Joe Rogan Explains Hunting to Russell Brand

You should eat eggs though, man. You really should. You should eat some animal protein without, I mean, if you oppose the moral aspect of killing an animal, which I totally understand and appreciate. And that's what led me to become a hunter in the first place, is that I was really uncomfortable watching these animal rights videos of factory farming. I thought it was disgusting. I was like, I don't want to participate in this. Yeah, it's reprehensible. Hunting is a different thing, man. To me, hunting is this intense, it's very spiritual in a way. I mean, people don't get it because they see you celebrating when it's over because it's very, very, very difficult to close in on a wild animal. What are you hunting? Mostly elk. Elk's my favorite, for two reasons. One, it's very delicious, super nutritious. Also, if I shoot one elk, I can eat it for like eight months. What, you can freeze in them? There's like hundreds of pounds. Salt in them? Yeah, yeah, freezing them. So you're out stalking an elk on the plains. Where are you? Like near where you live, you just go out? Utah. Utah is great. Some bikes, how do you follow them? You can, you know, you do travel on bikes if you're a white tail hunt. A lot of times you would go into the woods with bikes because they don't leave a scent the way your feet do. And animals don't associate the sound of a bike the way they associate it with like the sound of stepping bipedal hominids stepping towards them. Wow, they've evolved, right? Uh oh, bipedal. Yeah, they see you on a bike, they don't even freak out as much. Delightful, never seen that before. What's that? Oh, my brain! What are these things? So elk, are they like herd animals? You just see like a herd of them. Yeah, you see a herd of them and try to figure out which way the wind's blowing and you try to get close to them. Is this a video of us? Yeah, this is a video of us from... Oh, beautiful place. I mean, I can see the harmony of nature. Yeah, so that's an elk. Now the thing is with me, I see that elk there and I sort of feel like I've watched too much Disney. You know, like I see that elk and I feel like I'm Bambi literally, you know, I don't have it. Is that early in the morning? You look tired. Not tired. Might be late afternoon actually. I think that was late afternoon. Yeah. Like, from that position, I couldn't, like, I would love the game of being able to, because actually I've had to go down gun ranges, it turns out I'm a pretty good shot. And it's nice to see that thing come back with like holes around its abdomen and it's it, and I think satisfied. You've been dealt with paper man. But like the elk, I couldn't, I've got too much empathy in me that I couldn't deal with the feeling of after it was shot. I like, they're like almost thinking about it, the sentimentality of it. I've sentimentalized it now, you know, at least I don't eat meat and stuff like that. So it's not like I have all those feelings of but can handle it in a packaged, portioned off way. It's just I feel too much like, oh, that creature. So what in your head, when you're doing it, when you're pulling the trigger, you're not having what's going on in your mind? Well, you only are hunting these mature animals that have already passed on their genes. You also are recognizing that if you're not killing these things, they're not, it's not like they're going to live forever. They are, they live a short life, a short life with a very violent death. It's either wolves or mountain lions or bears or something's going to take them out. Yeah. And what you're doing is essentially dipping your toe into the natural world. And I've heard the argument that, well, this is ridiculous because everyone can't do that. You know, if everyone went out and hunted all the animals, there'd be no animals left, which is true, but I'm not everyone. And so I don't, you know, I'm going to use that if everyone did the argument. It's a good argument because you, if you're encouraging people to hunt, it is kind of a good argument because it's not realistic. It's not sustainable. But the other thing to recognize is that the reason why most of this wildlife exists in the first place, a lot of it was wiped out in the early 20th century from what they call market hunting. And the late, late 19th century, early 20th century, they, you know, they didn't have refrigeration and it was hard to get food and we didn't have the same sort of large scale agriculture that we have today. And so when someone would want meat, they would, somebody would either have to hunt it for you and you would go to the market and get hunted food or you would go out and do it yourself. And they basically wiped out most of the wildlife in North America to the point of extinction, whitetail, deer, elk. They've been extirpated from the majority of their range in North America and only been replaced in a few other places. But the places where they've been replaced, it's all through money that was generated through hunting tags, all through billions and billions of dollars. There's a thing called the Robertson-Pickman, I think that's what it's called, act, where 10%, if you buy hunting gear and equipment, 10% of that money goes to habitat restoration, making sure that rangers and forest people get funded. So there's a fish and game department gets funded and all, and also population conservation, making sure that the populations are healthy, repopulating certain areas with elk and deer. And this has all been done through the money that's generated through hunting. Yeah, I can see that there's a, looking at my own feelings towards it, I can see that there's a, potentially I'm bringing a sentimentality to the idea of animals that's like anthropomorphic. Yes. Like I'm like, oh, you can't kill that. What about its babies? You know, like I'm thinking about things like that. But what I, you know, I live in a rural area in Britain where like hunting is normal and agriculture is normal. And I wouldn't get very far if I was sort of like, you can't shoot those pheasants, look at their feathers, they're beautiful. You know what I mean? Like it wouldn't, it's not a helpful attitude. So whilst I like record, in myself, I couldn't do that because like, it messes me up on a sort of, it feels like a very sort of deep visceral level, you know, like, but I feel that this is precisely the kind of territory where we have to look at acknowledging and tolerate indifference between us. This is where I feel like the sort of these ossified polarized positions between right and left are starting to take root because if someone like me who don't eat meat, don't eat animal products and wouldn't hunt for ethical reasons, starts trying to impose on other people, now you shouldn't hunt because of this, that, have you not watched Bambi? You know, like that's going to mean that people aren't able to explore who they are. And so my, I've let go of judging people around things that I don't agree with because I reckon I don't know everything. You know what I mean? I'm this, this is like, this is about my morality, is about how I behave. And if people said to me, I'm thinking about going hunting, I'd go, well, these are my feelings about it. However, though, I just heard that hunting does contribute apparently to the survival of some species. And there is an argument that it's quite natural and indigenous and it's probably a way of getting in contact with who we are originally as hunting people. It's an important part of our anthropological history and possibly a lot of the condemnation of hunting is part of the rejection of who we used to be as we become overly civilized and more and more detached from what it is to be human, whether that's sacred or pragmatic. We don't know what human beings are anymore. We reject our own sexuality. We reject our own bodies. We reject, you know, we're trying to turn ourselves into these sort of cyborgs, these emotionless, sexless, meaningless creatures. Where is our passion? Where is our connection with the sacred? They would go, hold on. I only asked you about hunting. When are you going to stop talking? Never. You gave me an in. I will pummel you with my belief system on all things. Like, you know, like, so I don't feel like that anywhere I get in a judge in people.