Joe Rogan Experience #1395 - Glenn Villeneuve

Joe Rogan 0:03 Boom, here we go. What's up, Glenn? How are you, man?

Glenn Villeneuve 0:05 Hey, Joe.

Joe Rogan 0:05 Nice to meet you in person.

Glenn Villeneuve 0:07 Good to come down here.

Joe Rogan 0:08 (laughs)

Glenn Villeneuve 0:08 Good to meet you.

Joe Rogan 0:09 Dude, you, uh, you're one of my favorite characters on that show. It was, uh, it was always weird watching you. For p- people who don't know what you're ... Life Below Zero, it's, um, this crazy show where people live, you know, in this very rugged terrain. And you, you had, you had the most interesting life 'cause you, when you lived up at the cabin, you would live by yourself. Just you in a very small room, just, uh, hunting all your food, and, and, and hiking around. You didn't use any vehicles, and you just kinda had a rifle and a frying pan and a pot and a place to sleep, and you seemed really happy up there.

Glenn Villeneuve 0:48 Oh, yeah. I'm having a good time. I just wanted to strip everything away that I could dispense with, you know. Um, I got the idea I wanted to go back to living like a hunter-gatherer. Back in '97, I just got this idea. I was actually living in a tent in the woods down in Vermont and having such a good time, I thought, "Where could I go with this? What could I do with this kinda lifestyle?" And I decided to move to the Brooks Range of Alaska.

Joe Rogan 1:10 What was it, like so, you ... What made you go live in a tent in the first place?

Glenn Villeneuve 1:15 I just always liked the outdoors. I just love nature. And, you know, I was doing other things too, but there was this, this one summer when I was in my 20s when I found this really cool spot in the woods, and I thought, "Hey, I'll set up a teepee over there, and I'll just hang out there this summer as much as I can." And I just had a great time, so I started thinking more about, you know, instead of just living in the woods kind of as a recreational thing, I started thinking about, "Hey how could you actually make a life living like this?" You know, get up every morning with the animals around, the sky, the water. Um, I started thinking about it. I started reading anthropological stuff about hunter-gatherers that summer, and I started getting ideas. And, uh, it took me seven years to make it to the Brooks Range and to get out to that lake that you've seen on TV and to actually start living that way. It took me a few years just to organize my life enough to move up to Alaska. And then once I got to Alaska, I was kinda in Fairbanks for about four years before I could really spend long periods of time in the wilderness. But once I got it all arranged, I just drove up the Hall Road, which is this industrial road that goes up to the North Slope Oil Fields. It's very, very, uh, unimproved in areas. Just gravel road for hundreds of miles. I drove about 300 miles north of Fairbanks. I parked my van, and I walked 60 miles off of that road by myself out into the wilderness and started figuring out how to live off the land.

Joe Rogan 2:39 How did you know where to go?

Glenn Villeneuve 2:41 Oh, I had found the spot a few years before. I had actually found that lake flying around in a little bush plane. 'Cause part of my plan originally, when I formulated this idea back in Vermont, I thought, "I'll become a bush pilot. That'll be a thing I can do in Alaska," you know?

Joe Rogan 2:57 Mm-hmm.

Glenn Villeneuve 2:58 Um, so I was thinking about starting an air taxi service. I had been studying flying for a few years. As soon as I got my private license, I jumped in the plane and flew to Alaska. But then when I got up there, I was getting my commercial and all that. And in the meantime, as much as I could, I'd go out and explore, look around. And I discovered this lake one day when I was flying across part of the Brooks Range, and I set up a little tent camp there that summer, 2000. But it took me another four years before I could actually walk out there and start living.

Joe Rogan 3:26 60 miles walking?

Glenn Villeneuve 3:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 3:28 That's a long fucking way. (laughs)

Glenn Villeneuve 3:31 Hey, I walked the length of Vermont when I was 13 years old. I walked, you know, from-

Joe Rogan 3:34 Did you really?

Glenn Villeneuve 3:34 ... Massachusetts to Canada. But, um, the difference is when you're-

Joe Rogan 3:37 When you were 13?

Glenn Villeneuve 3:38 Yeah. I actually started when I was 12, gave up. (laughs) And the next ... I was with my uncle. We went for about a week, and then the next summer, I convinced my mom to drive me back down and drop me off alone where we had given up the year before. But, uh, that's-

Joe Rogan 3:51 Just, uh, just you by yourself?

Glenn Villeneuve 3:53 Yeah. When I was 13, I was alone. But that's a trail. That's called the Long Trail, and it's marked. There's a little paint mark, you know, on the trees up ahead of you telling you-

Joe Rogan 4:01 Mm-hmm.

Glenn Villeneuve 4:01 ... where to go.

Joe Rogan 4:02 Yeah, but still-

Glenn Villeneuve 4:03 The Brooks Range is-

Joe Rogan 4:04 ... you were 13.

Glenn Villeneuve 4:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:06 That's a little kid.

Glenn Villeneuve 4:07 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:07 And your mom's like, "Go. Go ahead."

Glenn Villeneuve 4:10 It was amazing. I was given a lot of freedom.

Joe Rogan 4:12 I guess so.

Glenn Villeneuve 4:13 I mean, I'd already quit school by the time I was 13, you know?

Joe Rogan 4:16 Really?

Glenn Villeneuve 4:16 I went back a few times, but, uh, yeah, I mean, I, I never, I never finished the, uh, fourth grade, tell you the truth. But I went back.

Joe Rogan 4:25 Wow.

Glenn Villeneuve 4:25 I went to one year of high school, eventually. I was curious about what was going on over there.

Joe Rogan 4:29 Did you ever get a GED or any of that jazz?

Glenn Villeneuve 4:31 No, I never needed a GED for anything I did. But I went to ninth grade, and, uh, you know, I did my own thing after that.

Joe Rogan 4:40 But you seem like an educated guy. Do ... Are you self-educated?

Glenn Villeneuve 4:43 If I got any education, it's self-educated, yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:46 Yeah.

Glenn Villeneuve 4:46 I mean, I just ... I like to be learning all the time. Whatever I'm doing, I like to learn. But if I'm making a TV show, I wanna learn everything I can about it, you know? If I'm flying airplanes, I wanna learn a lot more than I need to know to do what I'm doing. Um, and it's the same thing with, uh, going out there and living. Just learning as much as I could.

Joe Rogan 5:03 Yeah.

Glenn Villeneuve 5:03 There's so much, so much to learn out there.

Joe Rogan 5:05 Now how long did it take you when you were 13, and, like, what did you do for food?

Glenn Villeneuve 5:10 Oh, well, that was easy. Buy it at the store and carry it on your back. I never hunted when I was a kid.

Joe Rogan 5:15 Oh, okay.

Glenn Villeneuve 5:16 I mean, I remember going once or twice with some uncles of mine. We never got anything. I never ... I didn't have any real hunting experience until that summer I walked out to the lake.

Joe Rogan 5:25 Really?

Glenn Villeneuve 5:26 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:26 So you really just had a rifle and, and-

Glenn Villeneuve 5:29 I don't-

Joe Rogan 5:29 ... didn't quite know what you were doing?

Glenn Villeneuve 5:32 I'd read a lot about what to do.

Joe Rogan 5:34 (laughs)

Glenn Villeneuve 5:34 Uh, the biggest thing ... Joe, I got out there. I had two months' food. I left two months' worth of food at the lake, okay, to get me started. And I walked out there in July. And I bought-

Joe Rogan 5:45 Can I pause you for a second? When you say two months' food, like, what did you bring?

Glenn Villeneuve 5:48 Oh, I had left, um, basic stuff. Grains, leg ... you know, some beans, some rice, uh-

Joe Rogan 5:54 Stuff that you knew you could survive off of.

Glenn Villeneuve 5:55 A jug of oil. You know, basic ... Some flour was out there. And I left that the year before when I had a plane. It ... My whole plan to become a air taxi and, and do the bush flying, I ... At that time, I realized this doesn't ...... go together with living off the land in the wilderness, so I actually sold that plane that summer and drove up the road and walked out to where I had left these supplies the year before. And decided that's what I really wanted to do, just go live off the land, you know?

Joe Rogan 6:25 Mm-hmm.

Glenn Villeneuve 6:25 I don't n- I don't need an airplane anymore, I don't need to fly. So, um, when I got out there, I had, there was a 55-gallon barrel and it had some food in it, it had a few supplies. I had a tent, you know, it was insulated but it, it hadn't really become, uh, a cabin yet, uh, th- it's the same place that you've seen but it, it was just, uh, a little less... a little less solid back then.

Joe Rogan 6:47 And the cabin as it stands, you built?

Glenn Villeneuve 6:49 Yeah. Well, i- I flew in the plywood and stuff and then, a- when I got out there, I put, I put... I had a wall tent originally, I'd had a tent camp out there since 2000, I'd built a plywood cabin under the wall tent, basically, is what I did. But, um, when I got out there, I had some food, I had my rifle, I had fishing equipment. I started living, I started improving that little cabin, you know, and by September I ran out of food. Like, complete. I had one bag of flour, this little plastic bag of flour. It was all I had left when it got cold enough that I figured I could start moose hunting, so that was my plan, I gotta get a moose.

Joe Rogan 7:30 Why'd you have to wait till it got cold? Is it regulations?

Glenn Villeneuve 7:34 Bugs. You gotta preserve the meat.

Joe Rogan 7:35 Oh.

Glenn Villeneuve 7:36 I've got no freezer.

Joe Rogan 7:37 Right.

Glenn Villeneuve 7:38 I, I had, you know, I had to wait until, like I still do when I hunt moose, my moose hunting season starts the day I can leave a piece, a scrap of meat out on the ground all afternoon and go look at it and there's no fly eggs on it.

Joe Rogan 7:53 Mm. That makes sense. Wow, that's crazy. So you have to l- other than the rifle aspect of it, you're, I mean you were really living like a primitive hunter-gatherer.

Glenn Villeneuve 8:04 I would've used a bow and arrow if I thought I could've survived.

Joe Rogan 8:07 There's your spot right there.

Glenn Villeneuve 8:08 There it is. Hey.

Joe Rogan 8:09 Well, if you only wanna gather meat, th- the rifle's the way to go.

Glenn Villeneuve 8:13 You know, I was always trying to just let go of everything I could, I could do without, but I never got to the point where I thought I could make it with just a bow and arrow by self. You know, people used to survive out there before they even had archery.

Joe Rogan 8:30 Yeah.

Glenn Villeneuve 8:30 They survived out there with spears, but they were groups of people. They would build a fence, they would corral animals.

Joe Rogan 8:35 Yeah.

Glenn Villeneuve 8:36 They would put nooses up between trees to get a moose, things like that.

Joe Rogan 8:39 There was also probably a lot more animals.

Glenn Villeneuve 8:43 I don't know that to be the case, but I think-

Joe Rogan 8:45 Maybe not Alaska. Alaska probably not too much different, but throughout North America, like if you listen to or you read, rather, the, uh, tales of, um, um, uh, Boone and Cro- not Boone and Crockett, uh, the, the, Lewis and Clark, when they made their way across the country, like, they found a lotta game. There was a lot of animals. I mean, it was just an abundance of animals. And then of course, if they ran into buffalo, obviously, there was millions and millions of buffalo.

Glenn Villeneuve 9:11 Unbelievable. That's the difference between Alaska and down here. Down here, we've modified everything.

Joe Rogan 9:16 Yeah.

Glenn Villeneuve 9:16 We've paved everything over.

Joe Rogan 9:18 Alaska's still wild. You know?

Glenn Villeneuve 9:20 Northern Alaska's the most wild place left in this country. That's why I went there.

Joe Rogan 9:24 It's barely in this country too. I mean, it's not even attached.

Glenn Villeneuve 9:27 Yeah, some people don't really think of Alaska as United States.

Joe Rogan 9:30 It's not.

Glenn Villeneuve 9:31 (laughs) But it-

Joe Rogan 9:32 It's not, it's a frozen Puerto Rico, it's way up there, it's, it's not even connected to us. It's one of those weird ones.

Glenn Villeneuve 9:38 But it i- it is wild. And, and you see, actually, that's what drew me to it. The first time I ever saw the Brooks Range was years before I moved to Alaska. I was on a flight. I used to get jobs as a courier. When I was in my 20s I was real interested in traveling, and I found out this way I could travel all over the world as a courier, so I would go to New York City, I'd get these jobs as a freelance courier and take off to wherever they need me to go. And one time, I got this flight to Tokyo, and I'm flying right across the whole length of the Brooks Range, great circle route, New York, Tokyo, takes you right across it. 600 miles of mountains from the Canadian border over to the Chukchi Sea a- across from Siberia, and there's one road across it in 600 miles, and I was just glued to the window the whole flight looking at that.

Joe Rogan 10:25 Wow.

Glenn Villeneuve 10:25 And I thought, "Someday, I'm gonna go check that place out on the ground," you know? I mean, it's incredible when you see those mountains, they, they're big mountains, they're up to 9,000 feet high.

Joe Rogan 10:33 And that one road is the Haul Road?

Glenn Villeneuve 10:35 Yeah, the Haul Road, also known as the Dalton Highway. That was built in 1974 just to construct the Alaska Pipeline to get to the oil up at Prudhoe Bay on the North Slope, the oil fields up there. So they built that road in one summer, it's an amazing story in itself.

Joe Rogan 10:50 Wow.

Glenn Villeneuve 10:51 Yeah, they started in April and they had the whole thing done in one summer from, uh, the Yukon River all the way up to the Arctic Ocean.

Joe Rogan 10:59 So when you got down to one bag of flour...

Glenn Villeneuve 11:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:01 ... was there a part in your head where you're like, "What i- what am I doing here?"

Glenn Villeneuve 11:06 No, I never wondered what I was doing there.

Joe Rogan 11:07 No?

Glenn Villeneuve 11:08 No.

Joe Rogan 11:08 You alwa- it always felt right for you?

Glenn Villeneuve 11:10 I- oh yeah. What I was doing there was looking for a moose. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 11:15 (laughs)

Glenn Villeneuve 11:15 Yeah. And, uh-

Joe Rogan 11:16 And you already b- had that whole shed built-

Glenn Villeneuve 11:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:18 ... for meat?

Glenn Villeneuve 11:19 Oh, there's no shed for meat.

Joe Rogan 11:21 Well, it, what's that thing that you do, where you have everything like, uh-

Glenn Villeneuve 11:23 The sod house?

Joe Rogan 11:24 ... covered up, the sod house? Yeah.

Glenn Villeneuve 11:25 No, that came y- that came like four years later, I think, yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:30 Oh.

Glenn Villeneuve 11:30 No, no, I didn't have that yet. I didn't even have a meat pole.

Joe Rogan 11:33 Really?

Glenn Villeneuve 11:34 No, I built the meat pole after I got the moose, the same meat pole that's still there that you've seen, it's 20 feet high, and I built that with a piece of parachute cord and a, a little block and tackle that you can fit in the palm of your hand that just had parachute cord around it and I, I ha- I had to get, well, that big, it's, I'm actually talking about that platform that's right beside the meat pole.

Joe Rogan 11:54 Mm-hmm. Right.

Glenn Villeneuve 11:55 Um, the meat pole's 20 feet high, the platform's 15 feet high.

Joe Rogan 11:57 Let's explain to people what a, what a meat pole is so that they know, just to, to...

Glenn Villeneuve 12:02 That's like my freezer. I don't have a freezer out there, so I just hang meat up and I live in the freezer, the Arctic, it's your freezer from September until usually sometime in May, I can keep meat without anything other than the open air around it-... you know?

Joe Rogan 12:19 That's a long time. (laughs)

Glenn Villeneuve 12:21 Yeah. (laughs) It's most of the year.

Joe Rogan 12:23 Yeah.

Glenn Villeneuve 12:24 The lake's only thawed out from June until, most years, around the 1st of October it freezes over, so you get about four months of open water, about eight months of ice.

Joe Rogan 12:35 So you're basically living off of fish for those months?

Glenn Villeneuve 12:38 No. Um, there, there was one year when I caught a lot of fish there, um, 'cause I stayed there... I stayed there one time 15 months without going to town. And-

Joe Rogan 12:50 Just by yourself?

Glenn Villeneuve 12:51 No. Uh, I was only there for four months totally by myself, but I'm not totally crazy. I went back out and, and I got my woman to come in there with me after for-

Joe Rogan 13:02 She's totally crazy.

Glenn Villeneuve 13:04 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 13:04 (laughs) She's gotta go like-

Glenn Villeneuve 13:05 Well, that may be true. I got divorced from her later. But, (laughs) um, but, uh, actually, no, I, I've sp- most of the time I've been out there, I've had a family, uh, with me most of the time.

Joe Rogan 13:17 Wow.

Glenn Villeneuve 13:17 I, I went out there, uh, you know... I, I actually was al-... I, I got married, um, before I went out there. I went out there for four months, I went back, I got Sylvia, my ex-wife, and, um, we were out there for years, you know. We would go back and forth. We would go to Fairbanks for six months or sometimes a year. We'd go out there for a year. You know, we would, um, go back and forth. And then what happened was, uh, after we split up, I was out there one winter totally alone, and that's when I got on the show, right after that. Um, it all just... The timing was perfect. Th- I'm up there by myself. I'm living real close to the land. I, I mean, I'm sleeping under caribou hides that winter, and I'm eating just caribou. Like, I had a little tiny bit of store-bought food with me, hardly anything. And I hadn't seen a human being in four and a half months.

Joe Rogan 14:15 Wow.

Glenn Villeneuve 14:16 And the executive producer of the show flies from LA all the way up there to meet me, and lands. And he was-

Joe Rogan 14:21 How'd they know you were there?

Glenn Villeneuve 14:23 The summer before, I was in Fairbanks, and for a few years, I was trying to figure out, "How can I share this stuff I'm experiencing?" 'Cause it's incredible. I'm just... I'm realizing that this is not ordinary life anymore, and there are a lot of people that don't even realize what's going on out here in the middle of the wilderness. So I'm talking to people. I'm trying to find some kind of a filmmaker or somebody, and I don't know anything about it, but I'm trying to find somebody to, to help me do something like a documentary or something like this. So my friends know this. Somebody handed me a email address. They said, "You should write to this person. They're looking for people like you." They told me it was a filmmaker. I didn't know what it was. I sent off an email. I said, "Hi," you know, "I live in the wilderness. I'd like to talk to you about if you're interested in making a documentary." And a few days later, I started walking from the road again to get back to my camp. So I left them a satellite phone number and I said, "This is my only means of communication. It's a satellite phone. I don't keep it turned on, because it runs on a battery. You can send a message to it. I check it once in a while. It's basically for emergencies only, but you can communicate with me this way." And I put that in the email how to do it. Well, that whole winter went by, eight months went by, I hadn't heard from them, and I had forgotten about that person. I'd sent emails to a lot of people. And then one day, I turn on my phone, there's this message there. They wanted to talk to me. So I called them up and we start talking, and they tell me it's a reality TV show. And I had literally never seen a reality TV show in my life. I hadn't watched TV for many, many years. And, uh-

Joe Rogan 16:04 So you had no idea what that even meant?

Glenn Villeneuve 16:06 Not really. I talked to them about that, but they mostly didn't... they mostly wanted to talk about me, not about them. And I kept trying to get information out-

Joe Rogan 16:13 (laughs)

Glenn Villeneuve 16:14 ... like, "What is this?" (laughs) Exactly.

Joe Rogan 16:17 Right.

Glenn Villeneuve 16:18 You know? And, uh, 'cause I kept... I remember, I kept saying, "What I really wanna do, I wanna talk about nature out here." And they're like, "Well, we don't wanna make a show about nature. We wanna make a show about you." But, in any case, I learned what reality TV was over the next few months. Because after we talked for two weeks, the executive producer flew all the way up from LA. He flew from Fairbanks on a little ski plane out there to meet me, and he landed and met me to make sure that I wasn't the biggest bullshitter they'd ever talked to. They had no idea. I mean, they were just talking to me on a satellite phone, and I was telling them, "Okay, you know, right now I'm living off these two caribou I killed last month," and, and they came out there and they saw that it was real, and they were like, "Yeah, we want you on the show."

Joe Rogan 17:01 Wow.

Glenn Villeneuve 17:01 And a few weeks later, we were making TV.

Joe Rogan 17:04 So they had to come out just to check to see if your story was legit?

Glenn Villeneuve 17:07 Yeah. I mean, I couldn't give 'em-

Joe Rogan 17:09 So they had to come out to the actually lake-

Glenn Villeneuve 17:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:10 Yeah, yeah, the actual lake where you're living.

Glenn Villeneuve 17:12 I couldn't give 'em references. I mean, I was all alone out there. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 17:15 (laughs) Wow. That must've been very surreal for you. A guy lands out there, some Hollywood jackoff (laughs) -

Glenn Villeneuve 17:22 Well-

Joe Rogan 17:22 ... comes out to visit you.

Glenn Villeneuve 17:23 ... it was great. It was like getting out of solitary. I hadn't seen anybody in four and a half months. That's a long time.

Joe Rogan 17:28 When I say jackoff-

Glenn Villeneuve 17:29 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 17:29 ... I mean it with all due respect. I just mean a, a Hollywood person, you know, like a, a, an LA television producer flies out to me- to meet you when you're doing your wilderness thing. Like, what a convergence of worlds.

Glenn Villeneuve 17:40 Well-

Joe Rogan 17:40 There's no world that's more removed from the world of living by yourself in the woods than Hollywood. That's, like, the most opposite of it.

Glenn Villeneuve 17:51 In some ways, but we're all human.

Joe Rogan 17:53 Yes, we're all human.

Glenn Villeneuve 17:54 And we had a great afternoon together. We had an awesome afternoon together.

Joe Rogan 17:58 So did you take him and show him your routes and all the places where you go?

Glenn Villeneuve 18:02 It was in April. I had a packed trail on the snow. That's still winter where I am. And I took him out for a walk up onto a mountainside so he could get a view of the whole country there. And it just happened that the first grizzly track I had seen that spring that had come out of hibernation was right there in front of us. The, the bear had hit my trail and was walking down my packed trail right in front of us. It was that day, totally fresh tracks.

Joe Rogan 18:30 Whoa.

Glenn Villeneuve 18:31 So that was exciting. And, uh-

Joe Rogan 18:33 Did you see the bear?

Glenn Villeneuve 18:34 No, we didn't see the bear. It had headed up the mountain. Um-... it was walking a lot faster than we were. But, we saw a, a lot of, uh, beautiful things that day and, you know, w- he shot a sizzle reel and he brought it back for the network to see and everything.

Joe Rogan 18:51 Wow. So what were you thinking when the guy left, like-

Glenn Villeneuve 18:55 I was thinking-

Joe Rogan 18:55 ... "Where is this gonna-"

Glenn Villeneuve 18:56 ... "That was fun, that was cool."

Joe Rogan 18:58 (laughs)

Glenn Villeneuve 18:58 I got to show somebody around out here-

Joe Rogan 19:00 Yeah.

Glenn Villeneuve 19:00 ... you know, because other than my immediate family that had been there with me, my wife and m- and we had two kids by then, you know, that, uh, they hadn't been there since the year before. But, nobody had ever seen it with me. I, I'd, I never had had anybody out there to, to walk anywhere all these years. By the time this happened, I'd been out there for nine years off and on, you know. I'd had my camp out there since 2000, actually, and I'd been kind of living there at least half the time for nine years. I'd gotten to know that country so well. All the mountains. I've walked some days 20, 25 miles over 5,000-foot mountains and everything, hunting sheep, hunting caribou, and just looking around, trapping sometimes. Um, but always alone.

Joe Rogan 19:44 Why was this life so appealing to you from such a young age? Like, the fact that you're, uh, you're 13 years old and you make that walk all the way across Vermont. And, I mean, that's, that's a long-ass walk.

Glenn Villeneuve 19:57 You know, I grew up in a small town right near the base of the highest mountain in Vermont, Mount Mansfield, and some of my earliest memories are looking at that mountain wanting to go up there, and I got to the top of the mountain by the time I was nine, but it took me nine years just to get up there. Things take time. It's like I wanted-

Joe Rogan 20:13 So this has always been something that's, you're drawn to-

Glenn Villeneuve 20:16 I guess.

Joe Rogan 20:17 ... for some reason.

Glenn Villeneuve 20:18 I g-

Joe Rogan 20:18 You're drawn to being in the wilderness.

Glenn Villeneuve 20:20 I'm drawn to a lot of things, but the wilderness is definitely one of them.

Joe Rogan 20:23 When you get there, did, do you feel like everything's right? Like, when you finally got to your place and you finally started, when you walked 60 miles out there and started living, did you finally feel like, "I'm in my spot, this is where I'm supposed to be"?

Glenn Villeneuve 20:38 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 20:39 Like you knew?

Glenn Villeneuve 20:40 I had literally been planning to do exactly that in the Brooks Range for seven years. Like, that's what I was doing every day, was preparing to do that.

Joe Rogan 20:53 Wow. E- but what was it about it that was so compelling? Like, why was that a thing that you were so drawn to?

Glenn Villeneuve 21:02 Because when I was living in the woods before that, when I was in the tipi in Vermont, every single day I'd wake up with a smile on my face, I'd just be excited what was going on. Get up, look out, see the fog coming up off the water on the lake. You know, "Oh wow, there's something over there. There's a loon," whatever it is. There's, um, I was just excited about what was going on out there and I just felt really connected to it. And there are a lot of really positive aspects to being out in the woods. I mean, just the physical part, like I like to stay in shape, I like to be active, and you can't help but be active out there. You can't help but stay in shape. Um, I liked the diet. I mean, once I started eating animals I killed myself, and food that I collected myself, you know, plant food too, it was, um, that was the best food I ever ate in my life. When I ate that first moose I killed, I mean, I never had anything better.

Joe Rogan 22:05 That's a crazy way to live, man. It's interesting because most people would tell you, "Hey, you gotta get a job."

Glenn Villeneuve 22:09 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 22:10 "Like, you, you gotta, you gotta be a normal person. You can't just go out there and live."

Glenn Villeneuve 22:14 Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that's what I told them, I said, "I'm gonna make a career out of this." Now, I didn't know exactly how it was gonna play out, um, but I was always confident that it was a valuable thing to do and that it would not only benefit me, but in the long run, that I would be able to share this with people and that it would pay off. And it did. It j- it just, uh, took time.

Joe Rogan 22:38 Now, what did you do for money?

Glenn Villeneuve 22:41 What I did for money was two things. One is, I didn't go out there till I was 30 years old. I didn't go to Alaska till I was 30 years old. I had to have some savings. And number two is I arranged everything in my life so I had literally no expenses, or almost no expenses. I didn't have... I never had any debt. I didn't have student loan, like I said, I left school early. I didn't have a mortgage. When I got to Fairbanks, I found one acre of land on the edge of town for $6,500. I built a little log cabin myself, 200 square feet, no plumbing, just a wood stove to heat it with. I lived in a tent all winter before that cabin was done. Um, 40 below zero, that wasn't easy, and that was right on the edge of town. Um, and then moved into that cabin. I had everything arranged. I got a vehicle, but it was all paid off. When I went to the Brooks Range, I literally didn't have any expenses except about $300 property tax a year for that little cabin in Fairbanks.

Joe Rogan 23:39 What were you doing for jobs before that? You said you worked as a courier?

Glenn Villeneuve 23:43 I did a, a lot of courier flying, that was mainly because I wanted to travel.

Joe Rogan 23:46 Mm-hmm.

Glenn Villeneuve 23:47 But when I was in my 20s, I was managing some real estate in Vermont, it was timberland. And, um, that wasn't something that I was interested in doing as a long-term career, but I was able to make some money from that. And then the next thing that I was planning to do was to get into the aviation, but the thing with the aviation is if you're gonna have an air taxi service, you're not gonna be living out in the bush. I didn't realize that when I started down that path. You see, I also did a lot of other preparation in terms of studying, and one of the things I did too was, I, I made these shorter forays into the wilderness. So the first place was in Northern Canada, and I went up to Northern Quebec five different times. One time, my girlfriend at the time and I, we spent six weeks canoeing across, uh, a part of Northern Quebec, never saw a single person in six weeks. During that canoe trip, we would see these small planes flying over-... and that's when I started getting the idea of these little float planes. I started thinking, "Okay, I'm gonna become a pilot." That's one reason it took me seven years to move to Alaska, because I had to study aviation. There was a lot of different things I had to do. But, um, that's when I got that idea after that trip to Canada. I started studying flying, and that did slow me down moving to Alaska. But that was a good thing too, because now I can actually afford an airplane. I just got back into flying last year, and, um, the next stage of my life, I think that's gonna be quite important.

Joe Rogan 25:11 So when you first got there and you, you set up your, your shack, you're, you're living out there, you're hunting, food, and did you feel like... I mean, this had s- been something that was like a calling for you for a long time. It had to feel very strange that you're actually making it happen.

Glenn Villeneuve 25:33 Oh-

Joe Rogan 25:33 Like, it must have felt cool.

Glenn Villeneuve 25:35 Oh, it always does when you do something you've been dreaming about for a long time.

Joe Rogan 25:39 Like, what was it like to wake up there and go, "I'm actually doing it."

Glenn Villeneuve 25:43 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:43 Like, this crazy pipe dream-

Glenn Villeneuve 25:45 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:45 ... of living in the woods next to a lake-

Glenn Villeneuve 25:48 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:48 ... now it's real.

Glenn Villeneuve 25:50 Yeah. Yeah. And I was... I just felt super fortunate, and that's still how I feel. Like, all these things that I've experienced out there, I realize how few people in this day ever get to experience these things.

Joe Rogan 26:06 Oh, yeah, I mean, you're- w- you're right next to grizzly bears.

Glenn Villeneuve 26:09 Wolves, grizzly bears, wolverines, uh, these animals inhabit the same area that I do, and I have a lot of interactions with them because I'm out there so much. You know, over the years, a lot of things have happened. I've spent a lot of time around wolves. Um, amazing things, you know, that, uh, if you had asked me, I never would've thought woulda happened, coulda happened. I mean, there've been times when I ran out of food, and I've literally tracked wolves and taken food away from them when they've killed caribou.

Joe Rogan 26:42 What?

Glenn Villeneuve 26:43 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 26:44 How many wolves were there?

Glenn Villeneuve 26:46 One time, there was a lone wolf that got a caribou just ahead of me. He didn't have time to do anything except gut it for me. (laughs) Literally, that's what they start eating is the guts, and he had opened up its belly and pulled the guts out, and the whole caribou was there.

Joe Rogan 26:59 Wow.

Glenn Villeneuve 27:00 Um, what happened that day, um, I was really hungry. I had- we had run out of food. I was out there with my ex-wife, and w- we had, uh-

Joe Rogan 27:08 And your kids?

Glenn Villeneuve 27:10 Had one baby at the time.

Joe Rogan 27:12 So you're out there with a baby, and you don't have any-

Glenn Villeneuve 27:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:13 ... food?

Glenn Villeneuve 27:14 The baby was fine. She was nursing. Um- (laughs)

Joe Rogan 27:17 Yeah, but your wife doesn't have any food.

Glenn Villeneuve 27:19 Yeah. Um, well, we always had something to eat, just not enough. But I never, ever have been out there when I didn't have something to eat every single day. Some days, it was just one rabbit. Some days, it was just one ptarmigan, which is very little food, but I've always been able to get something to eat. But this particular year, it was kinda early on, this was the winter 2006, 2007. I hadn't been out there that long. Made a miscalculation. I was counting on caribou showing up, because so far, I'd always seen a lot of caribou in the winter. That winter, they didn't come. If I had known, I could've prevented the situation, but we had taken one moose in the fall. I had killed a moose in September, and I thought, "Man, we got 500 pounds of meat. We're set. The caribou will come later in the winter." But it's amazing how much meat you can eat when you're not eating much of anything else.

Joe Rogan 28:12 Mm-hmm.

Glenn Villeneuve 28:12 And all that I was eating at that time really was meat, fat, and maybe a cup of berries a day, you know, that I had gathered in the fall and froze. Um, so the moose, we went through that pretty fast. W- uh, found out that two adults can eat a large bull moose in three months if that's all you got to eat. I've-

Joe Rogan 28:31 Wow.

Glenn Villeneuve 28:32 I've eaten, by myself, a, a large bull moose in six months.

Joe Rogan 28:38 (laughs)

Glenn Villeneuve 28:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:39 For pe- people that don't know, a large bull moose is about 2,000 pounds.

Glenn Villeneuve 28:44 I don't think they're quite that big. Uh, they're probably 1500 pounds. You probably get 500 pounds of meat-

Joe Rogan 28:48 So like a Yukon moose is, like, 2,000 pounds? What's-

Glenn Villeneuve 28:51 Ah, people. People exaggerate. It's-

Joe Rogan 28:54 People exaggerate today?

Glenn Villeneuve 28:54 Oh, they exaggerate a lot of things, Joe.

Joe Rogan 28:56 So but a big one-

Glenn Villeneuve 28:57 I've heard so many-

Joe Rogan 28:57 ... like a 60-inch bull? How m- how much does that guy, uh, get, something like that weigh?

Glenn Villeneuve 29:00 Yeah. That's actually what that bull was. It was about 60 inch b- uh-

Joe Rogan 29:03 Wow.

Glenn Villeneuve 29:04 That one was actually 57 if I remember right. I don't pay too much attention to the exact measurements, but I think that-

Joe Rogan 29:09 So somewhere in the range of 1500 pounds, which is-

Glenn Villeneuve 29:11 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 29:11 ... like, what, how many pounds of meat you think that is?

Glenn Villeneuve 29:15 Uh, I would guess that you probably are getting five, 600 pounds of meat-

Joe Rogan 29:21 Phew.

Glenn Villeneuve 29:21 ... outta there.

Joe Rogan 29:21 Are you, um, taking the, the femurs and getting bone marrow out of them and doing all that jazz too?

Glenn Villeneuve 29:26 Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Th- that's, that's a really important part of, of my diet when I'm living off an animal is, um, I like variety, and the animal has a ton of variety in it. One caribou will give you so many different options in terms of food if you know how to utilize it. I've eaten everything out of a caribou except the poop, literally. You can even eat part of the antlers when they're-

Joe Rogan 29:51 Really?

Glenn Villeneuve 29:52 Oh, yeah. In the spring when they're growing, they're soft on the ends. It's like a pickle. You skin them. You take the velvet off. In the last inch or two, it's just, it's got the consistency of a pickle. They're great.

Joe Rogan 30:02 Really? You eat it raw?

Glenn Villeneuve 30:03 Yeah. I eat a lot of animals raw. I eat a l- a lot of parts of a caribou raw. But, uh, anyway, you get a lot of variety 'cause you eat all the organs. You eat the eyes. You eat the brain. You eat the liver, the-

Joe Rogan 30:13 You eat the brain?

Glenn Villeneuve 30:13 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:14 Really?

Glenn Villeneuve 30:14 Spinal cord.

Joe Rogan 30:16 Whoa.

Glenn Villeneuve 30:16 Like I said, I've eaten everything except the poop out of a caribou, literally. I mean, you can even... the cartilage. Y- you can get all kinds of variety, and it's nutritious. It's good for you. I mean, I learned about all this from the old people that used to eat this way. I wouldn't have... I would've been reluctant to eat certain things if I, I hadn't been-... uh, educated by other people that you can do this. I was talking to this 90-year-old woman in Fairbanks, you know, and I asked her, "So do you eat the brains?" 'Cause I'm thinking, you know, mad cow disease-

Joe Rogan 30:43 Right.

Glenn Villeneuve 30:43 ... prions.

Joe Rogan 30:44 Yeah.

Glenn Villeneuve 30:44 She's like, "Oh, yeah, the brains are great." And then I did a little research. They've never found prionic disease in Alaska in any of the animals up there.

Joe Rogan 30:50 Hmm.

Glenn Villeneuve 30:50 So I was like, "Okay, I can start eating the brain."

Joe Rogan 30:52 That's an issue that's happening more and more, uh, here in the lower 48. You're, uh, getting a lot of CWD, which is another-

Glenn Villeneuve 30:59 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 30:59 ... prion disease. Very scary stuff. You know, it's, uh, there's parts of Wisconsin where my friend Doug Duran lives, where, you know, 50% of the deer they, they test, test positive for CWD.

Glenn Villeneuve 31:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:13 Which is a real fatal disease, and hasn't made the jump to humans yet, but they're very concerned.

Glenn Villeneuve 31:19 And, you know, this is, um, coming from the deer.

Joe Rogan 31:24 Yeah.

Glenn Villeneuve 31:24 Like you said, there's a lot of deer. And where deer and moose live together, the moose get it. We don't have any deer. So other than moose and caribou, that's why we don't have the prionic disease up there.

Joe Rogan 31:31 You have no deer up there?

Glenn Villeneuve 31:32 Mm-mm.

Joe Rogan 31:32 At all?

Glenn Villeneuve 31:34 Well, moose are a deer.

Joe Rogan 31:35 A type of deer.

Glenn Villeneuve 31:36 Caribou or a deer.

Joe Rogan 31:36 Right.

Glenn Villeneuve 31:36 But we don't have anything other than moose and caribou.

Joe Rogan 31:39 You don't have black tail, which would be-

Glenn Villeneuve 31:40 Those are much further south.

Joe Rogan 31:41 Yeah.

Glenn Villeneuve 31:41 Down in southeast Alaska. I don't know their exact range, but nowhere near where I am.

Joe Rogan 31:45 That's interesting.

Glenn Villeneuve 31:47 It's too harsh of a country. They don't... It doesn't... Not the right habitat.

Joe Rogan 31:52 Wow. So you... When you take this caribou away from the wolf, how does that go down?

Glenn Villeneuve 32:01 What happened that day was, uh... Thanks for reminding me. I'd forgotten that story (laughs) .

Joe Rogan 32:05 (laughs)

Glenn Villeneuve 32:05 That's what we were talking about. Uh, I had a trail up the mountain. There's a lot of snow in the winter, you know, two, three feet of snow. So you gotta have packed trails to walk efficiently. Pack them down with snow shoes and stuff, and pretty much follow the same routes. I'm following my trail to go up the mountain, looking for food that day, and I came on... There, there were no caribou around. I couldn't find a caribou anywhere. I didn't see caribou track for, like, months. They're migratory, and if they happen to migrate 10 miles away, I'm not gonna see them. That's, that's out of my range. I come on a track of one caribou. It's wounded, it's bleeding, and it's being chased by one wolf, and it crosses my trail. So I start chasing them. It was real fresh. It was snowing out, and I could tell that this has just happened. This injured caribou, this wolf is chasing it up this mountain. They're right ahead of me, I gotta follow this. So-

Joe Rogan 32:57 You have a rifle?

Glenn Villeneuve 32:58 Yeah. Yeah, my rifle is my constant companion. I mean, that, that rifle goes just about everywhere I go up there. So, uh, I start just jogging up the mountain as fast as I can go. It's a 5,000-foot mountain and this, this caribou is wounded pretty badly. He's bleeding almost continuously, you know? And it's clear to me that if he doesn't make it over the top of that mountain, this wolf's gonna get him. I mean, going down the other side, I don't know, but this wolf has a good chance of getting this caribou. This is usually the way they hunt. They injure them and it takes time. It's not like they just run up and knock them down, you know?

Joe Rogan 33:40 They usually hamstring them, right?

Glenn Villeneuve 33:42 Yeah, they, they'll jump on their back. They'll... They, um... I, I see a lot of them injured on the, the big muscle right here on the back leg. Is that what you mean?

Joe Rogan 33:51 Mm-hmm.

Glenn Villeneuve 33:51 Hamstring?

Joe Rogan 33:51 Yeah.

Glenn Villeneuve 33:51 Right in here?

Joe Rogan 33:52 Yeah.

Glenn Villeneuve 33:52 Yeah, they'll get them in there. You find a lot of caribou injured real bad that get away.

Joe Rogan 33:57 Mm.

Glenn Villeneuve 33:57 They get away with big pieces of hide ripped off of them.

Joe Rogan 34:01 Phew.

Glenn Villeneuve 34:01 I killed a caribou once that only had two good legs. It couldn't even walk anymore.

Joe Rogan 34:05 Wow.

Glenn Villeneuve 34:06 But anyway, uh, I start chasing them up the hill. They're kind of zigzagging up the hill, and this caribou obviously doesn't know this mountain. It doesn't know where it's going. It heads in a direction where there's some cliffs on the other side of this ridge, and I'm getting real hopeful at this point and, uh, I still haven't seen them. They're, they're ahead of me on the mountain. And sure enough, the tracks come right up to the edge of the cliff, both the caribou and the wolf, and go right over the top of the cliff. And I'm like, "There's no way that caribou survived getting down," 'cause I know this mountain like the back of my hand and, uh, I just sat down there and I listened, and I sat there at the top of the cliff and sure enough, it's real quiet out there in the winter. The Arctic is just, like, dead silent. And I start hearing the crunching in the snow of this wolf, and he's down in the ravine and he knows I'm up there. He can sense that I'm up there at the top of the cliff, and he wants to, to bug out of there at that point and he just walked up the other side of the ravine. I'm looking across the ravine and I see the wolf going up and I know, "Hey, that caribou's down in that ravine somewhere."

Joe Rogan 35:15 So he's just getting away from you?

Glenn Villeneuve 35:16 Yeah. They had-

Joe Rogan 35:17 Did they already know you by then? Because you, you had shot quite a few wolves.

Glenn Villeneuve 35:23 Mm...

Joe Rogan 35:23 Right? You had-

Glenn Villeneuve 35:24 I trapped a few, I shot a few. Not tons, but, yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:27 Well, you shot a few on the show, that one time on the lake where it's frozen and...

Glenn Villeneuve 35:32 Yeah. The... I didn't have a cameraman with me. That was actually... That story was told on the show and I documented it a little bit as much as I could with my little camera at the time. Um, that day I shot three wolves, but that was a very unusual situation. That was... Those wolves were actually trying to get me, which is a- almost unheard of. Um, but this was years before that. This wolf, and like almost every other wolf encounter I've ever had, every other wolf encounter I've ever had, the wolf wants nothing to do with you. I mean, the wolf knows I'm dangerous and w-

Joe Rogan 36:03 How do they know you're dangerous? Are they having any interactions with other humans?

Glenn Villeneuve 36:08 Wolves know this all across North America. I've only been able to find two documented, bonafide cases where wolves have killed humans in North America in recent times. There was this one guy, young guy up in Saskatchewan several years ago. There was one woman in Alaska that apparently was killed by wolves. It almost never happens. Um, they just know that people are dangerous. They've been persecuted, hu-... I mean, there were bounties on wolves. It's... I think it's in their DNA now.

Joe Rogan 36:39 Hmm.

Glenn Villeneuve 36:40 You know?... all wild animals. Grizzly bears, they don't want anything to do with people-

Joe Rogan 36:45 (laughs)

Glenn Villeneuve 36:45 ... 99.9% of the time.

Joe Rogan 36:47 It's interesting you saying that. Grizzly bears, where they're hunted, don't want to have, uh, anything to do with people.

Glenn Villeneuve 36:52 Right.

Joe Rogan 36:53 They're, they're having a real problem with grizzly bears in places like Montana, where they don't hunt them-

Glenn Villeneuve 36:56 Right.

Joe Rogan 36:57 ... where they don't have n- any fear, many, many generations of no fear-

Glenn Villeneuve 37:01 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 37:01 ... of human beings-

Glenn Villeneuve 37:02 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 37:02 ... and you're getting a lot of maulings 'cause of that.

Glenn Villeneuve 37:04 Yeah, I, I wouldn't be crazy about walking out in the national park where you're not allowed to bring a gun (laughs) .

Joe Rogan 37:08 Yeah. Well, Mo- Montana in particular, there's, th- they have a lot. So-

Glenn Villeneuve 37:13 But in, in this case, the wolf wanted out of there, it walked up the other side of the ravine, I watched it. It was about 300, 400 yards from me. When he got up to the top of the ridge, he stopped way, way up high above. I remember looking at him through binoculars, or maybe it was the scope of my rifle, I just remember him giving a yaw. He laid down a, on the ground when he knew he was safe way up there and he just gave a yawn, and I could see his tongue, and it was just like a dog. I could see him give this yawn like he had just climbed up this big mountain in about 10 minutes, you know? So I just walked around the cliff, went down in there, got that caribou. I actually made a backpack out of his ribcage to carry it home.

Joe Rogan 37:47 Wow.

Glenn Villeneuve 37:47 And, uh, it was cold. It was, like, 25 below. It was, that was pretty brutal getting that thing, you know, back to the camp from up on the mountain there.

Joe Rogan 37:55 How heavy was it?

Glenn Villeneuve 37:58 Oh, I don't know. I... a lot of things I don't weigh, but I'd say a caribou like that probably weighs about 250 pounds, something like that. You know, obv- obviously don't take all of that weight at one time with me. I carry as much as I can.

Joe Rogan 38:11 Did you have a backpack that... like, a pack frame?

Glenn Villeneuve 38:13 I had a frame and I just stuffed everything in the re- I remember it was so cold and I was so tired up there running up this mountain in the winter, and it's dark. It's dark up there all the time. There's no sun in the winter. Um, I just remember getting the head off that thing, throwing the legs and stuff in the, in the ribcage and throwing it onto that frame I had, and it was all inside of the big ribcage (laughs) , still had the skin on it and everything.

Joe Rogan 38:37 Was the wolf watching the whole time?

Glenn Villeneuve 38:39 He was up on top of the mountain. I didn't, I wasn't paying close attention to him after that. I don't know how long he hung out up there.

Joe Rogan 38:45 I would think that you would wanna keep an eye on that fucker (laughs) .

Glenn Villeneuve 38:49 (laughs) .

Joe Rogan 38:49 He's-

Glenn Villeneuve 38:50 I've done this other times. It... wolves... I spent a lot of time around the wolves. This isn't a lot of time. When the snow conditions are just right, you can actually keep up with wolves, believe it or not. I've stayed with wolves all day long, going eight or 10 miles. When the snow is deep enough, they start walking single file, and every wolf in the pack steps in exactly the same track. And their stride, when they slow down to a walk like that, is just right for me. I can step right in their tracks. I don't even need snow shoes.

Joe Rogan 39:19 Wow.

Glenn Villeneuve 39:20 If there's less snow, you can't, you can't keep up with a wolf, you know. The- their normal gait, they're trotting. You can't even come close to that speed. But when the snow gets deep and they get single file, if you're in good shape, you can jog behind wolves all day long. And I followed wolves, I followed a pack of 12 wolves one time, eight or 10 miles, they were hunting caribou right in front of me. Um, there was another time I remember taking caribou meat away from a pack of wolves, which I didn't even see they had killed the caribou, but, you know, there's a lot of brush and different stuff around. I discovered it because the ravens flew up off it. I went over there and judging by the tracks, there were half a dozen wolves around and I took that caribou that time, brought it home and ate it. Um, but I had a lot of interactions over the years with the wolves, and I never had wolves act aggressive to me. I've had them act curious, I've had them act scared, I've had them act indifferent. I never had wolves act aggressive to me until that time, January 2012, when a pack of 20 wolves literally took after me out on the lake, and I did shoot three of those wolves.

Joe Rogan 40:19 And what was that about? Why do you think they were taking after you?

Glenn Villeneuve 40:22 Um, it was a very unusual situation. First of all, there were 20 wolves in one place. That's unheard of up there. That's totally unheard of. The largest pack of wolves I've ever heard account of that far north was 17 wolves, and that was back in the 1970s. Uh, usually there's five, six wolves in a pack up there. It's real hungry country, it's hard for them to feed themselves. If the pack gets bigger than that, they have to split up and go somewhere new. But, um, I don't know what happened that year. I don't know if two packs combined. I don't know if the pack just grew to that size, but it was unheard of. Anyway, I'm up on a mountain, I look down at the lake, it's in January, it's just twilight in the middle of the day. I see this big brown spot out on the ice and I'm like, "What the hell is that?" It's, like, out in front of my cabin about 500 yards, this big brown spot. At first I thought it was water overflow that comes up through the ice sometimes when you get a crack. And I get out the binoculars, I'm looking and holy cow, that's a giant pack of wolves that just took something down on the lake. I can see, like, one of them is breaking off, one of them is breaking off and then coming back over, and I, I realize what's going on. The- there was very little snow that year. Even though it was January, it had been cold since September, but very little precipitation. There was only about maybe four or five inches of snow, so I could literally run down the mountain. I was down at the lake within 20 minutes. And I went right to my cabin, I got my camera, I got my tripod, I'm like, "This is phenomenal. I gotta document this." And I start walking across the lake out to where they are to get pictures of this. So I get about 350 yards from these wolves, I still don't know what the animal is that they gut there, and I, you know, I can hear them. You can hear bones breaking and stuff, the wolves-

Joe Rogan 42:06 Wow.

Glenn Villeneuve 42:06 ... you know, it's just amazing. Yeah. And I start taking pictures and I run out of batteries. I'm like, "Oh shit, I ran out of batteries." So I gotta go back to the cabin, that's like 150 yards behind me, you know? And, uh, I turn around, I start walking back to the cabin. When I get about 30 yards or so from the cabin, I look back over my shoulder and the whole goddamn pack of wolves is racing across the lake straight toward me. I'd never seen anything like it. I sprinted like Jesse Owens through the door of that cabin. I was only 30 yards from it. I turn and I look back out the window, and these wolves came right up into my yard. They were 50 yards from the front door, 20 wolves.

Joe Rogan 42:47 Whoa.

Glenn Villeneuve 42:48 Yeah. Like, this is unheard of. Wolves are usually high-tailing it out of there when they see people. So, uh, I get my new batteries. I get the camera set back up. I go back out. By the time I get back out in the yard, they're back over at this thing they've killed, like, 500 yards away, and I wanna get more pictures of this. I got my rifle too, of course, so I start heading back over. When I get about 350 yards from them, I start taking more pictures. I got a great picture, you can pull it up maybe.

Joe Rogan 43:17 Yeah, I wanna see that.

Glenn Villeneuve 43:18 It's, uh, in the notes section on my Facebook page. It's a story, an unusual occurrence with the wolves. Anyway, um, they're all eaten, and, uh, I start taking pictures again. And after I take some pictures, first one, then two, then three, the wolves, they, they're like s- I can see they stop eating and they're looking at me. They're like 350 yards away, but I can just see that they notice that I'm back out there on the lake, and they're sizing me up kinda. And then I see some of them are just really slowly moving toward me, like walking a few steps and stopping, and I'm thinking, "Hmm, yeah, I got my rifle and everything, but there's a lot of wolves there. How do I know they're gonna stop when I start shooting?" You know. So, (laughs) I decide, uh, "Maybe it's best just to make a slow retreat." And I started backing up and walking back toward the cabin, and the wolves, it looked like they were slowly walking towards me as I'm walking toward the cabin. When I got about, if I remember right, it was, uh, 100 yards from the cabin, those wolves started galloping. They just-

Joe Rogan 44:24 Whoa.

Glenn Villeneuve 44:24 All 20 wolves started galloping towards me.

Joe Rogan 44:26 Oh, Jesus Christ.

Glenn Villeneuve 44:28 From that kill.

Joe Rogan 44:28 Oh wow, look at this picture.

Glenn Villeneuve 44:29 Yeah, those wolves right there, they start galloping towards me, and I dropped that tripod right there where I, where I was, and I, uh, you know, I was 100 yards from the cabin. They were 400 yards from me, and I ran as fast as I could for the cabin, 'cause I thought, "Hey if I start shooting, w- what if they don't stop?"

Joe Rogan 44:48 Right.

Glenn Villeneuve 44:48 The ones... It's 20 wolves there. I got-

Joe Rogan 44:50 Right.

Glenn Villeneuve 44:51 ... four or five rounds of am- if I had one in the chamber, I had five rounds of ammunition there. Um, I ran for the cabin. I go in the door and s- just like the time before, they're right there in my front yard. I look out and they're 50 yards away, they're all milling around, 20 wolves. I'm like, "Jesus Christ, this is amazing. I've never seen anything like this." So, but I'm safe and sound in the cabin. So I just collect my thoughts. I'm like, "Man, it's time to teach these wolves a lesson. If I let those wolves leave now, they're gonna think I'm just food, I run away when they see me."

Joe Rogan 45:24 Right.

Glenn Villeneuve 45:24 You know, that, I mean, I could be out there in the night, in the dark, and not even know wolves are around-

Joe Rogan 45:28 Yeah.

Glenn Villeneuve 45:28 ... and get ambushed by 'em or something, so I, I had to shoot some of those wolves. So I, I loaded up the gun, made sure everything was perfectly right, (laughs) you know. Um, put some extra ammunition in my pocket, checked everything out. Okay, I'm set to go out there with this gun and, and talk to these wolves about the situation. (laughs) And, uh, I go back out and they were back at the moose. It, it turned out to be a moose they'd killed. They were back over there at the kill. So I thought, "Well, it'd be a lot safer if I shot from close to the cabin," you know, "rather than go out there on the open ice. So I'll just see if I can lure 'em back over here." And I started running back and forth right in front of my cabin on the, on the, uh, ice just to get their attention, and sure enough, it worked. That whole pack of 20 wolves started racing across that lake at a full gallop straight toward me. I couldn't believe it. I was right in front of my cabin, I'd just run back and forth, like, 50 yards out to my little water hole in the ice and back to the cabin a few times, and they just started running right at me. So I sat right down th- there on the bank, on the shore, right, you know, 15 feet in front of my porch, and started shooting. I think if I remember right, the first one I hit was 264 yards. I measured it all off the next day, it was kinda interesting just checking out the tracks and seeing what had happened. I hit three of 'em. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:44 What happened when one got hit?

Glenn Villeneuve 46:46 Um, they stopped at, th- the closest tracks to me were about 40 yards, you know. I, uh-

Joe Rogan 46:53 That's way far out.

Glenn Villeneuve 46:53 When it was happening-

Joe Rogan 46:55 That's so close. (laughs)

Glenn Villeneuve 46:55 ... it was, it was happening so fast. I was just sitting down, you know, braced, shooting. I remember reloading after I shot five times. It all happened so fast, but then the next day when I had time, I went out there and looked at all the tracks and measured everything and sized up the situation, figured out where I had hit different wolves and stuff. And, and I wrote that all down, that's what I was mentioning in the notes section there on my Facebook page, that story, because I wanted, when it was fresh in my mind, to really have the details 'cause I knew right then that something happened to me that doesn't really happen to people. I mean, to get, have a pack of wolves come after you is a- (laughs)

Joe Rogan 47:30 Yeah.

Glenn Villeneuve 47:31 ... a very unusual occurrence.

Joe Rogan 47:33 Very unusual.

Glenn Villeneuve 47:33 Y- you can read, you can read all over the place that wolves don't attack humans, you know. I've, I've read that many times.

Joe Rogan 47:39 But they have.

Glenn Villeneuve 47:40 They have. Uh, at least-

Joe Rogan 47:42 Well, particularly-

Glenn Villeneuve 47:42 ... a couple times.

Joe Rogan 47:42 ... historically.

Glenn Villeneuve 47:43 Historically, yeah.

Joe Rogan 47:44 I mean, the whole Little Red Riding Hood-

Glenn Villeneuve 47:46 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 47:46 ... that's all because they were trying to warn children about wolves.

Glenn Villeneuve 47:50 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 47:50 Do you know the story about World War I and the wolves? The, the Germans and the Russians had a ceasefire in World War I because so many of them were getting killed by wolves.

Glenn Villeneuve 48:02 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 48:02 They decided to stop killing each other and kill the wolves 'cause they were losing so many guys, and then, you know, if guys got shot on the battlefield, the wolves would find out and the wolves would tear the guys alive.

Glenn Villeneuve 48:14 Wow.

Joe Rogan 48:15 Yeah, it's, it's a crazy story. If you go to themeateater.com, this was a story that I had told before, and, you know, uh, Steve Rinella, my friend who runs the Media, th- those guys were, like, a little skeptical of it, so they historically researched it. Turns out to actually be accurate-

Glenn Villeneuve 48:30 Mm.

Joe Rogan 48:30 ... and there's a lot of stories from The New York Times, and Jamie's pointing. What?

Glenn Villeneuve 48:34 There has been an update on this story.

Joe Rogan 48:35 Oh.

Glenn Villeneuve 48:36 As of April of this year.

Joe Rogan 48:37 Oh.

Glenn Villeneuve 48:38 Th- there's, I'm finding an article about it where they're talking about that, and, uh, (clears throat) it links back to an article from The New York Times in 1917.

Joe Rogan 48:45 Mm.

Glenn Villeneuve 48:45 And this team researched a little bit further, and before you got too far, it turns out they debunked it in some way.

Joe Rogan 48:50 In some way?

Glenn Villeneuve 48:50 They're trying to figure out exactly...

Jamie Vernon 48:53 ... how. It says, "There's no mentions of any wolf truce in some Russian stuff." The Christmas Truce of 1914, I guess is what it was called, or something close to that, but-

Joe Rogan 49:01 'Cause I think that's a different truce.

Jamie Vernon 49:03 Yeah, they just said there's no, uh, I guess there's no... They couldn't find anything in the Russian sources, I guess, to prove that maybe.

Joe Rogan 49:09 They couldn't find anything in the Russian sources, but didn't they find things in the German sources? I mean, there was absolutely recorded instances of people getting killed by wolves.

Jamie Vernon 49:17 Right.

Joe Rogan 49:17 And I think they definitely did have some sort of a ceasefire to kill the wolves. Like, the- the guys at meat-eater.com, they went over this really thoroughly with many salt- sources.

Jamie Vernon 49:27 It says, "The information found its way into the newspapers at the time, but no one dared to check the New York Times sources."

Joe Rogan 49:33 So New York Times might have bullshitted?

Jamie Vernon 49:37 So this says, uh, "Meanwhile, Russian hunting scientist, Sergei Matveychuk, said there were no Russian sources for this information. The earliest information appeared February 15, 1917 in the Bridgeport Evening Farmer Newspaper."

Joe Rogan 49:50 Hmm. I don't know.

Jamie Vernon 49:51 Which would be an American newspaper, I guess.

Joe Rogan 49:53 Go to, uh, the meat-eater.com story on it. I think it's the meat-eater.com. How the fuck do they not have meat-eater.com? I don't understand that. Buy that please. But, um, anyway.

Jamie Vernon 50:07 I- it is difficult.

Joe Rogan 50:07 Wolves have killed people.

Glenn Villeneuve 50:09 Yeah.

Jamie Vernon 50:09 It's difficult, though, to get to the truth. I mean, it's hard-

Joe Rogan 50:12 Yeah.

Jamie Vernon 50:12 There's so much BS.

Joe Rogan 50:14 Sure.

Jamie Vernon 50:14 Who knows what's true, what's not sometimes. But-

Joe Rogan 50:16 Historically.

Jamie Vernon 50:16 ... I know that, historically, there are a lot of reports of wolves in Russia killing people for some reason.

Joe Rogan 50:22 Yeah.

Jamie Vernon 50:22 And, you know, and maybe Scandinavia in, in the older times when there were more-

Joe Rogan 50:25 Do you know about Paris? Do you know about the wolves of Paris?

Jamie Vernon 50:28 No.

Joe Rogan 50:28 It's a very famous story. Uh, apparently, at one point in time, and now they're starting to see wolves around Paris again-

Jamie Vernon 50:35 Really?

Joe Rogan 50:35 ... but at one point in time, wolves had actually invaded Paris. And there's an historical account of the townspeople getting together and, and spearing these wolves.

Jamie Vernon 50:45 Wow.

Joe Rogan 50:45 Yeah. Google the wolves of Paris.

Jamie Vernon 50:49 Their article on, uh, Meat-Eater was updated in August-

Joe Rogan 50:52 Mm-hmm.

Jamie Vernon 50:52 ... of this year, and their takeaway at the end of that, 'cause they said that it was actually mentioned in multiple newspapers, but it might have been a barroom tale. But there are reports of people dying from wolves, hundreds of people killed, wolves in the war. There was a ceasefire of some kind, but-

Joe Rogan 51:08 So it's-

Jamie Vernon 51:08 ... the actual events-

Joe Rogan 51:09 I'm kinda confused.

Jamie Vernon 51:09 ... of all being together at that exact moment may not be accurate, but...

Joe Rogan 51:12 I think what had happened was w- what they were saying was because of war itself, all the gunfire, these wolves had moved away from certain areas.

Jamie Vernon 51:21 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 51:21 And then, they had found wounded soldiers, and they started eating the wold- wounded soldiers. So then, they started to associate gunfire with wounded soldiers. So they started actually going towards where the gunfire was, which is what you hear with grizzly bears.

Glenn Villeneuve 51:38 Yeah. People talk about that with bears. I, I've never experienced that. I'm a little bit skeptical, to be honest, about animals associating gunfire with food and going toward gunfire. That, to me, seems a bit farfetched.

Joe Rogan 51:48 Apparently, it's an issue in places where the grizzly bears aren't hunted.

Glenn Villeneuve 51:51 People claim that, yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:52 Yeah. Well, well, they have rules in certain places where, if a grizzly bear finds your elk, you have to leave it alone.

Glenn Villeneuve 51:59 Right.

Joe Rogan 51:59 Like, you- you're not even allowed to scare it off. You have to get out of there, like, it's not yours anymore.

Glenn Villeneuve 52:04 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 52:05 Which is a fucking bummer (laughs) .

Glenn Villeneuve 52:08 (laughs) Yeah, and I have that issue. You know, bears, uh, find kills and...

Joe Rogan 52:12 Oh, sure.

Glenn Villeneuve 52:12 When you're, when you're working alone, you gotta leave meat. You gotta make multiple-

Joe Rogan 52:16 Yes, of course.

Glenn Villeneuve 52:17 I mean, with a moose, I have to make 10 trips.

Joe Rogan 52:19 Oh, of course. Now, when you found these wolves, and you... Like, how, w- when you started shooting and you hit one, did the other ones freak out? Did they realize what's going on?

Glenn Villeneuve 52:30 The, the, some of... They started putting on the brakes, but like I said, the first wolf I hit was over 250 yards. I think it was 264 yards, something like that, from me. And some of the tracks came about 40, 40 to 50 yards from me, before they had stopped. They were doing U-turns, you could see, um, in front. They were all just milling around. When I was reloading, I just remember seeing all these wolves milling around in front of me, like, running around in circles. And I was like, "Holy cow," and I'm reloading. And I remember shooting one more time as they were headed away, but they all took off. They headed into the woods. And one of the wolves that I had hit was paral- paraplegic, but he was still going on two legs. So I ran in-

Joe Rogan 53:12 So it's the spine to him.

Glenn Villeneuve 53:13 Yeah. I ran in the cab-... The other, the other two had just dropped immediately. One of them was hit right in the head. But I ran in the cabin and grabbed my 22 'cause I didn't want to put a big 30-aught-6 hole in this, this wolf that was paraplegic. And, um, I chased him down, caught up with him, shot him with the 22. Then, I could hear all the other wolves howling and howling. They're like, you know, probably almost half a mile away from me. By then, they were up in the woods on the other side of the lake. And I just ran towa- I ran over to that, uh, what they had killed. And this was the first time I saw it. It was a year-and-a-half old bull moose. And it was still all there. The legs were still on it, I got pictures of it and stuff. They had just started eating it not long before I started photographing.

Joe Rogan 53:49 Are the pictures on your Facebook page?

Glenn Villeneuve 53:51 Um, not of that moose. They put those on LBZ, I think.

Joe Rogan 53:56 What's LBZ?

Glenn Villeneuve 53:57 Life Below Zero.

Joe Rogan 53:58 Oh.

Glenn Villeneuve 53:58 Um, when they showed that story, that was way back... You know, that was, like, six years ago. That was one of my first stories. That's a different moose. I got charged by one, one out there one time.

Joe Rogan 54:08 So, so when you find the wolves that you did shoot-

Glenn Villeneuve 54:13 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 54:14 ... and, you know, you've, you shot and killed three of them-

Glenn Villeneuve 54:16 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:16 ... do you eat them?

Glenn Villeneuve 54:18 You know, I ate some of those (laughs) just 'cause I was low on food. I don't like to eat wolf meat if I can help it. Um, it's... To me, there's, like, cleaner meat and there's dirtier meat. I- I- I don't really like to eat bears. A lot of people eat bears. I've eaten the one grizzly bear that I ever shot. I didn't shoot him 'cause I wanted to eat him, I shot him because I needed to shoot him. But, um, if I have caribou and moose, I don't really want anything else. Um, really ungulates is what I like to eat.

Joe Rogan 54:45 Right. Of course.

Glenn Villeneuve 54:47 They're cleaner. If you see the stuff that bears eat... I don't know why people are so crazy about bear meat. Some people really like bear meat, but I've seen what bears eat, and I don't really want to be eating bears.

Joe Rogan 54:56 I know, it's rotten food a lot of the times, right?

Glenn Villeneuve 54:59 Ugh. Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 55:00 Yeah.

Glenn Villeneuve 55:00 And I mean-... you know, they got, they just got a lot more parasites that can actually harm you.

Joe Rogan 55:04 Yeah.

Glenn Villeneuve 55:04 Like, a caribou's a clean animal. There's a couple things they can have that can hurt you, not too bad normally. Um, but, uh, a grizzly bear, I mean, you're skinning them and there's worms this long crawling out their ass and (sighs) . They got a lot ... And those worms can hurt you. They're-

Joe Rogan 55:20 Yeah.

Glenn Villeneuve 55:21 You know, they're- they're bad. If they get into a person, they can cause serious problems 'cause they don't stay in your intestines, they go into your brain and different weird places. (sighs) It's the eggs get into you and they hatch 'cause they're in a unfamiliar host, they don't know where to go.

Joe Rogan 55:33 Oh, Jesus.

Glenn Villeneuve 55:34 They go into spinal cord, they go all over the place.

Joe Rogan 55:37 What do they do if that happens to you?

Glenn Villeneuve 55:39 A lot of kids have- have had big problems g- ... The same kind of- there's very similar kind of worm lives in raccoons, so kids playing on the playground, they ... You know, raccoon feces has the eggs in it.

Joe Rogan 55:49 Oh, wow.

Glenn Villeneuve 55:49 It's, um, Baylisus scaris, uh, is the- the genus of worm. It's like a roundworm. Normally, it doesn't cause the bear too much problem, it just lives in their intestines. But if that larva ... If- if you get an egg in you and that- th- the larva doesn't know where to go, he's in a unfamiliar host and they act differently, they'll migrate into weird places in your body, like nervous tissue. They get in your eyes and stuff.

Joe Rogan 56:13 Oh, Jesus Christ.

Glenn Villeneuve 56:15 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:17 Oh, look at that.

Glenn Villeneuve 56:18 Ooh.

Joe Rogan 56:18 Someone's got one in their eyes.

Glenn Villeneuve 56:19 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 56:20 Oh, Jesus. The parasite on the playground, roundworm.

Glenn Villeneuve 56:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:24 Wow. Look at that, man, in the eyeball.

Glenn Villeneuve 56:27 Yeah. And it's-

Joe Rogan 56:28 What do they do?

Glenn Villeneuve 56:29 Well, I- I've never got one in my eye, so (laughs) I can-

Joe Rogan 56:34 Fuck that. Look at that thing-

Glenn Villeneuve 56:36 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 56:36 ... traveling around inside this person's eyeball.

Glenn Villeneuve 56:38 You know-

Joe Rogan 56:38 Fuck that, man.

Glenn Villeneuve 56:40 There's a lot of parasites out there. That's the thing people don't realize is, like, um-

Joe Rogan 56:44 Oh.

Glenn Villeneuve 56:44 ... humans used to have a lot of parasites in them.

Joe Rogan 56:46 Look how many people have them in their eyes. Look at all those pictures of eyeballs.

Glenn Villeneuve 56:50 Yeah, I- I killed this one bear one time-

Joe Rogan 56:52 Oh.

Glenn Villeneuve 56:52 And those worms, they were-

Joe Rogan 56:53 Click that one on the left, Jamie. Right to the left of your cursor, right there.

Jamie Vernon 56:56 Uh.

Glenn Villeneuve 56:56 Click on that.

Jamie Vernon 56:57 It says 15 worms in that one.

Joe Rogan 56:59 Click on that.

Glenn Villeneuve 57:00 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 57:00 Oh, my God. Their eyeball's overcome with fucking worms.

Glenn Villeneuve 57:06 Yeah, I've had to deal with those worms, but not in me. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 57:09 15 centimeters, that's what it says.

Jamie Vernon 57:10 Oh, okay.

Joe Rogan 57:11 (gasps) That's so long.

Glenn Villeneuve 57:12 Yeah, they're long. They're lon- ... They're about as big around as your f- your pinky, you know, or- or at least my pinky.

Joe Rogan 57:17 Oh, God.

Glenn Villeneuve 57:18 (laughs)

Jamie Vernon 57:18 There's 14 worms in this woman's eye and-

Joe Rogan 57:20 Oh, my God. Look at her fucking eye.

Glenn Villeneuve 57:23 (laughs)

Jamie Vernon 57:23 That's disgusting.

Joe Rogan 57:24 Oh, my God. That's so insane. Ah, fuck parasites, man. So-

Glenn Villeneuve 57:29 There's so many parasites, it's creepy. Like, I seen a lot of parasites, but most of them won't hurt a human.

Joe Rogan 57:34 Right.

Glenn Villeneuve 57:34 Those are one that will, and the one that's in the grizzly bear is just a slightly different variation from that one that's in raccoons. It's-

Joe Rogan 57:41 Mm.

Glenn Villeneuve 57:41 ... Baylisus scaris transfuga lives in the grizzlies up there. And, uh, yeah, I had a-

Joe Rogan 57:45 So were you wearing rubber gloves when you cut them open-

Glenn Villeneuve 57:46 No.

Joe Rogan 57:46 ... and everything?

Glenn Villeneuve 57:47 Hell no.

Joe Rogan 57:48 No?

Glenn Villeneuve 57:48 No. But I- I, uh, I did build a big bonfire right there 'cause it was right in my yard and I just burned the ground 'cause I got little kids up there and they were, you know, crawling around at that time, playing and stuff.

Joe Rogan 57:58 Mm.

Glenn Villeneuve 57:58 And I just built this huge bonfire 'cause I wanted to make sure no eggs.

Joe Rogan 58:00 Right.

Glenn Villeneuve 58:00 The eggs are very resilient. They can last for years and years in the environment. They can survive being frozen all winter.

Joe Rogan 58:06 Really?

Glenn Villeneuve 58:07 Oh, yeah. They're microscopic eggs. That's what you gotta worry about, not the big worm. You gotta worry about the eggs.

Joe Rogan 58:12 Fuck.

Glenn Villeneuve 58:13 A lot of bear hunters don't know this. When you're handling a bear skin, those eggs are on the fur.

Joe Rogan 58:19 Yeah.

Glenn Villeneuve 58:20 If you're playing around with a bear skin before it gets tan and then you- you know, you go like this or something, all of a sudden you got those eggs in you. Scary shit.

Joe Rogan 58:29 Dude.

Jamie Vernon 58:29 Mm.

Glenn Villeneuve 58:30 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 58:31 Fuck that. Oh. Ugh. That's the ... That's one of my number one fears, something creepy crawly growing inside me, getting in my eyeballs and into my brain tissue. I have a buddy of mine, my friend Justin Wren, he, uh, does a charity called Fight for the Forgotten and, uh, he builds wells for the pygmies.

Glenn Villeneuve 58:51 Mm.

Joe Rogan 58:51 And we help sponsor them and we do some things with them and he goes back and forth to the Congo, like, a couple times a year.

Glenn Villeneuve 58:58 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 58:58 And he went there recently and, like six months ago, and has caught a parasite that they can't identify.

Glenn Villeneuve 59:06 Mm.

Joe Rogan 59:06 And they think it might be in his brain. They don't know where it is, but, like, he'll work out really hard and then he'll b- be shivering with, like, pale skin and, uh, you know, th- they're trying to do all these different things to him to try to eradicate the parasites, but they don't ... they don't even know exactly what he has because he's so deep into the jungle. He's so deep in the Congo. He's going where a lo- a lot of Western people don't go.

Glenn Villeneuve 59:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 59:29 So they're- they're really baffled. They're like, "We're not ... We don't know what the fuck you have." And he's had it for months, uh, months and months and months of suffering and just b- b- i- it's taken a toll on him across the board. Every- every aspect of his health has deteriorated because of this. It's really creepy.

Glenn Villeneuve 59:47 I've heard of people dying from parasites they picked up in the tropics, yeah.

Joe Rogan 59:51 (sighs) So when you eat the wolf, what do you eat? You eat the backstraps? Do you- do you cook the hams? Like, how do you-

Glenn Villeneuve 59:58 Uh.

Joe Rogan 59:58 How do you eat a wolf?

Glenn Villeneuve 1:00:00 The only way that I like to eat a wolf is to boil it for a good long time 'Cause wolves too will have parasites. They'll have trichinosis, you know.

Joe Rogan 1:00:07 Right.

Glenn Villeneuve 1:00:07 They're meat eaters. Anything that eats meat, you wanna make sure it's thoroughly cooked. I like to boil it.

Joe Rogan 1:00:12 Boiled wolf.

Glenn Villeneuve 1:00:13 Yeah. I- I haven't eaten-

Joe Rogan 1:00:14 You make like wolf soup?

Glenn Villeneuve 1:00:14 ... a lot of wolf. I've eaten wolf, you know, three or four times when I didn't have much else and I figured, "Hey, I better take advantage of this food I got here rather than give it to something else to eat."

Joe Rogan 1:00:23 Do you feed it to your family?

Glenn Villeneuve 1:00:25 Um, they've probably eaten wolf, like, uh, my- my kids when they were little, maybe once or something. I can't remember for sure.

Joe Rogan 1:00:30 That is hilarious. How many people could you ask that to? And they go, "Yeah, my kids have probably eaten wolf." (laughs)

Glenn Villeneuve 1:00:36 I don't know. Like, I met these Mongolians once and they were like, "Oh, you shoot some wolves? We want wolf meat. We love wolf meat." You know, Mongolians, they're all into it.

Joe Rogan 1:00:44 Yeah, a lot of Native Americans were into wolf meat.

Glenn Villeneuve 1:00:47 I don't like it. It's ... It's got-

Joe Rogan 1:00:48 A lot of trappers were into wolf meat.

Glenn Villeneuve 1:00:49 Well, that's what they had to eat, but, uh ...

Joe Rogan 1:00:51 Yeah. But some of them actually preferred it.

Glenn Villeneuve 1:00:53 Really?

Joe Rogan 1:00:53 Yeah, there was something from the Lewis and Clark exhibition.

Glenn Villeneuve 1:00:55 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:56 There's another thing that, um ... Expedition. It was something from, um, Rinella was telling me about. Some guys actually preferred wolf meat. It was like their favorite, favorite meat.

Glenn Villeneuve 1:01:04 Well, domestic dog ... Lewis and Clark expedition, they would buy dogs from the Indians and eat them because-

Joe Rogan 1:01:09 Yeah.

Glenn Villeneuve 1:01:09 ... they didn't want to eat salmon.They had s- they had fish, is what I heard. They could have eaten, but they'd rather eat dog 'cause they wanted red meat.

Joe Rogan 1:01:17 Oh, Jesus.

Glenn Villeneuve 1:01:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:01:19 Wow.

Glenn Villeneuve 1:01:20 When they got way out, like the Columbia River area.

Joe Rogan 1:01:25 So did you eat these wolves that you shot?

Glenn Villeneuve 1:01:27 I ate a little bit of it, 'cause I was short on food that, at that time, that winter.

Joe Rogan 1:01:31 Yeah.

Glenn Villeneuve 1:01:31 You know, not like the whole thing, but a, a few meals of it.

Joe Rogan 1:01:34 So you boil it and wha- how do you do it? Like, onions and potatoes, make a soup?

Glenn Villeneuve 1:01:38 I didn't have anything like that.

Joe Rogan 1:01:39 No?

Glenn Villeneuve 1:01:40 I mean, no, I'm out there all winter long. Th- that was 2012, 2013. It was, uh, I, I didn't have any vegetables.

Joe Rogan 1:01:48 Do you know-

Glenn Villeneuve 1:01:48 You know where I get the vegetables? Out of the caribou's stomach. What the caribou eats for plant food, that's what I get for plant food in the winter. That's the only...

Joe Rogan 1:01:54 So you would actually eat their stomach contents?

Glenn Villeneuve 1:01:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:01:56 Really?

Glenn Villeneuve 1:01:57 Sure.

Joe Rogan 1:01:58 That's hardcore.

Glenn Villeneuve 1:01:58 People's done it for thousands of years, man.

Joe Rogan 1:01:59 I believe you.

Glenn Villeneuve 1:02:00 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:02:01 I believe they have.

Glenn Villeneuve 1:02:02 Not only that, but I pickle meat in it. I take, uh, tenderloins off a caribou are great pickled in their stomach contents.

Joe Rogan 1:02:08 Pickled-

Glenn Villeneuve 1:02:09 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:02:09 ... in their stomach contents?

Glenn Villeneuve 1:02:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:02:10 Explain that to me. How do you do that?

Glenn Villeneuve 1:02:12 Well, you, you gotta learn about caribou stomach 'cause you don't wanna go d- too far downstream. It starts turning brownish. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:02:19 Right.

Glenn Villeneuve 1:02:19 But like the first, uh, the big chamber, the rumen, when they eat these lichens, in the winter that's what they're feeding on.

Joe Rogan 1:02:27 Mm-hmm.

Glenn Villeneuve 1:02:29 You can't eat those lichens off the ground. They're harsh. But when it's partially digested in a caribou stomach, it actually is an edible food and the old people used to eat these a lot. I read about it, and I even talked to some people who had done it, you know, when they were kids and stuff. And sure enough, it's not bad stuff. I got hooked on it, man. One winter I was eating a lot of caribou stomach contents, and, uh, yeah, my family wasn't into that. They, they were, like, looking at me like... And I was like, "Oh, man, it's like salad. This stuff's good." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:02:59 (laughs)

Glenn Villeneuve 1:02:59 I don't eat much of that anymore. Basically, I went as primitive as I could go, and I satisfied my curiosity about living that extreme of a subsistence lifestyle. So now, I eat much more store-bought vegetables. I eat, you know, normal foods. Um, but for a time there, for a few years, I got down to where I was eating caribou stomach contents. I was doing anything, uh, I just wanted to just immerse myself in that whole environment out there. I wanted to get my food right there, what I-

Joe Rogan 1:03:34 Mm-hmm.

Glenn Villeneuve 1:03:34 ... could see.

Joe Rogan 1:03:35 Right.

Glenn Villeneuve 1:03:35 What I could get myself. Just get right into it, you know? 15 months without even going out to town, not talking to other people. I mean, uh, th- that time I had my wife there, but, um, just to really get into a different state of consciousness. It puts you in a different state of consciousness, and it's a beautiful thing.

Joe Rogan 1:03:54 Now, when you said pickled stomach contents-

Glenn Villeneuve 1:03:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:03:58 ... uh, how do you, how are you pickling a tenderloin in the stomach contents?

Glenn Villeneuve 1:04:02 You just take the caribou. You get to the right chamber of the stomach. They got four chambers on their stomach, you know? Um, you just cut a little slit in it, just after you've pulled the s- the guts out, and you just slip the meat in there, and you slip it right into the rumen, in the contents there. And what happens is, assuming the temperature's about right, and it, it, it will retain a lot of heat. It creates heat. I think the, the m- the micro, uh, organisms in there create heat, because if you just bury that in snow, and the snow of course insulates it, it'll stay warm for quite a while. And, um, if it was really cold, it might not work out. It might freeze solid before it pickled. But if it's the right temperature, the meat'll turn brownish color over time, and it'll be pickled. The old people used to do this all the time. I read about this, you know, 20 years ago, and then I talked to people and I said, "Yeah, this is safe to do." So I tried it, and w- and there was a winter there where that's where I got a lot of my vegetables was out of the caribou stomach. Um, and the meat will just, it'll, it'll turn brownish first on the outer part of the meat and then all the way through it, and it gets pickled. I've done a lot of different things with meat. You know what I like to do with meat? A lot of people don't realize, 'cause you live in, um, the modern world, and just like me when I grew up, right, um, meat's dangerous if it's raw. You gotta be careful. You gotta, like, wash everything, be careful. Actually, what I found is that, um, it, it just all depends on the conditions. Once you learn how to handle meat properly, you can do a lot of things with meat that most people would be scared to death of. Um, and it's completely safe, as far as I'm concerned. I never had any problems with it. But, um, like moisture's very important. If you buy meat in the store, it's wrapped in plastic. That keeps it moist. You let it sit around for a while, it spoils, and it doesn't take long. Leave meat out of your refrigerator, it'll be spoiled in a day, right? But if you take a muscle out of an animal and you butcher it properly, you separate the muscle as one piece, you don't make a bunch of cuts in the fascia, you can take a muscle that's two or three inches thick, don't put it in plastic, don't wrap it up, that'll cause it to spoil, you leave it right out in the air, two or three inch thick muscle, I, I set 'em on a rack up high above my wood stove. It's like 100 degrees up there sometimes. Other times it's cold up there. It just varies during the day, depending on how the fire is stoked, right? I'll let it sit there for a week, 10 days, and then I'll eat it. Never cook it, just let it sit there.

Joe Rogan 1:06:31 Really?

Glenn Villeneuve 1:06:32 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:06:33 Never cook it?

Glenn Villeneuve 1:06:34 No. Just let it sit there. Um-

Joe Rogan 1:06:36 So it gets a crust on the outside.

Glenn Villeneuve 1:06:39 It gets a crust on the outside, but it's too thick of a piece to dry like you would dry jerky or something.

Joe Rogan 1:06:44 Right.

Glenn Villeneuve 1:06:44 It stays moist inside. It's like making cheese almo- it turns into something like cheese. It gets different flavors.

Joe Rogan 1:06:51 So you're aging it.

Glenn Villeneuve 1:06:52 Yeah. You're aging... It's actually fermentation that's taking place. Uh, I believe it's actually a, a fermentation process. But it takes on different flavors. I really like it. I call it gummy meat 'cause that's what my kids used to call it.... and, um-

Joe Rogan 1:07:05 Gummy meat?

Glenn Villeneuve 1:07:05 Gummy meat, 'cause it gets kinda gummy. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:07:08 Oh, God.

Glenn Villeneuve 1:07:09 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:07:10 It's rotten.

Glenn Villeneuve 1:07:10 No, it's good. It's good.

Joe Rogan 1:07:11 Yeah.

Glenn Villeneuve 1:07:12 It really is. I wish I had some. I, I was saying when I left, uh, Alaska, I wish I had some, something like that to bring Joe down, but I didn't have anything.

Jamie Vernon 1:07:20 (inhales)

Glenn Villeneuve 1:07:20 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:07:21 So when you're... What, what's going on here?

Jamie Vernon 1:07:23 I, I was just, I was looking for something about the caribou stomach, and there's this thing called The Polar Manual made by the, uh, government, yeah, I think the Navy.

Joe Rogan 1:07:29 Oh, look at this.

Jamie Vernon 1:07:30 It says that caribou back fat is better than chewing gum. And, uh, I think this was made in 1961.

Joe Rogan 1:07:35 Huh.

Jamie Vernon 1:07:35 So it might be even older.

Joe Rogan 1:07:36 Look at this. "Old timers from the North mention many interesting Eskimo, Indian, and Siberian foods. Pemmican." I've heard of that. It's, uh, "the meat of bear, seal, caribou, and walrus mixed together with fish eggs and dried into a hard, frozen block. Trappers' peaches-and-cream is chewing dried beaver tail. Caribou back fat is better than chewing gum. Don't overlook the contents of a seal's stomach for a fresh fried fish dinner nor the contents of a caribou stomach mixed with the trip lining as a tasty," in quotes, "salad of reindeer moss and lichens properly..." Uh, how's that word? Acidulated?

Jamie Vernon 1:08:20 I guess, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:08:21 Acidulated?

Glenn Villeneuve 1:08:21 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:08:22 Wow.

Glenn Villeneuve 1:08:22 I like the next one there. "Walrus milked at death gives 16 quarts of milk." I love dairy products. (laughs) I, you know, you can't get 'em out there.

Joe Rogan 1:08:30 16 quarts of milk from a walrus.

Glenn Villeneuve 1:08:32 I, one time-

Joe Rogan 1:08:33 (laughs)

Glenn Villeneuve 1:08:33 ... I was thinking about milking a caribou after I killed her, but I, I, I didn't just because she was in bad shape. She'd been attacked by the wolves and she had an infection in her leg, and I was afraid that somehow I might get sick. But I, I just remember this lactating caribou that I had killed, and I was thinking (laughs) , I'd never heard of people doing that, but, you know, milking an animal after it died, until you just read that. But walrus-

Joe Rogan 1:08:55 So you were worried, you would've taken the milk b- except for the fact that she had been infected?

Glenn Villeneuve 1:09:00 She was the one that only had two good legs.

Joe Rogan 1:09:02 Oh.

Glenn Villeneuve 1:09:02 And her back leg, going right up there towards her udder, oh, it was in terrible shape. It was all, it was full of pus and ...

Joe Rogan 1:09:11 Oh. Damn. I encountered that with an elk, uh, I shot once. He had been, uh, stabbed by another elk-

Glenn Villeneuve 1:09:19 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:09:19 ... like in his, uh, in his, uh, one of his back legs, and it was just all filled with pus. Like, when we're, uh, quartering him and taking it apart, there was this one section that was just all pus. It was fucking nasty.

Glenn Villeneuve 1:09:32 I've seen the same thing in a moose. Stabbed in the back, like in the haunch there.

Joe Rogan 1:09:36 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Glenn Villeneuve 1:09:37 By one of the tines.

Joe Rogan 1:09:38 So, when you boiled the, the wolf, how are you eating that?

Glenn Villeneuve 1:09:44 Uh, just plain.

Joe Rogan 1:09:46 Just plain? Just chopping it up?

Glenn Villeneuve 1:09:47 You can fry it after you boil it, give it a little extra flavor.

Joe Rogan 1:09:49 Is that what you do? Or do you just-

Glenn Villeneuve 1:09:50 If you get some fat, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:09:51 Was that what you were doing or were you just eating it boiled?

Glenn Villeneuve 1:09:55 Both.

Joe Rogan 1:09:56 What is it like? Is there something you could-

Glenn Villeneuve 1:09:58 Tastes a little wolfy.

Joe Rogan 1:09:59 Wolfy. (laughs)

Glenn Villeneuve 1:10:01 (laughs) I'm not much into wolf meat. It's-

Joe Rogan 1:10:03 Right.

Glenn Villeneuve 1:10:03 ... you know, it's kinda-

Joe Rogan 1:10:04 It's a desperation food, right?

Glenn Villeneuve 1:10:05 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:10:05 Is that how you would look at it?

Glenn Villeneuve 1:10:07 If I didn't have something else, I'd eat wolf, but-

Joe Rogan 1:10:09 Yeah.

Glenn Villeneuve 1:10:09 ... you know, I got other things. Um, there's all kinds of stuff you can do with food. You can, uh, you know, you can get as primitive as you want.

Joe Rogan 1:10:19 Yeah, I can imagine.

Glenn Villeneuve 1:10:20 But there's so much else going on. Like, for me now, um, if, if you want to live that primitively off the land, that's all you do. It takes all your time.

Joe Rogan 1:10:35 Mm-hmm.

Glenn Villeneuve 1:10:36 If you wanna share that life with other people, like what I've been trying to do the last six years, you can't just do that.

Joe Rogan 1:10:46 Yeah, because you-

Glenn Villeneuve 1:10:47 Not to that extreme.

Joe Rogan 1:10:47 ... you don't really have the amount of time to hunt and