Joe Rogan | There Are 10,000 Cartel Members Growing Illegal Marijuana in California w/John Nores

What is the, is there an estimate of how many cartel members are growing in this country right now? If you say there's 27, 28 states, is that what you said? Yeah. What is the, is there a rough estimate of how many cartel members are here right now doing this kind of stuff, this kind of stuff? You know, it's a real approximation because you only know based on who you catch or who you've been able to debrief. But like in California, we know from the amount of grows we deal with every year just on the trespass cartel front and the number of operatives it takes to run a grow and get it started and then to harvest it. I mean, conservative estimate, 10,000. 10,000 people. Yeah, I'd say conservative estimate. Just California. Just in California. And the reason we say that, and I always go very conservative because it's such a kind of a silent enterprise and it's really hard to get some of this data, but we've just validated it through the numbers of things we run across. You know, when you look at the fact that it takes two skilled growers that are vetted because they cut their teeth down in Mexico doing it effectively under the federalist nose and they grow well. And you mentioned this when you had Mike Baker on the show, which was interesting. And you hit it on the head when you said, man, these guys are really resourceful. You know, you've got to respect their work ethic and you have to because they're hiking waterline, they're hiking infrastructure in, they're covering their tracks. They're out there for six months at a time. You said they were walking around with carpet strapped to their feet so they didn't leave footprints? Yeah, and in more especially, we have a whole lot of photos in that book about things we've seen on trail cameras and they will put felt lined, lined soft felt on their shoes, tie them up tight. And if they're walking like an old forest road, you know, that's got a gravel base, you'll never see that track. I mean, you know, you've tracked big game. I've done it, you know, it's the same type of technique. And if you don't have any sign, I mean, they're really good at disguising. We actually found a guy and I have a picture of this in the book and also in the PowerPoint when I when I teach to this throughout the country. Calhooves actually carved out of wood because a couple years ago we were, you know, the US Forest Service, a lot of this grow problem is on our national forests, you know, Northern California and Northeastern California, not so much Silicon Valley where I started, but the rest of the state even down here. And what these guys would do is there's cattle leases on those properties where, you know, countries can run cattle on part of the forest and, you know, or a joint on private property. And we were getting tips on a bunch of grows, you know, where you've seen them from the air or Hunter or Engler would report them or we'd have a suspicion because of a waterway and we get see some plants from satellite or whatever. And we go try to find this grow and we weren't picking up tracks. And we're, you know, we were pretty good at finding these things now. We've been trial and error in it for a lot of years. But we're seeing a lot of cattle tracks because we're running around with cows. And sure enough, they were putting on cow hooves and strapping them on top or underneath their, their boots, clomping around to disguise themselves as cattle. Clever, right? And then once they get way up into a deep canyon where they're going to put their grow, they just take them off and throw them in a backpack. And then the light bulb went off. We better look at, you know, our tracks a little more carefully. So how do you guys try to go about finding these things? Do you, do you rely on people reporting them or do you have like aerial surveys? How do you? It's a mix of all of that. We get a lot of reports from people in the ground and our best reporting parties or what we call our P's are hunters and anglers. When it comes to the outdoor public, but anyone in the outdoors could run across them, but hunters and anglers especially, because where do we go when we're, when we're going to find a good water hole for elk or, you know, we're hunting black tail. We're going to go, you know, we're not going to stay on the beaten path, man. We're going to go down to the headwaters. We're going to find a pristine area. We want to get away from people. So the people that are going the deepest into the back country. Absolutely. Absolutely. And then they're finding the water, you know, source and then maybe they're following it and it's dry or it's diverted. Like what I found in 2004 that started this whole craziness. And then they run into a grow. We also do find it from the air, you know, we do all agencies. It's no, no secret, no, no tactical reveal. We fly to look for this stuff from the air. I have a friend who found one on to hone ranch. Really? Yeah. A few years back and I didn't think anything of it. I thought it was just some crazy person decided to try to grow pot. Yeah. This is back before it was recreationally legal. Okay. And there was no shootout or anything crazy like that. Good to hear. They got there after. Yeah. Either they realized that their grow up had been compromised and they took off. But you know, to hone ranch is enormous. It's like 270,000 acres. Yeah. And just the gall of these guys to go deep into that ranch and set up this grow site right. And the guys who worked there, they, I guess they just stumbled upon it. I think they stumbled upon it because of garbage too. If I remember correctly. Yeah. That, that, that follows track. And the thing now you're talking about a private honey ranch. It's got a catalyst and all that tones. Huge. We've done a lot of good stuff with tone ranch and supported, you know, good hunting programs there. But an interesting statistic when I retired last year in December in 2018, you know, I mean, we keep stats ever since one of the cool things about the, our specialized team starting in 2013 is we solidified all the documentation to be spot on. You know, reporting was kind of haphazard throughout the state. We weren't sure what other agencies were doing, but we knew what we were doing now. And so I'm keeping that data. And there was a real shift in just public land presence of these cartel growers. And by the time I retired last year, it was almost a 50 50 split. So ranches like tone ranch, a private hunting club in the Silicon Valley, one up in Shasta County. You know, where they're doing big time conservation projects to get black tail and mule deer and tule elk and everything else up in numbers. And now they've got this presence on their hunting club hitting one of their sensitive waterways, you know, so so it's, it's not just a public land thing. It's really good for everybody listening to know that you could find it anywhere and you stumbled on it. And it's funny you mentioned the reporting parties, the cool thing after I did Steven show on a meat eater and talk to those guys, we started to get tips, you know, I actually got a tip and you know, and it's in play and I won't say too much more about it. But we'll definitely we'll be talking when it's all over and done, but it's going to get handled. And it's so cool to see the guys like you and I that hunt and love it and love the passion of what's out there are out there stumbling on this stuff and getting out safely. And we're fired up enough not to wait. You know, we're calling people to say, hey, it's out there. Can you help us? Or it's the warden sheriff's search.