The Joe Rogan ExperienceJoe Rogan Experience #1395 - Glenn Villeneuve
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,009 words- 0:03 – 2:39
From a Vermont tipi to an Alaska cabin: deciding to live like a hunter-gatherer
- JRJoe Rogan
Boom, here we go. What's up, Glenn? How are you, man?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
Hey, Joe.
- JRJoe Rogan
Nice to meet you in person.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
Good to come down here.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
Good to meet you.
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
What was it, like so, you ... What made you go live in a tent in the first place?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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.
- 2:39 – 3:31
Finding the lake and committing: bush planes, the Haul Road, and a 60-mile walk in
- JRJoe Rogan
How did you know where to go?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
60 miles walking?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's a long fucking way. (laughs)
- 3:31 – 5:34
Unusual childhood independence: hiking at 13, leaving school early, self-education
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
Hey, I walked the length of Vermont when I was 13 years old. I walked, you know, from-
- JRJoe Rogan
Did you really?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
... Massachusetts to Canada. But, um, the difference is when you're-
- JRJoe Rogan
When you were 13?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
Just, uh, just you by yourself?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
... where to go.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, but still-
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
The Brooks Range is-
- JRJoe Rogan
... you were 13.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's a little kid.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
And your mom's like, "Go. Go ahead."
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
It was amazing. I was given a lot of freedom.
- JRJoe Rogan
I guess so.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
I mean, I'd already quit school by the time I was 13, you know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
I went to one year of high school, eventually. I was curious about what was going on over there.
- JRJoe Rogan
Did you ever get a GED or any of that jazz?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
But you seem like an educated guy. Do ... Are you self-educated?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
If I got any education, it's self-educated, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- 5:34 – 12:38
First season survival math: stored staples, building the cabin, and waiting for cold to preserve meat
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
Can I pause you for a second? When you say two months' food, like, what did you bring?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
Oh, I had left, um, basic stuff. Grains, leg ... you know, some beans, some rice, uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
Stuff that you knew you could survive off of.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
And the cabin as it stands, you built?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Why'd you have to wait till it got cold? Is it regulations?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
Bugs. You gotta preserve the meat.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
I've got no freezer.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
I would've used a bow and arrow if I thought I could've survived.
- JRJoe Rogan
There's your spot right there.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
There it is. Hey.
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, if you only wanna gather meat, th- the rifle's the way to go.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
They survived out there with spears, but they were groups of people. They would build a fence, they would corral animals.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
They would put nooses up between trees to get a moose, things like that.
- JRJoe Rogan
There was also probably a lot more animals.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
I don't know that to be the case, but I think-
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
Unbelievable. That's the difference between Alaska and down here. Down here, we've modified everything.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- 12:38 – 19:44
Family life in the bush and the road to reality TV
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
Just by yourself?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
She's totally crazy.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) She's gotta go like-
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
And the executive producer of the show flies from LA all the way up there to meet me, and lands. And he was-
- JRJoe Rogan
How'd they know you were there?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
So you had no idea what that even meant?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
... like, "What is this?" (laughs) Exactly.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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."
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
And a few weeks later, we were making TV.
- JRJoe Rogan
So they had to come out just to check to see if your story was legit?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
Yeah. I mean, I couldn't give 'em-
- JRJoe Rogan
So they had to come out to the actually lake-
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, yeah, the actual lake where you're living.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
I couldn't give 'em references. I mean, I was all alone out there. (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs) Wow. That must've been very surreal for you. A guy lands out there, some Hollywood jackoff (laughs) -
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
Well-
- JRJoe Rogan
... comes out to visit you.
- 19:44 – 26:09
Why wilderness felt like home: health, joy, and the taste of a first moose
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
So this has always been something that's, you're drawn to-
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
I guess.
- JRJoe Rogan
... for some reason.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
I g-
- JRJoe Rogan
You're drawn to being in the wilderness.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
I'm drawn to a lot of things, but the wilderness is definitely one of them.
- JRJoe Rogan
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"?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
Oh, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like you knew?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow. E- but what was it about it that was so compelling? Like, why was that a thing that you were so drawn to?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's a crazy way to live, man. It's interesting because most people would tell you, "Hey, you gotta get a job."
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
"Like, you, you gotta, you gotta be a normal person. You can't just go out there and live."
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Now, what did you do for money?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
What were you doing for jobs before that? You said you worked as a courier?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
I did a, a lot of courier flying, that was mainly because I wanted to travel.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
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.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
Oh-
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, it must have felt cool.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
Oh, it always does when you do something you've been dreaming about for a long time.
- JRJoe Rogan
Like, what was it like to wake up there and go, "I'm actually doing it."
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
Yeah.
- 26:09 – 29:21
Extreme scarcity and predator competition: taking a caribou from wolves
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
What?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
How many wolves were there?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
And your kids?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
Had one baby at the time.
- JRJoe Rogan
So you're out there with a baby, and you don't have any-
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... food?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
The baby was fine. She was nursing. Um- (laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, but your wife doesn't have any food.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
I've eaten, by myself, a, a large bull moose in six months.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
For pe- people that don't know, a large bull moose is about 2,000 pounds.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
I don't think they're quite that big. Uh, they're probably 1500 pounds. You probably get 500 pounds of meat-
- JRJoe Rogan
So like a Yukon moose is, like, 2,000 pounds? What's-
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
Ah, people. People exaggerate. It's-
- JRJoe Rogan
People exaggerate today?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
Oh, they exaggerate a lot of things, Joe.
- JRJoe Rogan
So but a big one-
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
I've heard so many-
- JRJoe Rogan
... like a 60-inch bull? How m- how much does that guy, uh, get, something like that weigh?
- 29:21 – 40:19
Eating everything—and the risks: organs, brains, prions, and parasites
- JRJoe Rogan
Are you, um, taking the, the femurs and getting bone marrow out of them and doing all that jazz too?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Really? You eat it raw?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
You eat the brain?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
Oh, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Really?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
Spinal cord.
- JRJoe Rogan
Whoa.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
... prions.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Hmm.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
So I was like, "Okay, I can start eating the brain."
- JRJoe Rogan
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-
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... 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.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Which is a real fatal disease, and hasn't made the jump to humans yet, but they're very concerned.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
And, you know, this is, um, coming from the deer.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
You have no deer up there?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
Mm-mm.
- JRJoe Rogan
At all?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
Well, moose are a deer.
- 40:19 – 54:16
The 2012 wolf incident: a 20-wolf pack rushes the cabin
- JRJoe Rogan
And what was that about? Why do you think they were taking after you?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
... 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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Whoa.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, I wanna see that.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
Whoa.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
All 20 wolves started galloping towards me.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, Jesus Christ.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
From that kill.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh wow, look at this picture.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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?"
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
The ones... It's 20 wolves there. I got-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
... 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."
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
You know, that, I mean, I could be out there in the night, in the dark, and not even know wolves are around-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
... 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.
- JRJoe Rogan
What happened when one got hit?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
Um, they stopped at, th- the closest tracks to me were about 40 yards, you know. I, uh-
- JRJoe Rogan
That's way far out.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
When it was happening-
- JRJoe Rogan
That's so close. (laughs)
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
... 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)
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
... a very unusual occurrence.
- 54:16 – 1:13:27
Desperation foods and fermentation: boiling wolf, eating weasels, and caribou-stomach “salad”
- JRJoe Rogan
... do you eat them?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Right. Of course.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
I know, it's rotten food a lot of the times, right?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
Ugh. Oh, yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
And I mean-... you know, they got, they just got a lot more parasites that can actually harm you.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, Jesus.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
They go into spinal cord, they go all over the place.
- JRJoe Rogan
What do they do if that happens to you?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, wow.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
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.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, Jesus Christ.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
Yeah. Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, look at that.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
Ooh.
- JRJoe Rogan
Someone's got one in their eyes.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
(laughs)
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, Jesus. The parasite on the playground, roundworm.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow. Look at that, man, in the eyeball.
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
Yeah. And it's-
- JRJoe Rogan
What do they do?
- GVGlenn Villeneuve
Well, I- I've never got one in my eye, so (laughs) I can-
Episode duration: 3:12:46
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