#120 Donny Dust - Paleo Tracks Survival
Donny Dust - Primitive Serval Expert, Author, Reality TV Star & Marine Corps Veteran of 12 years of service with an honorable discharge in 2011. He is now a worldwide expert in remote primitive survival, emergency preparedness and ancient/historical technologies. He has taken his time in service and days living among the wild landscapes of the world to offer one-of-a-kind presentations on resiliency, leadership, and communication. No other person has such a diverse background to leverage when providing his one-of-a kind presentations. He has authored books, worked on feature films as a technical consultant, took part in different network television programs, conducted numerous podcasts and radio appearances as well has spoken in front of crowds who traveled far and near to hear him speak. Known as the "Professional Caveman" Donny is nothing but professional, adventurous and creative. Donny runs a successful wilderness self-reliance and survival school called Paleo Tracks Survival, premier survival and wilderness self-reliance school. Tune in as Donny Dust joins Bobby Marshall in studio to discuss, primitive living, primitive tools, archery, hunting, survival, wildlife behavior, bushcraft, Colorado, outdoor life & much more.
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Donny Dust - Paleo Tracks Survival
Our returning guest for this episode is my friend, Donny Dust. He's the Owner and Operator of Paleo Tracks Survival. He's been the star of multiple television survival shows. Donny is a true primitive survivalist, an incredible knapper and much more. Above all that, he's one of my favorite humans to be around. I always enjoy his company. This was a great conversation and I hope you enjoy the episode.
Donny, it's good to see you.
It's been going well. I'm excited to slowly move into the Colorado spring. We'll probably still get some snow here and there but you can feel it in the air when it gets a little bit warmer.
You start seeing those little teeny tiny blades of green underneath the pine needles. It's one of my favorite times of year because coming out of February and January, it's brutally cold sometimes. We've gotten pounded for a while with snow. There's some serious snow in the backcountry.
As I'm looking down on that Boulder side up around the Indian Peaks wilderness, that area, I'm awed.
There is 150% of snow.
That’s what I mean. It's unbelievable. I got to bring a client out and we've been talking back and forth. He's coming from Massachusetts. He's like, “What should I anticipate for snow?” I'm like, “It’s March so you'll find some in shaded areas.” We've been scouting different areas to make sure that it's not post-hole walking the entire time as we're heading out there. It should be a good time.
Do you ever travel with snowshoes or anything like that?
Sometimes. If I'm out doing my thing, I'll bring a pair of snowshoes. If it's me and my dog, Finn, we drag a sled with snowshoes on it. As it gets a little bit deeper depending on where we go, then I'll throw on some shoes. In most classes, that's one of the unique things to build and go over. You can build a quick set of snowshoes out of pine boughs. You could build a longer-styled ski-like snowshoe that will give you some ability to walk on top of the snow instead of walking in it and through it and burn a lot of calories. I brought you some stuff. I always bring stuff.
You're the gift bearer. You brought me a stack of books. I've been hanging onto these because I didn't want to give them all away. That's awesome. I got a good stack over there. It's such a good book too.
I appreciate it. There are plenty of books there. I signed those so hand them out to folks as you see fit. We have some old tools over here. These are some of the smaller points.
The smaller copper axes were the best for chopping compared to stone. But a polished stone used as a large ax head can be just as durable as a piece of copper.
These are some of my most prized possessions.
One is a good goat hide dress. One is a piece of a Georgetown shirt that's shaped in the style of a Solutrean point. The Solutreans originated in France.
You're giving me this?
Yeah. These are all for you. It’s a good conversation piece.
These are beautiful.
That would've been fixed like a large spear shaft where they would've hunted game with it. It’s not necessarily thrown. It's more of a thrusting spear. If they were lighting fires and hurting animals in various regions, that would've been ultimately like a finishing tool or a thrusting spear.
That's so cool. This is stone from right up the road too.
Some of this stuff is from Texas.
That's beautiful. It's almost white. It’s gray on one side. That’s cool.
These are the flakes of that stone. This is a piece of Georgetown. On the exterior side where it's a little bit wider, I call it a close cortex. The cortex is more chalky but if you can keep the underlayer of the cortex on there, it'll keep the stone somewhat white. When you flip it over, it's gray.
It's so badass. It's gray on one side and white on the other. That's beautiful.
This one has some obsidian. This is more like a lower leaf, another large spear point with some of the obsidian flakes. We've had conversations.
This is so cool because this is like a glass almost. It is volcanic glass.
Obsidian is a volcanic glass. That's the cool portion. All of that around its edge, you can see through it. It's super sharp.
You're the fucking man. I don't expect anything from you when you show up. It's not like, “I want some more free stuff.” That is awesome.
Those are some of the flakes. You could open up the game process and about everything and anything with one of these.
The flakes are incredibly sharp.
They’re razor blades.
It's so cool. Even when I'm out archery hunting or a lot of times in South Park, I spent some time out there in the prairie, planes and stuff. I was camping as a kid and stuff. We used to pick up flakes to see if they were actual arrowheads. You could see where somebody would sit there and flake off. There'd be a whole pile of it.
You'd go through it and then you might find one that was partially broken or something. I got to say it. I've picked up a lot of artifacts. Some of them I've left out there. Some of them I kept before I knew any better. I do have a small collection in a non-disclosed place. This is crazy. This craftsmanship is better than some of the original.
I appreciate it.
It's unbelievable. That is so cool. To find something like this in the wilderness, you would be an archeologist besides themselves because they're normally broken.
They’d have broken smaller points.
Do you ever leave anything out there for people to find?
I have played some tricks on some folks and buddies of mine that are archeologists. You'd be like, “Look what I found.” They're like, “No way.” I'm like, “I made it so leave it out there.” I was down on my buddy, Russell. He’s got a large tract of land. I was living out on his property for a week, building some wickiups and smokers and spearing fish with an atlatl.
On Russell’s property and this has all been documented through various archeological groups, students and professors, he has a lot of ancient campsites and midden sites. There are a lot of springs running through the area. There are tons of games. We went out and did a dig. On his property, we were pulling out all sorts of these Pedernales-style points. On his property, he's found bifaces that are not fully finished or work that are 14 or 13 inches long. Some are pretty intense. He's a big-time collector. His daughter is the youngest one that completed the North American Grand Slam for Sheep. I don't know if you heard about her.
I read an article. Was there a write-up on her in Eastman's?
It’s everywhere. She was thirteen when she did it. She did the dhole Rocky Mountain Desert. I can't remember the last one. Her name's Cami Cunningham. Her sister Stormi, which is in sixth grade, is getting ready to do the North American Big 12, like bison, elk and all these different things. They are so some pretty awesome hunters. It's cool knowing those girls when they were young and seeing them progress into that hunting thing. Their dad's property is where I like to go and stay if I'm in the hill country out of Texas or anywhere in that area.
That's so incredible. I want to shine a light that the youth are taking on hunting because I feel like it's a dying thing. I feel like there are a lot of grown men trying to find their masculinity out there. You run into a lot of new hunters and stuff like that. There's a huge connection. You understand it. I understand it. You understand it on a whole different level than I do primitively and stuff. It’s so cool when a kid takes the initiative to do that and has that support there for them. That's why if any kid, any of my son's friends or anything like that shows any interest, I try to take them someplace if it's cool with their parents. I’m like, “Let's go.”
You got to run with it. If it's an interest, why not? Even if you bring them hunting once or twice, whether it is waterfowl or small game and they're like, “I dig this. This is awesome,” then you slowly build from there. Introduce rifles, bows or whatever that weapon of choice might be and see what happens.
It’s such a good connection for an appreciation of life in general. I'm sure other people view it differently. Everybody's different. It was a good life lesson as a kid. It taught me some serious life lessons. Life's fleeting. It's temporary.
It shows the importance of it.
There is some work ethic behind it, some adversity that you face and some emotional stuff that happens to you. Even as a grown man, I still get emotions. It’s a roller coaster. I’m happy, sad and grateful. All those things come into play.
It's a unique thing. Knowing Stormi, Cami and Russell, their dad, those girls have been hunting since they were young. I remember it was 2018. It was me, Russell and Stormi driving around on their property trying to find the right spot to set up a youth rifle for a deer hunt. He's got plenty of acres to do this but it was being part of that early process of them and seeing where it's grown and transitioned.
If you go into Russell's house, I always call it the East Wing of his house. It's a huge place but there's nothing but arrow points, large bifaces and all the different sorts of history that's ornate to his property as well as different areas around the US. He's big on hunting and conservation as well as preserving that past. He identifies it as a form of hunting that's ultimately evolved to where his girls are out there breaking records and appreciating life.
Those two young gals ride horses and muck stables. They’re in high school. They're part of cheerleading. They play guitar and sing. They do so many things where it's not hunting where Russell and his wife say, “What are your interests? Let’s do them all.” It's a great thing to get around Russell and his entire family because they're good people. He's a country boy at its finest but when it comes to hunting and stuff, that's deep within their family history. His dad, Barry, brought Russell on his first dhole hunt. They're doing those same historic lines. I'm like, “That's pretty awesome.” They're good people.
That's so cool that he connects it back to this primitive thing and has an appreciation for that. That's something that's lost with people that are anti-hunting sometimes. I don't think that they realize, “This is how we evolved. We've been doing this since day one. We've been cooking meat since day one.” On a vegan diet, you probably could survive but we wouldn't be the people that we are without the advancements.
Some stone tools date back millions of years ago. Those are large hand axes used by earlier versions of us, like Australopithecus and all these evolutionary phases of ultimately evolving into Homo sapiens and Neanderthals. A couple of different species that did exist were using simple hand tools that were still knapped. They had to understand the process of removing a flake.
They’re like, “We got to sharpen something.”
Exactly. They would see these lines of various cherts and flints and say, “How can we get those out?” With other stones and sticks, they would pry these large cobbles out, break them into pieces and then use those as cutting tools, chopping tools and things to that extent. That process has been part of us all the way up. If we didn't have those things, we might not be who we are. It’s amazing to me.
If we didn’t have stone tools, we might not be what we are today.
We're seeing that advancement in technology. This is the same thing. This was technology millions of years ago. It only gets better. If you look at anything that you modern hunt with, you're talking about high-powered rifles. Even going from this to blacksmithing where they started making steel points was a huge advancement. Each one of these weighs a little bit differently so you have to be good with that specific tool. You have to adjust for that. There are a lot more not flaws because these are beautiful but flaws in actual use for something that is not as strong. If you threw this and it hit a rib bone, it might break.
On my YouTube and various things, I've shot in obsidian point, chert and bone. They all have different ballistics and how they impact things.
Is that when you were doing it into the ballistic gel?
There are a couple with the gel. A gel is not a good medium to replicate the flesh of an animal with high membranes and all that good stuff. It was more about experimenting with that ballistic gel. I did some hog ribs and a couple of different bison experiments. I shot a small obsidian point. It hit a bone and detonated. It turned into this obsidian powder. Obsidians are razor sharp but if you hit a thick rib, it's not going through it. Even if you glance off the rib and break it, you still might get some penetration. It's that process of figuring out.
Something like this might be a little bit stronger, right?
Absolutely. You take some cherts and having thrown them in several different bison, you can hit a rib, cut through the rib and then ricochet off and still make it into the vitals. It's that process of saying, “This stone is razor sharp and great for crafting X, Y and Z but this stone is even better for shooting into an animal through an atlatl or a bow or even thrusting it with the spear.” That's the problem-solving. That's the technology. That's the understanding of different calibers of rounds and grains of arrows. Understanding the stone dynamic allowed people to say, “This works. This doesn't work. This is more suitable for this. This is better for this.”
Paleo Tracks Survival: It’s that process of saying, "This stone is razor-sharp and great for crafting x, y, and z. But this stone is even better for shooting into an animal through an arrow and bow or thrusting it with a spear." That’s the problem-solving and the technology.
It’s almost related to steel. The S35 holds a better edge than the 1080.
It's all those things. When you think about our understanding of metals, we started using copper, bronze and all those things at a very early age but we still relied on stone. It required far more effort to smelt stone and shape it into steel compared to stone. I believe when we were first melting those metals, they were more precious. They were more ornamental. They might be held by a chief or a tribe leader as a sign of power and wealth.
It's like when you get into gold, silver or any of those gems.
Even in the late Neolithic times, there were individuals still shooting arrows with stone points and might have had a copper ax. There were still folks that were using stone drills to drill out holes and maybe had a small amount of copper in different forms for more durability. The ax is probably one of the best small little copper axes that were the best for chopping when you compare it to stone. You could take a stone, put it up against a rock and eventually polish it and get it nice, smooth and flawless. Imagine that with a large ax head. It would take some time but it's as durable as a piece of copper.
The serration also serves a purpose. You brought this up the last time we talked which I thought was super cool. Some people will reach out to you and ask, “Is what you're doing ethical?” Especially from the hunting community, that's a concern. In theory, if this gets into an animal, it's game over. An animal's going to move after you shoot it. I don't care who you are. It's going to go someplace.
I had one elk that happened to where it was grazing. I was like, “What the hell was that?” Still, its torso moved. It spun around and then went back to grazing. It was the perfect pass-through between ribs, right through the hunting spot and right through the heart. I was using a razor-sharp machine to perfect a 100-grain broadhead. Something like this gets in there. As they start running, it keeps serrating and opening up. If anybody has bow hunted or done any primitive hunting, even with a rifle, the telltale sign is following a blood trail. That's how you're going to find your animal. I can see where this would be super effective.
I'm going to do some hog hunting with a neighbor of mine. He's going to be utilizing a lot more rifles. We're going to get some meat up front. We'll use a couple of rifles and take a couple of hogs. Once we've got a decent amount of meat to go in the coolers, then it's going to be me on foot with my bow and atlatl going after various hogs on this 42,000-acre ranch down in Texas. It will be fun.
I've discussed it with him and another guy that's going to be going. I said, “With some of these stone points specifically for the atlatl, I have various styles. The idea, for me, let's say going after hogs, I'm aiming for the lower back half. I'm going for the guts. I'm going for the soft tissue or the soft membrane but one of these will make it through a hog shield. It’s that big layer of fat, cartilage and stuff.”
It's so tough. Their hides are incredibly tough.
I'm like, “You don't have to think in this capacity. If I hit a hog or a big old sow and I rip a chunk of its guts out, it's going to go down pretty darn quick. I’ll follow the guts in the trail and they will be laying.”
You got to go through someplace where you don't have the potential to hit bone.
Why not? When we take ethical modern hunting practices, it’s a clean shot and killers. There is nothing ethical about killing. It’s how quickly something can ultimately die. In the case of hogs, that's how you create ultimately the quickest of kills. When it's shooting it with a bow and stuff like that, I'll have more force behind it. I will create the stone points that are of harder cherts and materials, not necessarily obsidians or something light. You take a 65-pound bow. Keep in mind, you're not 40, 50 or 60 yards away. You're 12 yards or 15 yards away with a 65-pound bow.
That range gap narrows big time. Even when you start getting into traditional bows that are perfectly manufactured with carbon fiber limbs, your range drastically changes.
You pull out all the bells, whistles, training wheels and all these crazy sites. The next thing you know, you have to apply a different aspect of hunting where you have to truly become the hunter and not say, “I'm not going to rely on all this technology to give you my shot. I'm going to rely on myself, what I've trained for and what I've worked for. I’m going to rely on my discipline, shooting and all these different things to get close enough to that game. I’ll then take that shot and go from there.”
For me, when it comes to hunting, that is what I enjoy the most. When I was on Russell's property, I knew these hogs were moving around between 5:45 PM and 6:45 PM every night. You could see where they were moving. There was a water system and then there was a break in the water. The water picked up. That's exactly where they were crossing.
Fortunately, the wind wasn't to my best use, if you will. It was coming from the north. This trail was facing north so there was no way I could get in that line without stirring them off. I looked in. Ultimately, I was like, “This tree looks like a great spot. I got a good line of sight as far as taking a shot. I got a good platform I can get up in.” I went out there and sat. I'm trying to video it and I hate videoing. I'm the most unsuccessful hunter when it comes to videoing stuff because there are too many things trying to hit a camera. There is too much stuff.
We talked about this a couple of episodes ago. A couple of guys that I know are trying to pursue that hunting career with an actual hunting show. It's the stress level. I've blown animals out by drawing my bow. If you have to wait for a camera, get it set up and all that, one little beep could ruin your hunt.
That's my thing. I'm thinking, “Is the red light on the camera throwing it off? What's going on?” I clink my tripod and I'm like, “Son of a gun.” All these things are going through my head. It's not typically how I hunt but I'm like, “We’re going to try and see if we can make this happen.” I'm up in this tree. I can see the hogs run across this field and they hit this tree line. Typically, in the past, they would hit this small little tree line. There was a hill. They would follow the hill around and I was right where they were following the hill. I'm like, “This is where I believe they're going to be going.” There were oak trees and plenty of stuff to grub around on.
They hit that tree line and instead of coming around where I was, they went up over the top. I didn't get the shot. I'm up in a tree but on camera, you can see all these hogs come running across. I was like, “I’ll go to a different area tomorrow.” I jumped down into this ditch and covered myself full of dirt. I was below ground because I was in this little ditch.
The wind changed from a Northwestern direction so I was like, “This might work a little bit better. I need them to commit.” What it did is it put me even closer to the route of travel. I've got one camera that's mounted and another one looking at me. I'm like, “This is dumb,” but I was like, “We’ll go from here.” I had a quiver full of stone points and my atlatl. There was no optics or anything like that. When it's dark, I can't see anything else.
Lights kept going down and they kept feeding underneath this tree. They would not commit to that area. I knew they weren't sanctioning me by any means because they were a few of the smaller ones where they were nosed to the ground. Some of the bigger ones were getting pushed out by some of the other hogs. They were content in that area. I was like, “They don't see the best. They do smell great. Let's see if you can get out.”
As soon as I got out, I could see one white hog. There was this giant white one. I'm like, “That's the only one I could see. What am I doing out here?” Before you know it, it kept getting darker and I was like, “The third night's a charm.” The third night comes around and I build a fire. I spear some fish and I'm eating those fish.
Is this for a TV show?
No, this is for one of my YouTube things. I was like, “Screw this. I'm going to sit here, enjoy this fire and do what I need to do. That's it. I'm not doing anything else. Screw the hogs. I'm not playing the game.” It's one of those things where you're thinking, “Why am I out here?” I wanted to get some meat. I’d love to get it on film but at a certain point, I'm like, “The stress is too high.” I'm not even bothering with it anymore. I'm done with it.
I commend you and other people like Donnie Vincent, which is another Donnie, that are guys that tell the actual story and show the process behind it or trying to show it because you can't capture all that. The Sportsman Channel is some of the worst representations of hunting. They're still cool to watch. I don't want to knock anybody that's on there but you cannot fit that experience into twenty minutes once you start putting commercials and all that stuff in there. Your show, Mud, Sweat & Beards, is amazing. That was an hour, right?
It was 43 minutes or 44 minutes.
You get a little bit more perspective. That show is based around hardship and then success at the end or maybe not even success.
There may be some successes and some failures. It’s reality.
It’s an awesome show. Go check it out if you haven't. Was it on the History Channel?
That was on USA Network. I believe it's streaming on Hulu.
That’s awesome. You and Ray were great in that.
I appreciate it.
It was good with the banter back and forth. Everything was amazing. I'm not going to name any names but there are some good ones out there that try to portray that. Randy Newberg is another good person that is a public land hunter. He is a rifle hunter and stuff but he's not shooting 380-class bulls that are on private land. It's all about the camera shots and that whole thing. YouTube has opened that up where you can have these different perspectives and a little bit longer show. I want to commend you for that, even though you don't feel as connected.
That's honestly why I don't do any photos. Hunting is my thing. It's my time. It's already stressful enough. I'm out there for different reasons. The show is the show. I'm not trying to be successful at hunting. Plus, what I hunt is honestly the first thing that walks in front of me. I'm out there for success. I'm on public land 90% of the time. For me to be holding up a couple of ears, that's not the shot. Nobody cares about that.
I have this conversation with my neighbor, Dan, all the time. He's a retired boulder sheriff. He is a big hunter. He has been all around the world. His mentality along with mine is meat first. That's the whole objective. Even when we go do hogs next month, we’re going with a couple of rifles to put meat in the freezer and then we can experiment with a couple of things.
Meat first. That’s the whole objective of hunting.
He's like, “I'll film it.” I was like, “You can but there are no guarantees on foot in different ways. We'll grab some meat in the fridge and then transition to something else.” I had a conversation with someone about this. I'm like, “You will not find a photo of me holding this or that up. I'll take one but then I'll share it with those that I know that are understanding of it.”
They’re accepting of it. That's my thing. The biggest thing that I wanted to do on this last hog hunting experiment was to show people how to preserve it. That was the whole objective. It wasn't necessarily the hunt. It was the smoker, shelter, fish traps and stuff that I built. That was the whole premise. It was like, “I can come out here. I can build this and do this.”
“I can take fish and feed myself a meal. If I can get a hog, it is the long-term that I can technically live. I can sustain out here for a period of time until that hog runs out. I can supplement it with some other things.” The idea was to take the hog, smoke the hog and show how you can sustain it over a period of time and not go hand-in-mouth. There were turtles, fish and some grains but that's all hand-in-mouth. It's getting by. The hog would signify a long-term stay there. That's what I wanted.
That's another great point that I thought of. A lot of those mainstream hunting shows are only showing the glory. They don't show anything that happens after that. If they do, it's the last 30 seconds of the show. There's a whole process of breakdown, getting the meat out in time and how to care for it. There are all these different things. Meat can spoil. A lot of those shows are guys putting a full quarter on their back and then hiking 300 yards side by side. There's a whole difference. If you're 7 or 8 miles in, you might want to consider boning some stuff out. You're cutting at least 100 pounds. On a cow elk, it’s easily 100 pounds if not more of bone mass.
A lot of mainstream hunting shows are only showing the glory. We don’t show anything that really happens after that.
You’re going to choose cuts at that time and say, “What am I willing to give up? What am I not willing to give up?” Like you and me, it is like, “I don't want to give any of it up. I need to figure out how to bust my ass to get it out of here, hang it in a tree and start preserving it.” Even landing a small fire underneath meat up in a tree is not going to cook it but it will diffuse some of the smell and give you an opportunity to walk out, walk back, walk out and however that plays out. That is a whole other side of hunting that people don't ever see because, on those shows, it's happy snaps. They’re like, “I got it.” It’s a cut scene and then it's in a kitchen frying up something and cooking it. It’s like, “That’s not even the case.”
It's not how it goes down. We've had Colorado Parks and Wildlife probably half a dozen times, which is awesome.
I've seen them all the time. Those are good episodes.
They've been good.
They're educational. I always learn something new anytime one of those officers comes in. I’m like, “I didn’t think about that.”
That's good to hear. It's hard for me because I like to have my freedom. They've asked me not to curse and stuff. I don't like anybody to put any stipulations but I value them and what they're trying to do. I understand it. Those are some good ones. One thing that they ran across in the past couple of years is guys are successful at hunting but then getting the meat out, they come across a ton of wasted meat. You can be cited for it. I don't know the severity of it, if it's a misdemeanor or a felony charge but if you're caught wasting meat, you have to pay.
That's never even been in my mind. I've posted YouTube videos. My dog, Finn, has this strange ability to find the legs of mule deer and elk. Typically, most hunters cut off right below that knee. There's no meat on it. It's bone, a little bit of sinew and some hide. He can find them. He'll run off for 30 minutes, come back and I'll have 2 or 3. I’m like, “You are unbelievable.” I'll sit there and use it. The lower leg of an animal is a great thing. I love them. I pull the hide off and it makes great sheaths. You got the bones for handles. You got sinew and all these different things.
The lower leg of an animal is a great thing. You can pull the hide off to make some great cheese. You've got the bones for handles. You got sinew and different things.
It’s tough as shit.
They always cut them off and throw them off to the side. I've had so many people ask, “How are you capable of finding those things?” I'm like, “1) It's my dog and, 2) Hunters typically don't take those.” There's no meat on it so I understand it but the resources on there for someone like myself are the things that I like to use. When you do come across those things, I see it as a waste but I don't expect everyone to have the same usage of a mule deer or an elk compared to myself and what they need. I believe they’re getting what they need and still sticking within the rules and regs as far as removing as much meat as they can.
The rules and regs don't make you take those.
It should go beyond the steak, the back strap, the chuck and so on.
You should take the whole thing out.
You should be responsible enough to take the whole thing out.
Maybe minus the bells but there is some good organ meat too.
There are the heart, liver and lungs. You can do stomach and tripe. That might take a little bit more but that's where it goes to my philosophy of honoring that hunt. It is your blood origin. With that stuff that's part of that animal, if you don't have a personal use for it, then awesome. There are plenty of hunters that take the game, harvest the meat and then never eat it and wind up giving it away to someone. There are people out there like me that will.
I'll use the intestines. It’s a great source of cordage as well as bow-making if that's your thing. I wish hunters would take an extra fifteen minutes and say, “1) Do I know of anybody that could use this? 2) Can I find a way to use this? 3) Maybe I could educate myself into going a little bit farther into this hunting path and not focus on the trophy but focus on the resource, meat, intestines and hooves.” My dog loves chewing on deer legs and hooves. You cut and boil them out. You can do a million things.
Everybody's got a free friend too. I hear you. Normally, when I shoot a deer or something like that or I harvest one, whatever you kill and whatever you want to say, I get it out. I try to take it out whole so I can utilize all those parts. A lot of those parts, like the sinew and stuff, I’ll cut up, put it in a separate bag and freeze it. Over time, my dog gets a treat. Maybe I'm not trimming the meat and I'm leaving some sinew in bigger chunks as I'm going through the butchering process.
I'll then trim that off and my dog gets a lot of that stuff and is very happy. I feel like I'm not wasting any of it then. That's the one thing. You can go and order this huge tomahawk rib eye. You might put down half of it and not clean the bone. I'll be damned if I've let any elk or deer go to waste. Something that I've packed out, I've seen die, field dressed and that whole process.
You know the story of it.
You’re appreciative of it a bit more. That's made me appreciate my steaks a bit more, whether it's coming from the chart house or wherever. It’s not very often.
That's a good way of doing it generally. People are coming around to that. They're coming into this another evolution of saying, “We have the technological advance to stand 100 yards off and shoot something. How can I go one step further into truly honoring that hunt and going a little bit deeper within that animal? There's more than shooting it. It's all the steps afterward. How can I make it more intense for myself and more important and meaningful to the animal?” We're slowly evolving into that. I hope so.
Another point to bring up is if somebody's new and getting into hunting or something like that, get yourself a couple of good knives. The time that you'll spend in the field with a good knife makes all the difference in the world. If you have a proper boning knife, I'll carry one in my pack for that so it's easier to take that rib meat and stuff like that. When I'm saying you have to take the meat, legally, they require you to take the quarters from the knee up. Would it be a knee? Are that fronts?
Yeah, up to the shoulder blades.
You have to take the quarters, the back straps and the tenderloins. You also have to take the head if it has antlers.
It’s to identify sex. You have to keep the sex on. If it's a male, it would have an antler or antlers. There has to be some identifier of sex.
That's what you're required to do. There's a ton of neck meat and rib meat. There's below the hoof. I don't ever take anything below the hoof but I might. I might call you this season and be like, “What can I do with this?”
There's no meat below that knee. The hoof, you can slide it off, throw it to your dog and they'll chew it up. It's all keratin and different sorts of things.
It's so good for them too.
It's what they're supposed to chew on and eat. Everyone's a little bit different in their hunting path as long as people stick to the rules and regs.
They’re there for a reason.
Pick your poison and go about doing it. For me, it's resources.
I love all these little hacks because I'm a big proponent of using as much as you can and not wasting any of them. I hold their life as valuable as I would anybody walking down the street. It’s not that you can go and hunt people but if you could, why not utilize the most of that person? That's honoring anybody. Afterlife, you want the most utilization of yourself as you can be, whether it's in memories.
After life, you want the most utilization of yourself as you can.
Some of the tools that I use to make some of these stone tools, if it's an antler time, it is like, “I remember shooting that. This thing is making stone tools.” It’s for me to go down a path of experiencing stone tools or living with them or using them. It's a total circle. One creates the other. It's a good time.
I love those little hacks. I'd love to pick your brain on that another time. Do you know Jason the Butcher? He is a local guy that teaches a bunch of Special Forces guys.
I don't know him personally. I've heard of the name in various circles.
He is a cool guy. He teaches a bunch of guys that are active Military guys in certain groups like 10th Mountain. He has done some stuff with the SEALs. He teaches them how to ethically harvest when they're in the field so they’re not eating MREs and the whole butchering process. He's even designed these trailers that they can cook and store meat in. It's a whole thing.
They can take a goat and then don't have to worry about food for X amount of days. It may be a sheep or something like that. There's a whole science behind that too but it is a cool deal. He gave me a little hack. He's like, “Let the meat hang. It develops this dry crust around the outside of it. Hang it as if you were air drying a veal tongue.”
It’s protection.
He’s like, “A lot of guys shave that off and throw it away,” which I used to do. I would cut it off. It’s dry. There's not a whole lot of meat there but he's like, “You can make a stock out of that. It's fucking amazing.” I've started doing that and I'm like, “This is awesome.” I feel like I'm even one step closer to saving as much of that as I can.
Broccoli's always my perfect example. I like the stems of broccoli. Some people will cut that off and eat the little florets but I'm like, “1) You can eat it and, 2) That's what you would boil down for a stock.” Anything that comes from the animal that's meat and bone, all of it you can boil down and make something out of.
I'm in a couple of conversations for some potential TV shows. One of them is with a gentleman by the name of Kiran. He was on a Netflix show. It was called Chefs vs. Wild where one amateur chef teamed up with an amateur survivalist. They went out, harvested all this food, came back and had to create this meal. It’s all-wood fired and very natural. He was the host of it.
He is a big-time chef. He lives in Africa. He and I have been chatting about a show where he and I go out. He’s also a hunter and a forger. He is a big-time spearfish man. We go out and take some game with the right resources and then he does this immaculate stuff to the meat. I'm like, “We can't go too far in this because usually, my cooking something is fish, stick and fire and I'm eating.” For him, it goes to a whole other level.
I'm like, “I like the idea of the show because it shows people you can go above and beyond. With all of the things that you could season, preserve and intensify your palate through some sort of meal can come from the natural environment.” It'd be a combination of those things of us traveling the world, spearing fish, hunting game, doing all these things and then presenting this beautiful meal at the end with everything that's come from the land.
People eat up survival shows and cooking shows.
Cooking shows are my favorite.
It’s a perfect combination.
I love a Gordon Ramsay episode because of how he approaches folks. He is a master of his craft. I'm like, “That looks pretty good.” Talking with Kiran, he grew up in Africa. His dad and mom did certain things but he was a chef. He goes, “I even remember going out with my folks, foraging food and catching our stuff pretty routinely. Even that's changed.”
He lives in Kenya. He goes, “That's not always the case but something that I've established over time was resourcing land. I'm not the best hunter. I do hunt but it is the ability to show people that you shoot a mule deer and these are the things we can get from the environment. This is how the mule can be presented.” It would take that concept of if there's a little crust on your meat after it's hanging that's a good thing. It's going to give it a little natural preservation.
It will give a little natural salt.
We can go above and beyond aside from saying, “I'm going to bring it to the butcher. The butcher's going to do all of his fine cuts and cleaning. He's going to keep all that extra stuff and turn it into sausage for $12.99 a pound.” People could learn from it.
That’s wild. Some of the science, if I'm remembering correctly, is that crust, what happens scientifically is there is salt in everything living thing. It's a scab so to dry itself out, it starts to pull the salt toward the outside of the meat to make a shell. If it's dried blood, it has more salt content in it. He is like, “That's why it makes an incredible stock.”
It makes sense when you think about it. It is meat hanging from a tree and gravity pulls it out. If there's no more pumping of blood or any muscular manipulation in the heart on behalf of the animal, it's got to go somewhere. It's like a sap in a tree. If you knock into a tree, the sap runs to it to fill it up. I'm going to have to do that. Even when you think of that, our grandparents and great-grandparents, that's what they would do to preserve food. They would do it in a colder environment or a dryer environment. That's how they would preserve foods. They would always hang meats.
There are always those iconic pictures in the history books. They build scabs, smokers and that sort of thing in your dried meats. That's one reason why I like veal tongue so much. You introduced me to that. It has been life-changing for me, being on this carnivore kick that I've been on because I can have a snack. It’s a luxury. It’s so rad.
It’s way better than jerky too. Unless you're making your own, the jerky you would buy is all stuff.
It’s chemicals.
It’s not good. A veal tongue that is air-dried is the best. Speaking of that, I'm going to try one of these Jocko GOs.
Give it a shot. They've been good. I'm addicted to the fucking things. They can't send them to me fast enough. I'm always hitting them up like, “We're out again.” They're like, “How many of these are you doing?” It's got a little caffeine in it and a bunch of vitamins. It’s paleo and keto-friendly and all that good stuff. It's a good little shot.
I'm so pumped about this. Our guests are going to freak out too. Anytime anybody walks in here and sits down at this table, the things are right in front of them. They start picking shit up. They're like, “These coins are cool. These arrowheads, where'd you find these?” I'm like, “I didn't find them. My buddy Donny made them.” It's so cool. These are next level right here.
It's the evolution of stone tools. Even as you look at these, you could even say all of these flakes are your first simple tools. You start going into some of these bigger ones that are more knives and spears and then it transitions into something more projectile-based. Even as they’re there, multiple technologies are sitting on these goat hides.
When it comes to some of the scientific stuff that you've done with these, like working with some universities and that sort of thing, we talked about you throwing some gel, atlatls and stuff. You've done some bison stuff. When you're working with some of these universities, professors or scientists, what are they having you do? Are they having you like, “We want you here to knap out points and throw these projectiles because you have the most experience of it?” Are they asking you to recreate stone tools that were to mimic a certain period?
It’s all of those. There's a gentleman by the name of Dr. Devin Pettigrew. His focus is ancient hunting weapons, specifically the atlatl and the bow. He can knap some stones. Long story short, I did a podcast called The Life and Ruins Podcast, which is all about archeologists. I always call it them nerding out and doing all this technical talk. They're like, “How would you do this?” I'm like, “I would make the stone tool and then kill the animal.” They're like, “How does that work?” I'm like, “It’s very simple.” It puts some of their things into reality.
From that, they had done a couple of experiments where they were throwing some atlatls into a pig or a goat. I don't think they were getting the results they needed because it wasn't something that they normally did through an atlatl. Dr. Devin Pettigrew has done it before but he's running the experiment so he needed to focus on other things. Through that relationship, I started making them some points. I started throwing them some atlatl and getting them the results they want. After throwing an atlatl for so many years, there's a degree of more penetration. There's a lot of direct science instead of you throwing it and hitting it where you're like, “That was a great shot,” but can you replicate that again?
There are guys out there like Tom Brady that can throw the football 80 to 100 yards maybe even and then there are guys out there that can throw 30 yards like me.
For the sciences, it's the repetition of being able to perform that thing consistently. In the past couple of experiments, I've made a lot of points. I've thrown the darts into the bison, the goats and various things to create the different data sets they're looking for. Some of the data sets are specifically about the terminal ballistics, velocity, kinetic energy and all this nerdery as I call it. I don't understand it to their level. All I know is when I throw an atlatl and it goes through the bison, they're all like, “Finally.” I'm like, “Was that okay?” They're like, “Yeah. That works.” I get excited.
It will be cool to go back and learn some of the science behind what you're doing though too.
That's where I get another juice that is worth a squeeze because I get to learn some of the technicalities of it. All of the knapping and stuff that I've learned has been on my own through trial and error and reading a few books. If you ever read an archeological paper and archeologists will admit to this 100%, it's hard for them to communicate a common language of concepts to people.
They can understand it within their channels but if you want to reach a broader audience and have them genuinely understand some of these things, you have to find a way to employ some interpersonal skills but effective communication that average folks can understand. Instead of saying, “The terminal ballistics and velocity of this,” it’s like, “How far it goes into the animal.” It is a lot. It’s easier to understand.
I've learned quite a bit. As it has progressed, specifically with Devin, it's making specific styles of points, Clovis points, fluted, unfluted, Pedernales style, Cahokia and different points. I make some points in this future bison experiment we're doing. I reached out to some other knapper friends that I have to say, “You can make 100 points and then put it on a shelf and never let it go anywhere or you can make some points and send them to me. We'll haft them up and throw them into a bison. You can also see how effective your points are based on their design, the stones you use and so on.”
You're critiquing your work at that point too.
Somebody will hold up a point and be like, “This is a killer.” I'm like, “Let me put it on a foreshaft, throw it into something and we'll see how much of a killer it is.” If there's a flaw in it or you knapped the blade and it's too thin in the middle, that's a weak point. There are a lot of things that can go wrong. I reached out to a couple of them and said, “Send me 5 or 6 points. We'll haft them and throw them.”
That's ultimately what we're going to be doing. When it comes to the atlatl and throwing, there is for Devin to do all of his science. I'm on a larger or a higher ability to throw with more kinetic energy showing a capability that is way above the normal. If you take the average paleo and their hunting abilities, they were specialized hunters for megafauna. It's awesome when you think about it.
That is crazy trying to throw a spear into a mammoth or one of those oxen.
It’s doable. You're probably with a group of guys keying in on a big bowl or something slow or weak. Being able to do it is pretty amazing. There is plenty of archeological evidence that supports that not necessarily as a theory but as a ground truth. What I can do for Devin is take somebody that's 40 years old, grew up in paleo and that is something they do. It’s like us driving a car, which sounds horrible to say. You know what to do. I'm able to replicate that degree of learning, time and longevity as somebody would have as being able to replicate somebody from the past as far as their throwing, the penetration, the accuracy and all these different things.
How long have you been at this? It shows in your work. It’s at least twenty years, right?
Yeah. I've been knapping stone for a while and the whole survival and living remotely. That has always been a thing. Even in the military, it was one of those things you got to learn from.
You were knapping in while you were in the military and deployed?
Not deployed. The stone started when I was stationed in Hawaii because there were different stones there and then when I was in Southern California. You start to experience and see things but there wasn't any direct knapping. I wasn't making something to go do something. I was experimenting with popping a flake off, cutting some yucca and seeing how I could shape it. There was an evolution to it as well. Once I started getting into knapping for the pursuits of ultimately living, it was the early 2000s and that time span. I've been at it for a while.
You’ve been at it for many years. That's awesome.
Getting the opportunity to work with different archeologists and folks like that is fun to see. Especially when you make a Clovis point and give it a throw and it kicks through the ribs of a bison, breaks one of the ribs or cuts through the side of the rib, hits the heart and comes out the other side, maybe 2 feet, you’re like, “That's a kill shot.”
I say, “Imagine if there were 500 of these things all masked together. You could give it a honking and let it go. Imagine if there were ten of you going after a bison. You could do a lot of different things.” Hunting and throwing an atlatl specifically with some of the stone tools can be a little nerve-wracking. If you make a stone point and miss it, the probability of it breaking is high.
They're so big, right?
Yeah. This is a good representation of an atlatl point. These would be more thrusting. This one, I would halt into a foreshaft because that's got a huge cutting edge. It has lots of lacerations and trauma. Everyone had their styles and unique points. There are so many different styles of points that some were hafted on arrows or atlatls. Later, they were broken and then reduced to go on arrows. It's cool to see and live that experience and then say, “This is what we did.”
I had a little bit of education that I got as a kid. My grandfather was a huge arrowhead hunter and stuff like that. That's where my passion right on fell in for it. He had found some that have a blood groove in them. That's like a little canoe.
That's called fluting. Typically, that's where you would create that groove so then you can make a thinner hafting point. It’s an easier transition so when the stone goes in, you're not catching wood. It sits down into the stone so it's even smoother.
They were thinking about aerodynamics back then.
You think about it like, “We're going after this animal. It's a large game. It's hard to bring down. We need to make sure our stuff is flawless. We need the easiest transition from atlatl, foreshaft or stone to an arrow.” It’s trial and error. You have hundreds of thousands of years to figure it out.
If you’re going after an animal, a large game that’s hard to bring down, you need to make sure your tools are flawless.
This is your job. That was your gig.
I have no other responsibility. I go out, hunt and come back. I dig it.
Is that your connection back into it? We've talked about this before. I read a post of yours and it was super cool. It was like, “Checking in at the front desk,” or something. It was almost like a half-cave. It was a super cool spot with an incredible view. It was you and your dog. I can't remember exactly what you said but it was so cool.
I was out between the border of Colorado and Utah. There are these canyons and stuff and not a lot of people go there. We went there. Pretty much, the post was like, “I'm checking in,” and it was a rock overhanging. We made a fire. We built some traps to catch some pack rats to eat for dinner. We were out there. At that particular time, there weren't any springs or anything. Part of that day was finding a muddy, murky stream that was full of silt. That night, it froze. We break some of the ice, put it in a Shemagh and let it drip into a Gourd water bottle I was drinking from. I found a little pocket of snow.
What is the Shemagh?
A Shemagh is one of those Middle Eastern scarves.
It's a filtering process like a cheesecloth.
The water wasn’t 100% clean but I knew the frozen water on the top would have far fewer sediments because they would've settled. It wasn't moving so that would freeze. If I'd pull that ice off, throw it in the Shemagh, hang it in the sun and then put my Gourd water bottle underneath it. It would melt throughout the day. I found a little pocket of shade that had some snow in there, scooped that up and put it in my dog's wooden bowl. It melted. That's how we got our water those days. That was all we were worried about. It was water.
Water is key. That’s something that I could do better on in the backcountry. I carry this little pump thing that filters it and then the iodine tablets and stuff. What are you doing out there?
The best system I've come across is called GRAYL. I should have brought it.
It's an actual water bottle.
What you do is pull off the bottom, scoop up the water and put the system back in it. It's a press. You press down into it. It filters through the bottom and then you drink. They have plastic ones but then they have a different one that's an aluminum base so you can boil water in it. You can filter water and boil water. There are lots of use for it. They sent me a couple.
Are they a sponsor of yours?
No. They’re just a good product.
They should be.
I'm always happy to promote good stuff, especially for anyone that's going to the backcountry, hunters or whatever the case may be. This is the system that I carry. If I'm bringing any clients into the bush, I used to bring Sawyers and all these different pumps and stuff like this. This is the easiest and quickest way that I could potentially rehydrate somebody if they were feeling sick because of dehydration or whatever the case. Scoop up the water, put it on top, press, unscrew and drink. It's awesome. I'm not going to lie.
I'm going to have to check that out. I forget what the pump is. It's an MSR, Mountain Safety Research pump. It's badass. It's cool because I've been traveling with a water bladder. It's a 3-liter that fits in my pack. I drink a lot of fucking water. How much are you consuming out there to keep hydrated?
I don't keep track.
I overhydrate most of the time.
Are you peeing clear?
Yeah.
That's hyponatremia. That's when you start to flush the salts and the minerals from the body. You always want to have a little bit of yellow in your urine. If you're going clear, it's too much.
Hyponatremia occurs when you start to flush the salts and minerals from the body. You always want to have a little bit of yellow in your urine. If you’re going clear, you’re hydrating too much.
It's hard for me to tell too because I take a lot of multivitamins.
It comes out pink or orange. If you're at an elevation of 10,000 feet, you’re up there. Something is going to impact you by being dry, windy and sun exposure. I don't want to say you want to pound water but you should be drinking water probably every 30 minutes. It’s not 8 ounces but you should be having a source of water that you're continuously drinking. Sometimes, when I start to get a headache, that's the easiest way to tell when I need water.
Cramping maybe too.
If you start cramping, you're dehydrated. What I stress to most clients is that being hydrated before you go out is important. You don't want to wake up and be in pain.
Don't go drinking all night and roll into elk camp.
Maintain good hydration and nutrition prior to it. When you're out there, it's supplementing the water. It’s drinking every 15 to 30 minutes a couple of mouthfuls of water. If you start to feel thirsty, then you are thirsty. If someone's hiking, they're like, “I could use something to drink.” If you got to think of water, then you stop and drink. It's that continuous process.
Pay attention to your body.
If you're around a camp and hanging around camp, you might not be exerting as much energy compared to hiking up a fourteen area where you started.
Maybe I'm overhydrating because of that bladder because it's so convenient. It's got a little straw that hooks onto one of the shoulder pads or the straps of the backpack. You put it in your mouth. You can do it at any time.
They are convenient. I got away from the CamelBaks, bladders and stuff.
You can't boil it over a fire though.
You could pop it. There are a lot of things that could go wrong but it's like this cartridge that you have.
I’m always carrying a Nalgene bottle with me though as well for that.
Nalgene is a great bottle. I carry a single-walled steel water bottle. I can carry water. I can boil water. I can collect water. That's what I carry.
It’s nothing with any insulation. You don't want to throw your Yeti.
Single-walled is the best way to go. For rehydration for folks, I'm bringing out what is by far the best system.
I would imagine some of those stainless steel water bottles and stuff probably have some coating on them. You don’t want to be inhaling toxic fumes or drinking.
Some of them are painted and have little logos on them. Mine is I can't remember the brand but it's single-walled with a black top. I put a little piece of leather on it to carry it and that's it. You can throw it in a fire. You can hang it over. You can do a lot of different things with it. It’s a little pot or bottle. Once you get the water, you want to drink it but you also have to find a way to carry it. If you can have a fresh source of water over here and know that you got to walk a day and a half that way, it's like, “I want to carry some water with me. Do I want to have it in this or do I want to have it in a liter bottle?” That’s what I want.
That’s super important. That's a good hack though. I'm going to pick one of those up.
They have a system. When I bring folks out, I have typically my truck, which has my full trauma kit, some radios and a lot of extra stuff in the event that something was to happen. What I carry with me in my pack is a small butt pack with an emergency blanket and some rehydration tabs. One of these GRAYLs attaches the butt pack. I have an extra blade, some fire-making stuff and then lifesavers or candy. Sometimes, people need a little bit of sugar and salt. I then have a small first aid kit for cutting abrasions and things like that. That is to address any minor incident with immediate concern.
The trauma kit, all the medical stuff and all those extras remain in my truck. Once we walk away, I carry a small little system ultimately to sustain whatever kind of issue we could come across and carry on with the training. If it's something major, we treat it at triage. If I got to go back to the truck for the radio or whatever the case may be, I go back out. That's money right there.
I was on a military base. It was at Luke Air Force Base. We were doing a show there. Where we were staging all the gear, we were building on the runway. It was so badass. The base was still active while we were doing it. They were launching F-16s. You couldn't do shit. We were on the flight line. We went into this whole military briefing beforehand.
It was at 6:00 AM and there was some general or colonel on the base. I got all these local labor roadie stagehands with dreadlocks and shit out in the middle of Arizona. I’m like, “I didn't sign up for this shit.” They were telling us, “This is an active flight line. If you cross the double yellow line, there are snipers. They can shoot you so don't fucking cross this line.” They got the whole laser pointer and overhead drone shot or Google Earth up explaining all this stuff to us at 6:00 AM. These guys haven't even had coffee or are probably hung over and shit.
That was interesting in its own right. We would be building these structures because they were going to have an air show there. It was the 60th anniversary of the Air Force. It was so cool because I got so many of these challenge coins. I have a whole other collection at home from being on all those bases and meeting so many badass people.
Where we were storing our equipment and some of the electronic equipment, they gave us a hangar. It was for F-16s but they had cleared it out or cleared the planes out of it so we could store stuff in there. When you walk into the bathroom and stand at the urinal, there's a color chart. It tells you, “You can't fly. This is a no-fly. You're good.” I don't know if these guys have to take a picture of their pees and then show it like, “My stream's good before I get in this million-dollar jet.”
Those are the pee charts. They're up everywhere at every military. You take a pee and look down. You're like, “It's yellow. I need three glasses of water.” It’s that reminder to always stay hydrated.
I didn't read the chart because I was like, “The clearer, the better. You're hydrated.” That was good shit though. That was super fun. I got to go to some pretty badass spots. We went to Luke and Andrews. I'm trying to remember the other one we did. What's the one in Vegas? That was cool because there are military aircraft that come from around the world and descend right there so they can cross-train. You'll see Iranian planes and all kinds of weird shit. For that air show, they would do pyrotechnics. They would have an old B-52 Bomber and then they would have this pyro going off like it was dropping. That was not quite like the real thing but it was still pretty cool. It was super fun.
If you're in Vegas, I encourage you to go out to the NASCAR track. I'm not a NASCAR fan. There is a racetrack. It's either Formula 1 or NASCAR. It's right near that base. I can't remember the name of the base but it's so cool. You can drive out there and watch. They're launching planes all day long. You'll see F-22s and F-35s. They fly a lot of aircraft out of there. It’s cool watching them. I've always had an appreciation for watching those machines and knowing what those trips are like.
Flying a Mach 1 and turning it on down is cool.
My buddy Andy is out by Miramar which owns Half Face Blades. There are always jets flying by out there. One of my favorite places to hang out on the beach is Coronado.
You see it all out there.
It’s beautiful. There's a Black Hawk every five minutes or Chinook or something going by. It's pretty cool.
When I was stationed in Kaneohe Bay in Hawaii, there are birds like CH-53s, 46s and all sorts of stuff flying all around. You could be sitting on the beach and it comes over. You’re like, “Oh my God.” It’s cool.
It's crazy because some of the people in the San Diego area are pissed off about it. It's like people that are pissed off about elk that live up here. It's the same correlation. I don't understand. I don't get it. I have an appreciation for it. It's cool to see.
I dig it. I always think, “If you don't like the thing that brings people to your town for tourists so your businesses can run, you might be in the wrong.” When I was driving in here, there were probably 40 elk crossing the roads. Some would cross somewhere around the other side. I was looking like, “None of them are hit so I can't pull over.” I was looking and was like, “Are there any sheds?” It looked like they were all slick. I’m like, “There are 40. There has got to be a bull in there somewhere.” I'm like, “We're almost at that shed hunting season.”
The bulls move out. They're here. It's crazy. They show up on August 29th and the opening of archery is on September 2nd. They leave around the third rifle. They're so smart. They turn into golfers. They’re like, “We're golfing the rest of the time.”
Older bulls and younger bulls will drop them. The big studs usually keep them around. I always look for those two circles on the top of the head. I was looking and I couldn't see because I was driving. I was like, “You should probably focus on the road.” As soon as I start seeing those fleshy little spots, I'm like, “They're starting to drop.” That's when you can snag them up. People probably come up here to see the elk and then they go eat at Beau Jo's and these different restaurants. You should support that.
When people come up to your place to see the elk and then go to eat at the different restaurants, you should support that.
It's crazy. This is the only place that I’ve seen this. It was maybe Estes Park where the caution signs on the side of the highway, there are so many elk. It's an actual elk. It's not the deer jumping. It's an actual bull. It’s a 330.
That's when you know you're in the right town. That's cool.
What have you been up to? We dove into this and went down some rabbit holes. You got done with Mud, Sweat & Beards. Is that going to come back for a second season?
No. It's not going to come back. I'm not upset that it's not coming back. It was fun shooting it. We had an idea of how we wanted to go about doing it but how it was edited and ultimately presented was not what I was envisioning in certain ways. It was still fun to shoot. There were no real major complaints. Pretty much, 2022 has been writing the 3rd book, which is different from the 1st two. For the third book, long story short, Simon & Schuster, which is a publishing company, reached out. They said, “We'd like to do a book with you. Are you open to that?” I said, “Absolutely.”
We figured out some left and right lateral limits and then spent the time working on the book. There was a gentleman I was working with on the book. His name is Gary. He lives up here in Evergreen. One of the contract things was like, “We know you can write but we would like to get somebody to help you write.” It was like, “You're not the biggest idiot but you are an idiot.” I did a lot with Gary by sending in materials and back and forth. He was a college professor and an editor. Books are his thing. They were like, “We want to give you that mentor,” and I was happy to have that.
It's cool. It's somebody in your back pocket.
This one is more survival stuff with some philosophies. There are ways to build traps, shelters, forage foods and things that you can identify to eat, like mushrooms. It's more of a survival manual. The goal is for someone to be able to take it out and then bring it into the bush with them and apply the stuff that's on the inside.
There are a lot of survival manuals out there that don't provide a lot of context on certain things. They're like, “This is the shelter you need to build.” That’s not my approach. I'm like, “Every situation and environment, every minute, there are varying degrees of consideration. This is what you should consider when building a shelter.”
It's on the fly. It depends on your environment, what's happening and what's available. There are so many things.
That’s the idea. I wanted to give a book that shows a way, not necessarily the way. I have been working on that. I handed in the manuscript on March 1st, 2023 which was the deadline. I got to work with an illustrator to illustrate specific components of it. There was talk about it potentially being ready to go on Father's Day 2023 or it could be Father's Day 2024.
I'm not 100% sure. As soon as I handed it in, editors and copyright people are starting to go over it because it's going to be 300-some pages. There will be a lot of illustrations but not these cheesy illustrations. I'm hiring a real illustrator that does a specific style. The pages will be crafted in a way that will be built for the outdoors. It's that manual.
The idea is you don't have to have a background in hunting, survival or primitive skills. Anybody could pick up this book and then bring it into the bush and have some baseline concepts to say, “How could I keep myself safe? How could I keep my family safe? How could I go about finding a meal? How could I do this or that?”
It’s more of a manual than a storybook.
There are stories in there. There are a couple but there's more knowledge to it. It’s more, “This is how you can develop certain skills.” For the title, we're still bouncing around a couple of titles here and there. There are a few butting heads.
You got to keep me posted. We can do another episode to help promote it once it's out. It’s super rad.
I will.
I'd be glad to purchase a copy whenever it's available.
I appreciate it.
That's awesome. You got to stop hooking me up. I don't expect any of that but it's super rad.
It's about giving. You gave me a Jocko. I never would've had one.
We'll send you home with some coffee or some of this other stuff that we have in here. I have a bunch of stuff I've been trying to get made for the show. It's on the back burner.
Wall stuff or pops?
No. It’s some swag, like some t-shirts, hats and stuff. I get a bunch of these challenge coins so I wanted to get a coin made. You know being a Veteran and having that experience to have a challenge coin. It would be cool to have one that was the name of the show because we have so many people on.
Get some wood and cut them into wooden coins. You can get those brands and burn them on there. To me, that speaks of earthy man wood.
It’s not these polished high-produced things but these are cool. These are so fucking rad. I love these things. We're super fortunate. I'm a big supporter of veterans in the military, whether they’re on active duty or non-active. First responders are huge. Not all people in every community are good. I'm sure there are some survival guys out there. They’re not all Donny Dust. We've had a few of them reach out to us too and I'm like, “We’ll pass.” That's been the hardest part of this.
I feel honored. This is something that you can't go down to the storm bond. These arrowheads are right up there. That’s my stuff. When I leave the studio for a certain amount of time, everything gets a little shoebox and a lockbox. It gets procured. If anybody breaks in, they can have the mics and all this bullshit that I can replace but this stuff is irreplaceable. It’s so cool.
When you were doing some of these bison experiments, we dove in pretty deep last time in the first one. There was a whole field dressing process where you process the whole bison with these stone tools and stuff. With the second experiment, was it very similar to that or were you guys learning something new?
First off, if you ever process a bison, you want to do it on the ground. It’s way easier. For the first one, we did it on the ground with lots of stone tools. There were certain points where I had no shirt but had shorts on and covered in blood and I'm like, “This is the best day ever,” because it's a whole different experience. For the second one, due to the location where we were, they put it up on this weird forklift tractor thing and hung it upside down. I don't like doing something that large. A deer is one thing but something that large, processing it open with some stone tools. I was using stone tools and then two archeologists were part of this, which were Dr. Devin Pettigrew and then another guy by the name of Justin.
Is he out of CU Boulder?
Yeah. You should have him up here.
We talked about him the last time but I spaced out. I'd love to have him.
He's good to go. He’ll walk in here and be like, “These are all Donny’s.”
He can identify.
He is pretty awesome. For this third bison, one of the things I'm going to be doing for YouTube is I'm going to be building a complete stone tool butchering set from the hand axis to get into the bones. Sometimes, when you break into bones, you want to show how you can get into the marrow. I want to demonstrate how to do that, how to use something like a discoidal flake to get into the hide and then use something backside of it to start peeling off different membranes but fully butchering it out.
Would it go as far as scraping the hide and stuff too?
Yes. We take the hide and then by using those same tools, re-crafting them into scraping hide with some scrapers and hafted scrapers. Doing it the first time, I wasn't involved in filming. In the second one. I tried to capture as much as I could but there were only four of us up there during that. It was myself, my girlfriend, Devin and this guy. With 4 people throwing 100-plus atlatls, writing down the data and taking measurements, there's a lot of work to go around.
When it came down to the butchering, we were like, “We've been out here for six hours doing this. Now, we got to butcher it out.” You do not necessarily miss the research points but you speed through certain things. I don't like to speed through things. I want to get into it. In the first bison we did, there were plenty of extra hands there. When it came to the butchering, not a lot of folks were getting involved because it was like, “It smells.” I was like, “Let me in there.”
For this next one, I'm going to bring my boys up. They helped butcher the last bison once I brought it home. We set up the big table. My oldest boy and I were cleaning it all out. The youngest one was running the meat into the side and my girlfriend on the inside was vacuum sealing it, marking it all and then putting it into the freezer. There was a whole process involved.
You get some meat out of it. That's huge.
There’s plenty of meat, which is all gone because when I cook, let’s say, steak some rice and broccoli, my boys will eat 4 to 5 pounds of it. It's the worst. It's great that they have the ability to eat that much but I'm like, “I shot six geese this past year and a bunch of ducks. What's going on? Why aren't we eating that?” They're like, “Let's get to the meat and then we'll go to the fowl.” It's everything.
It's the same with my kids. If I let them go through the deer or elk, it'll be gone like that because they have a new appreciation for steak and a lot of it.
This third go-around with some bison stuff, I was chatting with Devin. I said, “It should all be stone tools.” For the last bison we did, I was more focused on some of the stone tools. They were using some steel blades. I’m like, “I want the bison on the ground. I want it on its side. I'll split down the spine, peel it off this way and create that skin flap on the ground.” We’ll throw the meat on there. We’ll clear out one side and the guts pull out the other. We're going to get into a lot more detail and capture the butchering process. I’ve seen MeatEater do a bison.
They did it with stone tools though.
They did it with some stone tools but what they were doing wasn't making any practical sense. They were using a style of hand acts that wouldn't be used by Paleo-Indians that were hunting bison antiquus or even some of the larger bison. They could've but if you have a specialized skill to make blades, you're not going to be using large Acheulean and hand act styles. You might pick up a stone and crack the bone, presenting a certain breakage scar on that bone. There was a jumping around of different things.
It's going back to some of the blades and stuff that I carry to go through a sternum. I've seen guys pull out a bone saw and stuff. I'm like, “You don't need that.”
It's a sternum. You can get through it. There were some inaccuracies that I've seen that I think, “One of the things I want to do on this bison is to represent a variety of stone tools in the forms of a discoidal flake, blades, some saws and axes and say, “This is how this was used for something large.” With a rabbit, I can bite the back of the neck and pull the skin off. You can do it with your fingers. For something large, this is the greatest opportunity to present that methodology, those techniques and so on. That's my goal along with putting a lot of darts through there, getting the data and testing all the different points.
Can I come up and watch it? I won’t get in the way.
If you want to come and help, you can. The last time we did it, we didn't bring a tent. It was horrible. We were standing out in the sun all day and burned. As I'm chatting with Devin, my boys and my girlfriend, I’m like, “When we go up this time, we're bringing a cooler not just for meat but for drinks. I'm going to wear a hat and shield my face because one side of my face was burnt.” It was rough. You learn each time you do it and this next go-round, it's like, “We need support personnel like someone to take data and someone to hit record on this one camera.”
There are slow-motion cameras, speed radars and all these different science-y things going on. I’ll then throw it. Other people will throw as well because there are a couple of different styles of darts. One dart is close to 800 grains. It's huge. Throwing points like this, some people can't throw it because it's not in their motion. There's a style of a dart that is like a basket maker pint style. It's tiny. I can't throw it because it doesn't work with my ergonomics.
It takes a person of smaller stature maybe and mechanics. We dove into this. For people that are reading this and didn't go back and read some of your prior episodes, which I'm going to drop because it's a must, we lost that one recording that one time.
That was two hours.
That sucked. It was so good. We have battery backups and all that shit. The worst that might happen is we might lose some video. You were 20 and 40.
90.
There's that one. That is crazy.
This is number four? We did 20, 40 and 90.
You got a bunch of new stuff. This is super cool that you're doing this on YouTube because you can do it your way. You don't have an executive producer. YouTube has turned into this whole thing where comedians are releasing their comedy specials on them.
That's where I've gotten the idea. All these future experiments with some of the bison are going to solidify. Devin has done a lot of work. There have been other tests to see if stone points could have been used to kill megafauna, bison antiquus, ground sloths and all that sort of stuff. The other researchers would take a clay pot, hang it from a stand, throw an atlatl at it, hit it with a stone point and it would break.
They'd be like, “These stone points weren't effective against a large game.” It's like, “How are you even using it?” It's the worst testing. It was a non-fire clay pot. It’s horrible testing mechanics. That's why Devin said, “We're going to do this.” We've even looked into trying to get elephants. In Africa, they've done some similar tests with elephants many years ago.
Have you heard anything? I don't know if this is true. I heard it on another podcast. It might have been Rogan or one of those but they are genetically cloning mammoths. I was like, “Donny needs a trip up there.”
I would do it.
It’s in Russia, right?
Yeah. They have a chunk of land. There are multiple reasons why they’re doing it. One of the reasons is without large megafauna trampling down the permafrost, it's intensifying global warming and all this mass.
Without large megafauna trampling down the permafrost, it’s intensifying global warming.
It's a carbon-neutral type of thing.
They're doing that science to it. They're doing the science to better understand maybe who we are and how we hunted and then to reintroduce a species.
It freaks me out a little bit but it's fucking rad too. It freaks me out to the point of, “What's next? Are we bringing Saber-toothed tigers back?”
Fingers crossed.
What's that bear, the short-faced bear?
A cave bear.
Those things were huge. I’m like, “Do you think a grizzly's big or a polar bear's big?”
There's a new boy in town. It's even like bringing the wolves back here. The wolves aren't extinct but geographically, they were not in this area. There are so many different views, opinions and this, that and the other. They are coming. Up between Aspen to Rifle is the area they might be dropping.
They've changed a bunch of the hunting rules in 2023. I don't know if you've seen the regs yet for the big game but unfortunately, a lot of the over-the-counter tags for a majority of the state, there's a whole little yellow section where unless you're private land, I don't think you can hunt at all. It's specifically for those wolves. They're trying to keep them in the state because what's to keep them from going into Utah or Wyoming?
Nothing.
These animals don't understand borders. That's why we have wolves here. The wolves that we have migrated out of Yellowstone. Do you know how far that is? That's 600 or 700 miles.
When you think about it, for them, it's nothing. It’s routine.
I have an uncle that worked with Game & Fish up in Northern Montana when they reintroduced wolves there. They took this male wolf in on a brush plane. They had a radio collar on them. You know the peaks up there around Glacier Park and stuff. Its glaciated peaks straight up and straight down. That is some wild country if you've never been to it. It’s beautiful.
They dropped a male wolf off in circles and stuff over glaciated peaks. They dropped him off high too, I'm pretty sure. He did 300 miles in a couple of days and I could have these facts wrong. He was looking for a pack or a mate. The thing was huge. It was probably 3 or 4 feet tall. He was this big pumpkin head. It's cool. He's got some pretty cool photos of it. To know that they can do that in a couple of days over glaciated peaks, that's nothing. If humans can run 100 miles over to Leadville in a 24-hour period, then anything is possible. It’s crazy. We had our first negative interaction with a wolf in Jackson County there. A couple of dogs got eaten.
I've heard. What do you expect?
It's going to happen, especially when you have the dense population that we do. We're going to see it here a lot more than they do in Wyoming or Montana because the population numbers are staggering.
We have corridors of access that any animal will use. The bears will use it. Anything that is a path of least resistance to the easiest mill will be used.
You better lock your dogs up. That's all I got to say. Even with coyotes, coyotes take dogs. Mountain lions and bears have. Raccoons kill cats. There are predators out there. It's not like we haven't had them before so I don't think it's like, “It’s going to change.” You're going to have a new struggle and understanding of what an apex predator is though that hunts in a pack. It's not like a bear lion. It's a little bit different story.
We're going to have wolves everywhere. The wolves that we populate here, we’re also going to reintroduce them to New Mexico and Utah. There's some huge controversy behind that too because Utah's already talking about suing the state of Colorado over it if wolves show up in Utah. They don't want their elk herds to diminish, their moose population or whatever they got going on there.
I'm on so many different sides of this fence. A wolf is super cool. It's an apex predator. As they are introduced, they're going to find areas in regions and environments where there is no competition. They're going to be introduced into an area where there's no competition. There are no other packs that exist. They will thrive. They will multiply and then they're going to spread out. If you think about any species and how it exists, typically, there is competition for mating rights, food, terrain and all these different things. When you introduce something into an area and they quickly realize, “We're the only ones,” it’s like, “We can do what we want.”
It's like the Vikings.
That's it. They get bigger, badder and stronger. They multiply and then it's going to spread out. That's my belief. I'm not an ethnocynologist. I don't understand the mating habits of all these different wolves. Canis familiaris, is that what it is? Is Canis lupus the wolf?
I have no idea.
I truly think there's nothing that can compete with them. They're going to multiply.
As long as they can be managed by Game & Fish or hunters in general, that's key. We've spent I don't know how many millions of dollars to bring back moose. We've brought back some grouse, I know for a fact. There was a grouse that was a prairie grouse of some sort. The population is thriving but they spent tens of millions. Wolves eat everything.
They’re opportunistic killers.
They eat if you fed them to them.
They're the serial killers of the woods in the simplest term. They don't care as long as it's there.
What a majestic animal. They're so cool. There's a place for them and I'm not sure that Colorado is it, in my opinion. I love elk so much. My bias is elk. I love the season of elk in September when they're bugling and ruddy. There is something majestic about that. It's so cool. Wolves being around changes the behavior of elk like hunters being around. These are smart animals. They stop talking and making noise. That’s my fear.
When I go out hunting, the spots that I go, there is so much pressure sometimes during the archery season. Sometimes, I'm not able to go as deep as I want to go because I want to be able to procure that meat and get it out. You run into hunters. The elk there don't bugle as much as they do right here. I'm hoping that it continues outside my bedroom window in the summer. I want to be woken up by Velociraptors. That’s what it sounds like.
I worry about it coming here. I worry about the safety of I don't know if it's so much as people but maybe kids. There are going to be some interactions. There already is with bears and lions. At some point, there's going to be some interaction. In Wyoming, wasn't there somebody pulled out of their tent or was that BC?
By a wolf?
Yes. It was a father. It pulled the father out of the tent over a kid and a mom that were in the tent as well. It's pretty wild. Could you imagine being in your Patagonia sleeping bag and the next thing you know, you are pulled out of it?
There's a lot of truth to that. I do believe there are going to be some pros and cons. We're going to have a very scared population once they start making a little bit more headlines in Colorado of a wolf sighting here, a wolf taking a dog and all this stuff. Unfortunately, there should be more armed people going into the woods shooting.
That scares me more than the wolves, honestly.
That's what my fear is. Having been to Canada, Alaska, Montana and all these different regions, I've heard, seen and experienced wolves. I'm more worried about a guy going out for a day hike and he is with his family or they're going on a camping trip.
He's got a 10-millimeter.
There could be accidental discharge or someone's dog that's a Husky is running. There’s a lady who shot a wolf up in Canada but it was somebody's Husky. She thought it was a wolf. She skinned it out and was doing happy snaps with it in the back of her truck. People were like, “That is a Malamute Husky,” or whatever those things are. She got some slack though but that's what I'm worried about.
It’s out of fear. Instead of saying, “Where is this population? What is the probability that they're here? Why would they be here? Am I interfering with their food take, mating, birthing or denning?” It’s like bears. It’s like, “If this is a high bear area and this is where mama bears are taking care of the baby bears, then that's not where I want to be because I naturally present a threat by presence.” It’s the same thing with moose and everything. If you present a disruption to that animal, you're going to get jacked with.
That's about the only time you're going to get jacked with. That's the only thing. They're fearful. That’s it.
It could also be if I provide an advantage to the animal through the means of, “Here's a dog. Here's a cat. I live on the edge of the woods. I have rabbits and I'm always throwing my carcasses of rabbits on the opposite side of my fence.” You're going to have coyotes.
Everybody up here gets chickens for the eggs and they're like, “I'm in a homestead,” or whatever they're doing. It's like, “You're creating problems.” Whether they are foxes or bears, it doesn’t matter. Many people have chicken coops. It doesn't work unless you're going to put them in a barn.
Rats will eat a chicken.
You can't even lock them in steel in your car. It's crazy. There is going to be a learning curve with the wolves too. With all species of animals, there's a learning curve. Elk learn, “When I bugle, it calls in hunters. They’ve been duped and called into a hunter's call so I'm going to stop bugling.” They're fucking smart.
There is a learning curve that comes with that. I don't think it's fair to the species of wolf that they're dropping here. If you’re on the side of being an animal activist or animal rights activist, you also got to appreciate this perspective. It's something that's overlooked. They're the ones that are going to have the most negative side of it. They’re going to have to learn how to cross I-70, 285 and Highway 9.
They're also going to have no human interaction where they've been plucked from. I have no idea where they're getting these from but I imagine Canada somewhere. You're taking them from someplace where they have no human interaction to drop them into a state where there are seven million people with JBL speakers hiking in the woods and kids running around. It's going to be a learning curve. They're going to have to learn what not to do. Unfortunately, the first part of it's going to be rocky.
I don't think wolves are going to spend too much time learning what to do. They're going to quickly adapt. I do believe they're going to have to negotiate some of the thoroughfares, throws and stuff like that. They're going to be wolves. Wolves are wolves. They’re going to be like, “Can I eat this? I can. Let’s go do it.”
They're opportunists.
They’re the best serial killer you could come up with. When you think about humans, they're the ones that are going to be like, “I won't make any changes. I'm still going to do what I'm going to want to do.” You need to educate yourself about where they're at, how they're roaming, what they're feeding and what the specific times of year are. That's going to be a unique dynamic. I already think in my mind, “If I'm going to the backcountry with my dog, he could be eaten.”
Wolves are the best serial killers you can come up with.
He could also be shot by one of those assholes with a gun.
That's what I worry about. If I am ever going to do anything along the front side, I put an orange collar on him or typically, I don't go out when I know there are a bunch of rifle shooters out there.
He looks like a coyote, right?
He does so we don't go out.
There's a funny ass meme that I got sent. It's not appropriate or anything. It’s a dead donkey that somebody had shot. He's got his bow laid on it and he is like, “I got my first mule deer.” It's so bad. It's funny. I'm sure it was Photoshopped. I don’t think it was dead. It's wild. There are going to be some mistakes made by everybody, whether it’s humans, wolves or Fish & Game. There's going to be a learning curve with it.
The question is, do we expect the wolf to evolve or for us to evolve in the sense of living with the species?
It depends on whom you talk to. If you talk to a rancher, they're going to tell you that the wolf should evolve and learn by death. If you talk to any of the animal rights activists that maybe checked Yes or anybody on the Front Range, they will tell you that we need to coexist with them.
They're never going to come across the wolves. What we could expect more realistically is do we expect the wolf to change its hundreds of thousands and millions of years of existence?
You're talking about a whole other evolution period to domesticated dogs. If that's what you want, it's not going to happen.
A wolf is still going to go after a sheep. It's the ultimate serial killer. I also feel bad for that farmer who is like, “This is my livelihood. What's the balance? What's the point of saying, ‘I'm losing all of this because you decided to reintroduce this?’”
What is that compensation?
What's that course of action?
That's an industry that's already hurting enough. Even going back to training dogs for certain purposes, we've had Chris from Complete Canine. He trains a lot of law enforcement dogs. They specifically go all over the world to find these dogs because it takes a certain type of dog that hasn't been bred so many times to domestication to be in that line of work, whether it's a military dog, a drug dog or whatever it is. This is our show. We can do whatever want. I like the imperfections. It’s so cool. It takes years and years of evolution.
You should have this gentleman on. His name is David Ian Howe. He's an ethnocynologist. He studies the relationship and evolution.
I’ve talked to him. Is he out of Missouri?
He’s out of Wyoming.
He's got a YouTube page, right?
Yeah. He's on a couple of social media. He can break this stuff down to an amazing level. It’s awesome to talk with him because he will say, “This is why,” and then why potentially the guy that's finding these specific breeds of dogs that aren't overbred could be 100% wrong in his choosings and why he could be 100% right. He goes into the differences between dogs, foxes and canines. That's his world. I never knew what ethocynology was. That's my $10 word for the day. That's what that is. It’s the study of canines, our history with canines and how we took these wolves and then over time developed them to be four-legged companions that we have.
Have you ever had any interactions with wolves in any of your time? You probably are somebody that spends more time in the backcountry than anyone I know.
In Alaska, I've seen wolves in the distance. It’s nothing that I would confirm to be like, “That’s 30 wolves,” but you can see them running across a hill in that capacity. It’s the same thing that I've seen with big brown bears. I've heard them howl quite a bit up in Canada. You can genuinely hear it. That little bit of instinctive pucker factor goes on. I've never had any close interactions with wolves.
That would be awesome to hear here.
Wolves howling?
Yeah. It’s scary at the same time.
Aside from saving the animals, hunting the animals, human rights and animal rights, this is my thing and belief. I'm all for if they're here, they're here. I don't get to say, “You can vote. Put your check mark in there.” My life can be impacted greatly because I go into those environments. If you live on the front side, you do not get to vote. It's the same thing if you want gun control and you don't own a gun, you don't get to tell me what to do with mine. If I don't have a woman's body, I'm not going to tell her what to do with hers. If you are part of that, then your input is valued 100%. Otherwise, keep your opinion to yourself.
If you live in Boulder, go to Starbucks three times a day, do all of your stuff and want to make an impact on a farmer's life who lives out on the Western side about the goats and the sheep that keep his family alive, you have no input, in my opinion. I believe if the state wanted to do it right in where they were going to put those wolves in the counties, those people should have voted on the impact as well as the surroundings. I can’t stand it.
Paleo Tracks Survival: If you live in Boulder and you go to Starbucks three times a day and do all of your stuff and you want to make an impact on a farmer’s life who lives on the Western side about the goats and the sheep that keep his family alive, your input has no value.
I don't know if it's some conspiracy-type shit or whatever it is. It’s not a conspiracy but they're talking about splitting Colorado into a red and a blue. We’re on the divide. They're doing it in Idaho.
Oregon is in shifting to the Idaho states.
It's so crazy. It’s more division. The real value comes in having a conversation with people whether they believe your beliefs or not. We have readers that I've talked to firsthand. They're like, “I don't always agree with everybody that comes on but I enjoy reading.” Most people are of that mindset, like, “If I can get something educational out of it or learn from somebody else's experience or maybe their viewpoint, then it helps.”
I believe not everyone's opinion or input matters at times.
I agree. You should be impacting other people's livelihoods with your opinion.
If there's a means of voting and going through these processes to say, “This is how we're going to do it and this is what we're going to go about doing,” you should also take a look at who's going to be impacted greatly by that. Get their buy-in and some of their options. Otherwise, the representation that supposedly represents us might not be the best option. I don't partake in a lot of voting because it's pointless in certain ways. It’s like, “Why am I going to spin my wheels?” There are times when we could have better solutions to some of the problems.
It’s being on the side of science. Let scientists and biologists figure these things out. That's what they do.
I value their opinion. Starbucks lady, I don't value yours.
If it's something about voting on more taxes or how money is spent, I understand that. Everybody has an opinion on that that affects the greater good or the majority rule.
You pay your taxes but I do believe a certain portion of your vote should go to where you want your taxes to go. A certain percentage goes to roads, STEM and the greater good. If I want 30% of my taxes to go towards the conservation of hunting and all these different things as well as managing waterways as well as the Clean Air Act, I should have that say. I don't want it to go to this giant pot where all of a sudden, it winds up going to this country.
I wish there wasn't an income tax, honestly. Sales tax makes sense to me. If you had a super high sales tax to compensate for that or whatever we need, then it'd be more based on what you're buying than the money you're making. I don't know if that makes sense but it makes sense to me.
An import tax would be far better. If you go to some countries and something's $1.99, you give them $1.99. If you give them $2, you get a penny back. If we are looking to import certain goods from other countries, they should be taxed knowing that import could be impacting US-based companies, products and those sorts of things. I don't want to use it as a penalty.
You should get some tax breaks if it's 100% US-made.
There should be certain benefits and some of those things do exist. The downside is that people provide their taxes and then that's it. For someone who worked with the government for a while, I know that it's very easy to go out on taxpayers’ dollars and buy a bunch of random crap that is not necessarily needed because said name department has a $40,000 budget. If they don't spend it by the end of the fiscal year, that budget will be produced to $30,000 or $25,000. It’s like, “Hurry up and go spend it. I don't care. Get 1,000 pencils.”
You see it in corporations, either corporate or publicly-owned companies. It might as well be its little government at that point because you got people voting on who the board of directors is and what they do with it. It’s crazy. I've seen companies hire Metallica at 9:00 AM because they need to spend some money.
Metallica is great.
I thought it was fucking rad. I got paid a shit load to put on this show.
That's what I'm saying.
It’s money well spent. Good job but there's only one reason to do that. You got to spend some money.
Use it or lose it. I don't believe that some of the people's best interests are being addressed through some of your stuff through taxes. The representation of people doesn't exist in higher forms, especially with, in my opinion, the government. I don't think there are people there that represent people well. They're there for the paycheck. It's horrible.
Much of that has been brought to light. We're living in a special time. Everybody thinks it is super crazy. We're in a special moment in history where you have all these third-party avenues, whether it's podcasts or media outlets. I've been listening to alternative news because they're stating the facts. It's 1 person from the right and 1 person from the left. It’s Krystal and Saagar from Breaking Points. It’s fucking incredible. They have a real conversation about it and then they go on about it like, “Here are the facts. Here's what's happening. Here's maybe what could happen. Here's a little monologue on how I feel about it.”
It's not like, “If you don't do this, you're a piece of shit.” It was Matt Taibbi who does the Substack. They had him up in Congress trying to be like, “Reveal your sources.” He's like, “I'm not going to ruin my sources.” I was like, “What is going on? Where are we going? Are the government and certain sides of the government so butt hurt that they got caught?”
It's exposing a lot of that shit.
They're trying to backpedal and be like, “It's this.” For someone who was a counterintelligence agent for many years, you got busted and caught. I listen and I'm like, “These people are a freaking joke.”
They are blatant lies. It's insane that they still have their job because in any other profession, you would be gone or in jail. We're talking about breaking laws here too.
It's typically these people with money, power and influence that get away with stuff and then it circles back to the surface level being like, “Five years ago you did X, Y and Z.” If that was the average person, they're going to jail. It's my piece but with priests, politicians and professors, I typically don't trust. I have no reason to trust them. You could go to priests or prophets, depending on where you're at and whom you're talking to. It's not out of malice but I listen to what they say and I think about it a little bit more compared to you if you were like, “This is what I did yesterday.” I'm like, “Right on.” If they're like, “This is what I did yesterday,” I’d be like, “Did you really do that? What are you looking to gain from?”
Priests, politicians, and professors typically can’t be trusted.
Everybody that's in those positions, they're looking for power. It's a power status type of thing. It sucks that it's that way. I'm going back to the wolves here. That was a great little event. I didn't think you and I would get into politics but I love it. It’s good. Regarding your interactions with wolves, I've gone to Yellowstone and tried to photograph wolves. It was a total waste of money. I saw a wolf at probably 1,000 yards where I did not have the camera equipment, like the lens. You would have to follow it in on a front bed trailer to try to photograph. It was like, “Noted.” These are not easy animals to go find. We hiked our asses off and did all kinds of stuff. We went where the park rangers had told us. We did our homework even going into it. We saw one wolf come out of a tree line for 30 seconds.
That's what I said. I would think it was a wolf that I saw, 1 and 2, at a distance in Alaska. This is the ultimate serial killer. Think about it. They’re rarely seen, kills indiscriminately and do not care. It does not matter. It will maybe take a little bit of trophy. It is the purest form of a serial killer with friends because it’s rolling deep.
It's a cult or a pack.
It’s one of the smartest animals you could think of when you think of animals working collectively together to obtain some goal, which is food. With the longevity of their life and dominance in an area, they will master it pretty quickly. When they start to impact this area, it's not like they're going to care. The only thing they're going to have to adjust to is a little bit of human coexistence but they’re not. They're like, “I don't have to go run down this young cow, elk or whatever the case may be. I'll go eat your Mastiff, Chihuahua or whatever the case may be because that's easier.”
They eat each other. If somebody screws up in the pack, they don't have politicians.
It’s to eat or be eaten. I like that.
It’s wild. Something that we've never dove into is your military background. Do you even want to talk about it?
Sure.
I'm curious. We've talked about what was your catalyst not growing up but growing into what you are as a paleo survivalist, modern-day caveman and that sort of thing. You posted some stuff about that. It was cool. It was some old photos of you with everything from REI, the helmet, the ice stick and the whole thing with mountaineering and then to what you are, which is super cool. What was your childhood like? Did we talk about your childhood?
We've hit some wave tops as far as my childhood and all those specific things. I had a normal childhood. The cool thing about my parents was if there were any struggles or difficult times with money or anything like that, it would never be known to me. Bitches never went down. They would never complain in front of me or my sisters. They would always address things as two responsible adults would in the privacy of their room or when we weren't around. I wouldn't know if we were going through hard times. In my mind, that is the perfect example of what a parent should be. It should never be an issue of, “It's the child or the environment.” A good parent will never make it known to a child and that child will continue to be happy.
It can go the opposite way too. You can oversell stuff.
I’d be like, “Look at this. See this new dial-up phone?” You're like, “Oh my God.” I wouldn't know. I would love to be able to say there were hard times and good times. I wouldn't know if there were hard times. My dad specifically along with my mom are from Detroit, Michigan. There are some hard folks there.
That's never been a soft place. I can tell you that.
I was born in Flint, Michigan. My grandfather was a truck driver. My mom's mom was a single mom of five kids. They handled their business and they were not going to make it known to their children if they were having a rough time. My folks could have experienced those things but I would never even know. I only had good positive memories.
There was a lot of manual labor involved as the only boy in the family. It was pretty easy to understand if my dad made $1, that was his dollar. It's not like, “Can I get $20?” It was never even remotely a case. He was like, “If you want to borrow the car, there are one million things that you need to do to earn that opportunity to drive.” He's like, “If you want to use a car, you got to drive me to the train station at 4:30 AM.” There's a whole lot of learning about how to contribute to a family and not expect to get returns.
That's one thing that I've instilled in my family. Maybe one of the best features is we're a team or a pack. Everybody has their role. Everybody's expected to help. Sometimes, we're solving problems together. That's good too for them to have some input and figure it out. If you handle everything to them on a platter, we could do it very easily.
A family is a team; it is a pact. Everybody has a role, and everybody is expected to help.
We're starting to see how that turns out in certain populations. For me, my boys know like, “There are times when dad will invite us to join him in something and there are times when dad will request that we are coming.” They pretty much know like, “This is what we're doing today. We're going to be splitting firewood, picking up dog shit and doing X, Y and Z.” They're like, “That is not an invite. We are doing that.” There are other times when it's like, “I'm going to go do this. Do you want to join me?” They're like, “I'm going to be doing this.” I’d be like, “That’s cool.” There's an understanding.
Even my oldest son who drives works at a brewery on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. He loves working. His thing is he's like, “I want a job. I want to be able to make my money.” The reason why is after he graduates high school, he's taking an entire year off. He's like, “I don't want to do anything. I'm going to save my money. I'm going to Europe. I'm backpacking and traveling around for an entire year.” I'm like, “Do it.”
His thing is, “I'm going to bust my ass now so then I can enjoy a little bit. When I come back, I'll figure out what I want to do. Maybe I won't have the exact answer or maybe I will. Maybe I want to do this or that.” I'm like, “That’s perfect. No one says you got to have a plan at eighteen. Go do your thing.” All he does is bust his ass and work. It's that thing as a parent that I got from my parents. My parents were strict in certain ways but because I have a unique interest in the outdoors or any of these things, it was wrong.
Was your dad an outdoorsman or anything? Did he fish or hunt, anything?
Yeah. He grew up hunting and fishing. This is Michigan when there was nothing but farms. They were still trapping rabbits and hunting deer. It was part of their life. It's an easy comparison. I worked it out in my head. My dad's dad was a long-haul truck driver out of Detroit. He drove everywhere. Hunting, fishing and stuff like that, that's how they did it along with some of the financial resources.
My dad's the oldest. He experienced those same sorts of things from his father with hunting and fishing. He then said, “I wonder if there's a smarter way that I can provide more for my family.” It was not that his dad didn't but he was like, “How can I provide more?” He wasn't college educated but he went and worked as a stock boy in a store. He then eventually wound up running the entire store and so on. They would be Baby Boomers.
It would've been probably the 1950s when he was a kid.
For them, it was like, “I can work hard and provide opportunities but I can still remember where I come from, who my father is and the importance of all those things. I'm going to work this pattern of life in different stores, retail and different things like this and give opportunities.” The opportunities that he gave my mom were pretty amazing. We got to travel a lot as kids but it wasn't like, “We're going to Cabo San Lucas for the weekend,” and we would spend hundreds of dollars.
I remember once we went to Barbados and my mom was like, “We're bringing Crystal Light Lemonade. We'll be packing our snacks.” Everything was still frugal and very much on a budget. He busted his ass. My mother busted their ass to give me and my two sisters opportunities. For me, that's how I translate my things. It’s like, “I'm building opportunities for me and my interest to allow my voice to ultimately take advantage of this.”
That's key. It's got to be something that you're interested in. The normal 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM will kill you. You’ll be miserable.
My oldest son, his name's William. He speaks Spanish I don't want to say fluently but he has a good level of Spanish. His thing is he loves learning languages. He's taking Spanish, French and Latin in school. I've talked with him. I said, “When I was in the Middle East, the Philippines or wherever, when you're in that culture, you quickly learn to speak that language.” For him, he is like, “I'm going to go to Spain, South America and Central America and kick off my in-depth learning of Spanish.”
He’ll learn so much more being there too, by immersing himself in it. I'd learned a little bit prior to going about lines on how to pick up chicks when I was going to South America. I was like, “I better figure this shit out.” I didn't pick up one chick there because it was all scary. It was the wrong chicks. It’s being in the culture and having to work and survive in that culture or be immersed in it.
The easiest way to genuinely learn is to be part of it.
That's so cool. He's on the right path.
For him, that's where he wants to go. I've used my time in the military as an example saying, “When I was done with high school and all this stuff, I joined the Marine Corps.” I was a teenager. I did three months at a local school but it was not my thing. I hated it. All I wanted to do was leave, run into the woods and do this. I was working at the butcher counter at this grocery store. I'm like, “This is not what I wanted to do. I needed time to figure it out.” He has listened to that because we're similar. For him, he's going to take that time.
I'm like, “The Marine Corps gave me all the time that I needed. More importantly, they gave me opportunities and a certain level of training and specific skills that allowed me to say, ‘What you’ve been into is applicable here.’” It was very easy for the recruiter that when I walked in, he was like, “What do you like to do?” I'm like, “I like to hunt and fish. I like the outdoors.” He's like, “That’s perfect. You're great for the Infantry.” I was like, “That sounds like a great deal.” That was it. I walked in and took a few of the tests but was already eighteen. I came home, knocked on the door and said, “Hey, mom and dad.” They were like, “How's it going?” I'm like, “Guess what?” They were like, “What?” I'm like, “I'm going to the Marine Corps.” They were like, “Oh my God.” They were pissed.
It didn't run in the family then. There are a lot of times that it goes generations deep.
It does. My dad's dad was in the Army for a chunk of change. I don't know the full story but apparently, he stole a jeep when he was in the Army. He and his buddies were drinking and then he went through the front windshield. He got kicked out. I was like, “That's our blood. I’ve done that.” I joined the Corps and started in the Infantry. I was an Infantry Machine Gunner in 0331. When you go to boot camp and the School of Infantry, they separate you into different groups. They're like, “All of you are mortarmen, assaultmen or Machine Gunners of 0311s.”
If you were over 6 feet, you were a Machine Gunner and carried 240 guns, 50 cals, Mk 19s and all the heavy stuff. Once you arrive out in the fleet, you get separated into a light machine gun, which would go to a line Infantry unit. You would have heavy guns that would roll around in what was called a CAAT at the time, which is a Combined Anti-Armor Team. You would shoot 50 cals and Mk 19s.
There are a lot of different employment methods for a CAAT team, which is a Combined Anti-Armor Team. Sometimes, it was a long-range reconnaissance vehicle-based deploying scouts to get eyes on avenues of approach, roads and all these different things. Sometimes, it was blocking positions or convoy security. There are a lot of different functions for a CAAT. I was part of that.
This is pre-9/11.
We trained. They called them UDPs or Unit Deployment Programs to Okinawa and various countries. We had training and stuff.
You got to do some traveling with it too.
I was done with my first rotation. Right when I was done with my rotation, there were regimental schools out in Kaneohe Bay. They were like, “We'd like you to come and teach at schools.” I had been to Squad Leaders’ School and graduated top of the class with Helicopter Rope Suspension. They call it HRS Training. We called it Baywatch or MCWSS, the Marine Corps Water Survival School. I went to a couple of those schools. I ultimately went over there and taught how to be an instructor at those schools. I taught squad leaders HRST and various components of MCWSS.
Is HRST casting where you're deploying from a helicopter to the ground? Is it water extraction too?
It’s a couple of things. You have fast roping, which is typically a 6-meter rope for hands, knees and feet. You slide down the rope and start to rooftops, open markets and things like that where it's quick. You then have rappelling out of a bird. You're rappelling down on something. You have SPIE rigging, which is Special Patrol Insertion/Extraction. It is a rope that hangs out the belly of the bird and it's on the ground. You can be in something, maybe 10x10 or 100 square feet. It’s a small little area where the bird can fly over, the rope can drop out and everybody will hook up to that rope. It lifts straight up and then transitions.
I've seen them do it with even some game wardens in California doing the cartel stuff.
It’s a very quick and easy way to put people into a place, insert and then the extract would be coming out.
I'm so fascinated by helicopters. We've based some of the show around that. I got Flight for Life coming in, hopefully, here pretty soon. We had a two-star general from the 160th SOAR. That was awesome. Do you know what the 160 is?
Yeah. There are so many great air units and air wings out there. Helos have always tripped me out but after spending a great deal of time in them as an HRST master, I trained Infantry guys or a couple of designated guys from each platoon or company how to rig a bird for fast roping spine and how to communicate with pilots.
What I loved was pilots always need to get their hours in so you're going to do a course. You go there and hook up the bird because you're going to do all your classes around it. You do your flight brief and they're like, “I'm Sergeant Dust. I'm going to be your HRST master.” They're like, “I'm Chuck. I'm Steven,” and he’s like, “Roger that.” There is a different kind of formality there.
They’re like, “We need to at least get an hour and a half of flight time. Do you want to join us?” I'm like, “I do.” You're in Hawaii and they're doing race tracks and all this stuff over these beaches. I'm like, “Can we go to a Waikiki?” They're like, “No problem.” They'll fly anywhere. I had some of the best experiences hanging onto a gunner’s belt off this high beam and looking up. It was awesome. I loved it.
It's that whole Coronado beach experience.
That’s what I mean. It’s the beach and guns. You can't go wrong. 9/11 kicked off and I was in a weird spot where I was in school. I made it back to the States. Long story short, I wound up teaching the last maybe year of that enlistment at the School of Infantry and then got recruited into the counterintelligence human intelligence field. That was a whole different world, which was an awesome world because it is all about a lot of different things.
You have the CIA or Central Intelligence Agency, which is the intelligence apparatus for the United States government. The CI/HUMINT, the CounterIntelligence/Human Intelligence field, is the intelligence apparatus for the DOD or Department of Defense. When you deploy overseas, you deploy in something called a HET, a Human Exploitation Team, which is typically four collectors, an OIC, a chief, an analyst and a radio operator. You go out and conduct HUMINT source operations.
I don't want you to get in trouble. We know where you're going here.
You run a series of assets that provide you intelligence based on a variety of factors based on requirements, threats and all these different things. You meet with them and do various things with them in the pursuits of ultimately denying, detecting and deceiving terrorism, espionage, sabotage and subversion.
Is this where some of your connections came in with survival skills?
Yeah. Some of it is being unable to operate independently. For example, myself and my partner, you remind me of him. He was a good dude. His name was Tim Judy but everyone called him Silent Bump. He was super quiet. He was a tech guy. You look like him in appearance. He was all computer and tech and I had an Infantry background so I was on the opposite side of that. My sons were born on February 12th and February 20th. I was back down in the Philippines. Tim and I were going to certain areas in the Philippines and setting up various communication devices as well as trying to establish threat groups in an area. There are so many things.
There are so many moving pieces. It's a constant chess game.
When people are like, “Do you deploy,” I'm like, “I've deployed a number of times but not some of these other deployments.” I deployed with one other guy into the Southern portions of the Philippines with a pistol shoved down my pants and a backpack full of money. We were meeting these different assets that are national level assets down to small, localized assets that could tell you, “Don't drive down this road because three guys were killed there yesterday. This guy can tell you something else.” You meet with people discreetly in a variety of ways. That was the human side of it. The other side of it was the interrogations. As a CI/HUMINT Marine, one of the other sides aside from running sources and assets was you interrogate people.
That's probably why you're so good at interviews.
You would get a variety of individuals that have been suspected of certain things. TV and movies are horrible at representing an authentic interrogation. If I've already captured you, I don't need you to be like, “I did it.” I'm like, “I already know you did it. I want intel. I want information.” When you see some of these cheese dick cop shows, they're like, “You need to admit it,” it's like, “You are in American custody. I have you for the next however given amount of time. We're going to sit and have a conversation.
We're going to smoke a few cigarettes. I'm going to get you some chai. “Have you talked to your mom? You haven't talked to your mom? Here’s my cell phone. Why don't you call your mom?” They’re like, “I can't call my mom.” I’m like, “Call your mom. You won't do it? I'll call her.” There's a simple back and forth in certain ways. Sometimes, it's a 16-year-old kid who was paid $100, $5 or maybe $1 to put a bomb in the road.
That's crazy. We’re so fortunate. The world that we live in here in the United States is so easy.
We think of things to complain about. There's a whole spectrum of people that you could chat with. You could chat with a sixteen-year-old kid to a hardcore Al-Qaeda fighter, a foreign fighter or a local fighter that is ultimately there to kill everyone that they can. It's my job to make friends with them and then use them. I do not necessarily use them but be able to pull certain amounts of raw data information from them and turn it into some sort of actionable intelligence or longstanding intelligence.
It will probably save lives because you’re probably looking at a different spot maybe where these bombs have been planted. That's wild. I had no idea.
Not a lot of people do.
You told me you were a Marine but I didn't realize it went that deep. If you think of a Marine, you think of one thing. I’ll say it here. I don't know if it's slander or not. It's a jar hat.
I get it. My nephew is joining the Marine Corps. He leaves in a short period. His name is Aiden Dawson. Shout out to big Aiden Dawson.
Thanks for joining.
My other nephew, his name's Jacob Dawson. He went to college. I don't know why but Aiden's going down the right path. He is going to join the Corps. He wants to go on the intel side. I've given him many truths about the Corps that a recruiter will never ever give somebody who's looking to join. It’s genuine ground truth. He's like, “I still want it.” I'm like, “That’s fucking good. Welcome to one of the biggest gun clubs that you can imagine and the biggest band of brothers that you could come across.”
The Marine Corps is one of the biggest bands of brothers that you can come across.
There is a camaraderie there.
You won't be able to find it elsewhere. I'm pumped for him because he's going to be able to see and experience some of the things that I have. We'll be able to share those glances across from a Thanksgiving table and be like, “How was it?” He’s going to be like, “It was awesome.” It's going to be great. I loved my time in the Corps.
Eventually, it started to take a toll on my wife at the time and my kids because I was gone all the time. I mean gone not even in the sense of I'm deployed overseas. I'm running joint operations with the NCIS and FBI surveillance teams in Vegas on the West side because there are a couple of potential threats tied to a CNE network, which is aligned with Afghan fighters on the Eastern edge. I'm going there to meet with someone to see about potentially getting them a job in a certain area to see how willing they are to do stateside stuff and a lot of OCONUS stuff. It was awesome. In that case, I have to go to Vegas for the weekend. How do you tell your wife at the time, “I got to go to Vegas for the weekend?” She’s like, “What for?” I’m like, “I can't tell.”
Can you even tell them where you're going at that point?
You work them into the operation. I was able to with the people I was working with by saying, “I can't do this without looking suspicious.” I'm like, “There is a gun show. A gun and knife show was going on the Western side. You guys fund this.” What I'll do is I'll bring them. They'll go there. I'll break off, go to that and conduct the surveillance op. I'll return and then it will be like a regular weekend. There are no issues. Everything went as planned. A couple of years later, once you're out, you can reveal like, “Do you remember when we went to Vegas?” They’re like, “Yeah.” I’m like, “This is really what happened.” My kids get a kick.
I did a stateside surveillance op where I had to do a static position. I was in a Pizza Hut and there was some weird thing going down. This is in California. I had my two boys. They were young. One was three and one was a newborn. I'm in there with a baby carrier and my oldest boy. I'm like, “We're going to go to Pizza Hut.” That was my spot so I had to look out this window. Long story short, I was in a static spot. They get a kick thinking, “When we were young, we went on a surveillance op.” I'm like, “We did.” They’re like, ‘That’s so cool.”
It's a whole different way of living. Even in the Middle East, I spent some time with Bedouin culture and living with them. I’ve been to Southern Philippines and all these different places. When it comes back to a lot of the survival and some of the unique skills that I come across, it's living with these people in various means in wartime as well as in simple times, helping them build a well and why the importance of that water and security in this area. There's a whole conglomerate of influences from my military that tie into where I am.
You went deep. I wasn't expecting that.
Not a lot of people do. They're like, “What? You seem different.” I’m like, “I know.”
Thanks. I appreciate it. It means a lot to me and a lot of the people that are on here too. I feel weird saying that but it's awesome that we have men and women that deploy and do stuff like this. What forced you into the Marine Corps?
I was being a fuckup. I hated school.
You didn’t want to go to college or anything like that.
After I left school, I went to a community college for a week. I went back and was like, “This is horrible.” I blame an old ex-girlfriend for it because she used to live next to a recruiting station. I went to go visit her. She wasn't there. It was raining out. It looked like something out of a 1980s movie. I was holding a jacket and I see a light. I'm like, “Marine Corps recruitment.” I’m walking and that was it. I went in.
This is the first blood era and all that stuff.
I'd never talked about going into the military. The one thing I wanted to be when I was asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up,” is I wanted to be a ridge runner. Have you ever heard of a ridge runner?
No.
It’s a person that manages a section of trail for long through hikes. They're the representation of the Appalachian Trail Foundation or Pacific crest. I don't know if they still exist but I used to go up to the Appalachian Trail all the time to hike, roam, fish and do all this stuff. There was a guy up there. He had this little wooden platform and some cool stuff. I was like, “What are you doing?” He's like, “I'm a ridge runner.” I'm like, “That's what I want to do.” That was always in my mind. I was like, “That looks pretty cool.” He's like, “I hang out here all the time and hike and fish.” I'm like, “Do you get paid?” He's like, “Yeah.” I was sold.
He is there as almost like a park ranger or some enforcement.
He has some affiliation in that capacity. I didn't go into a lot of detail. I'm like, “That's what I want to be.” It’s that or a guy roaming around the woods. I was like, “There's an actual job for that title, which is a guy who roams around the woods,” and that was a ridge runner. I never liked school. I always liked history class. I was in drama. That's where all the girls were. That was an easy one. I always enjoyed all of the home ec classes. When it came to math, I was never into it.
The Marine Corps was a good option as far as helping me build upon what I knew, giving me new tools and new knowledge and enhancing some of my physical abilities. It was a great thing for a young man to go who had a great childhood but was unsure of what he wanted to do. It gave me solutions to problems. It created a whole new set of problems. I would be the first one to admit that plenty of problems rise in the Corps but it was something awesome.
Post Marine Corps, you were living in California at the time.
My last duty station was in California. My wife, at the time, wanted to head back to the East Coast because that's where a lot of the family was. We went to Maryland. I worked a small contract there as a government contractor. I hated it because it was the same thing I was doing in the Corps. It was a lot of stuff that was still the same. I'm like, “Why did I leave the Corps at twelve years if I'm coming out to do the same thing where I could have been working towards a retirement?” We were there for maybe eight months and then we moved back to Colorado.
I came back here on a short contract. While this was going on, I was teaching classes and trying to establish myself differently as far as providing outdoor experiences and all that stuff. I didn't have a lot of money or things so I started from a grassroots thing. I would go sit at parking lots, knap stones, do hand drills and throw atlatls at trailheads. I handed a few business cards. It was 2017. That was my first time on social media. I never went on any of that stuff. I had no need to. I didn't care what anybody else said. I just did it.
I'm glad you're on because that's how I found you. You're doing some cool stuff on there. Your TikTok is the only reason I would be on TikTok. It’s so cool. People ask you, “Can you make an arrowhead, ax or zombie bat,” whatever it is. They come up with some crazy ones and you tend to whip them out.
It’s been pretty awesome. I never envisioned myself going on there. There was no plan to but it's worked out.
I love the story behind it too, about how your kid was like, “You need to be on this.”
I felt weird being on it as an old man but he was like, “Make stuff,” so I make stuff. It's interesting how they're trying to get rid of TikTok. You can skirt through some of the bull crap that's on there like people dancing and stuff. If that's what you're into, knock your socks off. It's no different from Instagram reels or any of the Mark Zuckerberg Meta stuff that he tried to create that he ultimately failed at.
TikTok is doing it better than any other platform. Since all these American companies can't seem to break that code and gain some popularity, they're telling them, “It’s Chinese affiliated. They're selling your data.” I'm like, “If you think for the first time that this is the only time an app has sold our data or some way affiliating to looking deep into your pockets, talk about a product in your house with your phone sitting next to you and see what adverts you get within twenty seconds.” We have this naive thinking.
As an information portal, TikTok is no different than Instagram reels or the Meta stuff that Mark Zuckerberg tried to create. It’s actually doing better than any other platform.
The algorithms are cool. Since I only follow you on TikTok, then I'm getting educational stuff. Maybe I follow Rogan so then, I get motivational stuff.
You choose.
I don't have all those girls' asses in my face, which I don't unenjoy but I don't want to see that every time I open it up.
What you've done is you've educated yourself into understanding, “How do I get what I want to see?” Facebook doesn't do that. They're going to tell you what you're going to see. In the past couple of years as far as elections, it’s like, “We're going to tell you what you see.” At least on the TikTok algorithm, you can be like, “I want to follow this hashtag,” and you'll get to see those things. It's screwy how all this is shaping out.
I wish there was a way to solely choose what you wanted to see. If you only wanted to see motivational quotes, how useful would that be? That's great.
You could see a lot of things. As an adult, one, you have the power to say, “I'm not going to go on it,” or two, “I'm going to go on it but I'm going to be responsible with it.” It’s the same as if I was to give you a beer and you say, “I don't drink,” or, “I'll drink a beer but I'm not going to get drunk.” We have to exert some big boy and big girl rules when it comes to this stuff.
Some of these field entities like Facebook and all this stuff can't figure it out. They can't figure out how TikTok is so successful. If everybody likes to badmouth TikTok, that’s cool. Knock your socks off. For me, it doesn't impact my day. I do believe those people tried to go on it and then quickly realize, “We suck. We've failed miserably at this. We can't compete with this so we're going to tell Uncle Sugar. Uncle Sugar's going to come in and put these bans and restrictions on there.” I'm like, “Do you think if TikTok goes away, something else isn't going to pop up?”
There's so much more out there that we don't even know about.
We have a conscious ignorance of some aspects of life. When you think about all that Facebook and Amazon, come on.
It’s the balloon. It's a shiny object.
That's what I think. It's super dumb. Even if TikTok went away, I wouldn't be butt hurt. My life is not based on an app.
I got to stay off that fucking thing because I'll watch it for hours. What's crazy is I've seen a craze with some personal friends and some friends in this space that necessarily don't need a social media platform. Maybe they gain some popularity from it. They don't need that for what they're doing or trying to pursue in life. They're genuinely trying to do their thing.
It became such a distraction. People have had these huge fallings and they deleted their accounts. I commend them for that. It’s cool. We've gained a lot from it too. I've forged a lot of relationships. That's how I contacted you originally. It was through social media. I'm a proponent of it. There is some negative stuff but it's all about how you use it. You can pick this thing up and look at it for its beauty or jam it into your leg or your neck and kill yourself. It's the same thing.
Social media is like a gun. If you know how to use it and handle it and have been trained, educated and understand the left and rights of it, it's a very effective tool. If you treat it horribly and point it at yourself, point it at others and do not understand the trigger, you can go on for all the negative things.
Be a good example.
That's it. Be a good human. I've seen some great people on different social media apps. I've seen some people that I will never see because I don't know who they are. I don't follow them. I don't make it a point to say, “I don't agree with this person but I'm going to follow them so I can create a level of hostility in my mind.”
It’s the trolling type of thing.
I will never know of the people that I don't like because I don't like them. Why would I come across it of all the things that interest me? That's pretty much it.
That's what you got to do.
Social media is a very corruptive thing in certain ways but I don't believe it is to the level that some of our US politicians are propagating it to be.
Social media is a very corruptive thing in certain ways, but not to the extent that some US politicians are propagating it to be.
I would urge people to be truthful about it because there are a lot of mistruths and facades.
There is deception.
It's the same with hunting shows. That's why I commend people like you, my buddy Josh Walker that we had on and guys like that that are portraying the good and the bad side of it.
I can tell you through TikTok and some social media, I get a lot of requests from various entities and companies to promote this or that. I'm like, “First off, I'm the last guy you want to promote your stuff.”
It's crazy. We've been hit up by a makeup company. I’m like, “Do you think we use makeup in the studio? I know I'm very handsome but there's zero makeup.”
This shirt is from Walmart. I washed it. I'm not big into brands but if something is great, I will happily promote it. Why wouldn't I? I'm not looking for anything in return. When Netflix comes out and says, “We have a show coming out. We want you to make some survival videos. Would you be open to that,” I say, “Absolutely, but you're going to pay me,” and they'll pay well.
That thing works well within who I am, not as a fucking brand. I hate that word. People are like, “What's your brand?” There's no brand. That's who I am as a person. If you want me to make a crab trap, I'll make a crab trap because that's what I would normally be doing. All of a sudden, I see these people that are talking about gun safety. They're like, “You should also eat Doritos.” I'm like, “That is the biggest crack of bullshit.” I don't do it.
That’s something I've had to wash with Jocko GOs.
You’ve had Black Rifle Coffee though. You drink it. You use the stuff you use. That is called the authentic user. What people can do easily is go on social media and see the inauthentic or the fake user. That’s because this TikTok channel’s about a husband and wife and their funny communications back and forth or how they grow as a couple but in the meantime, use Clorox wipes. They're great.
It’s such bullshit. Some of the sponsors get upset at me and I'm going to say it blatantly because I'm not the guy that's sharing it on social media all the time. That's not why I want to make a post. That's not why I'm there. We'll run the pre-recorded advertisements. There's going to be an advertisement that interrupts the show. It provides this space. I'm not making serious money off of it but it's enough to keep it afloat. It's enough for me to travel somewhere, bring you in, have this equipment and sometimes, an assistant there. I would've been paying somebody. You're saving me money.
I got you.
We hit it off. We didn't even need anybody over there.
We let it roll.
I would've loved to have Jeremy here. He was super bummed. He's like, “Donny's coming in?” He's in Dana Point, putting in some show. It's cool if you use it the right way. I urge people to use it truthfully. Show your true self because that's the biggest thing.
I'm starting to do this in some of my YouTube videos. I’m going to be like, “This YouTube video is brought to you by nobody because I don't give a shit.” What they'll get is 100% me. This is where I'm a huge advocate of what is a social media influencer and what is a social media leader. A social media influencer will say, “Take Alpha Brain. I take it anytime I do this or that.” That is somebody that influences. From someone with a CI/HUMINT background, somebody can influence another person very easily through suggestion, the notoriety of who they are and what we would call wasto. What is their status within the sphere of their life?
If somebody goes on and says, “You should take this because I take this,” that is an influence. Influence is a negative way of getting somebody to do something that you want. If I stole your kids and said, “You got to do this,” that is a negative influence in the simplest form. If I stood on a podcast and said, “Jocko is good,” I'm not saying, “Everyone goes drink Jocko.” It is like, “I'll try one. It's good.” It’s part of the authentic experience. When there is like, “You need to do this because I do this,” that's influential. You're trying to influence someone for financial gain. A leader leads by example by saying, “This is why I'm doing it. It’s not because I want you to go out and buy it or for you to be persuaded.”
A social media influencer is somebody who can influence another person very easily through suggestion and the notoriety of who they are. A leader leads by example, saying, "This is why I’m doing it, not because I want you to go out and buy it or be persuaded."
That's a great approach. I need to look at that because I try to convey that in my ads. I write a lot of my ads. Sometimes, they send me a script and I'm like, “This is bullshit. I would never say this.” I try to make it as real as possible.
The easiest way for you to lead by example is as we were drinking Jocko, we drank it. The example itself is the leadership form of saying, “This guy's not trying to push this or promote this to say, ‘If you don't buy this now,’” but he's doing. You going and only eating meat is leading by example. Also, working out. I did a 45-minute ice bath. That's why it's the best. You fucking do it. That is what leading by example is.
It is the fighter-leader concept that most military members probably came across. It's like, “I'm not going to tell you to go charge that hill. I'm going to charge the hill and if you believe me to go be a leader, you'll follow.” That's the difference between what a social media influencer or 99% of these people are and someone who's employing a fighter-leader concept and leading by example.
I've at least tried to stay true to like, “I believe in these products.” When a company approaches me, it's never no. It's blatantly a no if it's a mascara company. I’m like, “Are you kidding me? Have you even looked at our demographic? I'm sure that information's available somewhere out there.”
We were talking about GRAYL. You were like, “Are you promoting? Are you supporting?” I'm like, “No. It's a good product.” A good promotion comes from an authentic user. I use it for my clients and rehydration. I enjoy Black Rifle Coffee. If you’re like, “I’m not buying it right now,” I couldn’t give a shit if you buy it or not but I enjoy it.
It’s not necessarily an influence but you get to derive your feelings towards my statement as well as that product. If you’re going to be like, “I fucking hate it,” I'll be like, “Sometimes, I do but sometimes, I do enjoy it.” In this age of social media influencers, brands and stuff, I do not live by any of that. People are like, “It's good for your brand.” I'm like, “I have no brand. I shop at the basic of stores.” There's nothing I'm out here promoting.
Überleben® is a company that I've worked with for a year. When I mean worked with, I'm not getting paid. There's no payment involved. I used one of their ferro rods in a couple of classes. They're like, “That's great. We'd love to start a partnership.” I'm like, “You don't want to start a partnership with me because then, it's going to cost you. You get nothing in return. What I'm willing to do is because it is a good product, I say it is a good product.”
When someone says, “What is that,” I will tell them what it is. After that, I don't want any ties or responsibilities with you. Why would I want to say, “Wear these pants. Buy this?” That's not always the case. I'm like, “If your product's good and I think it's good, all I'm saying is it's good. Therefore, do with this as you choose.” I have no obligation.
That’s a great approach. They're going to put advertisements in place for you. It already happens to us on other platforms where even though you're ad-free, YouTube's going to determine what ads go on here.
My other philosophy is I don't like taking money from people. Many people are like, “You should make merch.” I'm like, “Save your money.” I will take money from YouTube, Amazon and these big companies. The eighteen-year-old kid that's like, “I'd love to wear a t-shirt of yours,” I'm like, “Trust me. You won't. If you'll wear it for five minutes, you'll be like, ‘This is dumb,’ because it says Yeah on there or something silly and then it's going to wind up going to goodwill. Save yourself the money because I don't make merch. If you want merch, go get a stone flake. That's the best merch you can get.”
That is cool though that you sometimes get commissioned to make stuff. You do put some stuff up that you make on your website.
Every once in a while, I'll throw some blades up there and knives. Things that I've made so on and so forth, people can purchase it. I don’t have hats, shirts or anything like that. There's nothing wrong with that. That's not my style. I don't need it. If you want cool merch, go outside and take a photo. Spend some time. That's the way it is.
That's an awesome approach. I could probably learn a little bit from you on that. It's hard. It's a balance though. When you have this space and that thing, it's an ebb and flow. Trying to align with companies is one thing that I have stuck to my guns. I’m like, “These guys make something that I would use daily.”
When you think about your alignment with companies, they reflect who you are. It’s not necessarily a brand but it is stuff you align with, like veterans or hunters.
Also, what they support and some of the messages that they support too. A company sometimes can be viewed as a corporation or a moneymaking thing but in reality, it's like a little tribe. Black Rifle has brought us some guests. Jocko's been great. I hit them up and was like, “This is the idea for the 100th episode. It's going to cost X amount of dollars.” They’re like, “We'll fund it.” That's awesome.
That’s what I mean. That's a community of like-minded people working together to help. It wasn't like they pitched you saying, “If you don't sell this number of products through these ads, you don't get this.” That's where some people that are like, “Here's my discount code to X, Y and Z,” have made an overpromise to a potential company that they could produce and then they quickly find out. If someone's like, “Here's my discount,” I'm like, “I don't want that thing but I like coffee. This was a good time. For my first time having it, it was good.” I don't know what else I can say about it. That’s it.
That's Jocko's motivation thing. Have you ever watched his good video?
I don’t think so but it’s good.
He's a funny dude. I'm like, “Don't give me that pro wrestler shit,” but I love the guy. He's a beast. He's a good dude too. We're coming up in three hours. It has cruised by. What do you have coming up? There's a TV show coming out, right?
Yeah. On March 30th, 2023, there is a TV show I did with a gentleman called Ed Stafford. He walked the Amazon Jungle. It’s called First Man Out. It's going to be out on Amazon Prime. The first episode will be released on the 30th. April 6th, 2023 is my episode on Amazon where he and I race each other through the jungles. We only have machetes. That's it. We go out there and the objective is to get to this boat. The first one out wins. It was a good episode. That'll be on April 6th, 2023 on Amazon. You can watch all the other episodes as well.
Keep an eye out for the book. We'll have you back then.
Maybe we'll do a reading.
Let's do it but I suck at reading out loud so it's going to be all you but I'm a great listener. I listen to audiobooks all the time.
I'm getting ready for Colorado's 2nd or 3rd spring when it decides to show up in the summer. I’m looking forward to fishing, kayaking, hiking and stuff.
This is my favorite time of year. There's some fun coming up through fall. It’s great.
There is the meat rush in the freezer. It’s like, “What do we have so far? Four trout?”
I need to go back and check out your YouTube channel. You got all kinds of new shit up there. That's awesome.
I've been trying to step it up. I'm using the comedian approach where I'm tired of asking people for X, Y and Z. I'm going to do it and do it on my own.
You can do it right then.
That's it. My choice, my rules.
If people are reading and they got their phones in their hands, what are your social tags, platforms and all that stuff?
You can go to DonnyDust.com. You can find everything there. You can navigate and google it. There are all sorts of stuff. The last thing I want to say is the movie that I did, which is called The Big Bend, where I played the guy, Rio or the guy that was standing in a river that rubs mud is going to be released in theaters around April and May 2023 in California, Texas and New York. It's going to eventually go to streaming. I'll talk more when that comes out. If we come back, what maybe we could do is watch it here and do some behind-the-scenes.
It's your show. You are welcome here any time you want. I love having you. I appreciate you always carving out the time for us and the amazing gifts.
There is more coming.
These are so cool. I don't expect this. I got a nice collection going on.
We'll have to get a plaque.
I got to get something to put them on and get them off the table. I do like them on the table because people can pick them up.
You got this goat that you can lay out the flakes and play it out a couple of different ways.
Thank you. I appreciate it.
I always appreciate you.
This has been a lot of fun. Also, you run a survival school. That's one of your main deals. How do people get ahold of you for that?
They can go to PaleoTracksSurvival.com I have instructions on how to book and go through the whole gamut. Send me an email. We start a dialogue and plan the rest from there. I appreciate it. Thank you.
Thanks for coming. I appreciate it.
Important Links
YouTube – Donny Dust’s Paleo Tracks
Episode 20 – Past Episode
Episode 40 – Past Episode
Episode 90 – Past Episode
Chris Pelle - Past Episode
YouTube – David Ian Howe
TikTok – Donny Dust
Josh Walker - Past Episode
About Donny Dust
Donny Dust is a Marine Corps Veteran who is considered by many as a world wide expert in remote primitive survival, ancient/historical technologies, lithic arts (flintknapping) and emergency preparedness. Donny's passion for ancient ways of living goes beyond theory and guesswork and into true application of living wild.
Donny utilizes his countless days living among the world's wild landscapes and fully immersing himself in unique cultures in order to offer one-of-a-kind wilderness self-reliance training and education at his school Paleo Tracks Survival. No other person has such a diverse background to leverage when providing his one-of-a kind, in-person classes focused on remote primitive living, traditional survival skills, and ancestral technologies and practices. His expertise draws clients from all over the globe, including the UK, South America, Canada, and Australia.
Donny has authored two books (SCAVENGER and EARTHROAMER), worked on feature films as a technical consultant, taken part in several different network television programs, conducted numerous podcasts and radio appearances, , as well as spoken in front of crowds who have traveled from all over to hear him speak and learn of his wild adventures. Known as the "Professional Caveman", Donny is nothing but professional, adventurous, and creative.