway.” I’m like, “Holy shit. What’s up, man?” He was like, “We’re going to draft you here at 36.” I was like, “Let’s do it. Let’s make it happen.” It was weird because I had to sleep at the airport that night. Where I’m from, it’s an hour from the airport. My flight was at 6:00 AM. I was like, “Fuck it. Let’s go straight to the airport and I’ll sleep there.” I put a suit on, went and fell asleep, and showed up with no hair. I showed up bald.
They cut my hair with a horse clipper because I lived on a Black Angus farm. The family that I lived with were farmers and out of control. It was real. Crazy shit is going on there. It was fun. I showed up and it was weird because I was getting treated as a first-round pick. I was a second-round pick, but I was Bronco’s first pick that year.
I was a second-round pick and there were three of us there. There was me, Brock Osweiler, and Ronnie Hillman. It was cool. As soon as I got the phone with John, I was in Ohio. Somebody said, “Peyton signed there.” I was like, “Peyton who?” They’re like, “Peyton Manning.” I was like, “No way. Let’s go. We’re going to win the Super Bowl. We’re definitely going to win the Super Bowl. It is going to be sick.” We probably should have had three Super Bowls stints in four years. It's incredible. Everything after that was shit because it was so fun.
Majority of your career, you spent the last two years in Baltimore, so you played eight in Denver.
Eight years in Denver, won a Super Bowl, and then went to Baltimore for two years. Baltimore is cool. It’s a good organization, but the best part about Baltimore is you could deer hunt nonstop. You get unlimited doe tags and three buck tags and they got great crab there but it’s not the Rockies.
I’m glad you’re still here. I’m glad you’re doing the show and all that. Coming to Denver, playing alongside some of the awesome dudes like Champ Bailey, Champ Paula Malo, DeMarcus Ware, Von Miller, CJ Anderson, and all these dudes. Going into that 2015 season, that holds a special spot in my heart. I’m going to tell you why here in a minute. Going into that, that season didn’t look like there was much hope. Scott was leaning on the defense. Did Peyton get benched at one point?
He was hurt. He had to reluctantly go sit down for a little bit and get healthy. Brock came in and we won some games with him and made it happen. It was a fucked-up season. We were winning games at the last minute. We were the best defense that ever do it. We were the best defense there to play the game. Wade Phillips was beaten that into us the whole season. We’re going to be the best to ever do it.
I was so bummed when they cut him.
I don’t know. There was some shady shit going on. Not on his side, but front office shit and business bullshit that goes on.
That was a bad decision. Especially what you guys had built in the last couple of years and that whole Super Bowl Champs because of the defense. It takes a team to play the game.
We put ourselves in a position to win games.
You won a couple of games too.
Turnover, scoring, touchdowns and shit were off the chain.
That was fun to watch. I've worked on the halftime show for a number of years for the Super Bowl. We go about 3 to 4 weeks before it's even decided. It's the divisional round of the playoffs we get to see play. I was actually in Santa Clara and watching you guys play the Patriots. It's cool because we have some assholes on the crew that has been at 33 Super Bowls. They've been standing on the field watching them. They were big Patriots fans. They know me as a big Broncos fan when I moved to LA.
I grew up right here at 18 or 19. This was the worst place in the world. I was never going to make it so I moved to LA and lived there for twenty years. They brought me the brightest Orange Bronco shit you could see. I would have looked like a pumpkin dealer if I had dressed all at once. It’s like an orange jumpsuit. They assumed that everybody that lived in LA was Raiders fans. They’re like, “If you come back a Raiders fan, don’t even come back. Stay there.” That’s how much they love the Broncos.
Humans have been hunting since wooly mammoths were running around. It's an integral part of the ecosystem.
That was bred into my blood from a young age. I remember watching with my grandfather and uncles and all that stuff on Sundays. It was Broncos or nothing. You didn’t cheer for anybody else either. That’s the only time that you might get abused. That lifelong love for the Broncos and they were my NFL team, and then I’m sitting there in Santa Clara watching that game go down the way it did. Sitting next to a Patriots fan was one of the best things. I think you had a sack on Brady in that game.
We hit Tom Brady 27 times that game. We hit the fuck out of him. We were hammering him. It was awesome. I put a hit on him on the first play of the game. I think I slammed his ass. I drove him right into the ground. I was like, “It’s going to be a long day, buddy.” That’s the great thing about Tom Brady. He doesn’t give a fuck. He just keeps playing. He keeps going and trying to win. They almost beat us.
That was a close game. I’m sitting there like, “I’m finally going to be working on a Super Bowl where my team gets to come and play. I was jacked.” It was cool. I knew before you guys were coming in, I was like, “There’s a chance. I’m going to sign up for everything that I can do. I’m going to do the pre-game and the post-game. I’m going to do all the production stuff that I can on the field.”
We get there 3 or 4 weeks before we’re doing all the rehearsals. They do the National Anthem rehearsal, in and out of the stadium. I don’t know if you know this. We were going up and checking the field every couple of days. As they’re painting it, they painted both the end zones Broncos at one point. That’s an omen. I was all jacked. We get in there and you guys arrive.
It was Philip Rivers. I said that too. I did not say that to Tom Brady. I said that to Philip Rivers. Do you still get some bad blood with Philip?
I don’t think so. I’m grown up now. I was 25 years old when that happened. I have kids now and stuff. I wouldn’t say shit like that.
It was awesome being there. I was on the field with you guys for most of the game like two minutes of it, and then the halftime, and watching you guys play. It’s cool because I’m there with some of my best buds. We always had a great time. We always put ourselves in the right position. My buddy, Kyle, I remember, right before the National Anthem starts. He’s out there on the sidelines and Emmanuel is standing there. Kyle put out his hand three times right after the National Anthem and did three low fives with Emmanuel, and then I got a high-five from Terrell at the trophy presentation. I was jacked up in all my Broncos gear. The amount of fun that we had out there and being around a high-level game and being that close to you guys were super cool.
It was so fun when you started playing a game as a kid. I started playing because I watched the Green Bay Packers win a Super Bowl. I was like, “I want to put that t-shirt over my pads and run around with the Lombardi Trophy.” I got to do that and it’s crazy. Most people don’t get to live their dream. I got to do it.
One thing that sticks out in my mind too was it seemed most of the times, when I was at mile high or watching you guys come out, you were the first guy or one of the first guys on the field right behind Thunder Miles with the whole flag thing.
I would lead the charge to get everybody going.
I think I got some great videos of you guys coming out. We then had the National Anthem thing. We rolled out for Lady Gaga to sing the National Anthem. Peyton was in the way actually. I was having to yell at him. I was like, “Peyton, excuse me, sir.” I’m a Broncos fan. I’m like, “Please move,” or whatever. Finally, I was like, “We were running out of time. Get the fuck out of the way.” I don’t know if he remembers this or not. I was like, “I don’t want to run him over these big-ass heavy things.”
He breaks his ankle before the game or something. It’s stupid and dumb.
That was a surreal moment for me. That was probably the highlight of my entertainment career. All the rock shows that I’ve been to and all the traveling. I’ve been around the world. There’s something special about being there and then being able to stand with all you guys on the field and your families and stuff during the trophy presentation with the gold confetti and the whole nine. That was pretty sweet.
It was cool. I thought we were going to get back to another one because I thought we got in the business of building a championship dynasty here.
We could have so easily.
Just get a quarterback.
It’s starting to feel like that again a little bit. You were down at training camp. What are you thinking about this season?
Here’s the thing. When you watched that pre-season game against the Bills, the Bills have been trying to build a Super Bowl team for a decade now. They’re trying hard to get one. They finally got a quarterback that’s like the real deal in there. They got all the pieces to do it. They put Von in there. They think he shits horseshoes or something. He’s good. He knows what he’s doing. He knows how to lead a team. He's learned how to do that. He's learned what it takes to go win championships so he can educate guys. I have a feeling the $120 million they gave him had something to do with him wanting to go there too.
Anyways, Von is hilarious, but we got a new coach here in Denver. It’s going to take a minute to get that going. If they can go out there and make it to the playoffs, that should be considered a great success. If they could get to the playoffs, the next step is to get to the AFC championship. The next step is to get to Super Bowl and win it.
It’s a process. It takes a minute to build a team. They got the quarterback now. Now they got to get all the pieces around him. He’s got a good receiving crew. They’ve got a good secondary. Now they’ve got to build the offense line, defense line, and all that shit. The other thing that goes into building these championship teams is guys have to be willing to take pay cuts to stay in a place. You have to be selfless and take those pay cuts to stay. A lot of guys aren’t willing to do that.
Did they let you retire? Did you lose something?
I bought these new glasses to go fishing. It’s some polarized ones. They were specifically for fishing in shallow water, and I couldn’t find them in my house. I was flipping out. I told my wife, “You throw them away. I know you throw them away.” It’s because she grabs the shit and throws it away all the time. She was like, “I swear I didn’t throw them away.” I was convinced that she threw them away and she sent me a picture. They were right next to my nightstand. I didn’t think to look there.
I lost a pocket knife in my house one time. I’m digging through the couches. It is spring assisted to open. I had young kids at that time. I was like, “If one of those kids finds that knife, it’s going to be bad.” I tore my house apart. Rip the bottom of the couches off the little mesh. My wife was so pissed at me. I was cleaning out a backpack for a tour that we were on because we were going to the Middle East and the drug rules there, you can’t even have Tylenol PM or any of that shit. I was going through that, and it was in my backpack. At the bottom, it was a thin little knife. I had flown with the thing probably 60 times. TSA never caught one time.
Speaking about knives and TSA. When my wife and I first started dating, she lived in Vegas at that time. She was flying back and forth from Vegas. I was taking her to the airport and I was eating in the car while we were going to the airport. We’re eating in the car on the way, and there’s a butter knife in there. For some reason, I tossed the butter knife into her purse. She goes and gets on a plane. She almost missed her flight because there was a butter knife in there. The TSA made a huge deal about this butter knife. She called me and she’s like, “You almost made me miss my flight because of this butter knife. It was funny to me that you’re walking around with this spring-assisted tactical knife and they flip out over a butter knife. It shows you how stupid they are.
It’s so backwards. Honestly, I hate traveling now.
Five minutes before Derek walked in, we were talking about it.
I still have to. Unfortunately, the show isn’t making the money I want it to, but it’s not even about that. It’s about hanging out. I enjoy doing this more than anything. How often do I get to sit down with the Super Bowl champion and have an uninterrupted conversation? This is rad. That’s why I’m doing it. If I could do it full-time, that would be ideal.
It takes time. You keep building.
We continue to build, continue to do this, have a good time with it, and never make it about that. That’s the deal. I still got to go out and take the occasional rock show or whatever. I spent so much time in San Francisco and these big cities. Everybody is like, “It must be so cool.” I want to hermit out in the woods. I don’t want to do any of that.
It’s the same way. I begged my wife all the time, “Can we please move somewhere where there are no people?”
She needs a big ranch or something.
That’s my ten-year plan here. I say ten years because that’s what my wife wants to hear, but it’s a five-year plan. I want to buy a couple of thousand acres somewhere here in Colorado where I can hunt. That’s my spot. That’s where I hunt.
That could turn into a full business too.
You make it so it’s an over-the-counter tag spot and find a unit. The problem is land is so expensive. It’s disgusting.
It was so hard for me to come back here because all the time that I was touring, I was making great money, traveling around the world and being a single guy. I was always watching real estate here. To come back seven years ago or something like that. We left LA. I went to Texas for a year, which was a mistake, but a blessing at the same time. We sold the house there and made gobs of money on it because it was the same thing. Things were growing there. To come back here was a hard pill to swallow to get $500,000 for not that much.
It doesn’t get you anything here anymore.
Not even. Now I’m living in a $1 million house since the pandemic, but I don’t ever intend on leaving here. I’m glad I barely made it back in.
You got in at the right time. It’s probably doubled in equity.
A hundred percent. It easily doubled up here. It has always gone up here, but I remember back in the early 2000s, you could get a nice house here for under $200,000 on a couple of acres.
That’s what everybody says. When I first got drafted in 2012, I had buddies that were like, “You should buy real estate there.” I’m like, “I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m not going to start buying real estate.” I wish I would have because it would have been a great investment. I ended up getting in on some stuff from 2016 to 2017. I started buying some shit up. That's going to pay off here because we're building a house in Cherry Creek right now. That’s disgustingly expensive. It makes me want to throw up when I look at the budget. It’ll be my wife’s dream home.
Derek Wolfe: Bow hunting gives you so much of that adrenaline rush, even if you don't kill something. It’s with an animal that close.
Yours would be a Yellow Stone ranch.
Mine is a ranch where you got to drive for an hour before you see anybody. I get it though. She grew up in Cheyenne. There's nothing up there. No offense to Cheyenne but to her, that's miserable, not to have any access to anything. She lived in Vegas for a little bit. Obviously, you have everything you could ever want at the tip of your fingers. Now she's like, "I don't want to drive 30 minutes to the grocery store. I don't want to have to worry about should I need gas before we drive back. I have to drive 30 minutes to the gas station.” She doesn’t want to do that. To me, that sounds like heaven.
That’s how I envisioned heaven too. The whole reason we live here is because my kids do all this different stuff. They got to go down the hill. My daughter is in this extensive ballet at Colorado Ballet. That’s a full-on thing. This is close enough, 30 minutes or something like that. It’s the best of both worlds up here a little bit. They got some animals moving around.
I’ve tried so hard to get her to move to Evergreen too. She’s like, “No.” I’m like, “You’re crazy. It’s not far from anything.”
It’s about the same distance from Downtown.
Golden is 25 minutes from Downtown. You can get to the Golden quick.
I can be downtown in 35 minutes.
That’s nothing. That’s only ten more minutes than where we are now.
Come on up. Hang out. We’ll go to American Bowman twice a week.
I wish. That would be absolutely incredible. I have a teenager that’s in high school. Once she graduates, maybe we can.
It's hard when the kids are integrated into a school.
I’m not driving all the way down. It’s already a pain in the ass getting her to Cherry Creek now. Let alone if we live another 30 minutes away. The traffic makes me crazy.
Honestly, I don’t ever go to Denver unless I’m going to the airport or I have to go down there for one of the kids or something.
There are people everywhere. Homeless people are everywhere. I was at the Cherry Creek Mall and my truck got broken into. I was like, “Of all places, what the fuck.” In the parking garage too. They didn’t even take anything. It was rummaged through it. They didn’t take anything. I was like, “What is going on here?”
Colorado has changed a bunch. Growing up here, I wish it was still like that. Up here, it still does feel like that. My kids go to the same elementary school that I did and all that stuff. We live a mile from where I actually grew up. It’s a totally different lifestyle. I grew up dirt-ass poor. It’s cool because we have that connection too. My family has been here forever. All my family is here. That connection, being around that is important. This is a great community. We would welcome you guys up here if you ever want to come up.
I’m working on it daily. It’s a daily struggle. Here’s the other thing. The house we’re building is going to be worth a lot more than we’re putting into it.
That could pay for the ranch.
Let’s live here for a couple of years.
It’s the Western slope. I think that that’s probably where I would end up if I didn’t have to travel as much. We might end up over there.
The grand junction area?
Maybe, even more, a little bit towards the divide like Rifles or somewhere in there.
We took that route when we went to Dunton. We drove all the way down there. That was the other thing. She was like, “We should be flying." I was like, "Fuck flying. I don't want to do it. I'll drive for eight hours. I don't care." I hate it. It's such a pain in the ass.
It’s a beautiful drive down there. It’s an incredible, elevated highway and everything. It’s pretty cool.
It’s unreal. It’s beautiful. The change of landscape that you get to, you get that desert field once you start getting over there. It’s wild. Colorado is such a beautiful state.
It's awesome. I'm glad that you stayed here, Derek. Thanks for coming in. Real quick. I know that you're involved with a ton of foundations. You give a lot back to the city. What do you get going on? What's coming up next?
I have a foundation. It’s called the Wolfe Pack Foundation. It’s not tied to just one typical group. A lot of people have one foundation, and it works with one group of underprivileged kids. We do all that. We work with wounded veterans and underprivileged kids. I built my high school back in Ohio. I built them a brand new football field, the indoor facility is going up, a brand new weight room, locker room, and stuff like that. It's a cool deal there.
Right now, I've been watching these extreme rescue shows where the guys are backcountry skiing, and they fall in a crevasse or something and break their leg. They can't get out, they have to come and get airlifted out of there. These guys are incredible. These first responders go in to search. The search and rescue guys are awesome. They do not mess up. They make it happen. They get people out of situations where they should never be alive.
A lot of times, it’s free. A lot of those organizations are nonprofits. It’s super cool.
I was thinking that maybe within the next year or two, I’m doing some fundraising for those first responders and search and rescue guys because those guys are cool. I want to know that if I’m out on a backcountry hunt and I fall and break my leg, I’m not going to be left there. If I hit that end reach, they’re going to be there. I want to know that. I think that’s important.
That’s super awesome. It aligns well with what you’re doing and what we’re doing too. Anything that we can do to help you with our platform.
I need to get in contact with the right people in search and rescue.
We’ve had the guys from Alpine Search and Rescue in a couple of times and talked about some safety stuff, and stuff that you’d don’t think about like don’t send your kid out in a camel jacket and go on a hike. It’s going to be harder to find. It’s simple stuff like that.
Keep some orange on you. Something that is reflecting.
Have a few things in your pack. Have a plan if something happens. The biggest thing is having a plan. They’re awesome organizations. They’re doing all kinds of different stuff. A lot of them are volunteer-based. These are people that are getting off their couch to help somebody.
Those guys are pretty cool. They do some cool stuff. I was watching this one. They go into this cave and they had to do demolition in the cave to get this guy out of there. Imagine that. He had five vertebrae that were broken. This rock fell on him while he was in the cave. They had to blow it apart to get him out of there. I was like, “This is crazy.” It took them nineteen hours to get him out.
Some of the rope access stuff they needed to and the vehicles. I know one thing that was shocking when they had them in, but to no surprise is, a lot of the spots where they’re doing rescue are up in the mountains. I-70 is a parking lot on the weekend. The expense has gone through the roof on rescues now because they have to take a helicopter. It’s either National Guard or Flight For Life stopping and picking them up. How bad asses Flight For Life too. They’re another nonprofit. Basically, it’s a free ride to save your life.
That shit is expensive. If you fire the thing up, it’s expensive. Think about an ambulance ride. How expensive that is. Ten exits. It’s in that the helicopter ride.
That’s crazy. We’re super fortunate here in the State. I think that’s great.
I think it would be fun. I’ve been thinking a lot about what I can do to help these first responders or do something, raise money, and raise awareness for that. The first responder is everywhere. I have a couple of buddies that are firefighters and stuff. One of my buddies, Lane Walter, I don't know if you know who he is, but he lives up in Loveland. He's a firefighter in Denver. He does a lot of filming for hunts. He was a big bow hunter too. His wife was a police officer. He’s a cool dude.
Sounds like we need to get Lane in here.
Derek Wolfe: Some people don't understand what hunting means. They think we’re out there just to kill like we’re some sociopath. We harvest an older bull or elk. Everything we kill is getting eaten. If you don't manage these populations, they come in there and start killing the cubs.
You got to get Lane in here. He's cool. He’s been helping me and pointing me in the right direction as far as where I need to go for the filming and stuff. These firefighters and the shit they got to deal with. He was telling me a story. They’re there for emergencies, not for some teenage girl that has a hangover. She called them. She thinks she’s dying. He gets there, and she has hangover.
Hopefully, she didn’t get a free IV out of it.
She did. He was like, “We had to give her an IV, and she was fine.” I was like, “That’s bullshit. Get it together. The shit they got to deal with on a daily basis, you’re with drug addicts and people that are mentally ill. Anything I could do for the first responders, police officers, firefighters, and search and rescue guys, to me, that’s one big organization.
You should maybe consider one community that doesn’t get a lot of love. It’s a lot of people, and they don’t make a lot of money. There are two. Game Wardens are one. I got an upcoming episode with John Nores. He was battling the cartels and the environmental damage that was happening in California with these illegal grow operations, pesticides, and all this crazy shit. That episode will be coming out soon. That’ll be cool.
He was a super rad guy, but he basically did that for nothing for years. Not much money and they were going in superior gear, but also wildland firefighters. Those hotshot dudes are cutting down trees. How much risk they’re at? All the implications that come after they’re done with their careers. They’re breathing in the shit. They don’t have respirators. They are not your typical firefighters. It’s like, “Here’s your chainsaw and your shit. Go get it done.” They’re making $12 an hour. You can make more money working at McDonald's. It's strictly for passion. Just badass people. They are great people to be around. Any of those military dudes that we’ve had are a big supporter of that. I think you’re on the right track. It’s a dying career too. Who wants to go and do that?
It’s shit money and no benefits. There's definitely something that we can do. We could do silent auctions and archery events. I could draw a crowd of people that don’t even shoot archery to come up there to take pictures. The other thing is on the conservation side of things, I want to bring awareness and educate people on hunting. Like what we talked about earlier. What it does for the actual herd of animals. How important we are to the conservation of these animals. I think they had that Hug 100 Program because of all those trails that these guys are walking on, all the bridges, all the public land, and all that stuff. The search and rescue are paid by that too.
It is. I think there’s a portion that actually says search and rescue.
You pay, but it’s such a small amount.
It’s so worth it. It comes with an insurance policy. It’s pretty cool.
If you fuck up out there, they got your back.
That’s awesome. I love the path. I love that you’re staying in Denver. Thanks for making it up here. We’ll wrap this thing up. Let you get out of here. Anytime you want to come back, you’re always welcome.
Extend the invite and I’ll come up and hang out. Anytime.
Let’s get up to American Bowman too.
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Important Links
Derek Wolfe - Instagram
Tim Wells Grizzly Hunt – YouTube
Wolfe Pack Foundation – Facebook
About Derek Wolfe
Derek Wolfe is a former American football defensive end in the National Football League. He played college football at the University of Cincinnati and was selected 36th overall by the Denver Broncos in the 2012 NFL Draft, playing his first 8 years with them before signing with the Baltimore Ravens in 2020.