Summary
➡ The speaker shares his preference for eating wild game over domesticated meat, a habit he started in 1999. He mentions that he has eaten over 100 different types of wild game from various parts of the world. He also discusses some misconceptions about hunting and shares a near-death experience he had during a hunting trip in Canada due to an allergic reaction to black mold and aspirin.
➡ The text is about a conversation between two people, one of whom had his work streamed in Russia. They discuss their brands, comic books, and a possible collaboration. They also mention a hunting trip and end with a song about a comic called “Chosen One”.
➡ The speaker shares his experiences with hunting and his views on animal conservation. He talks about his encounters with various animals, including bears and rattlesnakes, and his decision not to hunt giraffes. He also discusses the importance of hunting for maintaining animal populations, using the example of deer overpopulation after the release of the movie Bambi. Lastly, he talks about his visit to Disney World and how the park manages its wildlife.
➡ The speaker discusses various forms of hunting, including hunting pythons in the Everglades and iguanas in Florida, as well as deer, elk, and mountain lion hunting. They also mention an upcoming trip to Vietnam for fishing. The speaker shares their thoughts on different hunting methods, stating that they believe in using different tools for different jobs. They also share a story about a UFO sighting during a hunting trip in California, and a Bigfoot sighting when they were 16.
➡ Gary and Jim had a strange encounter while camping, which they didn’t discuss until 29 years later. They both remembered the same details, suggesting they might have seen Bigfoot. Gary also mentioned seeing UFOs in Oregon and questioned why no one has captured these phenomena on camera if they’re real. He shared a story about seeing a rocket explosion and a man who had a similar experience, hinting at possible government cover-ups. He also discussed the intelligence of animals like Bigfoot and octopuses, and whether that should affect our treatment of them.
➡ The text is a conversation about the existence of Bigfoot and other mythical creatures. The speaker believes in Bigfoot and other cryptids, but doesn’t want to harm them. They also discuss a strange experience in a remote cabin where they felt a presence. They also touch on topics like hunting, the weather, and personal beliefs.
➡ The speaker shares his experiences with the supernatural, including putting oil crosses on doors to ward off spirits and a story about a kid in a Bigfoot costume getting mistaken for the real thing. He also discusses various legends and myths, such as the existence of Bigfoot, small people known as pygmies, and red-haired giants, suggesting that these creatures might be more than just folklore. He believes that these entities might choose to reveal themselves to us and that their existence is part of what makes the world interesting.
➡ The text is a conversation about hunting ethics, the acceptability of eating cloned or lab-grown animals, and the evolution of hunting practices. The speaker discusses their willingness to eat cloned animals but not lab-grown ones, their opposition to factory farming unless the meat is high quality, and the importance of ethical hunting practices. They also touch on the role of hunting education in promoting respect for animals and conservation, and the faux pas that can occur among hunters.
➡ The text is a conversation about hunting and fishing, focusing on the thrill of catching steelhead fish. The speaker explains that steelhead fishing is challenging and exciting because the fish are strong and hard to catch. They also discuss the rules and ethics of fishing, such as the illegality of shooting or snagging steelhead. The conversation ends with a rapid-fire question round about various conspiracy theories and beliefs.
➡ The speaker discusses various conspiracy theories, rating his belief in them on a scale of one to ten. He expresses skepticism about the moon landing and the official narrative of 9/11, among other things. He also shares his belief that government agencies exist to protect themselves, not the public. Lastly, he talks about his refusal to let his children believe in Santa Claus, arguing that there’s enough magic in the world without making things up.
Transcript
Good evening, listeners, brave navigators of the enigmatic and the concealed. Have you ever felt the pull of the unanswered, the allure of the mysteries that shroud our existence? For more than a decade, a unique comic publisher has dared to dive into these mysteries, unafraid of the secrets they might uncover. This audacious entity is paranoid American. Welcome to the mystifying universe of the paranoid american podcast cast. Launched in the year 2012, Paranoid American has been on a mission to decipher the encrypted secrets of our world.
From the unnerving enigma of mkultra mind control, to the clandestine assemblies of secret societies, from the aweinspiring frontiers of forbidden technology, to the arcane patterns of occult symbols in our very own pop culture, they have committed to unveiling the concealed realities that lie just beneath the surface. Join us as we navigate these intricate landscapes, decoding the hidden scripts of our society and challenging the accepted perceptions of reality.
Folks, I’ve got a big problem on my hands. There’s a company called Paranoid American making all these funny memes and comics. Now, I’m a fair guy. I believe in free speech as long as it doesn’t cross the line. And if these AI generated memes dare to make fun of me. They’re crossing the line. This is your expedition into the realm of the extraordinary, the secret, the shrouded. Come with us as we sift through the world’s grand mysteries, question the standardized narratives, and brave the cryptic labyrinth of the concealed truth.
So strap yourselves in, broaden your horizons, and steal yourselves for a voyage into the enigmatic heart of the paranoid american podcast, where each story, every image, every revelation brings us one step closer to the elusive truth. Today we got a true Renaissance man, someone that does it all. I swear. This is my homie, Gary Lewis. And Gary’s got a whole bunch of different projects. I’m going to let him mention it, I’m just going to go through.
But he’s got the outdoorsman podcast. He’s got a frontier unlimited tv show. He’s got frontiersman roast coffee. He’s written the best book ever about fishing in like the de facto guide for fishing in Oregon called Fish in Oregon or Fish in central Oregon book. And then he’s got another book coming out called Born Ballistic, about naughty gun things that YouTube won’t let us. So we might even cut the entire born ballistic section out.
It’ll only be for the podcast and rumble, and YouTube can just pretend that guns don’t exist. So welcome to the show, Gary, one of the OG paranoid american supporters and vice versa. You’re one of my favorite people. Welcome aboard, man. Hey, it is good to be here in your mystifying universe, Thomas. I appreciate it. Welcome. Now we’re on the level, the two of us. Okay, so when people try to ask questions like, when did you wake up, Gary? I’m embarrassed because it really was in 2020 when I woke up and I realized, oh, I’ve been lied to my whole life.
Remind me what happened in 2020. It was two days after a certain presidential election, and I’m laying in bed in a hunting camp in Wyoming where they didn’t even let us have sheets for the beds because they were afraid that we might afflict them with something from. And of course, that was the rule that was put upon them by their own. So, anyway, I wake up and I’m sleeping on this pillow of a whitetail buck.
I actually brought it home from Wyoming because I bought it at a dollar store or a dollar general store, and I’m sleeping under this big blanket that I bought instead of a sleeping bag. And I said, oh, shit, I’ve been lied to about everything my whole life. And I thought, well, why is that such a surprise? Because I grew up in a mind control religion, and we threw that off when I was 21.
And they told me about Santa Claus. And my grandpa, he finally says, there is no Santa Claus. Spoiler alert. The audience out there. Spoiler alert. Why did I believe them ever again anyway? And I thought, okay, I’m just going to enjoy my life to the extent that I can and surround myself with good people. And during that period of time, I was listening to podcasts because even some of these people were lying to me, but at least they knew it and admitted it from time to time.
And then I heard you, and I thought, well, here’s a guy who saw problems in the world, and he said, you know what we need is another comic book publisher. And I thought, okay, I think I like this guy. And then eventually, we go fishing together. Yeah, the hell we did, man. We did some serious fishing together. And I just want to say, that’s the coolest story. You’re the only person I think I’ve ever met that believed in Santa Claus this long.
And you said, you what? In 2020, you found out Santa Claus wasn’t real? Adorable. I love that. Like, a sleeping bag. And no one was giving you sheets, and everyone was wearing masks, and then you just wake up, middle of the night and be like, oh, my God, the illuminati is real. Or how did the descent start. I just so embarrassed that I just ignored all these clues.
Like, I remember watching the 911 coverage, and they said, this building has just fallen down. And I’m looking at pictures of the building, and I’m thinking, no, it’s standing. And then I put that out of my brain. I saw Bigfoot when I was young, and I put that in a little closet in my brain and didn’t access it for 29 years afterwards. Because when you see something you don’t believe in, you have to do something with that.
And so, I mean, all these other things, and finally I just owned up to it. I said, okay, yeah, they lied about this, they lied about that, and I’m fine. I have made it this far, and so let’s just enjoy life and try to protect the family as much as we can. Save some money and live out in the country. These are the things that I tried to do.
I wouldn’t be embarrassed at all, man, because if you think about it, most of the people that claim that they’ve been woke, or whatever the phrase is, to waking up and just essentially not believing the government, it’s kind of what it amounts to. But usually the first step is like, man, I need to get self sufficient. I need to learn how to hunt. I need to learn how to fix all of my own things and live off the grid.
But I feel like you started there. You already are at the point where most people that are scrambling now to figure out what happens when the Internet stops working, but you kind of already got a few steps ahead because that was just your default position, right? Because grew up in the country, and then when we lived in the city, I still knew how to fish and feed myself and start a fire and live in the woods without needing somebody else to take care of me.
We live now on two and a half acres out in the country, and we have some sheep and we have some chickens, and we don’t eat the sheep because I feed myself from the forest. Thank you. So I don’t need to eat that little guy. He sent me for anyone listening, but Gary sent me a picture. What am I looking at? Right? Like, I honestly thought this was a Disney screenshot at the first point.
This is one of the cutest little things. This is an american black belly sheep, and her name is fancy, and she’s one of several sheep that we own, and she was born in August, and she’s just a cute little thing. Sometimes people want to eat these sheep, and I’m sure they taste good, but not to me. Like, that one in particular. Do you have friends that come over and they start eyeing fancy and they’re like, hey man.
Yeah, try to get you drunk. You’re hungry. That’s right. Got any mint? That’s right. Yeah, they bring a little pocket, I guess. Jumping into some questions because I’ve got a whole bunch of different questions because I guess I’m embarrassed as well, but for the exact opposite reason. I’ve been balls deep into all this doomer and apocalypse and illuminati and conspiracy stuff since I was a kid. But outside of just fishing for entertainment in the past of time and drink beers with friends and family, I’m not out there dressing anything in the field.
I know that I could find a Gary hopefully when things go to hell. But yeah, I would just be like an absolute baby the second the AC stops working. Like after 4 hours I’d be ready to just start killing people for the state, no questions asked. I hate to say it. Anyways, getting to my question though, you mentioned that fancy is safe. No one’s going to eat fancy under your watch.
Is that all sheep? Do you not eat lamb? No, I eat deer, antelope, elk, bear, salmon, steelhead, sometimes halibut. I eat wild food to the extent that I can. We still buy bacon because you can’t get bacon in the wild. Really? Why is that? Because they just do fit wild pigs. They don’t put as much fat on as domestic pigs. In 1999, I told my wife we’re only going to eat wild meat after this.
And in 2001 we quit going to fast food restaurants. If we’re out somewhere, we’re done with that. I really had to become a successful outdoorsman in order for us to have meat in the freezer. And then there were some times where I would run out of meat in September, but that’s when our hunting season started again. And then I’d get another deer and we raised our children eating wild game and fish.
Actually, I grew up eating a lot of venison too. Not because my family were hunters, but because my family were friends with a lot of hunters. And we grew up in upstate New York, about as redneck as you could get in the state of New York. My, like, there was plenty of people that we knew that were like, I still know them now. Whenever they come to, they’ll, they’ll bring some venison.
And so what is your metric on will eat? Won’t eat. Is it just wild versus domesticated? Oh, pretty much. Of course if I go to a restaurant, I’m going to order what’s on the menu. Right. Okay. So I’m not totally off of you. Don’t bring your own carcass with you. You’re like, give this to the chef. No, but I had a doctor one time when I was 18 years old, a doctor told me after we’d run some tests and stuff, he says, Dr.
Browse. I will say his name. Dr. Browse. Great, man. He said, gary, you should only eat wild game. He said, if you just eat wild game and fish, you’re going to be fine in your life. And I found that to be true. Because if I eat too much beef, I don’t feel good. And chicken is just boring, man. And I’ve counted it up. I’ve eaten well over 100 different types of wild game.
I’m in Africa and New Zealand and South America and North America and Mexico and different places that I’ve been. And it just opens up this great experience of food that’s out there. That’s not chicken and it’s not beef and it’s not pork. They deep fry all those things? Yeah, I mean, deep fried. I’ve had warthog. Probably the most dangerous thing I ever ate was warthog, medium rare. Dangerous being because there’s stuff in that.
Things like trichonosis that you want to cook. And here I’m eating around this red patch of meat thinking, oh, that’s the most dangerous thing that I’ve seen while I’ve been in Africa. Did somebody eat the red part or did everyone eat around the red part? Everyone was eating around the red part. Yeah, it looked good. It smelled good, but we just ate the outside. Was that on the chef or was that just a bunch of american bumkins that were too afraid? It was on the chef.
It was on the chef? Yeah. Okay. You mess up when you’re cooking. What’s the most dangerous animal you’ve eaten? Not health wise, but the thing that could have killed you. The easiest. Bears. How would bear mount on the scale of all the different, hundreds of different animals you’ve eaten? If I have bear meat in the refrigerator, I will eat all the deer meat first, I guess. What’s the worst tasting? Is bear the worst out of all of them, or is there something that takes the cake? Probably the three worst things I’ve eaten are wallaby and snipe and pigeon.
What’s snipe? Snipe is a little bird that lives on worms and snails that eats out of the ground. It’s got a really long beak. I’ve shot them in Africa, and I’ve shot them in the United States. Was that just to know what it tasted like, or were there people like, oh, man, that’s snipe. Like, man, you’re lucky you’ve got snipe. Oh, hey, there’s people, and they usually have last names, like Macron, who like to eat snipe.
The french people seem to like to eat this stuff about brains. Have you eaten lots of animals? No, not at all? No, not to my knowledge. Is that a health thing or, like, an ethical thing? No, I just don’t want to do it. What do you feel about hot dogs? Also don’t want to do that either. But I have eaten the hot dogs from time to time. You already said that you don’t do a lot of fast food, so I would guess a hot dog would definitely fall in that category with, like, the pink slime chicken nuggets from any of the big ones.
Yeah, I still remember exactly what all that stuff tastes like. I mean, quarter pounder with cheese from mcdonald’s, I know what that tastes like. I know what it feels like. So hear me out as someone that I think I’m assuming is, like, identifies with the whole, eat the whole buffalo or use every part of the buffalo. I’ve got this theory that hot dogs and pink sludge chicken nuggets is just a 2024 version of Native Americans using every part of the buffalo and that so many people look upon it with disdain.
But is this not, like, truly in a very disgusting way, but is that not honoring the animal by making sure every last cell of that animal gets turned into a product? Know, we’re not the only creatures on this earth that also need to. So, like, the blackfeet that lived up in Saskatchewan and down into Montana, their very favorite food in the springtime was the unborn calf. So when the cows, the herd of cow buffalo, would rejoin with the males because they would split up in the winter, then the Indians, the blackfeet, they would hunt those pregnant cows, shoot the pregnant cow, take the unborn calf out, and that was the thing they would eat, and they’d leave all the rest for the wolves.
And this is well documented, and it was not eating every single part of the buffalo or using every single part of the buffalo. What did get to eat all the rest of it was the wolves, the magpies, the crows and the ravens and the coyotes and the mice. Because they didn’t have salt, they didn’t have refrigeration. They would drive herds of buffalo off of the cliffs. So I remember being in hunter education class and they’re talking about, yeah, the native American used all the buffalo.
And I would think, well, how? I mean, you can’t keep that meat from spoiling after a few days. They would use what they could and then let the critters have the rest of it. That’s one of these things that we’ve been sold our whole lives. That’s not true. Are there any other sort of commonly repeated myths about hunting or the ethics of hunting that get repeated a lot that annoy you? Yeah, that’s the one that probably annoys me the most.
But there’s other things that people say, well, my daddy told me this and my daddy told me that my daddy hung the deer for seven days in the garage and then he would cut the mold off of it and then we would take it in the house and eat it. And people still do it that way. And my daddy did this, my daddy did that. Well, it comes down to, hey, your daddy was a dumb ass.
You don’t have to do it like that. But you can’t say that at hunting camp. You just keep your mouth shut. Say that for the podcast when you’re in the safety of your room. So, do you have a personal closest call with death when you were out on a hunt? Yeah, man. Okay, so I really believed that if I had passed out at this one particular time, I probably would have checked out.
And it was up in Canada and we were hunting moose and wolves, and it was so cold. And we were in a tent with the black mold on the side of the tent was about waist high, thick black mold on the side of the tent. And I liked the people, I liked the food and the companionship and all that, but I was allergic, apparently, to this black mold.
It was overpowering me. Isn’t like every human on earth allergic to black mold, man, you would think. So my airwaves were closing up and the lady was giving me aspirin, which I was allergic to. And then she says, well, here, let me give you this, which is not aspirin, but is actually made of the same thing as aspirin. And I almost died right then when I took that thing that she gave me, whatever it was, it was something that’s like aspirin, something from my daddy.
Yeah, exactly. My daddy gave me this pin when he died suddenly. At that point, I didn’t care about killing a moose ever again, ever in my life. And I said, take me down into the town and put me in a motel room and I’ll get away from this mold and the other guys can finish their hunt. So that’s what we did. And I ate grilled cheese sandwiches and french fries because that was all they had on the menu at the little restaurant there for a couple of days.
It was like the most boring two days of my life. But I survived. That’s probably the closest I’ve come. I’ve been charged by bears. I’ve been charged by rattlesnakes. People think rattlesnakes. It’s really funny what people say about rattlesnakes. It is hysterical because there’s people that are deathly afraid of them. There’s people that have lost their limbs to rattlesnakes, and there’s people that have died because of rattlesnakes.
And other people think that rattlesnakes are this great totem. And, I mean, here’s a rattlesnake on my hat. So I kind of do. I kind of think they’re a totem. But, man, if one’s charging you, you kill that thing. Are there any animals outside of taste and domesticated, nonmesticated? Are there any certain animals that you would just never want to hunt for various reasons, or is, like, everything fair game? It used to be that everything was fair game.
I hardly hunt ducks anymore because there’s other things I want to do during duck season, but it’s giraffes. I won’t shoot a giraffe. And I used to think that I would. And I hunted with a guy and we had a giraffe come in. He was a native. Forget what tribe that he was from, but Shona. He was a Shona in South Africa. And the giraffe’s good luck, eh? And we see a giraffe, it’s good luck.
And from that moment forward, this giraffe came in while we were hunting, he came in and he was 10ft away from us and he was drinking, and I actually shot a warthog between the giraffe’s legs. And that surprised the giraffe. But, yeah, I won’t shoot a giraffe. Would that hold up even if there was, like, one of those. Have those overpopulated areas where people go to hunt like exotic animals? But I guess the loophole is that it’s overpopulated in this area, so killing it is a good thing.
Are those scams or are those things real? No, those things are real. Like, there’s way too many elephants in some parts of southern Africa and they really need to be cold. But, yeah, if there was giraffes that needed to be cold and my friends wanted to shoot them, that’d be fine, but now I’m not going to shoot one. Is there any that you feel bad shooting or is it all at the same level? It’s all at the same level.
Is that something that. Because, again, this is like, outside of my. No, you’re asking good questions because all of my friends struggle with these same things. I won’t do this, I won’t do that. My daddy said a bear looks like a human when it’s skinned, which it doesn’t. That’s one of the myths that really drives me crazy. People say, well, my daddy said that the bear looks like a human when it’s skinned.
So I don’t hunt bears. Well, they don’t look like a human when they’re skinned. They look like a bear without skin. How would they know what a human looks like without its skin? That’s kind of creepy. Gross. So are there any common, I guess, within the hunting camps? Like, oh, hunters don’t eat this animal. It’s too sacred or it’s too whatever or is just everyone their own thing? It’s really everyone their own thing.
And I encounter people who say, well, I don’t hunt predators because predators are here, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that’s fine for them, but there’s a real need to shoot and to hunt predators, and it’s called conservation. And we’re the ultimate conservationists, and we have to manage these species because they don’t manage themselves, contrary to popular opinion. This is a really good one that came up on that exact note that I’ve got another series called Occult Disney, and we watch all the old Disney movies.
And when we watched the, the beaten the ground trope of Bambi’s mom getting. And so I actually did a really earnest deep dive on the guy that wrote bambi. It’s so far out of memory now, I don’t remember any of the names and dates, but the guy that wrote bambi, he actually, I believe, went and tried to live out in the forest by himself and just wasn’t cut out for it.
He also tried to train a falcon, I think, and was overfeeding the falcon so that the falcon stopped seeing him as being necessary. It was just like, oh, I just get fed whenever. So when he actually took the falcon out to fly, it just flew and it just never came back because it didn’t see him as being the source of the food. It just saw him as like a means to it.
But one of the things that I looked into is that after Bambi came out, there were people that were starting to be against hunting deer. They just wanted you to stop hunting deer because of this Bambi movie. And they did that. And it became incredibly apparent that the deer had almost no other natural predators, at least not enough to cull them in any serious way, and that the deer would just start eating all the crops.
And this is where the research stopped. But I guess in a mine experiment, imagine if everyone just completely stopped hunting deer. They were just like, deer are off the menu. Countrywide, it’s illegal to hunt deer. They’re too cute. There’s a new Bambi movie coming out. We can’t do it. But what would happen is that the deer would start to eat humans out of their vegetation. And now, all of a sudden, it’s like the deers are kind of killing you, right? Because they keep growing, they keep expanding.
They don’t have any way to stop unless humans come in. So I understood that culling, and, in fact, when the guy after the book came out, he did a complete 180 because he saw this happening. And I think that they actually stopped pushing so hard on the friendly animals getting killed and making people feel bad. Like Disney as a whole stopped leaning into that because of this whole thing that happened out of the Bambi movie.
I was flying down to Florida, I think it was 2015, and I sat next to an attorney from Ocala, and I said, how do I find the real Florida as I’m coming down to your state for basically my first time to hunt? And he thought about it for a long time, and he says, have you thought about going to Disney World? And I thought, well, I asked you a serious question, and you told me I should think about going to Disney World.
But when I did go to Disney World, I am looking in the forest all the time, because they created that thing out of this forest and swamp, this wild country, they created this, and those animals are all still there. So I was just fascinated all the time I was there about how they deal with the bears that are still there and the alligators that are still there, and the wild pigs, and even down to the mosquito, which is probably the most dangerous critter God made.
Well, this is actually a really fascinating topic, the way that Disney World prevents mosquitoes from almost being present. And it’s not necessarily them just spraying chemicals. They actually have all sorts of botanists and experts that specifically pick the right kinds of plants that naturally repel mosquitoes. They add things into the water that repel them. I’m sure there’s also all kinds of chlorine and chemicals involved in some aspects, but that was one of the things that Disney world kind of prided themselves on is you won’t necessarily find any mosquitoes in the parks, and if you do, there’s something wrong with that part of the park and someone’s probably working on it.
Once you get off the property, you’re on your own. And there’s actually a section that I can’t remember what it’s called, but there’s like, campsites that are on Disney property. So that if you go and you’ve got an rv or you’ve got like a tent and you don’t want to stay in a hotel and you still want to be on Disney property, you can do that. And they’ve got campfires.
Actually been a number of kids that end up getting eaten by alligators out there because parents don’t know, they come from Connecticut and they like, oh, yeah, go play by the pond. Yeah. What could be bad out there? So that’s a big one, right? Yeah, that happened, I think, just a few months after we were there, a toddler was eaten by an few. I don’t know where the real Florida would be.
I guess I would say go to like, lake Okeechobee or something. But even this, this state has been know, colonized all to time. Good. Next time I go, I’m going to invite you. We’re going to fish Lake Okeechobee. That’s already in my thought process. I’d love to. There’s been a lot of debate over Lake Okeechobee for the last ten years here. Apparently it’s like turning green with algae because of some kind of, like, chemical runoff.
It’s been an interesting ride to listen to. There’s also a bunch of really weird Florida specific hunting things. Like, for example, you can go into the everglades and hunt python. They also have, like, iguana hunting expeditions. Have you ever done iguana hunting? No, but I’ve watched some videos on it and I’ve thought about it. So, yeah, I would do that. Where would that run? Is that just, like, not high stakes enough or it’s not high stakes enough for me to want to fly across the country to hunt iguana.
What are some high stakes hunts that are still on your to do list? Anything that is a deer hunt. I love deer hunting, and so deer hunts, elk hunts, mountain lion, those are the things that move me. But we are going to Vietnam and we’re going to fish in Vietnam in a couple of months. Are there any mammals that you haven’t hunted yet that you still want to? Yeah, I haven’t killed a mountain lion, so that’s high on the list.
I love bear hunting. I’ve never killed a grizzly bear. Now, let’s talk about various forms of hunting, because, again, I’m a bumpkin here. So I’ve got friends that have done the late night infrared night vision goggle from the helicopter, shooting wild boars from the air and stuff. And there’s also people that I know. They just set traps and they just go in, they collect whatever comes out of the traps.
And I know that those two things are on far ends of the extremes within the hunting world. Some people are, like, anti trap. It’s horrible. It’s indiscriminate. You could catch something that you weren’t hunting for, and then on the other side, it’s like using technology and shooting an animal from, like, a mile away, and they don’t see it coming. Do you have any thoughts or feelings on either of those? Or is it just, like, different tools for different jobs? It’s different tools for different jobs.
And I probably won’t be the guy in the helicopter, but I am not going to take away somebody else’s excitement or conservation tool. Is there anything limits for me if I had to think of, like, a cartoon version, right, like throwing a hand grenade in a lake and killing all the fish and just watching them float up, I don’t know if that would actually work. I assume it would probably some damage.
I think that does work. Is that valid? If you saw someone doing that, would you be like, this jackass? Or is it just, you know, that’s the way they do it around. Know if it’s legal, it’s ethical, especially in North America, because we have thought about everything and we have a conservation ethic that goes back to Teddy Roosevelt and his friends. But before that, the model of conservation in North America is very well thought out, and it’s been working.
And if it’s legal here, it’s ethical now, throwing hand grenades into a pond and collecting the fish. There might even be a conservation reason you would do that if you have some trash fish that have taken over the invasive species that have taken over this pond. Well, yeah, hey, that’s fine. Chasing bears with dogs, super fun, super exciting. And I wanted to bring up with. I was hunting in California, and it was the week that President Obama was elected, and we were in northern California hunting black bears with dogs.
And one of the most exciting hunts that I’ve been on, we lost a couple of dogs, and so we want to find the dogs before night falls. And so we go to the top of this ridge, and we’re calling down into a canyon, and I’m looking off. We’re so high up in the Sierras that I can almost imagine I can see the ocean from there. That’s how far I can see above everything.
But what I can actually see is the coast range and the fog over the coast range. And then Andrew, who I’m with, who owns the dogs, he’s standing beside me about ten yards away, and he’s looking to the right into this canyon and up toward this notch, and he says, oh, my God. And he was just shocked by something and frightened and scared. And the way he said it, I didn’t even want to ask him, but I had to.
And after a few minutes went by, he was visibly shaken. And I said, what did you see? A UFO? And then he wouldn’t speak to me for a couple of minutes. And he had. He had seen a UFO while I’m standing right next to him. And I did not see it. Now I’m looking off to my left, off toward the west, and he’s looking to his right, off toward the east into this little gap.
And he told me when we found the dogs, and after we got back in the truck, he said that this craft came up out of the canyon, and it’s spinning. It’s cigar shaped and it’s spinning and lights along it. And then he said it came up, and then when it elevated, it went faster than anything he’d ever seen. And it went through a little notch in the hills.
And he showed that to me, and he was stunned. He was frightened. And I’d read about ufos for a couple of years when I was a teenager, so what he was describing to me was what I would have expected him to describe to me and to me. It was strange, though, that he would have this experience, that he were standing right next to each other. And for me, nothing happened for him.
He saw this UFO, and why did I not see it? Did he believe in ufos before that? We talked about that, and I did. So I reject this notion that you don’t see it if you don’t believe in it, because that’silly nonsense for children that came out in what the bleep do we know? And the secret, and I don’t believe it either, that the Indians didn’t see the boats, essentially.
Yeah, I agree with you. Yeah. I hear, like, you and I in our circle, we hear this bandied about. But I saw Bigfoot when I didn’t really believe in it, but I didn’t see this UFO when I’m standing right next to Andrew. Do you hear a lot of UFO stories? I do. Yeah, I do. And I think we see Sasquatch and Bigfoot in the places where we see the UFO activity.
Okay. And I think there’s something to this manifestation idea, too. I do believe that people who open themselves up are more likely to see these things than other people. There was a really hard to draw the line surgeons of that in the 70s. Not only was there a huge uptick in UFO and Bigfoot sightings, but a lot of them together, and also lots of reports of Bigfoot and something that had been described as, like, a ball lightning, which I guess you could kind of throw into the UFO department, because if it’s, like, hovering and unidentified, it’s kind of a UFO.
So that kind of tracks. When you said you saw Bigfoot when you were younger, and you suppressed it until much later on, like, how old were we talking when you saw it? 16. And what exactly did you see? I saw this creature walk out from the blackberries on two legs. It’s about six foot ten. And it walks toward us, presents itself to us, I think, as a warning.
Maybe we were too close to its nest or something. When you say present, what do you mean? Did he, like, whip it out? Stood there. Stood there like, hey, you guys are messing around where you shouldn’t be messing around. And this was a female, and I had seen its tracks the week before, and I’d smelled it the week before and in the same spot, because this was property that my dad owned, so I was the only one that could get back there behind the gate.
And this is in southwest Washington. I had a friend with me, Jim, and Jim was closer to it than I was because he was walking on my right and I was on his left. I was carrying a single shot 22, and he was carrying a single shot shotgun. Its eyes were slightly red, as I remember, but something in me said, don’t look into its eyes, and I would not make eye contact with it, but it was so close.
Do you think a 22 could have done anything? No, I don’t think a 36 would have done anything to it. So I get the single shot shotgun. Probably neither. No, I mean, we’re talking about an animal or a creature or whatever. That’s got to be 800. Well, I don’t know. Very strong, big stinky. Thing. And you smelled it? I smelled it the week before. I didn’t smell it the evening we saw it.
That’s interesting, because I guess that’s one of the most common characteristics reported, is that you’ll smell if Bigfoot’s in the area, but if you don’t smell it when it’s right up on you, that almost indicates there might be some kind of, like, a scent gland or like, an intentional scenting process. See, that’s what I believe. That’s what. So it also, according to Jim, he believes it followed us down to our camp that night.
We could have left and driven home and stayed in our own beds that night, but we had gone there to camp, and we were going to camp, and it walked around our camp all night long. And I didn’t really talk about this, and I still don’t talk about this, but Jim and I didn’t talk about this afterward. We really didn’t hang out very much after that, either. And he came into my booth at a sportsman show 29 years later, and he says, hey, gary, probably don’t remember.
And I said, sit down. I need to ask you some questions, because this had been in my brain for a while, and I needed to see did I remember it the way he remembered it? And we remembered it the exact same. And he’s still a hunter, and he lives in Montana now. And he says that he’ll shoot it if he sees it again. But that wasn’t my takeaway, and that’s not how I see things.
Ten years later, I found scat, and I smelled that same smell. This was in Oregon, now, in the wilderness. And I think this is the thing. In the national forests, in the wild places, and when your mind is open and you are in places that other people don’t go to and maybe haven’t been to in a long time, you can see things. Like my uncle, he said that he knew where he could sit on the coast, up in the coast range in Oregon.
And he said we could watch ufos come off the ocean any night. Any night we wanted to. We could see the ufos coming off the ocean. And this world is so much bigger and more interesting than we’ve been sold in our public school education. So I got a couple of follow ups on some of those, because these are topics that really endlessly fascinate me, too, in the same way that you see your buddy 30 years later, and you’re like, let’s see if I’m crazy.
Are you crazy? Am I crazy? Is there still a baseline here I was so happy to see him because I don’t know if I had asked God to bring him back into my life or whatever, but here he was walking back into my life in that moment when I really wanted to say, hey, what did we know? Was I crazy? Am I crazy? So this is where, I guess, from an outside looking in, I would just wonder in the barnum way, like, there’s got to be some capitalist out there that if they knew that there was even a slight chance that Bigfoot was real, let’s go capture one of those things and put them on TikTok and make them dance and make toys and kind of be the world famous person that finally has proof that Bigfoot’s real.
Outside of the Patterson gimlin footage and all of the other the feet prints that they all bake into, like, a clay. But this is my number one thought, though, is that, well, that’s littlefoot, not bigfoot. But if Bigfoot were real and we live in such a capitalist society, there has to have been someone that would have caught it and put it on tv at this point. How is that not the case? And I guess the same exact question, but if there was a place where you could go and watch ufos take off from a lake, why not set up a freaking 24/7 feed, have that thing just stream right to Twitter and let the Internet audience like, oh, my God, there’s a UFO, or there’s a bigfoot, and make it popular.
The fact that neither of those have ever happened, it’s either there is, like, the ultimate orchestration of men in black and government agencies that shut the feeds down. Is it that and nothing else? No, I don’t know if it’s that, but there’s another story that I’d like to share with you after we talk about this. I think you’re making me knock things over on my desk now. I mean, you’re getting under my skin.
Yeah. When we block off these huge wilderness areas and national parks and you can’t ride a horse, well, you can’t do more than ride a horse into these places, and it really keeps most of the people out. I just wonder, are these, like, places that we’ve reserved for these animals to move in and live in? But the other thing that I think needs to be considered is I believe these things are as smart as we are or smarter.
Does that take them off the menu? Oh, absolutely takes them off the menu. Yeah. Do you feel that way about octopus? That’s a funny question. Yeah. Octopus is definitely off my menu because of gross, or is it because of intelligence level? It’s because pig anus looks exactly like octopus. Okay, so it’s more of a taste thing, not like a morals or ethical thing. The reason I ask is because octopi arguably have the level of intelligence as a small child, if not higher.
Right? Yeah. So I’ve heard that I used to like eating octopus, and I don’t now for the reasons I stated before, but now the. The thing about men in black. I mean, you brought that up. I was returning from an archery elk hunt. I was by myself. I’m in my Toyota forerunner, and I’m driving up over a mountain in a mountain pass on pavement, and I see this rocket come across the sky and another rocket intersect it, and an explosion.
And so this is in the 90s, late 90s. Where was this at? What state? In Oregon. And I was certain we had been attacked as a nation because of this rocket and then seeing a rocket explode up above me, and it was the only place where I could see something like that through the tree canopy. If I had been a minute earlier coming up that hill, I wouldn’t have even seen this thing happen, because I would have been back in the tree canopy again.
So I get into radio range, and I’m flicking around with my am radio. I’m just certain the country’s been attacked. Red dawn. Right? Exactly. And nothing on the radio. Nothing the next morning. Nothing on the news, nothing in the newspaper. And so I just kind of wrote it off as, like, I saw something strange, and I don’t know why. Something didn’t show up in the news or media or whatever.
And a guy that I had met, the only time I went to this one particular church, I met him. And he knew me because I’m a writer, and I write articles and books, and he followed my work. And he says, I need to tell you a story. And he says, I’ve written it in a form of a letter, and I’m going to send it to you. So he sent it to me, this long letter that he wrote in Longhand, and he saw the same thing I saw that night.
And he was bow hunting, and his wife had taken off on a horse in the evening, and they were looking for his wife, him and his friends from their hunting party. And they saw this thing in the sky, and they saw the debris fall to the ground. And so then in the morning, after they had found my friend’s wife, after they had found her, got her back to camp, they went looking for the wreckage, the debris that had fallen to the ground.
And as they are getting close, here comes a black suburban. And these guys said, what are you doing here? You’re not supposed to be here. And they said, well, this is the national forest. We can be here. It’s public land, and we’re out here hunting. And we saw some wreckage fall down out of the sky. And they said, you didn’t see anything. And they told them that enough times that they agreed they hadn’t seen anything.
And they turned around and laughed, and he said, I just needed to tell that story to somebody, Gary. And I said, well, I saw the same thing you did. Why did he pick me to tell that story to? That’s so bizarre. There’s a few other stories like that, some strangeness out here in the woods, but it always seems to be in the national forests and these wilderness areas.
Those things don’t happen when you’re hunting on your buddy’s farm. And to back that up, I’ve heard a fairly compelling argument that kind of hints towards what you’re implying here. But imagine if the government knows about Bigfoot and they know where the Bigfoot are living and everything the same way. And I don’t know, I guess I’ll ask you if this is even true, because I’ve seen it in tv shows and movies.
But, like, in Yellowstone, right? There’s some sort of protected animals, and they all get chipped. And the second that one of them gets shot, or it’s like, not migrating, and they detect, like, oh, someone killed this endangered or protected animal, the rangers just, like, swoop in and they start this big investigation process. Who killed this? Is any of that real, or is that, like, over the top drama? It’s drama, but they can definitely do that with a wolf if they wanted.
Mean, potentially, then you could do that with a Bigfoot and know that if somebody makes contact with Bigfoot, or at least to keep an eye on them and know, follow them there with the black suv and convince them they didn’t see anything. I think Bigfoot takes care of himself just fine. Thank you. Let’s get into a little bit of woo woo here, because Bigfoot, as I’ve learned over the last few years, it’s not just Harry and the Henderson’s Bigfoot.
And I’m not just talking about having, like, skunk apes and the red haired beings and all these different things. Let’s just assume that there’s, like, races of Bigfoot to put that one to bed. But then there’s also this concept that Bigfoot is, like, an interdimensional being that can shift. And a lot of these feel like they’re reverse engineered to explain why no one has caught or captured anything.
And, well, maybe they shifted and out of existence. Maybe they know how to actually camouflage themselves, not with leaves, but kind of like, shift their particle. I don’t know what the explanation would be. Are you in on any of those? Do you give merit to any of those? I buy in all of it. Okay. Do you think that. How about dog man? Have you heard about dogman before? Yeah.
And I know you’ve noticed this, that there’s these divisions of people who, they go down this road and they go down that road, or they’re not interested in ghosts, but they’re really interested in Bigfoot. And they don’t want to hear about the little men that lived in Florida and Georgia because that messes with their paradigm. But they’re okay to think about Bigfoot. And I think that all of these things are so much more connected than we grasp.
And I think if your big thing is your hobby is looking into ghosts and those kind of things that you’re messing with, maybe the same thing with. Just for the sake of a thought experiment, let’s assume that Bigfoot is more or less like a bear, just like a very exotic bear that no one has seen in the wild yet. So take away the interdimensional smarter than me premise, and it’s like we can kill them again.
And let’s assume that other cryptids are also potentially real in the same, like, what would be on your top three of hunting? Crypt. Let’s assume Bigfoot’s on there. What would be the other top three? What would you go hunting in terms of these legendary creatures that you’ve heard people talk about hunting that you mean to look for? Well, I mean, I guess I’m talking about, like, shooting it and skinning it and dressing it.
No, not interested. None of them? Not a single one? No. Not even, like, a little chupacabra? No. Why? Is it, like, an ethical thing or is it a taste? It is an ethical thing, because these things, I can’t go down your thought experiment and separate myself from the potential that this is an animal or a creation. Kind of like me and more like me than I would actually want to shoot.
What about, like, a monkey? Oh, yeah, and eat a monkey. Yeah, I’ve shot baboons and monkeys. Where are you at on the biblical scale from, like, I didn’t come from no monkey to dark? Yeah, I am a Bible believer. Okay. Do you think that influences you at all? It seems like a hard line in the sand of that humans couldn’t come from primates because that kind of goes against the intelligent design aspect.
So does that play into the ethics of eating monkeys? No. I don’t know if you can play this, but if you were atheist and you believed in the theory of evolution and that people really did evolve for monkeys, would you feel like you could still shoot and eat a monkey? Yeah, I think so. Was that no or. Yeah, I think yes. I would still be able to kill your ancestor and eat your ancestor.
Yeah, fair point, man. I like how decisive you are. Yeah, well, I love the thought experiments, and that was part of what I told myself when I woke up in 2020 was, I want to hear what other people have to say now. I don’t want to not listen to, you know, you and Juan and know, those were some of the first people I was listening to. That crew, we’re mean mugging.
Yeah. That was the rainiest day of my life. Me, too, man. Dude, I’ve lived in Florida for a long time now, like, more than two decades, cumulatively. And that was one of the worst rainstorms I’ve ever not just seen, but been caught in the middle of. In the middle of a river, essentially. Right. Or like an inlet. Here’s the last thing that got caught. The only thing that got caught.
Yeah. And so I wanted to point that out. You hunted that fish like a buffalo. They’re not easy to shoot with a bow and arrow. And you were the hero that day, that’s for sure. I got my Florida man credits, so if anyone ever wonders if I’m a true Florida man, here I am covered in fish blood. Look at how enamored Juan is with me here. I was, the man.
I was showing a beta what a true alpha looks like, and he couldn’t handle it. Yeah. Well, I know that was good, clean fun, but it sure didn’t last very long when that raid started. No, it was getting fun, too, man. But do you have any similar experiences where you were in the middle of an amazing hunt and then something happened and ruined it? Yeah. I wanted to tell you about this.
Okay. But we also have to remember we brought up, you know, while we were talking about Bigfoot, and Teddy Roosevelt described Bigfoot in one of his. Okay. And people that want to argue know this thing doesn’t exist. Well, Teddy Roosevelt thought it did. I know you’re talking about, too. I don’t have the name of it, but I’m working on one of my little pamphlets about, like, mkultra, and one of them is going to be on Bigfoot, and we’ve got all the different big reportings of it.
And that’s one of them with Hetty Roosevelt. He was basically sharing stories with other people that were in, like, a logging camp. And they all had these stories about Bigfoot coming and messing with them when they were trying to chop down the forest. It’s a fascinating read. Yeah. Man, there’s so much more to this that hasn’t even been explored, this whole Bigfoot topic. But I do want to bring up another thing.
I was in a cabin in northeast Oregon, and this cabin is 17 miles from the nearest pavement, so it’s a long drive on a gravel road to get there, and it’s on 800 acres that belong to a friend of mine, and she let us hunt there. And I was there with my favorite hunting partner and his son, and his son is on the floor sleeping and talking in his sleep.
And then James is on the bunk below me, and I’m on the top bunk, and James is snoring. The boy is down on the floor talking in his sleep. And I wake up, and I’m trying to find my earplugs, which have fallen out. And I’m reaching underneath my pillow, and something reaches with two hands from the wall of this log cabin, reaches out and grabs me by my arm, this arm, and shakes me like that, two handed.
And I said, okay. I hear. I don’t. I’m not afraid. I wasn’t afraid when I saw Bigfoot. I’m not afraid of this thing. But it sure got my attention. And I said, I know you’re know, it’s cool. We were there to hunt grouse, and then I was going to come back in the two weeks later to hunt deer. So I didn’t tell James about it. I didn’t tell his son, because we had to sleep there one more night, and nothing happened the next night, two weeks later, I want James to arrive at the same time I do as we’re going to camp so that I don’t have to go in there to that cabin by myself.
But he says, hey, gary, I can’t be there till 10:00 the next morning. I thought, oh, no, I got to get there in the dark. And so I have to drive. It’s like 8 hours from where I live to this cabin. I have to drive through these towns, and I stopped at a grocery store, and I shop, and this is like 09:00 at night, and I’m shopping for some groceries for the week that we’re going to be camped there.
I didn’t want to leave the grocery store. Because I think, man, I got to go back up into that cabin. There was no moon that night. I drive down the road, I get to the cabin, and I shut off my headlights. And it is dark. There’s no electricity, and there’s no moon. I walk up to the front door, and I had brought some oil with me of some sort.
And I just took a little bit of that oil. I put it on the door. And the sign of the cross. I walked around to the back door. I put the sign of the cross on the back door. Then I walked around to the front door, and I walked in. I said, all right, I’m back. It’s cool. And I went to sleep. And we never had any more experiences like that.
Then finally, I told James about it. After we were done with that week. And he’s the kind of guy, know, he’s got to see stuff to believe it. It’s got to happen to him to believe it. But he believed, know, because there’s just things that we can’t explain that are out there. This world is so much more interesting. Do you do that now just out of habit? Do you just put crosses and oil on the doors.
Of hotel rooms and cabins? Good. Oh, man. I stayed at the flamingo last week in Las Vegas. I probably should have done that there. I think it would have helped. The moldy tent. Are there certain things. That even God can fix on short orders? No. The moldy tent. Yeah. I’d probably have to get away from that. Do you have any ghost stories? That one from the wall. That’s my ghost story.
That is my ghost story. Whatever it was that grabbed me from the wall. Have you heard anyone else describe something similar to that before? Yeah. My sister restored a house and lives in it still. They’ve lived in that house for 25 years. And she has regularly seen things in that house. And she only talks about it if we ask her. We have to get her to open up, and then she’ll talk about it.
Do you think that bullets would work. Against any of these supernatural entities? Okay, well, here’s a funny one. There was an inordinate amount of Bigfoot sightings. At this one particular time. Maybe 15 years ago here in Oregon. And so I knew the manager of this resort. That was located near there. And so I thought, you know, could be some kid got hold of a Bigfoot costume. Because those things exist.
And we even bought one. One easy way to get. I saw him at a sportsman show one time. I said, so Rick did that kid. Is that kid still appearing in the Bigfoot costume? And he looked at me kind of funny because we’d never talked about this before, and I’m just making an assumption. And he says his parents made him get rid of it because he got shot at four different times.
Yeah. I was going to say then that made me really laugh because on the map that shows Bigfoot sightings, that kid represents a whole bunch of those sightings because he was going out to the highway and walking through the forest and showing up. But if he got shot at four times, he was not hit. And there’s a lot of hunters over the years that I’ve heard of that have shot at Bigfoot.
And they said he didn’t die or whatever. Well, die. You didn’t hit him. Yeah. I guess everyone that ever takes a shot assumes that that was bullseye. Like, they’re a marksman. I know that’s true. I’ve missed deer, I’ve missed elk. I’ve missed the paper inside of a range before. You just blame it on, like, the barrel needs to warm up a little bit, I’ve heard. Yeah. Is that true, by the way, on a tangent, does the barrel need to warm up when you’re shooting a rifle? If that is your rifle, and it shoots better when it’s warmed up, you need to get rid of that gun.
You want a gun that shoots right on the first shot. The first shot is always the most important one. That is not the only time I’ve heard that. I’ve heard it many times when someone’s a little bit off and they’re just like, oh, yeah. It takes a few shots to warm up. And I’m just thinking, so is the metal malleable? Is it so hot that it’s starting to morph? It doesn’t sound like the best gun to have in the arsenal.
You either need a new gun or you need to go take some classes. Do you have any other supernatural notes? Because this is the meat and potatoes of this stuff. Okay. So I think we see these things because they let us see them, and I don’t think we see them because we were lucky and just saw this critter that was out there. I think it wanted us to see it.
If that happens, do you think it would be pointless to actively try and hunt Bigfoot because of that? I feel like if I really needed to see Bigfoot, I could, and I think I know how I would do it. But it might take views of that episode, man. Pardon? Think about the views on that episode of Gary Lewis. No, we got them. It would not work that way.
We would not see it if I brought the camera. So that’s another popular thing. Do you think that Bigfoot can sense when you have technology on you? Yeah, I think this thing is as smart as we are. It has a different life way. One of the things that I’ve noticed in my life is that we who are white men, and I might have some Indian in me, or they say in my family, but we don’t listen to the Indians.
We don’t take what the Indians have seriously, but they believe in this thing called sasquatch. The Indians around here do in the northwest, and they have traditions that go way back before western Europeans were here. And I even allude to it in a book that I wrote called John Nosler going ballistic. And this book was published 20 years ago now. But John Nosler up hunting in the British Columbia, in the woods in British Columbia, he hunted with Indians.
And they told him about their tribe, chased out a tribe of big Indians. And this, I think, is what they were referring to. Or maybe they were talking about giants. Do you remember what year that was? It was in the. That they told him this. But that would have happened long before. Of course, it would have been hundreds of years before. Okay, pre colonization, then. Probably pre colonization.
We were talking about Mothman and all the other big and small creatures out there. Is there any that you’re dead set on? It absolutely exists. Okay. I’m like everybody else. I don’t really want to talk about dog man. And there’s things. Chupacabras. I know that other people are interested in those things. I’m not super interested, but even though I think it’s all connected. But the pygmies. That’s not the right word.
But the very small people that the Indians said that they wiped out. The Cherokees said that they wiped out. I’m interested in that. Why did they wipe them out? I’ve heard the stories, but I have no insight or context outside of. There used to be smaller people, and humans just decimated them all over the world, and now they’re completely gone. But were they stealing our stuff? Were they annoying? Were they just in competition with resources? Because we tolerate short people now.
Like, we call them short kings, right? They’re fine. But I feel like there had to be something specific with the pygmies. Like maybe they bit people’s ankles or maybe they, like. I don’t know. I don’t know what it was that would cause human beings to want to eradicate them entirely. Okay, so if people haven’t heard of this before, I think we should kind of describe that. They were probably from.
From the description, they would have been like 20 inches to 25 inches tall. And people now are maybe more tolerant than they maybe were. Think about the microchips those little people could have. That’s right. The other one is the red haired giants. Okay, so Sarah Winnamaka was the first Shoshoni Indian, or paella Indian, to learn to read and write English. And she married a white man, and she was a very sought after speaker.
And she traveled all over the United States to speak and do speaking engagements. And her father was chief Winnemucca, that Winnemucca, Nevada, is named after. And she said that she owned a dress that was decorated with the red haired scalps of giants that her tribe had killed and vanquished. And this would have happened in Nevada. And apparently they sealed up a cave and the Indians sealed up a cave that they had driven these giants into, and then they starved them and smoked them and smothered them, starved them of oxygen.
And I’m fascinated by that story, too, because she said she owned a dress that had the scalps of these red haired giants. When I hear red haired giant, I guess I just throw that into the Bigfoot bucket. But do you think that this might be something separate from Bigfoot? I believe it’s something separate. So we’re talking about human giants. Yeah. Do you think there’s any giants today? I think their dna is here.
Do you believe in DNA? I do. I’ve heard that DNA is just theoretical, too, but I guess that was. Oh, interesting. I don’t know if I believe it because that means that anyone that’s ever been convicted of DNA evidence is also just theoretically guilty, but that would be hard. Okay. Moving a little bit away from the supernatural stuff, because we’re going to get back into it because we’re going to do a little segment where I ask you how much you believe in certain paranormal topics.
Great. I’ve got two other, I guess, hunting, foraging, eating kind of questions. And I feel like I can assume the answer, but I just want to ask you outright. So the first one is that would you hunt and or eat cloned animals? Oh, man. Like dolly the sheep. But imagine dolly the sheep was dolly the bear. Wow, what a concept. I guess I would. Now, what about lab grown bear? Gross.
Would I eat lab grown bear? No, absolutely not. I wouldn’t eat lab grown anything, I hope. Probably have. All the bears became extinct. Like, some horrible thing happened. They all died off. No more bears ever. Except we’ve got this way that we can lab grow bear meat, and it is legit bear meat. Let’s say one of your friends is like, I got drunk, and they talked me into it, and I had a bear burger, and it’s bear, dude.
It tastes just like bear. Would you still be like, no, there’s no. Okay, so there’s some boundaries. So now I’m curious. At what point, if ever, would factory farming be acceptable? Let’s say that we’re overrun by deer. They keep eating everyone’s food and their plants, and there’s not enough hunters to keep up with it. So they just derive a way that the deer, like, I don’t know, they run themselves into a little assembly line, and it does the whole process, the bolt in the head, and it packages and it separates it and everything.
Are you on board with that in any context, or is that like a complete no? No as well? No. If it’s still that high quality food, then I’d still be interested in eating it. So let’s say just a typical factory farm. Cows and chickens and pigs and all of that. Raising deer, same thing. As long as the meat is quality. Do you think that everything else is fine? Like, legal is ethical? Yeah.
And then just to pry at that one a little bit, because my thing is, I poke at things until they break. No, I know. So is it legal to shoot? I don’t know. Let’s say to shoot a deer intentionally, terminator style, like, take out all the kneecaps and then shoot it in the shoulders and then shoot it in the ass a few times, essentially torturing the deer by shooting it in a bunch of non lethal ways.
I assume if you’re, like, just a really bad shot, that’s not illegal, right? Right. Is it illegal if you do that intentionally? Yes. Do you think that there’s a real difference between those two? Yeah. What is that difference? One is a sadistic intent to make the animal suffer. One of the things we’ve got really good at as hunters is keeping the animals from suffering. That’s what we’re really good at these days.
And we use more accurate rifles, and we use higher quality bullets than our grandfathers did. And these books that I’ve written called born ballistic and going ballistic describe the process in how those bullets were improved. And I have seen the hunting evolve from when I was young to now, the way people do things is way different than the way they did it when I was young, in a deer hunting situation, if a deer was seen, everybody would shoot at it back in the old days, and it might get hit three or four or five, six times.
Now one person sits and shoots at it while everybody else watches, and they’ll shoot. It’s usually a one shot kill. The animal doesn’t suffer. Usually. We’ve become more ethical as hunters and our laws get at that. Our hunting laws promote better ethics, better game management. I like that. Yeah. And it’s interesting how much the intent drives some of that legality and ethics. And in an extreme example, that makes no good point whatsoever.
But if there’s two people shooting at their own deers, and the guy on the left knows what he’s doing and he’s intentionally missing, but he only intentionally misses three shots, and then he takes the animal out versus there’s, like, some new hunter that doesn’t know what the hell they’re doing, and they shoot the thing like 20 times and it’s suffering, and then they take it out. Technically, on paper, the guy that made the animal suffer the most is still more ethical than the one that had it suffer the least just because the intent was different.
But I guess, from the outside looking in, if the first guy just lied, all you have to do is lie, right? And just be like, oh, no, the first three, I don’t know what was going on, but deep down he was like, yeah, I’m a sadistic asshole. I’m doing this. I don’t know if those people are out there. I feel like if you were a sadistic asshole, I guess, take it out on hunting animals that you then eat would be better.
We kind of sort that out as hunters through hunter education classes. How so? Almost every state requires hunter education as an 1112, 1314 year old. You go and you sit and you listen to these old guys and more experienced hunters tell you what good hunting is and what ethical hunting is. And they don’t really teach you how to hunt. They teach you how to be an ethical hunter.
And that stuff really takes hold, and you begin to see your place as a conservationist in this larger framework. When you’re ten, 1112, you’re kind of a nasty creature. How did you know? Have you talked to my parents? Yeah. Well, I knew a lot of people were like me when I was young, but you sense, oh, I’m part of a culture that takes this seriously and treats these animals with respect.
And that really is one of the byproducts of our north american model of wildlife conservation. Are there any faux paws that hunters can do like new hunters? And you’re like, this asshole hasn’t learned not to do this thing yet. Yes. So if you go bird hunting with somebody and you both have the same amount of time and money invested and a pheasant flies up in front of you and your buddy shoots it, that’s a faux paw.
And if you both shoot at the same bird because it flies up and the bird is in the safe shooting zone between the two of you and your buddy says, that one’s mine. And then the next one happens and he says, that one’s mine. I got that one. And then he’s claimed all the birds that the two of you shot together. A high score thing? Or is this like he wants the meat, he wants the bragging rights is what he wants? Yeah, I killed ten birds today.
Well, no, you didn’t. You were hunting with your buddy and you claimed ten birds. Those are the people that we don’t hunt with again. And then they wonder why. I wonder why I didn’t get invited back. Yeah, there’s someone listening that’s like, oh, man, that’s what it was. That’s why Gary hasn’t invited me again. Then there’s people that walk around with the safeties, know on their guns or their hammer know, you could talk to them about it.
And if they say, well, this is just the way I do it. Well, yeah, you can do it by yourself then, because I don’t want to be with you. I know a lot of people that are very hardcore about never having the safety on because it’s like, what’s the point? I have this thing to do. This. It’s weird. It’s weird how there’s certain lines in the sand that people have on how to handle certain things.
So some of that is really in your own brain, right. And then some of it is you’re endangering your buddy. And we have lots of different kinds of guns and some of them are perfectly safe without having a safety. Is this a no Glock scenario? Well, I’m talking like a. 38 special, a five shot revolver. Okay. Yeah. Even better example. Yeah. It’s not going to go off if you don’t pull the trigger and it doesn’t need a safety because the safety is in your brain.
So you know what I’m talking about. So I’ve got a little segment we’re about to jump into. But I’ve got one question that’s worth more than just a one to ten rating, and we’ve already predetermined a secret signal that Gary will motion at me if he doesn’t want to answer. So he’ll be like, I don’t know, but he’s also going to make a little mo. You won’t see it if you’re watching, and you won’t hear it if you’re listening, but I’ll know if Gary does it.
Have you ever been invited to or heard of a real existence of a most dangerous game sort of hunting organization? Do you know what I mean by the most dangerous game? Okay, I’ve not been invited. I believe that exists. I don’t think anybody in my circle, the people that I know, but I think that exists at some level. What do you think the draw is for that? I can only speculate that if such a thing exists, that these are people who have everything they want in life, but they don’t have a certain kind of thrill they think that they’re looking for.
Where do you get that? It’s. Let’s say that you don’t do the dangerous game. We’re not claiming that Gary does the most dangerous game. What’s the most thrilling version of. I don’t know, what really gets your adrenaline pumping out of all the different types of huntings and activities you do? Is it sleeping in a tent with black mold? I love steelhead fishing. Really? What is it about? I guess, again, as a bumpkin outsider, but I would assume that if you’re not like shooting at an animal that could potentially rush you and decimate you, the rest of it’s just kind of like laid back.
So what is about steelhead fishing that gives you an adrenaline rush? These fish, it’s a rainbow trout that goes to the ocean and comes back two or three or four or five years later, and it’s just supercharged with the power of the ocean, and it might be 50 miles or 200 miles to get back to its home water, and now it’s six or seven or nine or ten pounds and is just going to fight to the death and getting one on the end of your line.
They call it the fish of a thousand casts, and I hate to refer it to it that way, but it’s hard. And to me, as a young person, it was kind of a rite of passage to catch a steelhead, and I’ve never lost the thrill of that. So steelhead fishing, deer hunting, bear hunting, these are my favorite things. Is there a laws or ethics around, like shooting a steelhead fish with a 22 or setting up like a net? Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Are either of those legal or are those both illegal? No. If you were found to be doing that, you would go to jail. Really? What about if you’re on your own land? Jail. Really? What if you’ve got your own two acres and I guess steelhead wouldn’t work because they go out to the ocean. But let’s say that you’ve got your own pond and you stock it. Is there something you can do there that would send you to jail? The steelhead, they could come up the creek or the river that is next to your property, and that would also be jail.
Yeah. Is that just about shooting fish at all? Are you allowed to shoot any kind of Fish? You can shoot carp. Do they just have better lawyers do the steelhead? They sure do. They got lawyers and they got judges for sure. What is it? What is it about a carp that you can shoot a carp and you can’t shoot a steelhead? In America, carp are an invasive species.
Okay. So if there needed to be culling with steelhead, then it magically becomes legal and therefore ethical. Yeah. Would you have any qualms about shooting a steelhead with a 22? Yeah, if it was legal, I would not do it. Is it because it’s like cheating? Yeah. What if you did 1000 casts and it’s not catching and you’re holding? There’s a way that you can catch these fish. It’s called snagging.
And snagging is illegal, and you can make it look like you’re really fishing, but you actually caught the fish by snagging it. It didn’t actually bite. What’s snagging? Snagging is where you drag the hook along the fish’s body and the fish might be ten or 15 yards away from you and you can see it in the river and you cast because the rivers are clear, and then you drag the hook and you snag it in the side or the tail or whatever.
This is interesting to me because this also sounds like something like an inexperienced novice could do accidentally. Could you find yourself in jail from doing that, or would they intentionally? If you’re doing it intentionally, you could find yourself in jail. There’s so many loopholes for hunters that might also be like, really good liars and just be, oh, it was an accident, I guess after the 20th one that day, then they’ll be like, all right, bud.
Yeah. If you’re in a group and someone’s like, snagging fish left and right, does everyone else call them out like, hey, get out of here with that crap. Yeah, we call them out. How often does that happen? It used to happen quite a bit. Of course, I grew up in the. So it used to happen quite a bit back in those decades, but people have been called out enough and learned enough that that doesn’t happen as much anymore.
But snagging is still legal in some places in Alaska, and it’s considered perfectly ethical in those instances. It does take some sounds. It sounds harder, honestly, than just doing the normal way. It almost feels like you would need more skill. Yeah. There’s a place called Seward, Alaska, and you can snag salmon off the beaches there. And it takes a level of skill. It really does. Are there any forms of hunting fish from helicopters or does that not exist? I don’t think people are doing that, but shark or anything.
I’ve hunted carp with bow and arrow. I’ve hunted carp with arrow guns and the arrow guns. That’s pretty cool. And you can put a little laser on your arrow gun. Do you use that with steelhead or is that off limits for steelhead? You could, but it would be off limits. Okay. Yeah. So you’re just not allowed to shoot steelhead with anything. You have to catch them with a hook in the mouth.
In the mouth. Right. You can’t even net them. Can you scoop them up with a net? Is that also cheating? Indians can scoop them up with a net. So if you are part of a protected class, you’re allowed to do that? Yeah. There’s another version of fishing that I’ve heard of before where Indians or Native Americans, but they put some sort of a drug in the water and it causes the fish to get knocked out and they just float up to the surface.
Is that real? I’ve heard of that and I believe that is real, but I don’t remember what that is now. But it’s some plant, right? Yeah. It’s like some kind of a powder that they make out of just the natural floor and fauna, and it knocks the fish out. I don’t think it kills them. I think it stupefies them or it’s almost like a narcotic to fish. Yes.
The only reason I bring that up, I think that’s another thing that you’re not allowed to do that unless you have some sort of a link to the cultural heritage that your ancestors did this. But if you just fly in from, again, Connecticut, I don’t know why I keep focusing on Connecticut, but you fly in and you just start drugging fish. Apparently that’s illegal. And unethical. There’s a lot of shady People in Connecticut, I guess.
Absolutely. All right, let’s just jump into this next section. We can keep going on stuff, but I want to ask you some rapid fire questions. Hey, conspiracy buffs, I double dare you to take some PCP, the paranormal conspiracy probe. On your marks. Get set and go. All right. Rules are pretty easy. You’ve got one of the best shirts I’ve ever seen, by the way, my friend. The rules are one to ten.
You’re just going to rate it. If it’s a one, then you don’t believe it at all. If it’s a ten, then you absolutely believe it. So let’s just say Bigfoot, since we’ve already talked about that one to ten, where are you at on Bigfoot? Ten. Let’s talk about flat earth for a second, because you mentioned standing on the top of some kind of a peak and you almost thought you could see the ocean.
Yeah, I could see Paris. Flat model. Where are we at, man? I don’t know. So I guess I’m around a five. I’m around five. Put a five on that. That’s fair. What about demons? Ten. About angels? Ten. What about dinosaurs? Like Trex in a museum? Well, if it’s Trex, it’s a zero, obviously. I mean, paleontologists will admit there is no such creature. I mean, look at those things.
How could they have even bred with each other? They can’t have sex. How could there be more than two? Trex would be zero. But dinosaurs, I think they were big lizards, man. So I’m going to say, yeah, five, let’s say, yeah, there was something there. But I’m fascinated by this topic, though, because some of my friends say, no, just no dinosaurs. And then other people, they’re all in on dinosaurs.
And let’s give me a six on that. What about dragons? And I mean, fire breathing, flying dragons? And they could have existed at any point in history. They don’t have to exist today. Seven. What about full blown aliens? The little gray ones with the big black eyes in particular? Jeez, man, I don’t. This brings up another story that we don’t have time for, but let’s put me down at, like, a three on that, because aliens could be coming from somewhere other than what the standard narrative is.
This isn’t me. But I feel like mold might be alien. I think mushrooms might be alien in that it’s so ubiquitous now that no one would ever even consider it as being alien. But interesting. That’s its own theory. Okay. What about time travel? I’m open to that. So let’s say put me down as a six. What about 911? Where are you at on 911? You said you just recently woke up, but I’m sure you’ve heard of all the different theories, or at least a handful.
So official story, 911, one to ten. One. Let’s go down the list on a whole bunch of these. Oklahoma City, Jeez, one. Waco, Texas, and I guess, to be specific, that they accidentally set fire. They didn’t mean. What about Ruby Ridge? Randy Weaver, they didn’t know that they shot Vicky. They did what they intended to do there. So that’s a one. Where are you at on one to ten? As any of the three letter agencies being to protect America, how safe do you feel from any of them? DEA, ATF, CIA, FBI.
Fill it. There’s. We got to put a number on it, right? I think they’re there to protect themselves. And it’s one thing I learned working on my last book. These agencies, they exist to protect themselves. And even the clubs that we form, that’s what we’re protecting, our own clubs. Yeah. Put me at a five on that because there’s great people in those organizations, and I think there’s black darkness in those organizations, too.
One to ten. That the government could actually take away Americans guns if they really wanted to. They could not. Is this a one? They could not. Is it a three? They could not. They could certainly try, but they would not be able to. There’s too many. So give it a one. Yeah. And then I guess I have to ask this one, too. We landed on the moon and let’s just make it broad.
Let’s say that a human being has stepped foot on the moon in the last hundred years. One. Let’s talk about some of those ones and then we’ll let you go. But I want to start with the mood landing. Why are you at a one and not a three and not a five on stepping foot on the moon? This goes back to my earlier embarrassment, because when I first saw those videos, I thought, well, how can they be having that phone call when they can’t make a phone call across the country without having these big gaps in talking? And I’d heard my mom talk to my aunt in another country and this huge gap in conversation.
But they can talk to each other when somebody’s on the moon. No, that’s not real. They had a better phone plan. Yeah, they had a better phone plan. So that was one thing. Then I looked at the craft that they said they landed on the moon on, and it looked like something I would have made as a ten year old. That doesn’t compute. But then I talked myself into believing it because everybody else believed it.
And then that day I woke up in 2020, I thought, man, I got to go look at that again. And I don’t want to, but part of growing up is thinking for yourself. And what they showed us from a trip to the moon just doesn’t make sense to me. I like what you said there. I felt like I should look into it again, but I didn’t want to.
Or some people, they just don’t want to. And I wonder, let’s say that you can prove to someone that we never went to the moon, right? And they were a diehard believer their whole life. Or you could at least get them to feeling like it’s a one or a two. Even without proof, you just enough evidence, they get like, how does that help somebody in the long run? That yesterday I believed we went to the moon, and now today, after talking with Gary and paranoid american, I think that it’s all lies.
And what, what positive impact do you think that makes on somebody for the rest of their life? I don’t know. If it does make a positive impact on somebody, do you think it’s better to just not say anything and just let them believe that we’re on the moon? If it doesn’t positively impact them, why should I argue with somebody about something that’s probably not going to change their life for the better? If they want to believe in Santa Claus, then I’m probably going to let them.
Unless they’re my grandchildren. I’m not going to let my grandchildren believe in Santa Claus if it’s up to me. Well, you made it all the way to what, like late thirty s, forty s until you found out about Santa Claus? No, I was six when I found out about Santa Claus. But how did that happen? Did you catch mommy in Santa Claus or did you overhear something? No.
I think my grandpa finally said, hey, there is no Santa Claus, Gary. At six, he was like, grow up. Yeah. And so I did the same thing with my grandkids and they would look at me like, don’t talk to know. And I thought, isn’t this know? They, they came to, but. Well, you tried telling them and they didn’t believe, right? Right. Did you get in trouble with the parents? No, because I did it on my own time.
Okay. I mean, still, like grandpa said, santa’s not real. I feel like that would warrant an angry call at some. Didn’t let. I didn’t let my kids believe in Santa Claus, but my daughter fostered at all. Like, even from day one. No, we never. Because I didn’t want to be a person who lied to my children, so I wasn’t going to lie about that. That’s an interesting take, man.
That’s actually one that I find endlessly fascinating, because if I can only pick two out of the endless arguments, but one is like, let them enjoy this magic and let them still live in a world where fantasy is still kind of possible in their head versus, like, no, I’m not going to lie to them. And I guess some people would say, well, it’s not lying if it’s instilling this magical of childhood or throw the penny in the fountain and make a wish or any of those sorts of magical thinking things.
But also, I think, me personally, and if my parents are listening, no ill will towards you. But I feel like that first moment when a kid finds out for themselves, like, wait a minute, grandma’s in on it, grandpa’s in on it. Mom and dad, all my teachers are in on it. Everyone is in on it. But I don’t know. In my mind, I almost am thankful for that because that was like, okay, people can lie to you, and you really can believe something.
For in my case, I think I was about 20 something when I found out Santa Claus wasn’t real. So for two full decades. It’s crazy how long people can keep this up. And there’s also this unspoken rule of, like, you don’t say it out in public. We can say it here because I got licensed from the Santa Claus board before we started, but you’re not supposed to go out.
You pay a lot of money. And just like, where all the kids are lined up to get the picture, and if you just be like, hey, this guy’s not real, you know what I mean? That’s kind of the ultimate faux Paul in a way, even though stop lying to your children. Well, I think there’s so much magic in the world, we don’t need to make up this other thing.
I like that, man. I’ll actually leave it on that if you can tell people where to find you, all your different projects that you’ve got going on, where to buy the books, where to see the show, when to tune into the podcast. What’s your favorite flavor of your coffee? Tell us all. Okay. All right. Well, I’m drinking frontier roast, and that’s the coffee. And you can get that on the website garylewisoutdoors.
com. The Instagram is Gary Lewis outdoors. And I seldom go to Facebook, so if you send me a message there, it’ll just probably stay there, not get answered. I’m the same way. And the fish in central Oregon book is one of the projects I’m proudest of. And you can get that on the website, you can get it at Amazon. And this is my latest book. It’s called Bob Nosler born ballistic.
And the television show is called Frontier Unlimited. And we’re on cable and broadcast affiliates around the country. We’re in the russian language in 18 russian speaking countries. And then easy way to watch is on Huntchannel TV. Click uphuntchannel TV, click on shows, click on Frontier Unlimited. And if you can’t remember Frontier Unlimited, it’s fu. Fu. Frontier Unlimited. You can’t remember at Fu stands for Frontier Unlimited. That’s cool.
You’re in Russia now. Do you have a russian audience that reaches out to you? No. We were contacted by a streaming company when streaming was a new thing from Russia. And I thought, okay, this looks like a joke or a scam or something, but I’ll walk down the road with it a little ways, maybe it’s kind of like believing in Santa Claus. And I had to file a paper with the russian government and a tax form with them and I eventually got a check and they got 13 of our episodes and we couldn’t heard it here.
Gary Lewis is an agent of the russian state. He is paid by the russian state to create propaganda. It’s awesome. This was during a time of capitalism, I think it was actually a russian private company that paid me. The best time are the times of capitalism. I sent a note to you the first time and I ordered some of your books, your comic books, and you gave me this t shirt, I think, right? And I thought I liked comic books when I was young.
And I think it’s pretty cool what you do. And being a comic book publisher, it’s kind of like a cry for help, right? Oh, very much so. Please. Maybe if I make it funny, maybe now you’ll listen to it. If it’s not doom and gloom, that very much is where it came. Anyway. You know, you more than anybody else, your brand has become your name. It’s not like, oh, I know, Thomas.
No, it’s like, I know, paranoid american. I leaned into that. It’s interesting because people would just start calling me paranoid as like my first name, but I like it. And I feel like that’s the best branding possible. And your last name is american. It just worked out. Yeah, it’s on my birth certificate. Yeah. My company is Gary Lewis Outdoors and so people will say, well, here’s Gary Lewis outdoors.
But you took it a whole nother level with paranoid American. But have you considered changing your last name to outdoors? I’ve thought about it, yeah. But I wear this when I go to 4 July celebrations. That’s what I wear on July 4. It is the ultimate conversation starter. And once we get the Bigfoot pamphlets in, I’ll send you a whole freaking box of them that you can just pass out to everyone at the campfires.
That mkultra, that little tract that you made, I usually have one within like, arm’s reach, but I might not today. Yeah. Tell me how good it is. Tell everyone how good it is. It’s a really important little tool. Very quickly, somebody gets up to speed with what that was all about. Anyway, good job on that. I still have a stack. I haven’t given them all out. You got to be selective.
Yeah, I appreciate that, Gary. Yeah. I would love to collaborate on one with you on something. I don’t know what the topic would be yet. Maybe it’s just fishing in Oregon. Yeah, there’s a lot of magic there, man. So this was awesome. We ran well. Wow. We ran really late. Usually these are wrapped up in like 90 minutes. We could keep going, but we’re going to save some for top.
And whenever we go on the next hunting expedition, we’ll get lots more images and video. Here’s a quick little shout out the original crew. There I am showing Juan how to be a true alpha. He hasn’t figured it out yet, but we’ll get him there. And thanks, Gary, for inviting us on that trip and giving us that opportunity to show the world how alpha I am. I appreciate that.
Well, we’ll do it again. We’ll do it again. All right. I don’t know what I’m going to pick. I’ve got so many commercials I can lead out with now. We’re gonna do the class. We’ll do a chosen one. Since we just showed Juan’s face again, here he is being an absolute beta. He didn’t catch any fish at all. I did, but he’s got a comment. Chosen one, go visit Chosen one.
It’s easy to remember if you just sing along. Chosen one, go visit Chosen one. The chosen one. Yes, he is the chosen one. He’s got his own comic and now he’s got his own song because he’s the chosen one. Yes, he is a chosen one. Go buy a copy at Chosen one. Chosen one. Go visit Chosen one. It’s easy to remember you if you just sing along. Chosen one.
Go visit chosen one. .
