How "Grip n' Grin" Pictures Create Misconceptions About Hunters

That's a big issue with perceptions of people who don't hunt, right? Non hunters perceptions are a lot of times based on grip and grins. There are a lot of times based on maybe you were flipping through the channels and you get on the outdoor channel and some guy shoots a big buck and they're hooting and hollering and high fiving each other. And people find it distasteful. They see it and they don't understand why everyone's so excited and so happy. They don't see how difficult it is to get to that position. How much anxiety is involved in shot placement and squeezing the trigger or make sure you don't flinch. It's hard. Any kind of hunting and taking an animal's life is very difficult. So when you see that success celebration, people think it's like a celebration of death, of killing. But it's a celebration of success and of overcoming anxiety and nervousness and the fear of failure and the moment itself, which is so enormous. The moment when you're squeezing a trigger or drawing back a bow on an animal, it's a heavy moment. Yeah. And there's so much going on in the mind, so much anxiety that you have to battle. Well, and I think too that it's a snippet of time that's taken completely out of context. Yeah. You don't see the lifestyle potentially that... And there's all gradients and scale inside of hunters. Some people, it truly is a lifestyle. They've dedicated their life to it. Others do it less time, whatever. But when I see a grip and grin photo, I see a lifestyle. I see somebody that's probably dedicated a big part of their life that's not even connected directly to hunting that has informed their ability to be efficient hunters. That's kind of what the stories that I'm telling, and even in the future, some of the stuff I'm planning in the future, what I'm trying to tell the story of is people who live their lives close to the land and the other things that happen. So you always hear some flavor of hunting in most of my podcasts. Many of them are not about hunting at all, but you'll see a small window, but you'll see this life. For instance, there's a podcast that's coming out soon, and I interview this old guy that really is a legendary hunter. I'm not going to tell you where he's from. I don't want to forecast what the podcast is about, but the whole podcast is about his life. Very little of it's about hunting, but it puts it in context and it goes, no, that's not just an old hillbilly out shooting stuff. This guy has dedicated his life to this. This is a very thoughtful process. Not just his life, his dad's life and his dad's life before him was dedicated. These guys made a decision. This is going to be a big part of our life, boys. We're going to be hunters. It affected their careers. It affected their families. It affected how many kids they ... I mean, just like the implications of choosing a lifestyle is so big. That's what I think is so profound about hunting, and that's what I'm interested in, because I love to hunt. I cannot erase that from me. I do love to hunt, but I am very interested in how hunting has actually affected my life, how it impacts the character of my children, how it impacts the sanctity of my marriage. I'm going out there, but I'm being serious. I think that what we choose to dedicate our life to has the opportunity to make us better and impact our character. It's just a big story, man. It's a big story and a grip and grin doesn't tell that story, but it's so hard because it's hard to tell me, Clay, don't post a picture of yourself with a dead deer and you're smiling. It's like, bro, you want me to accommodate my entire life for you? I will do that. I spend much of my life doing that, trying to interpret for people hunting, but we're kind of asking for some empathy too from the other side, and we've got to do a better job of telling our story. Yeah, I think there's that, and there's also that we're connected to what you would call, what the general population would call trophy hunters. Therein lies the rub with bears, is that many people don't understand that bears are food and that it's not just food, it's actually a delicious food. From a conservation standpoint, it's actually important to control the population, but when you see someone posing with an animal, unfortunately, it will go to elephants or giraffes or some unpleasant animal, a lion, where you see someone posing with a lion and then you think about some canned hunt in Africa where some obese man is standing there with a rifle over this majestic animal and it's very distasteful and it infuriates people, and rightly so, because the image they're getting out of that is some cruel sociopath who's just trying to check off boxes. Catch new episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience for free, only on Spotify. 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