#2216 - Luke Bryan

Joe Rogan podcast, check it out! The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day! Hey, what's up Luke? Good, this has been, thank, this has been a long time in the making.
I need to thank you for taking care of my family, when they came to see your show. I hope they had a great time.
They had a fucking fantastic time. But it was also my daughter was, like, freaked out because she was going to the show.
She didn't know she was going to get to meet you. And her friend didn't know they were going to get to meet you either.
So we were able to keep that a good little secret to them. Yeah, it was cool.
They had the best time. They came back beaming.
So thank you. Well, Vegas, you know, that was wrapping up Vegas.
So, yeah, that was a fun two years of residency there. Did you do two years there? Yeah, I did two years, 26 shows per year.
Dude, man. Vegas will take a little piece of your soul.
Just a little tiny piece every day. Well, the thing about it is, like, all of that get to Vegas and, like, you know, you run to the craps table or blackjack table your whole life getting to Vegas.
Dude, I got all that. I could.
I'm like, I get to Vegas. I'm like, man, let's just sit in the room, watch a little sports, and I got the gambling out of the system.
Well, that's good. Did you used to gamble a lot? You know, I've always been, I've never been a sports gambler.
My dad, but my dad raised me to kind of be a poker player kind of kid. I mean, I used to joke, if my dad didn't play poker, we'd have never had Santa Claus.
I mean, he was just a crazy little poker player and like a little pool hustler. Oh, so he um oh so he was all in well so one of my dad's fame one of my dad's famous quotes is um so we we we he flies me out to vegas when i'm 21 or whatever and man i had like we were in college and i had took like three three or four hundred bucks with me.
Just broke as shit.

And two hours into the trip, lose my money.

This was like where we still had truck phones.

I'm not even sure we were like toting.

We certainly didn't have like the Motorola Razr where he could just call me.

So he just goes looking for me and he calls my hotel room.

And he's like, boy, what he's real george real southern georgia i said i lost all my damn money and hell with this place he goes well you ain't gonna win it back in the goddamn room so i mean once you have that that mindset that mindset in gambling certainly mean, when that's your dad going. And so that's been a famous saying when my buddies, you know, when they're down and out, down two or three grand, and they're pouting over the bar, you know, you're not going to win it back at the goddamn bar.
But I did. I went through phases where, you know, I never really got financially behind when I didn't have money.
I would just, I controlled it pretty well. And I did my two years out there.
I never really had any big beats or anything like that. But I do love to just, man, I love to just sit there, have a drink, have a cigar and watch Dice and Cards.
Because you're just sitting there and your mind's checked out. It's like no different than going to the driving range and hitting golf balls or sitting on the bank fishing or sitting in a deer stand.
But I got out of there. I got all my gambling, at least for now, out of my system.
But it was great to meet your kids there. I really appreciate it they really enjoyed it and like i said they were just they were blown away meeting you they're like well it was a fun show because um we got to really do a lot of bells and whistles out there that aren't available on normal shows when you're you know out touring and stuff because you're having to take down stuff be real mobile out there we put a lot of stuff in the room and well that's nice that the that's one good thing about the residency you know you're going back to the same spot over and over and over again and we had our routine i mean i have my my room and you know about 6 30 i'd hop in the shower run there, and get on stage about 8.30 and knock it out.

And 10.30, somewhere at a craps table.

I'm lucky I don't gamble.

I don't do it. You never got into sports?

Nope, nope, nope.

I used to bet on fights.

Back in the early days of the UFC, I used to bet on fights.

And one day they made it illegal, but I already stopped doing it.

Because I was like, this is probably not a good thing for me to be betting on things I'm commentating on.

Because I can't affect the outcome.

Right.

But, like, so... They made it illegal, but I already stopped doing it because I was like this is probably not a good thing for me to be betting on things I'm commentating on because I can't affect the outcome right, but sometimes quite close I also sometimes know some shit You know this has been a bunch of times so one of my business partners I would just I would tell him to what to bet on and we were like 84% at one time.
It was crazy Yeah, well for like six or seven fights in a row six or seven fight cards in a row we're about 84 percent because every now and then they would have these guys that were coming in from japan or from russia and uh the the odds makers didn't know who these guys were and i was like oh jesus christ and you house yeah you already oh yeah i knew those studying them for yeah years so i knew i knew everything about these guys i'm like jesus christ bet the fucking house lay up yeah there was a few like when anderson silva came into the ufc i was like bet the house bet the house on the brazilian whatever you got i go throw it all at this guy you can't fucking lose because when he came into the ufc he was like in his prime and i got to see him evolve in japan and then later on in england And so when he came into the UFC he was like in his prime and I got to see him evolve in Japan and then later on in England and so when he came into the UFC I think he was a favorite over this guy Chris Liebman who's a really tough guy but I'm like whatever the odds are, fucking throw it all at that guy. I bet y'all were you betting with him too No, I wasn't betting.
I'd already stopped I was like, I could get in trouble Don't get in any trouble now either. Don't lose the gig.
Well, now the UFC made a law, and it was real recent, like two years ago. Up until like two years ago, all staff, anyone could bet.
Now no one can bet. Really? Yeah, because there was a scandal.
One of the trainers apparently was involved, allegedly was involved, knew about an injury. And then it turned out there's probably some other bets that were a little shady that perhaps allegedly people were involved.
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That's 20% off plus free shipping worldwide with the code ROGAN at manscaped.com. So they're like, okay, we've got to put a stop to this, which is too bad because it was fucking nice to know.
If I was unscrupulous. I had had a little so i went my whole life no sports betting through college i mean my i through college i'd walk in and my buddies back then they'd spliced seven to eight tvs together and they're they got all their they got all their notes and i'm like and i'm like dude no wonder you're fucking you got all d's and you're you're you're about to get shipped out of college but i survived all that and uh me and a buddy we started picking two games a week and we would load up and this was this was like um six years ago five years ago So I would load up like 20 grand a game.
But I was strict, and I had my deal. And it just, we like bet, I mean, just take Alabama and the points in the first half.
You do that most of the year.

I mean, it was 80%. So we did well.

And then my buddy moved away from me, and we quit talking about it.

And then I went rogue for like two years.

I was betting like Utah State at the West Coast game, midnight,

just throwing bets in.

And I was like, man, I'm out.

So I'll stop. Did you see Uncut Gems? Yes.
Dude, that movie tripped me out. I think it tripped everybody out.
What a great movie. Especially if you've dipped your toe into that world of like, and I've got buddies that that do parlays and like i'm not even sure i even understand the inner workings of parlays now still i mean and teasers and all that right right and you know i'm i'm so removed from that level of sport like let you know so-and-so's doing four late gonna get four layups at the half and And, man, that's opening up Pandora's box there.
It is.

And you've got to think there's people that are involved. There's been scandals where referees were involved, where referees were making calls they shouldn't have made, maybe calling fouls they shouldn't have called, and people getting paid.
There's so much money being thrown around. And, you know, the average referee, what do they make?

Hey, dude, so I saw you at the – I'm a giant Georgia fan. And I saw you obviously on the sideline on Saturday and just, man, some of those calls.
Yeah, there were some bad calls. It started getting weird.
We actually left after the first quarter and went to see Eminem. So we had an epic day.
We saw the first quarter of UT Georgia and then jetted and went to Eminem at the racetrack. Oh, the Formula One? Yeah.
Eminem played in front of like 150,000 people. It was fucking wild.
I mean, what a weekend for Austin, too. I mean, because I had buddies that were like, why are you not coming? And I'm like, man, I've had to be me all year.
And it's like the weather's chilly in Nashville. My boys want to go deer hunting.
I'm going to take them deer hunting, sit on my back patio and scream at the TV. But it got a little dicey there on the back.
I was like, oh, it was weird. Yeah.
Well, just the energy. There's so much anticipation for a game like that you can't replicate it you can't replicate it in any other in any other i guess those big um global uh brazil versus yeah argentina or whatever we had some friends from england who had never been to an American football game before.
What was their take on it? They were blown away. They're like, oh my goodness.
Oh my goodness. This is madness.
I'm like, this is Texas football. It's so fun.
They get serious here. It's crazy.
I got to shoot the cannon. Boom.
Did you shoot it through the Georgia shirt, that one? Yeah. Oh, gosh.
Maybe I gave it bad luck. You hurt my heart.
Maybe it was bad luck because they lost. Maybe what? Maybe it's a fucking rude thing to do.
Oh, we – yeah, man. It was a good win for Georgia.
And like I said, both those programs are just so – Incredible. Incredible.
It's when you're watching it behind the scenes, you know, watching how much organization there is. And it's incredibly complex.
Through the years, Kirby and I have gotten to be pretty good buddies. Kirby can't be buddies with anybody because that job requires – I've never seen a requirement of a job more than being a college.
It's probably like being a president. It is.
And so I don't text Kirby during the season, really. I know he, and man, just watching what those guys go through trying to manage these big programs like that.
I mean, and when they're not coaching, I mean, dude, they are politicking. Yeah mean, they got to go to the steak supper for this touchdown club here.
So, man, it's a wild ride what those dudes go through. And when you think about gambling with calls, like bad calls, that has got to be— imagine all your money's on the line, and you see some horrendous call, and you fucking— See, I'm out of that.
And I didn't really get into that heavily, even when I was betting regular games. But, man, it's freedom.
Man, I just watch the games with freedom, and I don't get in, you know. I'm good friends with Dana White, and Dana's a—he's a real degenerate.
I love how big, that's the best way to describe.

Oh, he'll describe it that way.

I get it from him.

Like your big horse racing guys, their adjective of themselves is, I'm a degenerate.

That's the first thing they say.

Well, Jamie and I went to visit, we went with Shane Gillis and a bunch of other guys,

we went to visit Dana while he was gambling. When we got there, he was down $600,000.
And I was like, what is happening here? I heard him say he learned how to play back grab because you can bet more. You can bet like $500,000 a hand or something.
It's crazy like that. That's so crazy.
I was getting anxiety just sitting there watching. And so then Taylor LeJuan came over, and Dana and Taylor have this deal where Dana teaches Taylor what to gamble and how to do it.
They're down $120,000 in what, five minutes? Five minutes. Five minutes are down $120,000.
And I'm just sitting there going, what the fuck, man? Look, Dana's rich as shit. Obviously.
I know Taylor is wealthy, but there's like a level where you could lose $125,000 is $125,000. Well, yeah.
I mean, I've learned kind of like if you're betting $1,000 a hand, you can get down $50,000 quick. But when you transition to that $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 a hand, you'll be down a million or two.
And I say, because I've watched some other buddies that bet on that level, I'm talking about like 15-hand swing is an $800,000 swing. And I'm like, but that's the scary part about gambling when you start, when you don't have much money and you grow into some

money but your your level of what you want to press your your anxiety level and your endorphins and all that it grows with your your wealth and man next thing you know you're well that's the only way they get their fix right they can't play 20 a hand yeah right that goes away right it's like Right.

Well, it's like the whole, you know, there's a lot in society that, you know, I think we're preyed upon with that thought process, gambling and a lot of it. Dopamine hits.
Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then once one level of the dopamine levels out, then you go to the next one. Yeah, it's hard to watch.
Forget about doing it. It's hard to watch.
Like, I don't get it. I'm glad I don't do it.
Well, I can say that I always have fun with it. I mean, I've always had fun gambling, and a lot of times I'd take my band after we get off stage, and we'd have one band night, and I'd, like, set them all up with some chips.
And I've gotten at a craps table where I can kind of manage everybody's bets, and I'd set them all up with some chips.

I've gotten at a craps table where I can kind of manage everybody's bets,

and I'm like, don't do that now.

Wait, wait.

It's kind of like steering the mothership.

We had some great nights just laughing and cutting up and cheering.

Like I said, one guy walks up, and everybody rubs his head. You know, it's just camaraderie, you know, at the craps table.
I gambled so much at the craps table. My last night, they let my craps team that dealt me all the craps come on stage and was celebrating.
I'm out there, like, I'm, and I look at my, you know, because they work in teams, you know, and my team comes out on stage, and dude, I was roaring laughing. I'm like, yeah, so.
That's hilarious. Look, I know people have a problem with gambling.
I think it should be legal, but it can get away from you. Yeah, well.
But that's like a lot of things in this world. Alcohol.
There's a lot of things that can get away from you. It doesn't mean it should be illegal.
Right. Well, Lord.
It's just weird that it's only legal in a few states. I think that's expanding now.
I remember when online gambling was illegal. Oh, yeah.
And then. It wasn't that long ago.
The early days of the UFC, online gambling was illegal. And then my, you know, because we're obviously southeastern Tennessee Bible Belt, and I don't know, but there's certain states.
I guess Tennessee is a legal gambling state, or maybe Georgia. I can't tell.
I have to talk to my nephews, all of his buddies, and see if they're on the little apps. But, man, they'll go sign their buddies up to get the $200 free.
I mean, they got all kind of a little racket. Yeah, well, and then also people would go to Indian reservations.
That was the big thing. Which is also crazy.
Like, gambling's illegal. You've got to pay the Indian reservation tax.
Right. You know, you've got to pay your 50 cent to do the dollar bet.
Yeah. Do that math.
Yeah, and you only have to be a small percentage Native American to get a piece of that. So there's a lot of millionaires just hanging around that casino, just enjoying it.
But if you've got a place like in Connecticut. Oh, Mohegan and all that.'re great so you know typically on my way kind of the mohegan i'd go play there a couple years i did one night i did three nights there and dude i'm like getting off stage just sitting there gambling and you know i'm like am i coming out ahead on this gig or what but i think i got out there making a little money yeah it's it's weird though that you could do that legally.
Well, then even like in Tennessee and Tunica back in the day, you just put a barge on the Mississippi River and you can gamble. It's like, well, what is that all about? Right.
That's that show Ozark. Right.
Yeah. Well, totally the same premise.
You know, it's like put a barge on the river and now let's take all all these people's money yeah my buddy johnny used to he was a pool hustler he used to call people riverboat gamblers when guys would just go off and you know a guy was a gambling addict you just trick him into a game he's like guy's a riverboat gambler or yeah that's the two analogies degenerate or riverboat gambler yeah be careful of all of them so it's just always been funny to me that Native American reservations are essentially a country inside the country,

and they can do whatever the fuck they want.

I was just reading about this Colorado wolf deal,

where they've relocated wolves to Colorado,

and the Native American reservation let them know,

the moment those wolves get onto our land,

we're flying over in helicopters and gunning them down.

I elk hunt every year in colorado and and is that where you've done i've done colorado most years i go to utah yeah well first of all cam haynes and i you know we we've got a connection with cam and just love that guy but yeah we so when i saw colorado do that i was like it's just like what are we doing guys well whenever you have biology that's getting voted on by people don't understand it it should be decided by wildlife biologists that's it that's the only people that should decide whether or not things like that happen well we can really dive into this and let's do it. My thing is,

we are so governed in the world of wildlife biology through the states and stuff,

they're not going to let animals,

they're not going to let humans ruin animal populations,

I don't think, anymore.

No, of course.

If anything's going to happen,

they're going to mess it up and let animal populations get too big. I was, and I don't know who to name or whatever, but I was with some guys with Wyoming, and we're talking about grizzly bears.
And I said, man, you know, because they brought up, you know, grizzly bear problems.

And I said, well, you know, because they brought up, you know, grizzly bear problems. And I said, well, what is the deal? And they said, well, there's 1,400 to 1,500 grizzly bears in Wyoming.
There needs to be five to 600. And five of the 1,500 are only hunting humans.
What? Like, have totally... But there's not that many human deaths.
Well, in Yellowstone, if you pay attention, there's about two or three that get... Right, but those 500 grizzly bears that are just hunting humans...
No, five. Oh, five.
Not 500. So there's five grizzly bears.
Right. There's like five grizzly bears.
Sorry. This probably won't be the first time I am not totally clear with you.
But, yeah, so there's 1,400 to 1,500. There needs to be 500 to 600 grizzlies.
But of those five to six, all of them, five of are have like oh we don't we don't care about salmon anymore we want to sit by this trail and pick off this hiker jesus and that is that is a high up biologist in wyoming telling me that and i'm like well why won't they let y'all go in there let some hunters think about the the you can do the math chart do a $30, grizzly bear tag do a twenty thousand dollar one they'll go for that yeah for sure um go in and let it manage it right but there's one federal judge that's got it all shut down one judge that's so crazy my friend went moose hunting said he saw no moose and he saw 12 grizzlies in Wyoming. I went on a bear hunt in Alberta, and there's so many grizzlies now, you can't even go.
It was through Cam's people. John and Jen.
Yeah. I saw them recently, and they've had to move.
Yeah, they move areas. Yeah, they have abandoned areas because they're overrun with grizzlies.
They sent me some trail cam pics that are terrifying, like little school buses. They look like school buses, like the size of these fucking grizzlies.
Was it you that was talking about they were trying to determine a male grizzly versus a male gorilla and who would win? Did we ever? I think I'm on Team Grizzly. Me too.
Because they eat things and kill things every day. Gorillas just, they fight.
They just like, they puff their chest out and they mostly eat grass. Well, but when you think about $30,000, $40,000 per grizzly and then the guiding fee and then the taxidermy.
Yeah. Think about the taxidermist.
And then the Pittman Roberts, people need to understand all the gear, everything, 10% of that goes to wildlife management. All of it.
And then at the end of that, nobody's's gonna let the grizzlies get exterminated right it's not it's they're overpopulated now and then when you look at the population the how beautiful the elk population is in colorado yeah and how amazingly managed it is in colorado for public hunters for a guy like me that can go get an over-the-counter tag,

I think they're probably going to wipe out over-the-counter

tags for out-of-staters.

They're going to make it a draw tag.

And then, now the wolves get to eat them.

And I don't get to bring my elk

hunting money in and

give it to them.

The thing is,

they always say that they're going to get

to a certain level of the population and then they're going to open it up for management. But they don't.
Wolf management? Yeah. But what happens is people sue.
And the wildlife, you know, all the people that love wolves, they sue. And when they sue, they stop the hunt, and then it has to go to court, and then it has to get decided.
And if you get a radical judge like this judge that you said that's in Wyoming. And these are all things that people in the know are telling me.
So, Lord, I don't need a judge somewhere in Wyoming like pulling my... No, you're probably right.
You're probably right. Everyone that I know that hunts there says there's a lot of grizzly bears and it's concerning because you don't see all of them.
If you see a lot of them, there's a lot more than you don't see because most of them are just not just out in the open hanging out with you most of them were deep well and and so i went on a uh i went on a uh salmon trip up in british columbia and what you know 99 of your interpretation of a grizzly is this big old fat chunky thing. Well, so we're flying in on these helicopters to go fish the salmon runs that are running up into the mountains of British Columbia.
And it's an amazing trip. Like, you fly over in the helicopter, you look down, you see the huge schools of salmon salmon you take your fly rod and you go catch them and drink your beer well helicopter pilot was like hey man we've seen some grizzlies in the area just and you know at the time we're like man this is all part of the uh experience yeah it's like get a get us kind of going a little bit well we land and the night before we didn't fish that day so

we'd flown in and drank some wine and dude you know my eyes are like fuzzy and we're fishing and i tell my guy i'm with i'm like hey i'm gonna go to the helicopter and get a beer or something and and dude i get there and i pop my beer and i'm like i look down the river and i'm like fuck that is a fucking grizzly coming toward my buddy. And I went, Jay.
And, dude, it was slim and like a damn. It was lean and like a greyhound.
Not, I wouldn't say lean, but it hadn't got all fat on salmon yet. Well, it comes down the bank and jumps in, and we ease back to the helicopter.
We look back, here comes another grizzly, literally 30 yards from us. And I'm like, we get there, and I had left my beer on the bank, and my grizzly sticks his tongue in my beer, and then he in the river i run grab the beer drink i'm like grizzly spit anyway the helicopter pilot goes you did not drink a beer i had to sip of it after i had to but that's like i mean he just like trichinosis wild shit yeah i get from that some berry infection or whatever salmon but loose ass So listen, dude get on the helicopter and the pilot's like man they're they're getting too comfortable we take off fly a mile down the river i i'd already had my fly rod together i never broke it down so i sat it in the little basket and we land i take off about 200 yards start fishing and i had i had i had to slide down this like 20 foot cut bank where the river had cut the bank i look across the river and here comes a grizzly bear galloping oh boy on the other side of the river and i'm like well i've already seen the other two mature ones and i I was like, well, that's a baby grizzly.

I was like, that's cute.

Dude, that grizzly hits that bank on the other side of that river and jumps about 20 feet in the air and lands in that river.

It looked like a Volkswagen VW bug hit that river.

I take off to the helicopter. All my guys are like, get here, get here.
A mother and two of the babies were on my tail. Oh, my God.
And when I got to the helicopter, dude, ruined my whole trip. I couldn't realize.
That's when it gets scary when you're on the mothers. Oh, they're the ones that.
They fuck everybody up in two seconds. Yeah, they don't play any games.
When they have their cubs with them, they don't take any chances. Like, I'm going to incapacitate this dude.
Yeah. Fuck him.
It is... So that was my grizzly encounter.
I wish all these people that get to vote, unlike BC when BC outlawed grizzly bear hunting, I wish all those people that experience—you should have to experience what it's actually like there. You should have to see.
You should have to see the population. You see what it's like experiencing them.
These aren't teddy bears. And for you saying you shouldn't be able to manage the population as wildlife biologists say it should be managed, you're putting people in danger, especially people that live up there.
The thing about it with me it with me now listen i grew up deer hunting my whole life ducks dove quail and man i always had a soft spot for bears and probably i still it's not like i gotta go shoot bears every year i mean whatever but when you find out when you hear you are a hunter and there are like when when I met John and Jenny and they were like, Luke, there are so many that need to be managed. I was like, man, that's cool.
Let's go do a bear hunt. Had a great time and didn't get all heady with killing a bear.
I mean, I know guys in Tennessee, in Gatlinburg, Joe. joe i mean dude they are darting black bears off second story mo uh holiday inn balconies they're digging in i mean they're digging in canning you know vending machines oh yeah walk and i'm like dude it's just a matter of time somebody's gonna walk out their balcony and these they're gonna get they're gonna get got right there.
100%. And they dart them and move them back into the Smoky Mountains.
You know what happened in New Jersey, right? The governor ran on this policy of banning the grizzly bear hunt, and he got in, or excuse me, the black bear hunt. In Jersey.
In Jersey. Jersey has the most black bears per capita in the country, which is crazy.
I'm going to send you something because I sent this to Cam last night because it's nuts. This dude just shot the state record.
So it's back in. Yes, it's back in immediately.
Because they had so many interactions. Joe, my mother lives in Mexico Beach, Florida on the Panhandle.
There's a lot over there, too And they, like trash cans turned over every day. Crazy amounts in South Georgia and Florida.
Yeah, that's it. So I have a photo of the bear.
Jamie, I'm going to send it to you. Next to the dude who killed it.
That's a good one. Okay.
Here, I'm going to send you this too. But look at that.
The size of that bear. So this is in New Jersey.
This is New Jersey. This is New Jersey.
That's a 770-pound bear in New Jersey. I didn't know they were up there that.
They're dense. Dense with bears.
I have a buddy who lives up there. He sees them all the time.
So down in the furthest most southern corner of Georgia, Bainbridge, Georgia and all that and then Mexico Beach, Florida around Lake

Seminole. I mean, they're everywhere down there.

They're all over the place. You got that photo of that dude

laying next to it? Yeah!

Look at the size of that thing.

Now that article says

800 pounds. That's from

Sever Broadheads. It says

880, but the other article said 770.

It looks... it's big.
Whatever the actual size it is it's big look at that sever hole well it's you know like i said i'm not that's a perfect shot i i think there's healthy numbers of all of it and like i said when i see you know when you see i don't know wolves and elks well there's more than healthy numbers. Okay, there it goes.
But you know what a hunter. 770, oh, gutted.
770 gutted. Whoa! Ah.
That's what it is. So they weighed it in at 770 pounds gutted.
So I think it was about 880. Holy shit.
Holy shit. Yeah, you see they got it in a slide.
They had to put it in well that's crazy man there's so many of and for people who don't know people eat bear and bear's good it tastes well and you know the sad part about i think uh california you know the the whole um the whole you know the gallbladder deal i don't know much about but, you know, there was a black market for black bear gallbladders. Yeah, in some cultures, they think it's medicine.
So they were killing black bears just for their gallbladder? Yeah. But I think that was overblown.
I don't think it's going to affect the population. I'm just guessing, especially a place like New Jersey, how are you going to affect that population? They're everywhere there.
You ever see the fights they have in Far Rockaway? What's Far Rockaway? Far Rockaway, New Jersey is like a nice suburb. It's like a nice neighborhood.
Giant bears. Jamie, pull that video up.
Giant bears brawling on this guy's front lawn. Did you ever see the guy that filmed the 10-minute grizzly fight? This might be—oh, yes, I did see that.
That was— That was insane. But that's where grizzlies are supposed to be.
This is in a fucking neighborhood. And these are big bears, and they're duking it out on this guy's nice lawn.
They go tumbling down the stairs, and they start fighting in the street, and people are watching. And they're probably fighting over trash cans over trash cans Look at so look at the size of these fuckers Imagine like you're watching TV So these dudes they duke it out this is like Jamie how long is this video? It's like a 10 minute video Six minute video six minutes, for six minutes these dudes duke it out.

They pile out into the street.

They're biting each other.

And this guy's filming from a car.

And you see it as it like trumbles down.

Like, yeah, pull it down so when they're in this.

So they come tumbling down the hill, you know, full UFC style, duking it out.

Passing by this guy's mailbox.

Look at him. It goes on forever forever and they're out in the street

this is a nice neighborhood

and you have

huge predators

in front of a Volvo

what the fuck

and this guy was trying to ban the hunt

hey pal there's plenty of these

bears you should hunt them

because if you don't hunt them they're going to hunt you

Thank you. Well, they're going to, you know, that's the thing.
I think it's no different than, I mean, I grew up in South Georgia with gators. Yeah, same thing.
You get one comfortable with you, man, and it's not good. It is not good at all.
What's the what we're dealing with here is ballot biology it's all people that are very emotional most of them live in cities before i ever hunted bear before i ever hunted at all i was like kill a bear what an asshole you have to be an asshole to kill bear and then you get it i was same i was kind of the same way but you probably had more hunting experience i grew up fishing white tail hunting and And I remember a man, you know, being a 14-year-old kid shooting a deer and having remorse. But then you need to have that remorse, too, as a hunter.
You need to understand. You're taking a life.
Yes. And you need to.
And I tell my boys that. My boys have grown up in it seriously.
And I'm like, hey, man like hey man hold up right let's just don't run up to the run up to it chunk it in the machine just just do a little homage right so go ahead but that yeah but the remorse go ahead though the remorse is important it's it's a part of the experience like you you are now connected to the food that you're going to eat. Right.
And I think that's what most people don't have. And I think that's bad for us.
I think all of human existence has been wrapped around hunting animals. And we hunted them ourselves forever.
And then we eventually figured out agriculture. But when we hunted them ourselves, most of the time that humans were human and we had this deep connection to this animal because this animal was going to sustain our family and they used it they took the the the skin from it and they made all kinds of things they took the tendons they made strings for bows they and the fur yeah the fur i mean it's what their clothes were made of.
They ate all the organs. They ate everything.
It sustained everybody. And that was how people lived.
And then when people stopped living like that, we got a little confused. I know people that eat meat.
Like my wife was at dinner with her friends and they were from England. And one of the friends said, where's your husband? And she said, oh, he's elk hunting.
And the guy made some sort of while he was cutting a steak made some sort of like oh that's atrocious. Why does he do that? And she goes why are you eating meat? You didn't like you paid a supermarket hit man to go kill that fucking steak.
This is so stupid but when you're removed from it culturally and England is basically removed from it culturally, there's roe deer there and there's some stags.

Stag, yeah.

But for the most part, England has a very small hunting population.

And I believe bow hunting is actually outlawed there.

It's outlawed in a lot of places in Europe.

It's outlawed in Scotland.

It's outlawed in a lot of places.

So there's like a deep ignorance as to what's going on and what it is.

And then they have judgment based on these cultural norms of like, and there's media depictions, media depictions of hunters in movies. They're never the good guys.
They're always pieces of shit. The hunters are always assholes.
They're always drunk. They're always, you know, trying to kidnap women or kill somebody, right? They're always like torturing an animal.
There's always something where someone has to come in and fuck up the hunters because hunters are they're portrayed as bad guys in movies yeah and then and and listen you you know you the success rate of the the the proper ethical things always line up that that that you know you don't the success rate doesn't always go like you wanted it to. Right.
But, you know, the fact that hunters still are working every day just to keep hunting and the fact that hunting is declining so bad. It took a little uptick during COVID.
Yeah. Because during COVID, people are like, hey, man, this fucking, what if there's no food? My buddy lived in Asheville, and he sent me a photo in the middle of the pandemic.
He goes, dude, he goes, there's no meat. And he was going down the meat aisle.
He's like filming it. He's like, there's no fucking meat here.
One of the best things that's just naturally happened at our house. And my wife is, you know, my wife's like typical housewife plays tennis great shape doesn't you know when she kind of eats like a bird when she does eat but man she will call me and she'll go hey let's have elk night and because we keep our freezer in my garage and i've got all my tackle in there and she has through the years understood like hey i'm gonna run out to the freezer.
We're going to do taco night. I'm going to throw all the elk meat in the sink and start thawing it.
And, man, over the last five years, I've woke up and we haven't had beef, cattle, and hamburger, tacos, spaghettis, bolognese. We haven't eaten it in five years at my house.
And it just takes you a minute to go, hey, put it in the freezer and then plan your dinner. You know, we all get busy with kids and stuff like that.
But I'm so proud of her that she'll call me and be like, hey, I'm going out to the freezer. Do you want me to get these elk tenderloins? Because by the time me and my – I got three children that go out there with me now, and two or three of us will get one.
I mean, we got enough meat. Like, it's awesome that.
It's the best food. It's.
So good for you. Man, when you pat out an elk patty hamburger, like, your hands have nothing on it.
Right. Like, I mean, you could take beef patty and just like, it's just like.

Fat grease.

It's like caulking, you know.

That's also why it tastes so good.

Right.

Which we got to, there's a time and place for that.

But it's pretty cool that elk gets that.

And they still have to add a little bit of pork fat to elk just to keep it.

But I give a lot of meat away.

And whenever I do, when I get texts back, I get texts back i get excited people like damn this is so good and it makes me feel better it does make you feel like there's something about wild game and get energy from it well yeah and yeah when you can go like we uh at my place uh my deer place in southern tennessee yeah man we we just we make sure man we got i got a big walk-in cooler there and if we if we're if we're not going to take something in there i put i've got some red stag up my place in tennessee uh i did a high fence down there and uh so between stag and whitetail and elk you know we're moving we're moving meat around and making jerky are they roaring on your property they do that's the craziest sound the craziest sound. It's the baddest.
I thought the elk sound was crazy. Elk sound is probably the craziest.
It's the best. Elk is.
But I'm used to it. But the roar of the stag is bizarre.
It sounds like a lion. I put one on my Instagram story, Jamie.
See if you can find it. This dude just staring at the camera roaring.
I hear, rather, Argentina is a great place to go. I hear they have a lot of them down in argentina we um it's interesting because tennessee is you don't know what the fuck that is.
So my 14 year old has been going to Colorado with me since since he was five or six and when they're that little obviously they can't bow hunt but we would get an elk down and i'd let the boys hike up with me and and pack the elk out and one day we had another hunter with us going to get an elk and my two little ones were following me and i said well we had an elk bugle i said hey boys stay right here and they're they're six six and eight and we went up the hill and i could keep well tate right before i walked off he goes dad are they gonna kill us if we sit here because those elk bugle i mean you can feel their bugles in the woods. And I said, no, son.
Feel them in your chest. So we went up and tried to call this elk in.
And then some elk did actually cross in front of them. And they're six and eight just sitting there, this big herd of elk coming by.
And we come back. And I was watching.
I could see them sitting down there on this tall log that I put them on. But I got back and they were like, those hell were all, I mean, you know, having your boys,

I mean, that's what I live for and to keep the, you know, and I just wish we could create

a narrative where getting your children doing that will, I mean, I don't know.

Well, hunting is a very difficult entry.

It's very difficult. It is.
If you're a person who's listening to this, like I've never hunted before, but I'd like to learn how to do it, good luck. It's very hard to do it.
You're right. Very, very hard.
It's very hard to find someone who's going to teach you, who has the patience to show you what to do. If you've never shot a rifle before, it's very hard to understand, like, what is the difference between a .300 mag and a seven millimeter what is this that that's the that is the tricky part really with all outdoors if you could if you could bridge the gap between um all parts of urban life and allow urban life to to find a place to go.
But we went through a phase in outdoors where landowners were like, if you hunt my land and you twist your ankle and break your leg, you're going to sue me, so no, you're not allowed to come hunt my land, so all the deer will get overpopulated, eat all my crops. So I think now states, I think Tennessee has put a law into where some of those uh getting sued well what i'm what i'm saying is that feeds people's inability to go find somewhere to hunt too i mean you're so many people don't have a 50 acre farm they can't afford it but they want to go hunt and then i just hope the hunting community and even the whole outdoor community can make it more accessible and landowners i mean i had this little lady that that um i wanted a turkey hunt her she had 60 acres that bordered like a 300 acre track of mine and i was like ma'am when when i'm out hunting and some of my turkeys or our turkeys may cross onto your property, do you mind if I go? And her house is a mile away from, or it's 50 acres.
It's probably 400 yards. She thought my shotgun was going to shoot through her house and kill her.
And I had to spend 45 minutes. And she grew up in Tennessee in the country.
And she doesn't understand that a shotgun is not, you know. Right.
And so, man, the education of it all, just the bridge and the knowledge of it gradually gets worse and worse. Right.
But the need for it gets greater and greater. And I tell my children all the time, I'm like, boys, there is no drug in the world and i'm not a you know i i'm pretty straight guy never done done much of that but i said i got a lot of crazy buddies that have and when a big elk's walking in or a big white tail or you hook a big fish there that the the adrenaline from that no drug will replace it nothing's like it I've done some wild shit in my time i i've seen the documentation of the wild stuff i've done some wild shit i'm gonna i'm gonna send you a video jamie of something that happened last week so this this is uh the best example of that this is the best example that we had this elk and he was out at about 50 yards we'd snuck it snuck in on him he was over the ridge at 50 yards we could see the tips of his antlers moving around i had my sight set at 50 yards and as my friend was calling him my friend was at a tree that was about 20 yards from me he came right into our lap so it's one of those things where i had him range at 50 and then i see him coming in he's coming in i dial him again i range him again at 40 a dial man i'm like oh shit he's coming into our lap.
So it was one of those things where I had him range at 50. 50 and then boom.
And then I see him coming in.

He's coming in.

I dial him again.

I range him again at 40.

I dial him in.

I'm like, oh, shit, he's coming into our lap.

He just kept coming in.

Watch this video.

Do you don't have any yet?

God damn.

Modern technology.

It didn't make it through?

Oh, it's still going.

Hold on.

I'm pressing it to send it through iMessage.

Oh, is that what it is? Maybe. Okay, let me...
It said it went through. Did it go through? I just got it.
Okay. Bust out those cigars.
You want a little heavy or a mild? Whatever you have. Here it goes.
Check this out. Listen to this.
Listen to this when he comes over the hill and gets angry. Like when I heard that, I was like, uh-oh, here he comes.
So right now he's about 50 yards. What's your heart doing right now? Right now I'm pretty calm because he's at 50 yards.
Right. But now I'm realizing he's not going to stop, so I range him again.
Now he's at 40. He pauses for a second.
He's staring right at me. I have to stop.
Oh, yeah, so you're off to the right. I'm off to the right, and I'm pressed up against a tree.
Full camo, hiding in plain sight. So now he's moving out.
So now I'm like, oh, shit, I'm moving my sight to 20. So now I move my sight to 20, and I'm trying to figure out a time to draw.
So right here I draw. That's when he turns.
He sees some movement. That's another one, beautiful one.
Perfect. That was it.
Boom. There's so much nerves and so much anxiety, and you're ranging him, and he's coming in, and it's like, and you think he's going to be at 50, but all of a sudden he's at 20, and then it's like, don the shot like relax execute a perfect shot well here's the beauty of all that in the outdoors you know when you hear these are mild they're good though um man when you when you when you kind of conquer one level of fishing or hunting then there's another one you can go learn the

space in you know what i'm saying you can go right and what i say is like i just i mean from the elk hunter that i was um the elk hunter that i was 10 years ago like took so much took so much work to even get from a 10% knowledgeable elk hunter to a 60%. Now, I can watch that elk react to everything and know how that elk's reacting because I've done it for 11, 12 years now.
And I've taken my boys., so when you get tired of whitetail hunting and whitetail hunting gets rudimentary, then

go try to dig in and take it to the next level to challenge yourself.

That's what's so fun about, like, when I got, I was always a bass fisherman, always

a bass fisherman, never a fly fisherman.

Well, then I got into fly fisherman, and that became the new seven-year challenge that I— You tie your own flies? I can now the little—I can tie big streamers. Right.
But like the little bitty— Where you got to get, like, goggles on. Oh, yeah.
It's a real art form. Totally one of the most rewarding things you can do.
Sure. You make your own lures.
Make your own fly and trick. A big ass fish.
A big fish with it. Yeah.
My only problem with fly fishing is a lot of it is catch and release. And I'm like, it's fun.
I know it's fun. But you're basically just fucking with fish.
You're just fucking with them. Like, I could have killed you, bitch.
You know? Well, I get it. The handling of the trout, like when I was, you know, I grew up bass fishing and we're like, and the bass flies out of the water.
We'd grab it and, you know, as kids, we're like, ah! You's like a a team in the delivery room comes in to hold the brand new baby. Heck, they treat newborns.
They're slapping newborns around and getting their lungs going before you mishandle a trout. The whole mystique of trout and all of this stuff is just, man, it's outlets for all of us, you know.
I mean, I remember when I moved to Nashville, man, my dad, he kept me fishing and hunting, and he wound up being a pretty dang successful business guy. And he told me, he goes, dude, when you move toashville don't forget to take time to go do that stuff and you know for about two or three years man i didn't i was focusing on my career but now as i roll out man you know as i'm kind of established it's you know man it's it's been the highlight and the fact that three boys landed in my life, like, you know, my wife's like, it's not even fair that you have – because I can always use one of them.
I was like, well, baby Bo, you know, he's really been stressed at school and he wants to hunt this evening. And she's like, I know your game.
I know your game. Well, we're so lucky in this country, too, that there's so much places that are public land.
That's another thing that Europe doesn't have. I mean, that's what Robin Hood was all about.
People think Robin Hood was steal from the rich and give to the poor. No, it was about hunting lands and hunting rights.
People were starving, and the king had all the land. And there was all these deer, and Robin Hood would go out and whack deer.
Like, that was the story about robin hood it really wasn't about stealing money it was really about hunting rights right they don't have that i didn't know that yeah but that's that's why it's so fucked over there that's why they don't have this attitude and that's why that's why you know you hope um the the whole education of hunting and landowners and and conservation of the animals and all the land ties into where landowners need to have a better understanding of, man, give this old boy a break. Give this guy that just knocked on your door and asked permission the good old-fashioned way, man, give him a break and let him take his son or go hunt.
and don't hoard your 15,000 acres to your...

Right.

You know. man give him a break and let him take his son or go yeah go hunt you know and don't you know

don't hoard your 15 000 acres to your right you know to your dad but hopefully he's a good guy that's the problem also is that assholes ask for permission and then do something stupid you know dude i had a guy shoot a stag one first year i put my stag in my fence shot him right off off the road. Really? Left him.
Man, you talk about pissed. Right off the road, just shot him and left him.
Shot him and left him. Yeah, see, there's people like that out there, and it's so fucked up.
It's the bad apples, you know. They're out there.
How could you do that to a stag, too? God, that's so awful. Yeah.
And the meat is so sensational. To know that that meat is going to go to waste, that's so crazy.
Man, I don't know. You know, I guess enough whiskey and an old back road and a raffle, you'll— Shitty education, bad childhood, all of the above.
Well, but— Yeah, all of the above. But, yeah, I mean, I look at—I've got a till my nephew.
He's lived with me since he was 12 and then my so till's 22 now and bo is uh bo's 16 and tate is 14 and till was 15 when he killed his first elk the rule has been if you can pull 55 pounds you're you're you're. And so Bo is a lot bigger than Tate.
When he was 13 and 14, so Bo, my 13-year-old killed a full-grown elk at 13. Whoa.
With a Bo? With a Bo. Whoa.
Totally the frigging most badass thing I've ever seen. And then...
Just to be that young and be able to execute the shot. Dude, he did it and he earned it.
And like I said, I've been hiking him up those hills. That's what another...
Like the hunting and the killing is... Man, when you pack out a damn 800-pound animal, the first time I packed my elk out, dude, when I got to the Polaris, I mean, I was like, I was sobbing, like from exertion, exertion, like delusional, because we took a wrong turn, we hit a big Aspen blowdown, and I had to tote the head and the cape out, and I had to walk over blown down Aspens with that that cape and once we got 500 yards into the blowdown and man we got that buggy and you know all and all the elk hunting guides they're the toughest they're the toughest dudes oh yeah they're doing that all year long they're grizzled they're the toughest guys i tell people man if i get called to a serious uh if i get called in in a serious war i'm calling my elk guides that's that's my first that's my first call so but it's you know and i didn't grow up ever thinking i'd have the opportunity or the or the you know the ability to go hunt elk but once you start doing it and and and but you know man this this week i killed thursday i killed my biggest whitetail i ever did and then i was so i'm so like overwhelmed by killing it i haven't even like i don't even know if i've enjoyed it yet because it was it kind of happened fast but um it's just so fun picture we how big is it it.
So listen now, and so I didn't post it because it's obviously in my high fence. And you know the, you know, but man, this deer was born in the fence.
In Tennessee, you can't bring any genetics in. You can't do anything.
Whatever herd you have, when you- Wild herd. Whatever wild Tennessee deer you have, you have to grow them and man this deer joe when he was two years old we were like what in the fuck what a ufo ship dropped this off in here he started with huge mass different looking genetics and we watched him for uh we grew him for we feel like he's five and a half and

Dude we're we are over the moon about this dag. I know that's a huge deer.
Oh, how big is your property?

It's I guess all together is probably 11 probably 1200 acres in so that is

Much more space than a deer would ever travel in its natural life anyway i'll i'll put it to you this way we put about 18 red stag in there they're up we don't know how many there are that deer might have get fucked by a stag i think his mom yeah he might have he might have crossed. That might be a hybrid.
A hybrid, yeah.

Dude, we will ride around.

We have too many stag, and we'll try to thin them out.

Joe, we can't find them.

Like, literally, like, we'll spend a day.

I'm like, hey, grab the rifle.

We're going to pull up here, walk this bottom.

Can't find them.

There's 60 of them in there.

We hunted them for four days this weekend.

We killed two.

So 1,200 is, I mean.

It's much larger than a deer would have in its natural realm. Yeah, and, you know, listen, I mean, there are a million ways you can criticize me for having the high fence.

But, you know, I have low fences that we bounce back and forth on the low fences because that's fun as hell too to not know what's walking in but the main thing is is i wanted my boys to have the ability to manage deer and grow them and i grew up i love south texas Big, big, I love South Texas deer hunt. Like, but I learned, I leased a South Texas place down here.
And then I learned having, you know, young children and my schedule, man, to go own a South Texas ranch, commit that much to a South Texas ranch and get five days there wasn't my thing. So my high fence in Tennessee is kind of like my little ode or my little homage to my love for South Texas whitetails.
So you can keep it close. Keep it close.
It's 55 minutes from the house. Oh, that's nice.
And it's a retreat. I get down there.
You know, Starlink has ruined us because now we have internet. But before that, man, we'd pull in the holler down there, and you'd have to drive up to the hill to make a phone call.
But, oh, Elon saved us on that. Yeah, the new Starlink's wild.
It's the size of, like, a notebook. Well, what was funny is the first time we saw the satellites come over, we were at elk camp.
You know, my nephew, Till, he's 21, and we're all liquored up. And my nephew, he goes, guys, I know we've been drinking all day, but what in the hell is coming toward us right now? And we were like, and then we had one guy in the group was like, God damn,'s elon musk and we watched it go over and we were like wow what a what a it's amazing we we used one in utah for the first time this year so easy to set up set it up like five minutes and then we're online youtube i mean my wife when i went to elk camp my wife was like all right i'll i'll hear I'll see you.
I'll talk to you in six days. First day, elk camp.
Set the Starlink out. FaceTime.
Hey, baby. How are you? It's crazy.
Yeah. My buddy was deer hunting recently in South Texas, and he said on three different occasions in the week their deer got bumped by illegals

he said it was crazy he said illegal aliens just moving through the ranch he said they they have you know a swarm of them every day i hunt south texas every year and the ranch we went to last year at any given moment you can drive and pick up 50 backpacks. They just, that ranch looks like, and I hadn't been, this ranch was closer to the border than I've ever been, and there are piles of backpacks and tarps.
You know, they'll take tarps and put the tarp out. And they'll wait in the day, and then they get picked up at night, typically.
But when they get picked up, they chunk their backpack. The ranch I was at, they have to have a full-time team of people just going around picking up backpacks and keeping trash off the ranch.
My buddy who has a ranch in South Texas found a a dead guy found a guy ran out of water just died on his ranch and it's heartbreaking because dude if anybody dude i can't imagine having to walk through that brush to get to freedom right because when i'm not knowing where you're going not knowing where you're going and probably you have kids yeah yeah dude when i leave south te I leave South Texas, I'm pulling cactuses out of my ass for a month. Yeah.
Especially if you do, you know, you go rattle for them and stuff. So, man, it's— Forget about rattlesnakes.
Forget about everything else that's down there. And water, yeah.
When you think about, man, you get your water rations. Yeah.
You miss that? Yeah. You could zig when you should have zagged and you're not going to run into water especially down there and it was in the summer so you know 105 degrees outside this poor dude just died and they found him well i every ranch every ranch i've went to the ranch owner um you know they're encountering two a year, 15 to 20.
Most of the time they come up to the main headquarters needing water. And when they get to you, or that's been my experience with talking to ranch managers down there.
They're very, you know, they're not, I don't think they're there to create any problems. They're just like, hey, you know, we need some water.
The vast majority of them are just trying to get a better life. Get a better life.
And we would be doing it too. Could you imagine if you live in a third world country and you had kids and you realize you can get to America and you get a good job and you've got to figure out how to do it? Yeah, I would do it.
We would all do it. It's just the craziness of not knowing where you're going in South Texas, which is so vast.

I mean, I think it's one of those things where people talk about it.

It's almost like talking about space.

You know, like, oh, the galaxy is 200 million stars or 200 billion stars.

It doesn't make sense because it's like it's too big for you to understand.

If you had to walk through South Texas, it's South texas itself is bigger than like multiple countries in europe yeah well i

think you know and even imagine before like the oil booms and oil rigs and stuff like now they

have a little bit of visual right lights to walk to right right i mean man i couldn't imagine

yeah just striking out just taking a chance hoping, or maybe you'd gone with someone who went through it before and they have a vague memory of what's the best way to get to a creek. I don't know.
I mean, you know, we've been there, and, you know, the guys, they open box blinds. You know, they're hunting towers, and there's a family sleeping in the box blind.
Man, you just got to feel so sorry for them. Yeah, for sure.
I mean, I thought, I mean, dude, I remember when I was 15, 16 years old processing Cubans where it's so bad that you're going to fucking piece together a raft and you're going to give it a go for Miami. Right.
I remember being 16 going, how bad must that be? How bad must that be? Pretty fucking bad. Pretty fucking bad.
Pretty fucking bad. Their case is a little different because they're running from a communist dictatorship.
And's why the most Republican motherfuckers in this country are Cubans. Cubans go hard.
They're like, we've seen what all this socialist horse shit comes down to. And it comes down to government control over every aspect of your life.
And they enforce it with violence. They enforce it with guns guns it's not as simple as everybody just gives up whatever they have and now everybody has an equal amount that's all nonsense that's the that's the hook but the reality is the government controls everything and you are fucked and they always live in big ass houses and they eat great food and everybody else it's everywhere it's from from africa Cuba to America.
The whole African. Yeah.
That whole. Have you ever hunted in Africa? I haven't, but I know I will.
I can go on this show and say, man, I'm not one of those guys that's like thinking about an elephant or lions and all that. I love to bow hunt and I'd like plains animals, you know, your kudos and all that stuff just i love to bow hunt and i love i'd like planes animals you know your your kudos and all that stuff man i i you know to build when my boys get a little older and we can do a proper two month currently sports and my children have ruined my hunting life or myself well because my my boys are going to play all the sports but when when we can get a i'd love to do them a gap year and let's go do a a true safari yeah and and not when i say safari that doesn't mean i want to go like hunt 60 days i want to do like your i want to see the all of the serengettis and all of the animals and take in the animals for a month and have like the the wives and the girls and the girlfriends and we sit out there and do the safaris but then i want to carve out two or three days with all the boys go you know go get the true uh planes game uh yeah and i i would look it's man i tell you it's a pretty cool story uh my um my pilot my lead pilot is south african and uh during covid man he couldn't his mother was dying and he couldn't get down there to tell his mother bye.
At this point, I just kind of got to know AJ. I've always heard that South Africans are pretty badass dudes.
At the time, I was learning that AJ is a pretty badass dude. I didn't altogether know it.
Well, he got with me, and he goes, Luke, man, it's still, I cannot get into South Africa. It may have been his mother or his wife's mother, but I called some local guys, some local Congress guys in Tennessee, and they granted him permission to get down there, and they got to tell either his wife's mother, well, he comes back and he's like, Luke, I now owe you a Cape Buffalo.
And I was like, what? He goes, my family has a big ranch. We're overrun with Cape Buffalo, and you now have one of my Cape Buffalo.

So, dude, he is going to fly me down there, and I'm like,

and that's just kind of the way he's wired,

but he's going to help us with some safari stuff. Don't they call them the Black Death?

Yeah, now they are bad.

Yeah, you don't just go running up to them.

Yeah.

Like with your, not your shit together.

That's a big animal. That's like an 1 animal right maybe bigger and like all muscle so cam and adam greentree they went up to uh australia you know australia has like an infestation of asian buffalo they have i forget which type of buffalo it is invasive.
So someone introduced it, like all the animals in Australia, a lot of the mammals were introduced and they have no natural predators. So they have these buffalo up there everywhere.
Cam said he shot one and they went up there with no food and they went up there to live off the land. They're drinking out of fucking crocodile lakes.
Like, literally.

Bathing in that shit. Filtering water.

Filtering water. Eating whatever

fish they caught. It's Cam's new version

of pushing himself. Now he's gonna...

I think it was Adam's idea.

He's a psycho, too.

Both of them are perfect together.

So he said he had one piece of buffalo in his mouth

for a half an hour, just chewing on it.

He said that's how tough they are.

He said it took forever to eat that thing.

The true form of like, yeah, no, that's even a whole other level of true organics when it takes you.

Oh, yeah.

You know, when your jerky's jerky right out of the, you know, right in the field.

Yeah, well, there's no dry-aged buffalo out there. No, that's a fucking— Did he say, I was a taste of it.
I mean— Because most plains animals in Africa, historically, they say are far beyond our plains animals as far as the meat. Like your kudos and your—I mean, I'm drawing a blank on all the plains games and like i said this is stuff that i'm like totally elementary in because i don't i just don't know much about that whole african thing it seems like the things that the big cats want to eat are all delicious right yeah like uh i shot a neil guy a couple years ago yeah yeah and tigers eat them right did Did you ever eat the Neel guy? Yeah, it's delicious.
And the meat is like an even more vivid red color to it than even our elk and stuff. Well, it's all delicious.
My favorite is still elk, but another one is axis deer. They get hunted by tigers, and they're some of the best-tasting animals alive.
Axis deer are delicious. I think cats are smart, just like bears are smart, too.
Salmon's delicious. Sit there and pick them off.
They know what they're doing. Well, have you done Africa? Are you going to do it? I would like to.
I'd like to go over to Africa just to see it. You really got it.
Cam, was he kind of your catalyst? Oh, yeah. And God, I mean, it's like you had Michael Jordan teach me how to play basketball.
Yeah, Michael Jordan teach you how to shoot free throws. Yeah.
It's so fun, though. But, you know, even with God, I tell you, man, I dove hard into duck hunting, and you talk about you talk about, I mean, learning to blow a duck call.
And when you think you know how to blow a duck call and you get next to somebody that blows a duck call and you blow yours and the room starts laughing at you like like ridicule like take your duck call off and put it in your bedroom and leave it when we go hunting and i'm like dude i've been working on this fucking thing for four years and they're like and it's so funny but it's like elk bugles yeah someone who sucks at bugling like you hear me like what the fuck was that i mean it's like you walking in with a with a tutu on yeah i love duck hunting too i've never done it but i love the idea because you're sneaking. You're hiding.
You got fake ducks. You got the whole deal.
Some people have ducks that even have flopping wings. Oh, dude, we got all.
Listen, man, let me tell you something. Dude, I got given a chocolate lab about eight years ago.
And here comes this wormy-ass chocolate lab into my home you know scrawny and since then oh my god that damn animal has thrust me into duck hunting just so i could take him duck hunting and man it is that sounds like the same excuse you use with the kids right my kid yeah i have to go for have to go for the dog. Yeah, for the dog.
The dog needs some duck hunting in its life. And my wife is, this dog, man, this dog can open every drawer in our house.
He can open Frito-Lays with his, he can smack Frito-Lays open and eat them. He can, he can, he is, he's pushed a porcelain pound pound cake a pound cake on a porcelain island off onto the floor ate the pound cake and the porcelain dish and like x-ray 100 shards of porcelain in his stomach the vet's like put that fucker out in the yard because there's and if he, if he lives, call me back.
He lived. And now I have duck hunting properties.
And my boy, you know, we're in the house blowing duck calls. My wife's like, you know.
I mean, my wife's like four boys in the house, all of them blowing duck calls. She's like, man, one day, yeah.
So do you have one of them setups where you're, like, hiding in one of those shacks that's underground? Well, yeah, we have elevated blinds that are brushed in and some brush. And then we have pit blinds that are, you know, when you get down in a pit blind.
And then you lift it up? Yeah, you're right along the water level. And then, you know, we have, you know, there's experiences where you wade in the woods, and they come down in the woods.
And, man, it's just, and it's, the thing that really makes duck hunting kind of like when you're in a blind with your, let's just say you got your buddies from way back, and there's five of you, and you're sitting there smoking cigars. And, you know, you're in the blind together, and it's very social, too.
Drinking coffee, it's, you know, 15 degrees. Coffee, cigar, you know, and everybody's like, shh, shh, shh, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up.
And you work the ducks. They light in front of you.
Kill them. Dog gets them, brings the duck back.
You look at the duck, and you're just like, just have a big old toke on your cigar, and you're like, yeah, this is pretty good

shit right here.

Are you good at cooking them?

Yeah, man.

You know, the thing about it, when you do, you know, your grain ducks, your ducks that

feed on your rice and your corn, you know, like a diver duck that eats essentially minnows, yeah, you don't want to eat that. And geese, geese, sir.
You find somebody that can cook a goose. You know the story about how to cook a goose? No.
Well, you get a big pot and you put a bunch of water and then you put a concrete cinder block in there and you boil the goose and you pull the goose out and eat the cinder block but some people can make uh but i thought goose was like a christmas goose a speckled goose speck speckle bellies are good but like a mallard and a wood duck oh man a wood duck with jalapeno and cheese and bacon wrap which nothing nothing's bad when you do that. My friend Jesse Griffiths, he runs this restaurant out here called Diedue.
Is it? It's fantastic. And he serves a lot of wild game.
And Jesse came on this hunt with us with Steve Rinello down in South Texas, and Jesse cooked some diver duck. Was it good? It was fantastic.
Whoever the hell Jesse is. He's a wizard.
Is a wizard. Well, that's great.
He's a real chef. So Ryan Seacrest, he's like, hey, man.
Ryan Seacrest, the radio guy? My guy, yeah, at American Idol. And Seacrest goes, hey, I've got a, you need a light? Yeah, thank you.
He goes, dude, I booked this at EMP, 11 Madison Park. Number one, at the time, number one restaurant in downtown.
You know, Adam was, Ryan was taking me and Katie and Lionel to dinner and I've never been to a, certainly the number one restaurant in the world. Well, they take us a tour of the kitchen and dude,, they have ducks, walls, because all of your French cuisine, really the centerpiece is duck.
That's like the duck fat. The ducks are the real big part of French cuisine.
Well, dude, I see all these ducks and I'm like, what are y'all doing here? He goes, man, we're aging them. So they get these.
Now, they're getting probably there. They're getting farm-raised, organically-grown ducks, and they age them with the guts in them.
Yeah, I've heard of that. I've heard people do that with pheasants, too.
You hang them by their neck. The enzymes of the guts pull stuff out of the meat well it adds a flavor to it apparently and dude man i ate sketches me out yeah well here's the tricky part because dude i don't even know if i enjoyed my meal because i i picked the chef's brain because i wanted to figure out a way to take my mallards and all my ducks i killed and age them properly but what you do got to worry about is when you shoot them you know you're putting you know you're shooting it's good the guts are going right through kind of in the meat a little bit so that gets you shoot them right yeah right that's different than you know i ain't got that good where i all headshot them yet but uh no when these guys are aging them, what's the temperature in the room? I think it's like just above.
They're not freezing them. I think it's however you would dry age a cow.
So like 40 degrees or something? Probably 40 degrees and 13, 15 days with the guts in them. Wow.
15 days with the guts in them. I've heard that people hang their pheasants until their their heads fall off and that's when they that's when they cut them up like who figured that out like who was the bold bastard it's the guy that ate the first oyster right you know drank out of the puddle right yeah and you know it is fascinating in pasant.
And when you look at pheasant and quail and chuckers and, you know, Hungarian partridge now, you're talking about the end all of wild game, in my opinion, the top of the... That's what you like the most? Well, I think when you look at the pheasants, you know, they call them prairie chickens and they're beautiful.
The meat's a little whiter and less gamey or so. Have you had Sand Hill Crane? Yes, ribeye of the sky.
I haven't, but it's crazy to look at it. It does look like steak.
It's a red meat, a deep red meat, and it's a bird. And, you know, they're wild little creatures too, man.
You know, when you take your lab Sand Hill Crane hunting, you got to gotta fit them with goggles because they'll poke her right up yeah whoa and then um we i i just got in a golf course property down in florida and uh we sold our beach house and then we're kind of migrating to this place and i fly down to the tour of the property and i'm like dude what are what are are y'all doing with all these sandhill cranes and they're like what do you mean it's like a golf course guy right and I said dude that's the rib eye of the sky bro he's like he looked it up and I don't you can't shoot sandhill cranes in Florida what I do there somebody call the governor everywhere really everywhere on this property you can't shoot sandhill cranes in Florida, but you can shoot alligators? Unless they're lying to me because they're scared I'm going to have a psychotic episode and go running out through the golf course with the guns. Maybe it's just the area where you're at.
You couldn't shoot sandhill cranes. They may be protected in certain counties.
But, you know, even in Tennessee, Florida Sanhill, they're protected under the federal... They're protected under the Federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
Look at that shit. Wow.
State rule, blah, blah, blah. Intentional feeding of sandhill cranes is prohibited.
So you can't hunt them. Wow, they're protected.
Well, in Tennessee, we have... In Tennessee, there's a couple guys that guide them, and I think it's a draw tag.
You can draw – you can put in to draw a sandhill crane tag, and then, man, they make a very distinct – something like that. And, dude, you can hear them, and I'll hear them coming over my farm.
And, God, if that's the wrong noise i just made i'm gonna get sounds good i'm gonna you got it sound whoa i love this guy i need me one of that's them wow now that's all of but yeah that's you hear that yeah what a fucking cool animal they sound like something from avatar see those beaks yeah those are a labrador blind labrador retriever blinders right there how do you fasten the goggles on a dog man Man, oh, God, here he goes. Oh, my gosh, this is like the great Sand Hill Crane goggles for labs.
This is going to be great. How does it secure on? I'm thinking about a dog's face.
I guess you've seen those dogs in those side cars on the uh motorcycles on the motorcycles probably probably that that rig but um i mean i googled something and i popped up yeah i don't think that's the same yeah that's that's like uh that's an aspen that's two dogs being silly yeah yeah but um the um yeah so in tennessee you you can hire a guy and he'll take you and they'll kind of get them coming into an area, and I think you can get it. Oh, there it goes.
There you go. Oh, wow.
Oh, that's crazy. Now, those look like, I think those are snow geese.
Wow. Snow geese are probably the same.
Look at their goggles all scratched up, too. Crane hunt.
No, those are, yeah, those are sand hills. Wow, that's crazy.
Dogs need to have their eyes protected. Yeah, so when you get, yeah, well, you've got your golden.
But, man, if you get your lab, oh, man, beware of that because you will get hooked. Oh, I'm sure I would be.
Also, I love duck. Duck's delicious.
On the grill, marinate it properly for a day or two, plan on it. That's what Jesse does.
That's the's why he does the diver duck i'm telling you this diver duck was sensational well but when that and that's the that's what you got to watch in all wild game is man plan it preparation get it marinated and yeah and man you just can't beat it yeah you got to know what you're cooking how to it, especially if you're cooking something that has low body fat.

You got to make sure you cook it nice and slow. Right, right.
You know, that's one of the great things about things like a Traeger. And you can just set it for $2.65.
Best thing in the world. Leave it.
The new one's fantastic, too. It's just everything comes out so smoky and delicious.
Man, my dad, 4th of July. I think he was drunk and hated us on fourth of july because he stayed up smoking the boston butt every night you know i remember my dad man he he'd had that old charbrook out there and he'd get up with his vinegar and all this shit and he would wake up all night night before the fourth and smoke them butts man but now you just walk out, put that thing on 220 at about 8 p.m., wake up at 8 a.m.
The app tells you if you're low on pellets. I know.
It's like, what are we doing here? It's crazy. It's so much easier.
There's something that men are attracted to, like, cooking over wood, though. Like an actual fire charcoal and wood.
Well, and we're in the heart of it in Texas, you know, right here. I mean, these guys take a damn, you know, they glue four propane tanks together and have a smokestack.
And the guy that, what's our guy that does our charity event? Oh, my God, I can't believe I'll come up with him. But Mark texts me Meat Church.
Have you met the Meat Church dude? Oh, yeah, I've met that dude. Yeah, dude yeah yeah he comes and he's got some awesome rubs he's got all that but then what's funny is yeah he pulled up to our charity event with this big smoker and man i'm like this is like elon musk style engineering on this thing it's pretty you know and man you know they get out there and yeah they'll look at me and you doing Traegers and we're, that's about like us, that's our version of having a tutu on.
It is funny because people want to do it all themselves. The offset smokers, like have you ever gone to Terry Black's here and see the lines of the offset smokers? Terry Black's is the number one barbecue place in the country, probably in the world.
They cook more volume of barbecue than anywhere else on the country. And they have just line after line of these giant propane tank smokers with briskets and beef ribs and spare ribs.
See, when I moved to Nashville, being a South Georgia boy, I'd never even heard of brisket. Really? We only knew pork barbecue.
And it's just, so when I moved to Nashville and then, like, there's some dude there with a Texas brisket restaurant in Nashville. I'm like, what are they talking about brisket? And this was 2001 I moved to Nashville.
This is how insulated you could be in your own, you know, as we talk about the ways of the world changing. I mean, it's like, dude, I lived in a section and everybody, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, they didn't, brisket was like.
I think brisket was originally a German thing. I think it was like with the sausages, like there was cuts of the meat.
Well, the smoker thing came certainly from German immigrants that came to Texas. That's where the origin of the barbecue out here is.
And then the brisket was like cuts that nobody else wanted. Right.
So they figured out a way to take these cuts that nobody else wanted and turn them into something delicious. They just had to do it over time.
And now it's like a preferred cut. You know know if you go to terry black's the brisket's sensational they're probably cooking yeah the preferred cuts of like which cut of the brisket would you like not not the old flank meat down there you know probably you can probably get the ribeye and all that it's all just how long you cook it for how do you how you do it what temperature and they they wrap it and they unwrap it and they spray it like they have it down to a science and then at the end it's like the the key is you want to be able to fold it over your finger and not have it break apart just get it to just where it folds over say our deal was just always smoke a big pig you know smoke a pig you know you know not not the not the one's big as this table but you know, about that long.
100-pounder. Yeah.
Yeah. And walk up there on the family reunion, and all the women were grossed out because, you know, you're just pulling the big pig, you know, the big, you know, you can pull that meat off a pig.
It's like that. So we're getting hungry, Joe.
I know. That's the good thing about wild pigs too so they're always

available to hunt like the one of the great things about texas it's it's not good if you're on a ranch or if you have a farm but if you're a person who wants to hunt you can hunt wild pigs so 65 days a year and always have sausage our place and um me and my best friend we've got a like a quail hunting place and down in the heart of south georgia tons swamps dude we were uh

you Me and my best friend, we've got like a quail hunting place down in the heart of South Georgia, tons of swamps. Dude, we were – which you know all the math, and I'm sure you've brought it up on how many sow pigs.
They'll kick off 30 pigs a year annually. They can, yeah.
And then we would have them roll through our front yard, $30,000 damage a night. And for anybody out there listening, if you have this going on, we mounted lights in all the trees around our whole lodge.
And you flip them lights on and we hadn't had one wild hog root up our yard since. Really? They will not come around those lights.
It's a great tactic. That's interesting.
Yeah. And when somebody told him, you know, some good old boy told him and he was like, man, we'll try anything.
Because you would walk out there and it looked like 300 landmines went off. And the night before, our yard looked like Augusta yeah it's crazy isn't it i mean they're they're bad little dudes now they do a lot of damage i mean in texas alone it's millions and millions of dollars of damage of crops every year they shoot them out of helicopters here you ever seen you ever done any of that have you it is It is.
Man, it is. It's the most unfair type of hunting that's ever existed.
Man, if you know. I don't know.
You know, my children, I took my boys. And somewhere there's a, you know, I hope he doesn't hear, but there's a Navy SEAL Marine recru recruiter because my sons are ready for warfare after doing that.
I'm like, but the guy that we took, he's got a big, beautiful high fence. If you fly around him, man, he has to thin him out every year.
Yeah, you have to. But it's so fun doing it out of a helicopter.
You don't want to thin them all out because you keep wanting to do it a little bit. Yeah.
But you haven't done that yet? No. No.
I'm still – I just mostly bow hunt them. Well, you know, our pig stuff in Georgia, man, it's fun because you can go on a deer hunt, shoot some deer with a bow, and then we'll take a rifle.
And late in the evening, the hogs will come out. I know a lot of guys shoot them at nighttime, too.
Yeah, yeah. Like thermals.
We have guys with the big trap doors that trap them and stuff like that. So, I mean, they're probably the number one, you know, wildlife.
I never will forget, you know, right when, like, maybe iPhones come out and you get your iPhone news updates, and then I never even knew what the magazine, like, The New Yorker was or, like, The Guardian and all those things. Well, The New Yorker, I'm scrolling through, and I i see feral pigs and it was this huge article done by a guy maybe the editor of the new yorker man he did a great job with that article and just went through and this was 15 years ago i read that article about you know the feral hog problems and you know you would think i i would i don know, I would think the New Yorker leans quite left, but the fact that this guy wrote the article from a perspective of huge problem, need to be dealt with, was a pretty badass take on it.
Well, once people see the sheer numbers, they're so overwhelming that you go, a minute how how are you gonna stop this how are you gonna stop it from multiplying continually every year well you're not you're not there's places you're not going to get to well it was in georgia and these these swampy deals you can't you know you can't you can't helicopter them there so that's when you get you know that's when you get these old boys with their dogs and they run off in the— That'll help. But even then— So, Joe, here's another thing.
You think about this. So when I start my high fence, the year that I started it, our turkey population in Tennessee, which it's been going through hell, and you'll hear this, the turkey population in Tennessee was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.
I mean, eastern turkey hunting, one of the most beautiful things in the wildlife that the state of Tennessee has. And my turkey population is amazing and still is.

But we hired a guy, and he put 110 traps out. 110.
And night one had over 100 varmints. Coons, possums, armadillos in the traps night one.
So they're just killing all the turkeys. They eat the eggs.
Yeah. You know, a turkey lays 12 to 14 eggs.
Now, listen, I found this out this year. This is going to, if I can get a couple nuggets that you hadn't learned yet, that's kind of the goal for the day.
So, and turkey does not lay their eggs all at the same time. Really lay their eggs one day at a time.
They lay it next to a water source. They go to the water source, hold the water in their mouth, drip the water on the eggs periodically, using the water to hatch them at the same time because a hen turkey if she had to hatch all the eggs hatch at the same time but if she had to hatch them for 12 days she could never keep them corralled properly so she manipulates with water and if i'm wrong now this is a biologist that told me this.
I heard this this year. Totally blew my mind.
So in the nest, and I've walked up on them, they got 12 or 13 of them sitting there beautifully. And whatever that hen does, she manages those eggs to hatch at the same time.
Wow. And maybe, maybe, now like a tortoise, I guess, or a beach turtle or whatever, you know, I think they, they spit them all out that night, but a hen, a hen turkey does not.
Well, so one armadillo rolls by that nest. And that's a wrap.
That's a wrap. She just lost them all.
And so there was a big study that went on in Tennessee about the decline of the turkey population. So what do they do about that? They try to hunt the varmints? Well, you know, well, trapping now is so rare.
You know, trapping, the art of trapping has gone down quite a bit in the arm of the, oh, and I'm not even bringing up coyotes in tennessee but uh so yeah if you can if they can loosen up tennessee can loosen up their trapping laws and make it more available and and uh you just got to thin out those uh you know armadillos in tennessee you would have never um man we woke up and we can ride around and shoot 30 a night. Really? Armadillos, 30.
Don't they carry, like, crazy plague diseases? Man, I wouldn't recommend touching them, you know. They say they do, but that's – People eat them? I'd never heard of that, but you probably can find somebody.
They definitely eat raccoons. They definitely eat raccoons and definitely, I don't know about possums, but if you're eating a possum, your ass is hungry.
You're very hungry. But raccoons, I mean, in Georgia where we grew up, had several old timers, man.
They'd get them a coon and it was always kind of a party deal. What know what does raccoon taste like i never had i never well we got an old buddy down there he's like you know what bald eagle tastes like owl so i guess you could say raccoon you know i had a buddy of mine tell a game warden that joke it didn't go over well so but uh there's a lot of shit that people eat that people would go, what?

Yeah, I mean, when you're talking about...

I saw somebody do the pig deal with a

full gator. Oh, I've seen

that before. And I hadn't done that.
I've had gator

tail, but I hadn't had that. Yeah, they'll take a giant smoker

and put a gator in there. Put the whole thing on there.

And they skin it and all that.

Put an apple in its mouth. Yeah.

You know what's crazy

in Georgia? There's a place

rural

I don't know. And they skin it and all that.
Put an apple in its mouth. Yeah.
You know what's crazy in Georgia? There's a place, rural. So all the chicken farms down there, huge chicken farms, all of them.
Well, what do you do with the chicken carcasses? Well, I mean, there's a lot. They used to grind them up and feed them back to chickens.
Well, they feed them to gator farms. Oh, wow.
They put them in a limb shredder. Oh, wow.
Now, you talk about the most foul smell on the planet. Go into a gator farm warehouse.
Joe. Buddy.
Just rot. Nothing can replicate.
Maybe the Sir Straumanommen challenge can rep you know the the whole sir strommen joke thing but what's that you've seen where the guys pop the lid on the uh the swedish fish no oh joe sir strommen what is it oh we did it at our at our deer camp it's like an aged, sweetest fish that's rotten in a can. It's aged? For years, like a sardine.
And so, yeah, the Sostramon Challenge. Look at this guy's face.
Dude, we popped that thing. So people fish with them? They use it for bait, like for catfish or something? Look, people eat that.
Oh, foul. And if you can stay in the room with it.
Have you tried it? Dude, no one. No, I was outside 15 yards from it, throwing up in the flower bed.
All right, we got to order some, Jamie. Order some.
I'm glad I didn't get you a... I might eat it on Fight Companion.

But, um... Well, Denver's on the verge of passing a

no-fur law. So if Denver

passes a no-fur law, what

are they going to do about cowboy hats that have

beaver skin lining? And then

if you're going to say no fur, how

are you going to say no fur, but you're allowing

leather?

So skin is okay as long as you take the furry part off is the furry part what's offensive you know if you know what you'd fucking the the chaos that would ensue if you outlawed leather everybody's belt is illegal everybody's shoes are illegal air jordans are they're calling it illegal illegal yeah they're to pass a law. They're trying to pass a law where they ban fur.
Sorry. They've done it before.
I mean, they've done it in other places. But where does it, like I said, where does it, Joe, I'm at with America.
It just keeps going. That's the problem.
When I'm an American idol. It never fucking ends.
When I'm at America, no. It never ends.
It's never going to end. They're going to keep pushing.
It'll get to you can't eat meat. It'll get to it has to be lab grown meat.
It'll get to it could get as crazy as you could ever imagine. There's animal rights people that would like to push in that direction.
And you would have never thought this would be possible. But you would have never thought that you would have biological males competing against females in high school sports.
And that's everywhere. And if you complain against that, you're a bigot.
You're seeing the craziest of crazy thinking. There's people that think the pedophiles are minor attracted persons.
And they'll talk about this as university professors teaching classes. It's been recorded.
People have seen it. It's not everywhere, but it's enough where you go, I see where this goes if it keeps going because none of this shit existed 20 years ago.
You go back to 2004, there was none of this shit. Nothing.
A transgender person was a rare person with gender dysphoria. It was very rare.
And there wasn't a lot of hatred towards those people. It wasn't a thing that people worried about.
Now there is. Because everybody's like, what the fuck? Why is this in schools? Why are you having them? There was a recent pool tournament where it was a women's pool tournament in the semi-finals it's two trans trans women competing against each other two men two biological men that wear lipstick competing against each other in a women's tournament it's fucking crazy so i would have never thought that would be possible so it can get to a point where there's no meat it can get to the point where meat there's this demonization of meat you keep hearing about it all the time meat is the number one source of carbon it's fucking complete total horse shit it's not even number two it's not number three it's not even fucking close cow farts yeah it's the dumbest shit ever and by the way all of that is factory farming regener farming is actually carbon neutral.
If they don't sequester carbon, it's actually good for carbon. There's a whole reason why there's a balanced ecosystem of cows eating grass and the grass fermenting in their stomach and then creating manure.
And that regenerates. Yes, regenerates.
It's carbon neutral. It's actually good for the environment, and everything feeds off everything.
There's a system that nature has evolved for millions of years. That's the normal way it's supposed to be done.
And, you know, we're just living in a crazy time. Yeah, when you think of Denver and Colorado and the outdoors, man, you've got to appreciate everybody's opinion of, you know, it's so old term, the granolaist.
But it ain't granola no more. I mean, it's...
They're getting a lot further than granola. Granola used to be normal until they...
See, the thing is, those people were weird and rare, and they were tolerated. But then they got online, and say if there's only 10 of them in this town and five of them in that town well then now there's hundreds of thousands of them collectively in the country all as a group and then they think that they're activists so they they think that they're doing something good so then they start saying things like no fur in colorado pass this bill and you start saying no meat no more meat no more meat, no one should have meat.
Okay, what are you going to do with these cows? What are you going to do? You going to go around castrating all those bulls? What are you going to do? How are you going to control the populations? Are you going to let them go extinct? Are you going to castrate all the bulls? Are you going to let some of them breed? How are you going to make this distinction? Are you going to bring in wolves to handle them? What are you going to do? What the fuck are you going to do? What are you going to do with all those people that work at the butcher shop? What are you going to do with all those people that work at the meat processing gonna do what are you gonna do with all those people that work at the butcher shop what are you gonna do with all those people that work at the meat processing plant what are you gonna do with all those people that have been transporting meat back and forth what do you do all those jobs all those families all their income all their businesses that they've had for a hundred fucking years what are you gonna do with that these people have like the most minimal understanding of the system that they're trying to influence. They don't know what the fuck they're doing by releasing wolves.
They think, wolves are beautiful. Yay! You see the governor? He's releasing the wolves.
He's like, yay! He's so happy. Yeah, they're going to be saying yay when they're down.
I don't know, dude. The dogs are getting eaten.
Dog, everything.

Dude, let me tell you something.

Well, not only that, they brought in wolves that had a history of killing cattle.

The wolves they brought into Colorado.

It's no different than the grizzly focusing on humans.

And, man, I live just south of Nashville.

We got 180 acres.

I've got neighborhoods all around us, man.

About every now and then email goes out

little fluffy's gone coyotes we put six coyote traps out on my farm one night six for six wow

and let me tell you what else is a little vicious son of a bitch. A fucking otter.
Oh, yeah. Otters will fuck you up.
Let me tell you, buddy. Those things are.
I mean, Joe, I'm so like, I mean, like I said, my brain is bass fishing and all this stuff. Man, we'll have otters come up into my bass pond.
And fuck those bass up. I'm talking about they're fucking gone, the fish, in three nights.
The fish are gone. And the otters eat one and play with the other ones that they kill.
Wow. And, like, you go by my lake.

Like, I have an all-female bass lake at my house, which you're going to – this is a whole other fun deal.

They will roll through there and eat my all-females and just throw them up on the bank.

There's carcasses.

How many?

Well, you get four otters in your pond on a 17 acre lake they'll eat 20 bass a night and you the problem is you don't know you've been got until it's too late you've been got wow and so joe a tit to grow a 10 pound bass is about,000. And think about it.
I've been loving on these damn fish. I've been walking out there making sure they're happy so we can all catch them.
Yeah, look at them. And then damn, damn, otters roll.
So if you have an overflow, a spillway on your farm, and it runs through your farm and dumps into a major river body of water, and that otter swims by that water dumping in that river, he is up that river. He's up that spillway into your lake, and he has got you.
Wow. And we'll put traps out, dude.
And, man, they just keep coming. Wow.
Keep coming. And I'm talking about otter pelts.
I mean, like the prettiest thing you've ever seen. So do you turn them into coats or anything? I mean, we've got enough where, you know, we can, we've got them skinned out in freezers and rolled up in our freezers.
And my farm guys, I mean, I think they're, but you know, the sad part there the market for that should be an amazing market but i don't i don't i think because everybody's scared to say they got a damn otter pelt yeah you know but yeah fur it's first got a bad name if it's got hair on it leather's fine none of it's fine but leather's fine with people no one has a problem with you wearing cowboy boots. Nobody gets mad.
Yeah, see? Look at that. Nobody gets mad at leather.
All that is is fur with no fucking hair on it. It's the same thing.
It's weird. But damn otters, man, them little rascals, you know, they...
I'm building a lake at my place in Georgia, and it's right on the Flint River. You're running wildlife management.

I love it, man.

It's so fun.

It's so damn fun.

Like, it's four hours of my day.

And it also cleanses your mind, right?

Totally.

Just like hunting.

It's totally, and it is not for myself.

You can't, my enjoyment is to watch the kid my front my buddies my children's friends come enjoy it too you know my my sons will bring a buddy home from school and next thing you know tate and his 13 year old buddy are shooting bows in the front yard all weekend and this kid who doesn't have a dad that hunts or has the ability next thing you know we i got one kid my my tate's buddy james his eighth consecutive weekend at my house hunting just loving life shooting bow and arrows did you show him how to shoot correctly got it all got him dialed in he shot his first doe this weekend nice just so fun and so so you know when you meet these guys that they don't let anybody else enjoy it i don't like those guys either yeah and and you know i love to i love to enjoy it with people but yeah the bass fishing thing's a blast but my my lake in in georgia it's going to about 35 acres, and I think we'll do an all-female lake down there.

Why all-female?

That way they can't breed.

Your females are your trophy bass.

Right, the big fat ones.

The big fat ones.

But don't they have to get pregnant to be really big and fat?

You put them in, and they don't have to be pregnant.

They just have to have the big eggs, and when they lay them, they just have to have a male not fertilize them.

That's right.

Of course.

So if you get a male in there, then the male, then you have a natural thriving.

He'll eat the babies too, though, right?

A male, a bass will forage on themselves.

Yeah.

But male bass, now I have three lakes that are naturally their own ecosystem where we have to, you know, I've got an 82-acre bass lake that we have to catch 3,500 pounds of bass a year just to keep them from not choking themselves out. Really? Oh, yeah.
3,500 pounds? 100 pounds. So what do you do? Just call your friends? Dude, we have bass roundups, and we get out there, and we catch them, and we'll load up coolers and take them into the little towns and give them to people, and I mean, it becomes a problem.
It's a weird thing with largemouth bass, too, because a lot of people don't eat them, and yet they're delicious. They great yeah great they're basically the same as bluegills well bluegills bluegills you know like all the bluegills at my lake are we feed them pellet food so they'll get big so the bass will eat them so the bass will get big and you don't want to go eat a bluegill that's And parked under a pellet.
Yeah. But a little wild bluegill stream or a little natural creek where I grew up in Georgia,

like shell crackers and bluegill that eat like a cricket or that are eating live stuff,

you fillet one of them real small creek or river bluegills.

Fry them up.

Oh, nothing better in the world yeah and then

bass is similar to that oh bass it's a nice flaky white meat flaky white meat get you a three or four pound bass fillet it like a red snapper but people like catching them so much they want you to release them we we spent our whole life my dad would catch bass we would fillet them he'd put them in a pyrex dish saute them uh bake them and then broil them on top and we'd eat bad we'd eat large mouth bass you know you could either have salmon croquettes that stink up the whole house you know where you knew your mama was cooking them or you can have fresh bass you know so we we grew up but isn't it a weird animal or weird fish rather that a lot of people don't eat but it's good to eat you know you wouldn't want you wouldn't want your you wouldn't want everybody fish fishing your big reservoirs like texas is the best big bass lake reservoir state right in the country you wouldn't want everybody out there keeping them you know you want to practice you want to practice catch and release on your big public reservoirs right but you know when you've got a private impoundment where you know you know you'd want you you want to you want to keep your bass because your bass you'll wake up let's just let's just say you've got a nice brand new bass lake you built 10 acres you stock it you spend 50 it. You spend 50 grand to put your bluegill, all your fish in there.
Then you just don't ever catch them. Within five years, you've lost it.
Right. You have to manage it.
Yeah, you're done. Your lake's done.
Your three-pound bass didn't have enough fish to get to four pounds, and then he missed a year of growing, or she missed a year of growing, and then you just put a $50,000 investment in your bass lake, and then you're out. Right.
You might as well drain it, start over. You know what I'd really like to do? Get a place in the north and have a lake with pike in it.
I think that might be my favorite thing to catch, because they're so ruthless. That's such a ruthless fish.
A animal. A killer.
They look like dinosaurs. First time I caught a pike, I'm like, why isn't this the most exciting thing to catch? They fight hard.
Or a muskie. Jesus.
I've never caught one of those. Me either.
We got a little... 10,000 casts? Yeah, see, i'm not that dude now i'll i'll wait and hunt a you know i'm not a um like i don't have to have the biggest best animal my whole life like i don't roll you know some people they're like they get into numbers they're size queens yeah or score i'm i'm not that guy i'm an experienced let's have fun let's see a of animals let's catch a lot of fish let's keep a lot of action yeah let's keep the kids engaged yeah you know um like when when my boys were you know when my boys were four and five i'd take them you don't want to take them out there on their first three bass fishing trips and you you burn them in the hot sun and they catch

one fish right you want them engaged engaged and get them get them going but uh yeah pike and all that that you know steelhead and that northwest steelhead catching one man i i don't that's just i hadn't done that i can't do that that's a release fish too right oh those are those are the Yeah, those are high on the list of, especially like C-run steelheads. You know, you have some that are kind of locked in, you know, locked in the reservoir locked.
But you get those big C-run steelheads and they really hold them. And they should hold them in high regard.
You need to leave those alone and let them come and go. Yeah, but then why are you catching them? You know what I'm saying? Why are you fucking with those fish? It's a little bit of that.
I get it. It's fun.
I'm not opposed to it. I get it.
But if I catch fish, I like to eat them. That's the whole reason why I'm catching fish say that yeah you know what that's why i like to catch walleye i would still say you're in the majority yeah yeah you're in that's what it should be i mean imagine if you just run around shooting deer with tranquilized darts like i got them a little weird a little weird yeah i've just proved that you that you did it? Yeah, you know, and then they make bumper tips on bows.

You can doink deer in the ass and run them off.

Yeah.

And they're like, why are you doinking a deer in the ass, you know?

It's a little weird.

Well, it's like they make those club heads so you can shoot squirrels and birds.

Yeah.

Well, you know, man, listen, dude.

I grew up, you know, my little town in Leesburg,esburg man i mean every year i got a pellet gun for christmas and i got a i got a full uh camo onesie or a coverall and dude i put my new pair of chippewa hunting boots i put my new set of I'd put my new set of coveralls on with the camo pattern.

I'd hit the neighborhood walking around with a pellet gun shooting the neighbor squirrels.

And, you know, we'd eat them every now and then.

This little old lady, Mabel Coxwell, we'd skin them and she'd fry them with some wild rice.

It tastes good.

If you cook a squirrel and do it right, man, it ain't nothing wrong with a squirrel. Isn't that crazy that most people don't know that? Right.
Squirrels are delicious. Squirrel hunting is very popular in parts of the South.
Squirrel dumplings. Instead of chicken and dumplings, squirrel dumplings.
You know, you get a squirrel and clean it right and brine it for the night and cook it with dumplings and put some onions and celery and all that, and you're off to the races. People think of them, they have like fluffy tail privilege.
Rats with tails. Because you see a rat.
Rats have those slimy tails, and people are like, that's disgusting. And they see that fluffy tail like, oh, so cute.
Not much different.

You know?

Well, the fact that, you know, the fact that, yeah, I could run rampant with a nine years old through the neighborhood riding my Honda 50 motorcycle, you know, through people's backyards, you know, chasing squirrels. And everybody's like, thank you.

That damn thing's been in my attic chewing up my Pink Panther insulation for... That's rural life, right? Yeah.
Well, that's people that understand what's going on. Yeah.
That's the difference between if you did that in a neighborhood in Manhattan, people are like, what the fuck is this guy doing? We need these squirrels. If they caught you in Central Park with a pellet gun, you'd go to jail.
First round ticket. Do not pass go.
Do not collect. If you break into a store and rob it, nothing will happen to you.
They'll let you right out. But if you get caught in Central Park shooting squirrels and eating them, you're going to get in real trouble.
It's wild. We live in a wild world.
It's a very strange,

distorted version of what human beings

have been experiencing

for most of history.

I mean,

nothing is wrong

with hunting

a little bit.

Especially when

95% of the world

eats meat.

It's a stupid argument.

Well,

and I think,

you know,

I think it's all trendy too.

I think the beauty

is now

the education of,

you know,

I mean,

you look at

Thank you. argument well and i think you know i think it's all trendy too i think the beauty is now the education of you know i mean you look at you know you look at the how great you know carnivore diets are being you know i've never done like a big old connor have you ever done a big carnivore oh yeah yeah did it change your life oh yeah that's mostly how i eat great i eat I eat fruit and meat.
Great. 99%.
I fuck around.

Like, my daughter likes to cook cookies. I had a big-ass cookie the other day.
It was awesome. I mean, I'm not ridiculous.
I'll eat other things. I'm not religious about it.
But most of my diet, like 90%, is just meat and occasionally fruit. Fruit before I work out.
Fruit sometimes after I work out. But mostly it's just meat.
well you know like i said the best thing about what you do here is you give everybody their platform to talk about their their way yeah and and you know your platform is enlightening i mean you know dude i've never you know i was around some dude that was talking about you know um microdosing mushrooms and all Dude, I was around some dude that was talking about, you know, microdosing mushrooms and all that. Dude, I never saw a drug.
I never saw a drug until I was 30. Did you see moonshine? Saw moonshine a lot.
That's a drug. That is a fucking drug.
Well, you're right. I mean, you drink a half jar of mason.
Oh, yeah, you're going to die. That's the crazy thing about alcohol.
It gets the past. We are having nicotine right now.
This is a drug. And when I have these.
It's a nice cigar, by the way. It's perfect.
It's very good, very mild. And, man, I was 39 years old before I did any tobacco.

Really? Never dipped.

My dad kept Levi Garrett, Taylor's Pride.

You know, the only time he wasn't chewing meant he had a life insurance policy.

He had to get blood work and didn't want to fail his life insurance policy.

But I was 39.

My mom, you know, my mom's a character. She, you know, but never did tobacco, never dip.
I put one dip in one time and threw up outside my high school. This old boy threw me a dip in and, dude, big old Kodiak.
And I threw up outside the high school gymnasium and missed my fifth and sixth period. And I was like, dude, I don't need that.
You remember those bricks, those squares of chewing tobacco you bite a chunk off? Oh, you just, oh, although. And what I was getting at is I was sitting, we were celebrating an album release.
I was 39 years old and one of my best buddies brought a nice Davidoff Churchill cigar. and any cigar I'd ever done, I had smoked a cigar like in Vegas.
And most time back then, you know, I done drank a Handle of Crown and smoked a cigar. And you wake up the next morning, you're like, you know, your life's over, essentially.
Well, it's probably the Handle of Crown. Well, we smoked that cigar and I sat in my rocking chair and just smoked that cigar and i was like man this is kind of it's kind of nice this is kind of like therapy right here all these people smoking cigars aren't stupid it's got to be something to it and they're chilled out yeah they're you know it's a nice conversational thing they are chilled they are universally yeah chilled out's a drug.
Yeah, let's don't. It's a drug.
We're drinking coffee. That's a drug.
The problem is there's a lot of drugs, and some of them are really fucking bad for you. Here's the deal.
And I'll call my buddy every now and then. And he was my buddy that bought me the cigar.
He was a lifelong Copenhagen and cigarettes here and quitting. And I called him.
I'll call him periodically. And I'm like, you asshole.
I'm stopping at a grocery. I'm stopping at a random cigar shop.
I've gone four days without a cigar. And I'm riding down the road.
And I determine right now I need one. You know, you weave across four lanes of traffic.
find a, you know, and the next thing you know, you're smoking a grocery store, I mean a gas station cigar to just, but hey, it keeps you, keeps the head clean. I like them.
Like I said, I think it's one of the best things for conversations. And I don't think you need to smoke 12 of them a day, you know.
No, I don't think so either, But I know people who do. I know people who just go one to the other.

They just chain smoke cigars.

Now, my mother, dude, Salem Ultralight 100s, three packs a day.

Whoa.

Four Bud Lights a day her whole life.

Four Bud Lights.

Every day.

Is she still with us?

She's with us.

Damn, that's the thing that always gets people. Dude.
They're like, maybe I should quit. Hold on.
Well, it was- Look at Lou's mom. Listen, my mom, man, dude, she, Joe, she's curved the beer a little bit, but she'll drink her a couple of duals, but she's going to have her one or two Bud Lights.
Every day? Every day. Three packs.
But she's like a... You know, it's like if she's walking in to the Dillard's or to the TJ Maxx, she's like, oh my god, I'm walking in.
Take a couple of puffs. Take a couple and hit, you know, litter the parking lot.
But she'll pan fry a ribeye in butter.

Pan fries a ribeye.

That's probably what's keeping her alive.

Pan fries a ribeye, fries some shoestring French fries.

And that's her damn meal four to five nights a week.

Four.

76 glorious years.

That's probably why she's healthy.

And is ready to chew my ass out at any moment. And how many cigarettes do you think she's down to a day? I hope she's probably at a pack and a half.
But man, when you do the math, when I used to sit her down and do math, you know, her and my dad were married 32 years and divorced. And so when she went out kind of on her own, I'd sit her down and do the math on four Bud Lights, two and a half packs of Salem's and four pan fried ribeyes.
It becomes a damn number annually. I think the ribeyes are fine.
Leave her alone with the ribeyes. You know what? But through the years, I've gotten Miller Lite endorsements.
I would get Miller Lite. I'd be like, Mama, there's a Miller Lite truck pulling up to your house it's going to deliver you a pallet of Miller Lite just try just try to fall in love with Miller Lite right nope bud light I'd get home for you know get home two months after the pallet got there you know there the pallet sits calling my buddies hey boys a lot of people had like a personal crisis when there was that bud light boycott there was a lot of people like i don't know what to do i don't know what to do when kid rock shot that bud light and then he kept selling it in his bar we drank some we drank some on the podcast we did together.
Yeah, and I love him. He let it go after a while.
He did. I love him.
He's been a damn good buddy of mine and has come to my charity event. He's a wild boy.
He's awesome. I love that dude.
He's a lot of fun. He's awesome.
But when I saw him do that, I was like, oof. Imagine being the CEO of Bud Light and seeing that.
Like, oh, no. Kid Rock just shot our beer.
With a fucking automatic. And was like, fuck Anheuser-Busch.
Like, no! And, I mean, that alone probably cost them billions of dollars. Just having him do that.
Yeah, when our beer is political, we're like...

Not just our beer, but Bud Light.

Bud Light, the beer that sponsored more boxing matches, more sporting events, more people

have been drinking Bud Light.

I mean, think about all the people who swear by Bud Light.

Post Malone's always drinking Bud Light.

You know, my wife's dad is a Budweiser fucking 12-pack a day dude, man. And, you know, he had to hear a little shit from his buddies about it.
People getting fights in bars. I have a friend who owned a bar.
We stopped carrying at the mothership because nobody was buying it. We stopped carrying Bud Light because nobody was buying Bud light have we checked on where it it's come back fully no i don't think so i think there's a bunch of holdouts that are always going to go fuck those liberals forever but the lady who came up with the idea is gone like the whole the whole marketing team behind they're all gone anheuser-busch is an american company that has employed american people forever it's a great company they just fucked up they get caught up in the mind virus anheuser-busch taught us that beer is wonderful for christmas and clydesdales and dalmatians are the equivalent of of jesus and christmas well you remember those uh bud light guys the real American Genius guys? Remember that? Real American Genius.
They had great commercials. Dude, I would cry over the Dalmatian Clydesdale commercial.
You remember the little puppy? Yeah. He's riding on the Clydesdales.
Find that, Jimmy. Oh, shit.
It's like a freaking Hallmark. You would never think that that company could get taken down.

But that just, I think that was good.

It was bad for Bud Light, but I think it was good.

Here it is.

Let's see it.

We're going to get all sweet.

Here we go.

Oh, the little puppy.

Listen to that music.

Oh, the little puppy got out.

Oh, poor puppy's lost.

This is for beer.

This is for beer?

Yeah.

Poor little puppy.

Wow, what a commercial.

Who?

We need to find...

Oh, God. Wolves.

They're in Colorado.

The horses saved the puppy from the wolves.

Have a bud.

Very effective commercial, you know?

Real quick, you're happy?

Yeah, and then there's the one where it's the Dalmatian, too, that grew up and then got to the old Dalmatian.

And the little, you know, they're riding. And the young Dalmatian sees the old Dalmatian, and I think the old Dalmatian kicks the bucket, and then the new Dalmatian takes its place, and then you're like, oh, my God, it's the best thing ever.
Yeah. And that company got taken out by having a transgender woman on their can.
But it just shows you how prevalent this whole mind virus is that it even got into Bud Light, which is just bizarre. The lady who's responsible for it all basically shit on the entire customer base, you know, saying that they have a fratty sense of humor and we need to update it and make it more inclusive.
And like, do you know what you're saying? You're alienating all the people that buy it and love it and counting on people who don't buy it and love it to start buying it and loving it. And maybe that'll work.
But you just alienated everybody who buys it and loves it. It's the dumbest poker move of all time.
The worst. The dumbest move.
Well, you know, when you look at country music, too, I mean, with country music, I mean, it is what it is. There's things that it is.
And you've you gotta love on what it is and then you've got

to grow it too i mean there's there's sensible ways to grow it and but it has to be up to the artist just express themselves honestly and if the artist is a country artist that has a different perspective let that be but leave all the rest of it the way it is too buddy the with every successful music artist that's ever lived, they may have faked you out, any genre, but country is even, country's tough. Because once you show any unauthenticity, buddy, you're done, you're done.
I can imagine. Like, dude, I mean.
Yeah. Like, dude, my biggest, like, when I, man, you know, I got, my thing was tight jeans.
You wouldn't imagine me wearing tight jeans on stage. How much that pisses people off.

Well, it's because you're handsome.

That's part of the problem. You're a good-looking guy up there with tight jeans.
Shaking ass. Shaking that ass, showing that bulge.
Get out of here. Dude, and then I'm like.
Bring back Merle Haggard. What the fuck is this? So, Joe, you know, one thing, know my biggest my biggest hurdle ever in my my career

and it still breaks my heart to this day i you know back when i my only way to your only way to make it in music is you've got to stop people's eyeballs on you you got to grab them vocally visually musically different you got to get them to stop for two seconds go what what is that what is that fucker doing right there and when i I came out with Country Girl Shake It For Me on the CMA shaking my ass, I mean, I had to do it that way. In my opinion, I had to go, this is my moment to show Country Girl Shake It For Me, and I'm the guy that dances and don't give a damn, and let's have some fun and come along for the ride.
And it was amazing. It was amazing.
You know, the fact that I'm a Georgia boy at the time, and I was talking to Texas people, I was talking to everybody. Well, then, at some point, a label for me became became bro country had you ever even heard that term i did i did because of you yeah well so i heard it and i'm like well bro country well then i started seeing the people making fun of bro country and i'm like this is kind of of fucking pissing me off.
And then me and some other artists start getting looped into this Bro Country phase. Well, when I was in my form of coming up as an artist, and I don't even know, we don't have to live on this long, but you'll be amazed, dude.
So I would go play. I made my way by going to Georgia and playing Georgia college towns in the southeast.
And even I played Auburn a little bit, Auburn, Alabama. And that school, I always wanted to break into Auburn and Tuscaloosa because I was always a Georgia artist.
Well, I started branching out. Well, dude, I'd get done with a college party.
I'd walk off stage. The first thing that would happen is, you know, three, six, nine, damn, she fine.
Give it to me. Give it to me one more time.
Get low, get low. I mean, and right when my set got done, hip hop, the vibe went to a nightclub.
And I'm standing, I done walked off stage, went to the bar, ordered the beer, and watched everybody that just let me play Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, all the classics, my couple of new songs. And I was like, well, man, nobody's got a fucking problem with this.
We're all together in this good time. So when I did Country Girl Shake It, for me, that made that tie.
Crossover.

It combined them. It made it tie to a little bit.
Yeah. And then Jason Aldean had his She's Country fucking biggest song.
When I heard, I mean, at the time when Jason and I are buddies, he does She's Country. I do Country, Grow Shaker for me.
Me me and him are like we're like this shit our lives are i mean i toured with jason one year and he broke all of elvis's indoor records we did it for two years i was the opener and jason was the headliner and people and and rap was we were playing rap before the show and and everybody was in well

then bro country comes along dude i wake up on the bus one morning and i got this interview

sitting there drinking my coffee in my fucking underwear and this dude calls me with

hits magazine and he goes well luke you know man this bro country thing and i said well hold up buddy here's what this is and i said and man i did this and i made one fatal error and at the time Joe no one hated my ass I believe that I mean I didn't because I was coming to Billy Bob's playing in well I had Texas I had the I had the I had uh I'd go to I'd go to Bozeman Montana and play country girl shake it for me I'd go to everywherezeman, Montana and play Country Girl, Shake It For Me.

I'd go to everywhere. Well, and I said, man, I don't know how to be an outlaw.
I'm not an outlaw. That ain't, I'm a college dude that played frat parties for country music.
I played I was like

I fucking did not

go sit in a prison cell

like Merle Haggard and write songs about guys going to death row. And I didn't go to Folsom prison.
And man, I listed all that. I was like, I'm not like Willie Nelson.
I don't do Willie Nelson. They're outlaws.
And I said, if it's bro country and that's what I'm labeled as, I said, and where I fucked up is I said, I haven't spent the night like sleeping on the street. And I didn't say like Johnny Cash's song, Sunday Morning Coming Down.
That's what I meant. I just didn't tie it.
Well, that dude took that article and said, Luke Bryan says outlaw country people are basically drug addicts that sleep in the street. And man, I pissed that whole that the way they manipulated that story.
I lost that whole crowd right there. Wow.
Broke my heart. And I think Waylon Jennings' daughter went real public with being, I mean, she was fucking mad at my ass.
And, dude, she went on there going, you know, Luke, my dad never laid, and I never meant that. I just meant, yeah, Waylon was in there, too.
But we all know what all those guys are because we got to watch all the documentaries about those guys and we got to be students of those guys that's the problem with interviews is first of all they're trying to get you what your interviews are the beauty well and you no one's no one's gotten pop more than you because they'll take our man i hope we sit here bullshit for three hours, but they'll take your five minutes right out of context and now they'll ai you that's happened a lot so well the so what happened man that thing started growing and man i had motorcycle gangs wanting to burn my house down i had oh my god when when you get misrepresented in that type of deal, and then the subcategories of articles, then the article of the article of the article. What year was this? Man, I don't know.
It was probably 2012 or 13. So this was when social media was not as impactful.
It was becoming. Was YouTube even around then? Yes.
And clickbait, the world of clickbait was getting rocking. So what I did is, man, I called Waylon Jennings' daughter and said, I said, ma'am, I just forgot to say, like the Chris Christopherson song, Sunday Morning Coming Down.

That's all I meant by that.

And I think she accepted it.

I called, I text Willie.

He sent me the best reply.

He goes, it's okay to step on your dick, just don't stand on it.

I called Jesse, Waylon, I called Jesse Coulter.

And she goes, Luke, what did you mean in the interview? And I told her. And she goes, Waylon stopped doing print interview.
And it was, but by then, the narrative started. And since then, I can always tell that if that one little thing, I probably would have kept that whole base.
And then the, oh, my God, he wears tight jeans and he must, you know, he must homosexual on the side, you know, as I'm posing with my, you know, my all-American family. I think it's probably a thing also they think Hollywood has invaded country music, which is always a big threat because there's so much money in country music that they think these Hollywood executives that don't understand or appreciate real country are going to come in and make something inauthentic.
So then they hear you saying that, get misrepresented, and then they take it as a part of all of that, righte la so my album came out i i i put i worked on an album for three years it's called mind of a country boy and i put it out like first of october and i didn't want to put the damn album out because the reality is is i'm not at the height when every artist hits their peak. You know it.
I mean, I sold out. I was selling out football stadiums first day.
Three or four years I did it. I know that's my peak, probably.
I know it is. Fuck, I'm not going to even say probably.
I'm a realist. Well, so we put the album out, and I said, you know what? No albums sell.
Nothing sells anymore. So I knew there was going to be a negative take on the album.
I knew something negative would come by me putting the album out based on it may not sell. And it sold what it did.
It did what I thought it'd do as me being the artist where I'm at in my life. Especially in this world of streaming.
Right. Nothing's buying anymore.
Nothing's buying. Well, dude, I did 40 hours of all the stuff.
What's happened is because of online advertising being the primary source of income for news, they have to do clickbait shit. They have to distort things.
And then they have editors that don't give a shit about anything other than the bottom line. Say you get a writer, even if the writer's a good person.
I've had writers that I know have written about people that I know, and they told me that their editor came in and changed things. They told me their editor came in to deposit things out.
Because the editor's ass is about to get canned. Yeah, exactly.
Because his company just got bought by a big conglomerate. Exactly.
That's why artists should just stay away from that shit. Well, and I, you do, and I knew it.
What sucks is, dude, you know, you know it. You know when you're getting baited.
Yeah. You can see it coming a mile away.
You have to film everything you do, every conversation you have with someone. You should film them all so that no one can take you out of Context and then if anything goes wrong, so that guy's full of shit.
This is what I said I did and then I did even make a video I did and those people should be shamed. It's a tear.
It's a terrible evil ugly thing You do you crush people's perspective? You change how the world looks at people just for clickbait. And it could genuinely affect someone's life and career.
Dude, man, listen. You know the deal.
I mean, I grew up in South Georgia. And, you know, we've raised our dang kids like colorblind.
It's so awesome. I'm so proud of their colorblindness.
Isn't it funny that that is a negative thing to say today? That people don't like that idea? Did I just say something negative? Yeah, there's a lot of people that don't think you should be colorblind. They think that that's a lie.
See, I thought that way. That was what we were all working towards until about 2012.
Have you ever seen, like, the numbers? I'm going to send you this, Jamie, because this is what people need to understand. A lot of what we're all experiencing is manipulation.
And a lot of this manipulation might not even be from our own country. A lot of this manipulation is what happens when you have foreign entities that are manipulating people.
Oh, yeah, that's it. Thank you.
Look at that, Jamie, you're the best. Yearly mentions of prejudice in popular US news media outlets.
Now look at what happens. Look at this crazy spike.
So you have everything from 1970 until you have like 1990. See, what's going on in 1990, between 80 and 90, you have cable have cable okay so now you have people that need more eyes on their shit so you have fox news you have a lot of this you have people get a little bit more jazzed up look at transphobia you never even heard what the fuck that was until 2010 look look how it just jumps up in 2020 in 1990 1990, didn't exist.
1980, didn't exist. Islamophobia, same deal.
Anti-Semitism. Scroll all the way up to the top though, Jamie.
So look at racism. Racism is essentially fairly steady until around 2012, and then it goes on this wild ramp straight up.

The New York Times, from 2010 to 2020, it goes up 712%.

Los Angeles Times, 756%.

It just skyrockets all the mention of racism.

Why?

Because no one wants racism.

No one wants to be racist.

Everyone's scared of being called racist, and all the race hustlers love to call people racist. So it becomes a commodity.
So people start trading in racism. And this idea that you shouldn't be colorblind.
And that you should recognize race. You should recognize color.
And stop. We were on a good path to what Martin Luther King said.
Judging people on the content of their character We were on that path and social media and manipulation fucked us and Hopefully we realize what happened now and I think there'll be a downward trend and people sort of like wake up And I think that is that's one thing that is balancing out right now with the internet is enough people realize they've been been manipulated. So it's starting to like calm down.
A lot of this woke shit starting to die off. And it's people are coming to their senses.
Like everybody just woke up from a fever dream. But as far as your situation and dealing with the media, don't.
Oh, I know. Just don't.
But when you're so dang, you know the deal. You're naive.
You're a little bit naive because you're a nice guy. But it's because you're a good person.
That's why you're naive. You assume other people are good people.
Well, you know, man, what's amazing is when I'm on American Idol, that desk, and I've been doing it for nine damn years, and I have cried with everybody. When those kids come in, they are—everybody walking through that door is a microcosm of america and man i've sat there and loved and loved and learned do you do you enjoy doing that like seeing new talent pop up nothing is more amazing than watching a broken kid with with with that's been told they're not good and they come from everywhere they it could be the man the craziest thing is the is the is the kids that were raised in the homes of doctors that the doctor family can't wrap their head around my child wanting to go try this fucking music thing.
What? Well, you're, you're doctors. We're doctors.
And man, when they branch out and the family gets behind them and then they go and follow their dreams and man, it's really, it doesn't get old. I mean, listen, I mean, it's a fun chair to be in.
It's a fun chair to be in because that door opens, and it's a life that comes in, and you don't know what the hell. We have a note or two like just lost their father to cancer three months ago from a small town.
But other than that, man, we don't know what they're going to do and how they're going to react. And it's pretty cool.
I mean, you know, when I had just moved to Nashville when American Idol was just, I mean, 40 million viewers a week. And, you know, the tone in Nashville is that's the cheap route to get famous because I I came up through, you've got to play a thousand nightclubs.
You've got to go through, you've got to meet the record labels. You've got to do the radio.
You've got to go meet everybody at radio. So the whole town of Nashville was like, well, it's not totally fair that they just pop on TV and skip all the...
But now, I mean, now all that's gone, which is great. Well, here's an example.
Oliver Anthony. Totally.
Oliver Anthony has one song he releases. It's the most...
Pull up that song because this fucking song, this dude releases it. It's just a camera and him with his guitar.

When I heard it, I was like, holy shit, that's fucking amazing.

And holy shit, that guy better have some songs to come behind it.

Yeah, well, he's a talented motherfucker.

He is.

I mean, a very, very bright man.

And it's what life should.

Listen to that. Damn shame.
Listen to that. This dude was selling equipment.
He'd never even done a concert. First concert he does is like 18,000 people at a state fair.
And he's as genuine as you get. You've had him on here, correct? I had him on here, and I actually gave him advice.
How did he do? He did great, because I gave him advice before I met him, because he was in the middle of all this. And he goes, hey, man, can I talk to you? So we talked on the phone.
I'm like, what's up? He's like, man, I'm getting all these offers from all these people. They want to buy this and buy that.
They want to give me $7 million if I do this and sign that. I said, stay independent.
I go, you have talent. Everyone's saying I have to act now.
I go, fuck those people. I go, you don't have to act now.
That's famine thinking. I go, you're talented, man.
And had to hurt a couple of his other songs as well. He's fucking Talented and he's genuine and I go you can't fake that just stick stick stay independent man because they're not gonna offer you anything Those people are just gonna there the reason why they want to give you a lot of money Is because they're gonna make way more than they're gonna give you that's the only reason why they want to give you money They want a piece of you before you become one of the biggest stars in the world.
And then they own a chunk of you forever because they gave you $7 million when you didn't have any money. I go, just bank on yourself, man.
Yeah. And guy, you know, the beauty of Idol is, is, and, and guys like this, there's so many avenues now.
You can go the old fashioned route. You can go the quick route.
You can go the Idol route. You can go stream on, many avenues now you can go the old-fashioned route you can go the quick route you can go the idle route you can go stream on you know you can go video yourself on all your social platforms and the right song can blow you up but then and then you got to go do the real work you got to do the real work that's what we tell the kids other other bullets in your chamber that's what we tell the kids on idle now i think when, really, obviously, when Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood won and even people after that, they went their ass to work, too.
It's an insane opportunity. It's insane.
And, you know, these kids on Idol now, they love seeing their social media platforms go up 1,000 percent, and it's worth it. And, you know, we, you you know and there's going to be bumps in the road and it's you know it's still you know it's still you know there's going to be a you know a group of people saying you know American Idol may exploit these kids but man I'm in the back I'm behind the scenes on everything, and man, we won't,

you know, they won't, when we get a kid that we love, man, we sit around, we go to dinner,

and we talk about that kid and love them. And I think, you know, these kids leave it going,

man, that was a great experience for them. I hope so.
But, you know. I and it is an insane opportunity if you want to be a professional musician and you want to make a career out of it it's one of the most unbelievable moments you got to do your path yeah you got my path was my path and it was unique to mine and because yours is different that don't mean i need to hate you for it there's a lot of that shit with comedians today too oh because a comedian will have one clip or he's doing some crowd work or one clip of one bit that everybody loves then all of a sudden he's selling out and everybody's like that guy he only had one good joke yeah he's only been around for three years but so what he let him run with it or let him run with it you know it.
You know, we're living in a new world.

It's like the song.

It is a new world.

Why wouldn't we all want someone else to win?

Right.

What is wrong?

What's wrong with people winning?

It's like you have figured out how to feed yourself with a guitar.

Yeah. You've figured out how to tell jokes with a guitar yeah you've figured out how to tell jokes yeah and make a living and and you know all like man like i said dude i won't even post my damn deer i killed because i don't want to i don't want to get online and be there with a glass of wine at 3 a.m.
and start motherfucking people. Like, dude, I want to kill them.
And like I said, you get over it, you get over it. But man, it pisses you off.
I don't read anything. I tell everybody, don't read anything.
Don't read anything about you. Just don't.
Don't read the good stuff. Don't read the bad stuff.
I do good with it. I mean, hell, I'm sitting there with a 48-year-old man.
My shit's in the bank, but it still makes you mad. It still makes you mad.
It doesn't matter, even if you're undeniable. It doesn't matter.
It's a human instinct to read negative things and get upset. Because humans always had to worry about threats.
And if the threats were other tribes or predators or whatever- You had to attack that threat. Yes.
So we're mentally conditioned to look for threats. What is it, fight or flight or something? Yeah.
Well, it's also, it's like, if you have a hundred people who love you, but one that hates you, that one is the one you're going to think about. You're not going to think about the people that take they say you're awesome you're going to think about that one that hates you and then you have to think about the kind of people that post comments most of the people who post comments are miserable people not the positive comments but the negative comments i started a thing you know and i know you got people in your world where man you, there's assholes,

and you'll huddle up,

and you'll spend an hour talking about how you can't believe how big an asshole that person is.

Yeah.

And I'm like, guys, we're 15 minutes in

on talking about this person being an asshole.

We wasted 15 minutes of our life.

We wasted 15 minutes on us trying to figure out

why can't they stop being an asshole? You basically wasted one one-hundredth of your day. On somebody that sucks.
You only get a hundred of those 15 minutes in a day and you wasted one talking about a shithead. It's a mess.
But it's a normal thing that people do. You just gotta not do it.
You gotta realize that this is a new world. And I've gotten conscious where when I see other buddies doing it i'm like oh whoa whoa get out of there yeah man i recognized it when i was on television before social media there was a thing called um there was these hollywood magazines like variety and the hollywood reporter and i would always call them the devil's rag because i would get to the set of the TV show and everybody was reading the devil's rag.
They were like, oh, I can't believe they're number two We should be no we should be right after friends. Oh Everybody was upset and I was like you guys are I'm on TV.
I don't know what the fuck is wrong with you people. I'm on television.
I can't believe I'm on TV You guys are upset that we're number 30 instead of number two or whatever the fuck it is Can we just appreciate the fact that this is back when there was only like five networks? Can we appreciate the fact that we're one of the luckiest human beings that have ever lived? We're on a fucking television show and yet you're reading these magazines and it's like is it Thomas Jefferson who wrote that quote? Comparison is a thief of joy. But whoever was that? Was it Jefferson? I know we know who it is.
We've read it before. But that quote is so accurate.
Comparison. That's why billionaires.
I know a dude is worth like a billion and a half dollars. And he thinks he's broke because he's friends with like Jeff Bezos.
I do not get into that you cannot get into that world there you can't win you can't win because you're in a crazy fucking numbers race and it doesn't mean anything you're not even enjoying what you have so my wife for her 40th birthday man i surprised her and i rented her um never done anything we rented 120-foot boat and took all our college friends down to St. Bart's for New Year's.
Have you ever heard of this scene? No. Dude.
Is it crazy? Joe. So first of all, I mean, this boat that we got is a 120-foot Westport.

Beautiful.

We get to St. Bart's.

I didn't know what the fuck we were doing.

Oh, you're in the yacht world.

Okay.

So you're entering into these worlds of 200-foot boats, 250-foot boats.

The oligarchs.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, I've seen that before.

And it's in St. Bart's, and they all float there for New Year's.
Uh-huh. And it's all dick-measuring contests.
Dude. And my captain of that little boat, which that boat looked like, our boat that we were on looked like their shuttle boats.
Right. And my captain, I said, did you ever pilot one of those? He goes, oh, yeah.
He goes, I said, what were they doing on there? He goes, looking at the other boats, wondering. I said, that dude is on a fucking billion-dollar yacht and pissed at the other billion-dollar yacht.
Yeah, that's real. They're all in competition with each other, and they're all hating.
You know, and I'm entering in, yeah, you just got to get your little world. Like, my little world now.
Keep it tight. My little Tennessee hunting world.
I tell people all the time. They're like, come on down to my ranch.
I'm like, man, I got my little deal. Yeah.
It's enough. Stay sane.
Keep it tight. What are they doing on that boat, Captain? Isn't that nuts? Imagine being on a 250-foot yacht, looking at the dude on a 300-foot yacht, going, God damn it.
I gotta upgrade. I was talking to a dude who pilots yachts, and he was telling me that they always want to sell them.
They always want to sell them and get another one. He goes, all these yachts are always almost for sale.
I go, how come? He goes, because they always want another yacht. They always want a bigger yacht.
It's a trap! It's a giant trap imagine having all that money you're not even appreciating it because you're worried about making more remember we were kids if you said like what would you do if you had a million dollars but never work again I'd fucking just well you know I remember dreaming did you lay in bed and just be like, I remember dreaming about trying to do it and how I was going to go. How you going to get rich? How am I going to get? I wouldn't say rich.
How am I going to be able to have my own bass pond? Right. Because I would have to call other people and get permission.
Right. And that dude, the anxiety of calling an old farmer.
Right. going, hey, you know, Farmer Johnson, can I go fish your bass lake? I don't know, Luke.
Not today. I'd be like, fuck.
And so I remember doing that. And then when you start achieving it, man, I still, I mean, I don't think it's, I don't think I'm living in that world of like the other digging.
You know, I think you can for a minute. Yeah.
I think you can for a little bit. But it's a trap.
It is a trap. And the problem is it's all numbers.
It's like, you know how dudes are crazy with deer? Like, I want a 200-inch deer. Say, I can't do that.
I want a 400-inch elk. They get crazy with numbers.
You know, I talked to this dude who worked on a ranch and they have big elk on this ranch. And he said, sometimes the hunters are really happy with an elk and then they'll put a tape to it and measure it.
And it's 396 and they get bummed out because it's not 400. I'm like, those people are sick.
You should never have them here again. You should ban them.
They should never be allowed to be here again. That's a the sickness but that's what happens with these people with everything man I never had a dream of being wealthy it was never a dream it was never even and never even in my imagination did I ever think I was gonna be rich I never even thought about it I when I started doing stand-up comedy my dream was to be a professional because I always had jobs my dream was to be able to pay my bills with comedy i looked at all that was yeah that was now my dream yeah let me make sure i didn't steer you wrong on that my my dream was to to do these things out of being driven like right i mean when i moved to nashville i wrote on a chalkboard write a number one song you know win a win a cma award you know oh you had a vision board i had a little vision board nice but i didn't understand i didn't really comprehend the money after that because i didn't know it and i didn't know like like people are like i'm a big Georgia Bulldog fan and they're like did you go to Georgia and I'm like buddy me going to the University of Georgia when I was 18 years old I mean I barely my dad barely got the money for me to go to the community college 12 minutes down the road so going to Georgia didn't wasn't even't even i didn't even put it in there right so but go ahead but i'm just saying that when i see people that that's all they care about is the money and then they're always thinking about the richness and i just think it's a trap and it the problem is if you're always comparing yourself to other people you're not going to to enjoy what you have.
You're not going to enjoy this experience, temporary experience of life. Right.
You know? Because it is temporary. It's so quick.
I'm 57 years old. How the fuck did that happen? All of a sudden, you just keep getting older.
And then, you know, one day you're dead. And I bet on your deathbed, you're like, how did it happen so quick? How did it happen so quick? What are you doing with your time? And are you enjoying it? And I think you need things outside of what you do that you love.
And like for you and I, I think it's hunting and the outdoors. Because I think it balances you.
I think there's something very spiritual about it. I think there's something just being in the woods.
It's a very spiritual experience, like real spiritual experience Like there I think it's like a vitamin that you don't know you need until you get it And when you get it you feel better when I'm out there. I feel better.
I just feel better I'm like the air is cleaner. I feel more in touch with being alive It just feels better and I think I'm not thinking about anything else when I'm if I'm elk hunting I'm not thinking about jokes and i'm not thinking about podcasts guests i'm not thinking about jack shit i'm just thinking about what i'm doing that's it it's and it's it's very difficult to do and it's it's you have to really focus and you're thinking about it you're always trying to improve and this that alone is good for your brain it's good for you know i i lost you know i lost my brother and my sister and my sister's husband passed away and man when and then yeah i lost my brother at 26 my sister at 39 and her husband died at 45 and man it is present the the daily appreciation of this deal yeah it's visually present isn't that crazy about people though it's like you almost need to lose something to be able to appreciate what you have well and i tell people man you know you you meet i tell people Man, really be careful because if you make it to 80, you're going to get popped with something.

I don't think you can get through this thing.

Like some kind of a disease or something?

No, no, I'm saying you're going to lose something.

You're going to lose something, dear.

You're not going to get through A to Z without really a hard loss.

No, that's just a part of it. You're not going to get through A to Z without really a hard, a hard loss.

No, that's just a part of life.

But some people, man, they're just... Delusional.

They just...

Well, they're delusional, and then a lot of people are medicated, too.

So they don't even know what the fuck is going on while they're living this life.

They're living this life under the influence of the pharmaceutical drug companies, and they're just floating through life in a haze. And they don't even know what's happening while it's happening.
And then they get to the end. And then what'd you do? What'd you do? Did you help people? Did you make people feel better? Did you inspire people? Did you enrich people's lives? What'd you do? You know? And then you have to realize, like, God damn, I wasted a lot of time reading comments.
Thank you do you know and then then you have to realize like god damn i wasted a lot of

time reading comments thank you thank you for doing that a lot of time get mad at assholes i don't do it bad though that's what's funny i don't do it bad everybody says that everybody says they don't look at their phone let me see your screen time like six hours jesus bitch What the fuck are you doing?

Oh, Lord.

Yeah, man.

I mean.

Well, we're all, this is a new world, too, in terms of that. I keep saying this is a new world, but this really is a new element to our lives is this social media element.
And I think there's not a lot of stuff that's written on it where people understand. Yeah, we're learning.
Yeah. We're're the we're the lab rats we really are especially our kids our kids really are the lab rats that we the kids really are and not just that also access to violence they see so much violence is so much online that's horrible think about I think about this all the time I would go stay with a buddy at his house, and he'd go, man, I rented Faces of Death.
Remember those? I wouldn't watch them. I'd be like, man, my parents told me not to watch that.
He'd go, what? You don't watch this guy get electrocuted and i'm like

fuck no i don't want to watch a dude get electrocuted dude we're watching people

we're watching people there it's yeah if you're on instagram you're seeing people dying every

every day every day i have friends i mean legs breaking shit I mean, I remember Joe Theismann when Joe Theismann broke his leg dude, it like shut the country down yeah I know, now that's nothing I watched a dude on a diving board and his foot fell in a crack and the diving board had an opening in it. And he went forward and his knee stayed in the same place and it just snapped his leg the wrong way.
And he's screaming, hanging from a broken leg. That's just one thing I saw today.
I thought you don't do that. I watch things on Instagram.
I just don't read comments. But me and Tom Segura, we send each other the most horrible shit every day.
It's ridiculous. But some days he sends me things I don't even look at him.
I'm like, not today. Oh, I can see it coming.
But I do love the funny, comical aspect of it that gets me and a cup of coffee dying, laughing at some person being a goofball. Or memes.
Some memes. They got us.
They memes they got us yeah memes are some of the best comedy out there and it's just random people create these funny things there's a lot of funny people what's amazing is we've gotten to where we can see the meme happen and predict the meme and the means on your phone yep the next day and you're like within hours oh yeah they're so quick and memes are weird because a lot of times you don't even know who made it you're sharing it somebody sends it to you you send it to other people like who got who made that who's the wizard that figured this out it's a fucking hilarious it's like a meme factory well it's like jokes you remember jokes like you know two guys walking to a bar those jokes who fucking wrote those we don't know but some of them were bangers and they spread they just spread spread across the whole country but somebody had to be the guy that sat down and tells the story two guys walking to a bar and then you know you know it's everywhere um well i mean there's a million places we can go but it you look at the damn children, my kids.

We're yelling at them every day, get up, get off the phone, get outside.

They do a good job, but I think it's just part of their deal.

They're being influenced by things far beyond our control and way different than anything that any other generation has ever experienced before.

Like my son, he's a 16-year-old quarterback. And, man, he watches all these other quarterbacks.
Hell, there are 14 recruiting download sites. And my son's like, that dude right there is the greatest quarterback in the country.

I said, well, how old is he, Bo?

He's 15, Dad.

I'm like, Bo, we don't know what that little shit's going to be.

What are you talking about?

He goes, well, Dad, he's a five star and he's 15.

I'm like, Bo, your dad, when I moved to Nashville, I was a one-star country singer. If I'd had a rating next to me and probability of me making it, yeah, it would have been a one-star.
I worked myself into hopefully a three-star recruit. And he's looking at me like I'm crazy.

And so one of those kids, he played them. Now, my son's not starting.
He's backup quarterback to a great quarterback. And we played him and we beat him.
We get down. He gets home after the game.
I said, what did you think about your little savior there? He goes, he's still the greatest quarterback of all time. I said, Bo, he lost the fucking game.
He's 15. Just, son, let's let life happen before we anoint.
Yeah. Just be inspired.
Be inspired by other success. But don't take it too seriously.
And also recognize that kid might start getting laid and throw it all away. Exactly.
He don't know what's going to... Yeah, you're 15.
You don't know what the fuck's coming your way. You don't know what...
Yeah. Yeah, you run into some Russian chip in your English class.
Yeah, some new Russian exchange student that needs an English tutor. Yeah, and then all of a sudden you don't have any sperm left in your body and you're dehydrated all day long.
Yeah, you're getting electrolytes on the sideline. You're not doing any off-season running or lifting.
You're busy. Also, people just, they lose the focus, you know, and sometimes they get pushed too hard by their parents.
There's a little a little bit of that too the kids rebel they don't want to do it anymore anything can happen but that's what's fascinating about life is that it's all open your daughters are uh how old now 28 16 and 14 yeah the 16 and 14 the 16 and 14 are going through a totally different experience the girls are all girlsck all girls the Tick tock girls are girls are way I mean I just they're way more influence negative my heart yeah aches for for girls in this in this well there's a there's some alarming statistics about the growth of social media from like 2009 where you see girls with self-harm all sorts of psychological conditions, online bullying, because girls are fucking vicious to each other online. Boys will run into each other and punch each other in the face.
But girls will attack each other's character, and they're reputation destroyers. And they love to make up stories about girls and be mean about girls and talk shit about the way girls look and the way girls dress and the guys' are dating and they do it to each other and it's just it's unfortunate but it's that's what gossip used to be gossip used to just be talking though it's like a normal thing where girls get around and talk but now they talk online and when they talk online then other people read it like oh and you're ruining people's lives and you're ruining little little girls' lives.
And suicide is off the charts.

And self-harm is off the charts.

And mostly young girls are getting affected by it.

When I have my 14-year-old go, Dad, I'm anxious about this.

I'm like, I didn't know the word anxious.

Right.

I didn't know the word anxious until I was 35 years old. Right? Right, right.
It wasn't thought when we were kids in high school. It wasn't processed as anxiety.
It was processed as like life. Yeah.
You get nervous. Yeah.
I mean, yeah. I got a big test.
My stomach hurts. I got to go take a shit.
Right, right, right. Yeah.
Right. Now it's the thing they think about all the time.
And the problem with that is Abigail Schreier wrote a book about this. You focus on your problems, your problems oftentimes become bigger.
When you think about things like anxiety, guess what? It makes you more anxious. It doesn't help it.
It actually has the opposite effect. Yeah, it's a weird world, but they're going to be okay.
We're all going to be okay. We're just going to have to adjust and figure it out on the fly.
It just this this adjustment is bigger than any adjustment than any generations ever had to make before but it's also like look at things like oliver anthony good comes out of it too yeah you know jelly roll jelly roll jesus love that dude best thing ever he's one of my favorite human beings ever best thing he's such a fucking sweetheart best thing ever when that guy that guy sang that song, Save Me, and everybody was like, what is going on? This fucking ex-con with tattoos on his face with a voice like an angel. Best thing ever.
Incredible. But this is all possible today, too.
So you got good and you got bad. It's just you got to navigate the waters you got to know where the rocks are steer that boat

young sailor you know and what amazes me is is man what breaks my heart is when people think they're all alone in their thing that's hanging up their life right when you meet somebody and it's all scaled way differently.

Like when you meet,

you're on the bus for hours with buddies and everybody go, they got their own life. And then, man, you find out I had one band member almost kill himself over something that if he'd have just had somebody say, man, I have that too.

Right.

Right.

And he would have not felt alone.

Right.

And people have got to quit thinking that they're the only ones that have gone through this thing.

Yeah, well, that's why you need people that you love. Yeah.
That's why you need friends. See, my household was a man.
We sat at the dinner table, and, dude, it came out. That's good.
But my wife's household was, man, they bottled bottled it up and it all worked and we don't know who came out better but but me and my wife you know we we work on like you know we work on like i mean like my wife never saw her mama like in the shower like just, like, just showering, you know, like, walk through the house naked. I mean, hell, we had one bathroom.
It was like we were a bunch of damn naked idiots running around trying to get to the bathroom. And my wife's like, yeah, my mama did not shower with the door open.
And I'm like, or, and I'm like, really? She's like, I'm like, you're kidding me. Never once.
I'm like, just. That's kind just that's kind of crazy everybody's well when you have daughters there's a certain amount of time where you can't be naked in front of them anymore once they're like four or five years old you're like okay that's a wrap my 16 year old so my beard we're living in our guest house right now because we're doing some some work to our main house you know we're our main house had kept happening.
We were like, we're moving out, and when we move back in, have it all fixed. So we got a 22-year-old, a 16-year-old living in the same house.
When my wife stored all of my bathroom stuff, it's in a box somewhere on my shaving gear. I run into my son's bathroom, my 16-year-old, and I grab this beard trimmer.

I grab this fucking trimmer sitting there, and I shave my beard, and I'm all up under my nose.

Do you smell ball hair?

No.

I get in my truck, and I'm driving down the road.

My son gets home from school crying, laughing.

What? Dad, you shaved your home from school crying, laughing. What?

Dad, you shaved your beard with my ball trimmers.

And I was like, you little shit.

First of all, I'm like, what in the hell?

16-year-old manscaping?

What the fuck's going on?

It's a new world.

I don't even think he's you know whatever these damn it's so fun man these kids my dad my my god it's so amazing dude we you know we were elk hunting man and uh my 14-year-old, we got this really cool, when we go elk hunt, we got to wade across a river to get to our elk spot. And the first couple years, man, we didn't know.
We just stripped down to our underwear and hung our boots and all our gear and walked underwear. And, dude, it was kind of like we're really men, you know? Right.
And so Tate and Bo, the first time I would put him on my shoulders and walk him. Well, then after two years, we were like, dude, let's go by and get like eight pairs of waders and sit them on the bank.
And we'll leave the waders. And everybody's like, that's a damn good idea.
I'm like, yeah. I mean, how many years it take y'all to understand? Go get some damn waders.
So Tate, for the last three years, I've toted him across the river. And, man, I looked at him the last day of the hunt.
And this tate tate's year to uh try to get an elk and he actually dad i kind of messed up the elk hunt i moved and spooked the elk which was great because he realized that just because you're luke bryan's son you don't get the damn elk but uh and um i said hey um i said uh i want to touch you across the river. I said, you're growing, and this will probably be the last year.
So I towed him across the river. And then on the way back, he goes, hey, Dad, I want to wade it by myself.
And, man, you don't realize how much your kids really are watching you. But we're sitting on the bank, and he's watching me, and I sit my bow down.

And he takes his bow and sits it down, and he watches everything I do.

And it was the cutest thing ever. I haven't even told my wife.

So every year I take my boots, and I tie them in a knot, and I hang them and throw them over my –

because we're toting gear, and I throw my boots over my shoulders so they don't get wet. Man, I looked at him, and he's sitting there tying his little string.
He stands up and throws him boots. Man, watching your kids just absorb it is just, you know, it's pretty damn special.
Sounds like you're having a beautiful life, my friend. Well, it's...
It really does. Kids make it.
It really does. It really does.
Luke, thank you very much, man. This was a lot of fun.
I hope we... How long was that? More than three hours.
Was it? Yeah. Yeah.
Holy shit. Yeah, it's 4.30.
Three hours. There it is.
Mind of a country boy. Listen or download now.
Look at you, you handsome bastard.

Well.

Fucking tight jeans.

Look at you.

Tight jeans.

Everybody hates me.

They don't hate you, man.

Just don't read the ones that do.

Oh, shit.

Appreciate you, brother.

Thank you very much.

Love you.

Hey.

Love you, too.

Love you, too.

Bye, everybody.

Bye, everybody. We'll see you next time.