Joe Rogan & Ted Nugent on Hunting with Anthony Bourdain

Also, there's a connection to what you're doing that's different than almost any other connection to food. I mean, the only thing that's reasonably close and it's pretty far off is when you grow it yourself. So if you grow your own vegetables, you got a connection to that food. But it's not the same connection as you get. No, because you're looking at- Especially if you send an arrow through an animal. You're looking at its eyes. You're looking at its eyes, but also you know how difficult it is. When you pull it off, there's this powerful connection between you and that animal. You earn it. And then you earn it. Yeah, and when you eat it, you feel that you earned it. I'm telling you- You get joy out of it. When Anthony Bourdain came to my place, he was still a little squeamish with killing stuff even though he ate dead stuff on every show and got his paycheck from eating dead stuff. I hunted with him. Yeah, did you? Yeah, he was a great man. He was a great man. He was a terrible loss. Terrible loss. And we talked about it and I shared my knowledge with him. I don't have an opinion. It's an animal. It's dead. You either revere it or you don't. You either utilize it with respect or you pretend you didn't have anything to do with it. It's dead. You're eating it. You should have been closer to the system. And the hunters, fishermen, and trappers of this country still carry on the definitive physics of spirituality that the native and aboriginal peoples called the Great Spirit, hence the spirit of the wild. The prayer for the wild things. But we're in a weird place, Ted, with cities, right? But I was born in Detroit. You were, yeah. But I mean, you got lucky in that your father was interested in bow hunting and that it gave him an escape, which by the way, it gives a lot of veterans today, a lot of veterans and good friends of mine are finding great relief in bow hunting as a discipline after combat life. Yeah, they're talking to a guy that's shared many campfires with those guys. They were there last night. Great transition for them. It's consuming. Yes. Fred Bear coined the phrase and I use it all the time. It cleanses the soul. When you leave the pavement, when I leave the pavement and I make that transition from modern concrete jungle hand to hand combat city guy, because that's where my rock and roll career is the ultimate. And you take that deep breath, you literally go back to the year one. I know there's a highway nearby and I know I can hear trucks off in the distance and the train whistle, which is kind of tittle-lating unto itself. But when I get in my swamp in Michigan or my woods in Texas, to quote Jimi Hendrix, ain't no life nowhere. I am the aborigine. It's me, my resources and the beast. And it's a religious experience. The spirit, the natives call it the great spirit. They've considered the buffalo their brother. And it is so consuming that I don't care what kind of stress. You could be going through the ugliest divorce in the world and I have. You could be fighting against people who don't think that America should be first and you don't need secure borders and you don't need to earn your own way. You're able-bodied, but you want somebody else's income. It's just crazy shit. And all of a sudden I get out there and I'm telling you, Joe, it's perfect. I'm literally intoxicated. I'm drunk. I'm stoned trying to pick up all the signals. And I do. I do a pretty good job. I've learned over the years because I need that so much to play my music like I play it that it cleanses my soul. I've been contacted since the 60s with vets who have gone through just absolute torture in their military careers. And when I get them at a campfire and we go out and sit before the sun comes up, I can't tell you how many times they've cried because it's good again. It was a great morning.