Cold, Tired, Hungry, and a Little Scared: Pat McNamara on Vacation | Joe Rogan

It's interesting that you combine those things though, that you have this gym where there's all this martial arts stuff and then the tactical stuff. What do you do to chill out? Because it seems like everything is fucking go, go, go, go, go, go. Everything is lifting weights, shooting and pulling ropes, shooting and arm dragging and shooting. What do you do to calm yourself? I am hobby heavy. Hobby heavy. Well, you show me your drawing. Yeah, I do. It's very talented. So I draw, I bird watch. Bird watch. Bird watch. I do bird watch since I was 10 years old. Really? Yeah. Golf. I go down this list. Guitar, drums, cook. Let me see here. I got so many freaking hobbies. It's ridiculous. But the good thing about most of them is I could go to them and it doesn't take me a lot of time or energy to invest in it. I'm a big time fisherman, outdoorsman, woodsman type of thing. I love that stuff. I get into the Rocky Mountains at least once a year and do like privation training, you know, just on my own. So like what do you do when you do that? Like just camp out there and live off the land? Yeah, try to, yep, try to sustain, you know, with what I have and what's available to me and it also includes- You do that once a year? Yeah. And it also includes orienteering. So, you know, 1 over 24,000 scale topographical map and so orienteering. These are wilderness areas, not like national parks or forests. And then try to hunt a killer, eat it, you know, along the way. I carry enough food so I'm not going to be miserable. So I'm not going to suffer. How many days you do when you're out there? Well, now that I'm retired, not four to five anymore. Yep. You like bring a rucksack or something like that? Yep. So I pack in, yep, whatever, whatever I need. And you know, packing a ruck is a, it's a real, it's artwork, man. Sure. Even if you've been in the military forever, you know, you just never ever get that down to a perfect science. Right. Especially a weight. Yeah. Because you got weight, you got terrain, you got, you know, the situation. The situation may dictate to strip this and add that and where are you going to put it? Do you bring satellite phone or anything? We do it or do I, uh, I bring, yeah, I bring one of those. The sirens. Yep. You don't want to roll an ankle out there. Well, plus I usually go to Montana, like the Bob Marshall. So that's the highest concentration of grizzlers. So you're not on the top of the food chain, man. There's some big hungries out there. That's a fucking scary spot. Yeah. Well, it's, it's always usually pretty good unless you run into a female. Yeah. With their cubs. Yep. That's when it gets super sketchy. I just wrote, I just wrote about that. That's another, I write. So I write for a ballistic magazine and combat handguns. And I just wrote an article about that when ballistic, uh, about what should be in your personal survival kit. You know, let's say you go on a day fishing trip in Alaska. What should, what do you have in that thing? You know, in the event that you need to go into contingency planning mode, that shit hits the fan. You got to have something on you instead of just your, your Orvis fly rod and a couple Beadheads. Yeah. The big debate with hunters is should you bring bear spray or should you bring a pistol? Yep. Especially. I bring both. Yeah. Smart. Anytime bear country, I bring both. I got them both on and I've talked to a lot of grizz hunters and I put that in that article too. It's like, guys, you know, I've done some research here. Uh, but yeah. So I'll bring, I'll bring both. Have you had any encounters when you're out there? I've had almost every year. Really? Um, the closest one 15 yards male. Yeah. That was the first time ever up there too. And I'm smoked. I'm at the end. This is when I was doing, I started doing these when we were, when I was active. So bringing up unit guys and this one was 95 miles long. We walk from, um, uh, a little spot on the map. Oh, Columbia falls south of Columbia falls, Montana to Lincoln, the home of Ted Kaczynski, the union Obama. Really? Yeah. Yeah. That's where you live? Yeah. So walk this stretch and it's 95 miles, right? North to South. And you got to cross like three different mountain passes and it's a smoker. So the, I think it was, it was the fifth day. Yeah. Cause we had one more hour away and one more rest overnight. And on the fifth day I had a, we would walk like lines of drift and stuff like that, you know? Uh, and if whenever I couldn't see 25 yards up ahead me, I would, you know, clap my hands, make some racket coming through, you know, that kind of thing. Because you, Grizz want nothing to do with you. You get in between their young, their food source, or you startle them. That's when you run into trouble. Right. Um, so I did not want to stay. And here I am and I've got six guys with me, but they're lagging behind. Uh, and I, you know, coming through and I look up ahead and this gigantic male stands up, buggoosh. And the only thing that I could see, my only reaction was, whoa. I mean, I was just blown away. I think 15 yards is less distance than you flew when you crashed into the deer. Right, right. Yeah, yeah. You flew in the air, so you could fly in the air and pass that bear by five yards. That's right. Yep. Wow. Yep. He took off. Boom. He was gone. Jesus. Lucky. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I mean, that's a lot, that's a lot of animal. Yeah. I tell you, when you're standing like in the woods, in the wild, 15 yards, 15, 50 yards. And when that thing stood up, that's all I could, that's all I could, I mean, I had a gun and bear spray on him. I went for neither of them. All I could think was, whoa. And then when he took off, my next thought was, where's my camera? Oh, Jesus. Well, that's nature's cleanup crew right there. Anything that limps, falls down, fucks up. Yep. That's what it's there for. That's why there's a thousand pounds of them. Man. It needs to keep eating. Impressive. Yep. Yeah. It's a, it's a majestic animal. And you realize like, wow, like this is just, nature has a system. Yep. They know what they're doing. When they want to get rid of a moose, they send one of these motherfuckers in there. Yep. I mean, really. Yeah. So, when you're doing these, these things, are you keeping a journal? When you're doing these trips while you're by yourself? Oh, I usually don't go by myself. I usually have strap hangers. And they're different every year. And it's a lot of times just like this. You know, a couple of guys talk and say, oh man, I'd like to do that with you. So, just send me an email and I'll send you the dates. Oh, wow. And then, because one is securities and numbers. Right. Especially in Chris country. Yeah. Plus, I like teaching stuff. So, I'll have guys who I could teach like orienteering and, you know, fieldcraft, you know, making a fire with sticks and kind of, that kind of thing. And the right way to maybe to prep and cook a trout. You know? So. Do you bring a rod with you? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of them small breakdown rods? Yep. I'll bring a, I'll bring two of them. I'll bring a telescoping tencala and a four piece, like a five weight orifice. Okay. Because. So, that's a fly rod then? Yeah. Okay. Because for me, that's sustenance. Right. Because I'm not taking a lot of food. Plus, I want to fish. I want it to be time off. Right. You know, I want to chill. I want to just work my ass off when I'm on these. So, I'm out there ripping lips, but I'm eating two of them in the morning and two at night. And then it's a lot of fun. I've been doing these things now since 98, I think. That's a great way to decompress too, right? Yeah. The places I go to, one of them, I will lose cell phone coverage an hour before I hit the end of the dirt road. Yep. So, and then you stop the car, you're at the end of the road. Now you're already in, you're just at the edge of the wilderness area, deep into a national forest. Right. And then into the wilderness for however many days and miles. You run into other folks when you're out there? Very rarely. The best, I loved walking like on the 95 mile one and seeing nobody. Yeah. Nobody. Yep. The places I remote, the Frank Church in Idaho. Yes, Idaho, yeah. I walked the Wind River in Wyoming. The Frank Church, I walked from the town of Salmon to McCall. That one smoked me. How far is that? On a scale of things, as a crow flies, it's not that far. I think it's 60 miles or something, but it's straight up, straight down. Straight down, yeah. The most horrific and just terrifying terrain. I mean, especially if you're, you know, if your objective is to move from point A to point B and not just an out and back. Let me see how far I can go. No, when you got somebody picking you up at point B and you have to be there? Right. Oh man. It is a freaking smoker. Yeah, I've never been to the Frank Church, but my friend Ryan Callahan was living up there for a long time. It's cool. He says it's amazing up there. It's also so remote, but yet it's so close to Boise. Like, it's not that far. Yeah, right. Yeah, the grand scale things, it's not that far. But there's, when you have these wilderness areas, like, I don't know, let's say it's 500 million square acres or whatever it is, you know, that's also encompassed by national parks and stuff. And you know, national parks will have dirt roads in them and they'll have little scatterings of population here and there. But those wilderness areas, there's nothing in those. Yeah, just animals. Yeah, there's no dirt roads. And it's such a complete ecosystem too. I mean, they have everything from wolves to grizzlies to mule deer to elk. It's all living up in there. Yeah. Yeah. They are cool. I mean, I love doing those too because you have to think there is an element of danger here that can kill me. And it's not just a big hungry. You could get cut and die out there because nobody's coming to get you. Even if you got that beacon, you know, Forest Service and stuff, they're probably busy servicing, you know, Grandma broke her leg trying to take a picture of a bison in this national park. But into that wilderness area, you know, there's no HLCs there and stuff like that. So man, I love that element of danger, especially since I retired. I want to be cold, tired, hungry, and maybe a little scared. And I want that several times a year because, yeah, it's primal. And I think most guys need that.