Joe Rogan Experience #1918 - John from The Boneyard Alaska

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast,…

   1. NANarrator0:00

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

   2. NANarrator0:04

      The Joe Rogan Experience.

   3. NANarrator0:06

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (instrumental music plays)

   4. JRJoe Rogan0:12

      Welcome aboard, Jon.

   5. JRJohn Reeves0:13

      Thank you, sir.

   6. JRJoe Rogan0:14

      (clears throat) Very nice to meet you, man. I've been, uh, admiring your Instagram page and all the social media stuff forever and it's crazy and perplexing, and so I couldn't wait to get you in here and see how the hell did you acquire this magical spot that you have in Alaska?

   7. JRJohn Reeves0:28

      I'd have to give you some context.

   8. JRJoe Rogan0:30

      Okay.

   9. JRJohn Reeves0:31

      And, um, I grew up on an Indian mound in North Florida, to give you an idea of-

   10. JRJoe Rogan0:37

       An Indian mound?

   11. JRJohn Reeves0:38

       Yeah, my parents moved this family down from Ohio and bought nine acres on the St. Johns River in 1962. That's where I grew up, and it was on top of an Indian mound. We didn't know it at the time, so I was always out digging in the mound, looking for pottery and was always captivated by looking for treasure, and I did that as a kid and then, uh, did a lot of surfing and stuff like that, as you might think, in Florida and got to be pretty good at swimming. Ended up in high school, uh, setting the American record in the 50-yard freestyle, and there was a fellow, an assistant coach at the University of Florida named Eddie Reese. You might recognize his name. He's the head coach at the University of Texas right here. Three-time Olympic coach, widely regarded now as the greatest swim coach of all time. I gave him a call before we came over here and just to say hello. We were in and out quick, but he, uh, rec- recruited me to Florida and I got recruited at a couple other colleges because I was a pretty quick swimmer. University of Alabama, I met, uh, Bear Bryant. The swim coach took me by the f- practice field and introduced me to him and he said, uh, "Can you catch a football? You should be a football player. You're too big to be a swimmer." And by the back... That was a couple of hundred pounds ago, by the way, I should mention.

   12. JRJoe Rogan2:03

       (laughs)

   13. JRJohn Reeves2:04

       (laughs) And, uh, he says, "Can you catch a football?" I said, "Yeah, I think so." He said, "Hey Joe, Joe, come over here. Throw this guy a pass." It was Joe Namath.

   14. JRJoe Rogan2:14

       Wow.

   15. JRJohn Reeves2:16

       He says, "Go long." I said... I start running down the field. Threw me a ball and I said, "You gotta catch this, you gotta catch this." And I caught it. He says, "Throw it back," and I did. And then, uh, went to the swimming pool and met all the swimmers and all that kinda stuff and then I got recruited by Florida, uh, Coach Eddie Reese and, uh, decided I wanna go to Florida. That was... Seemed like a lot more fun. I went to Florida and the, uh, first year I was there, I was, uh, All-American Swimmer and we... I got seventh place at West Point in the NCAAs. The next year, my coach... The NCAAs were in Aus- we were in, uh, Knoxville, Tennessee. He says, um, Coach says, "You don't win this, you're, I'm gonna send you to Alaska." "Alaska? What's that?" Never even thought about Alaska. I got second place, so, "Okay, I'm going to Alaska."

   16. JRJoe Rogan3:19

       (laughs)

   17. JRJohn Reeves3:19

       I didn't win it. Now here, here I am, full scholarship, great family. I had five sisters growing up and, uh, doing real good. I said, "Fuck it, I only got se- (laughs) I got second place. I'm going to Alaska." So I dropped outta college.

   18. JRJoe Rogan3:38

       So just because he said that?

   19. JRJohn Reeves3:41

       Yeah. Yeah, I- I- I was-

   20. JRJoe Rogan3:43

       But obviously, he's probably fucking around, right?

   21. JRJohn Reeves3:46

       Yeah, he was fucking around, but the thing is, I was such a shitty student, if I didn't drop out, I was gonna flunk out, and I talked to the registrar there, by the name of Wendy Smallwood, who took care of all the athletes coming in. She said, "You... Man, you... (laughs) If you don't get out of here, you're gonna flunk out." So I said, "Well, if I drop out, can I come back my junior year?" And she goes, "Oh, yeah. You can do that, but if you flunk out, no." And I said, "Okay, I think I will," and then I saw a movie called Jeremiah Johnson. I said, "You know what? I wanna be a mountain man."

   22. JRJoe Rogan4:21

       (laughs)

   23. JRJohn Reeves4:23

       And then after that, I went down to the registrar's office, took the dropout sheet, wrote "gone fishing" on it as my excuse-

   24. JRJoe Rogan4:31

       (laughs)

   25. JRJohn Reeves4:32

       ... hung it on my college door. I had played two, two-card gut poker game the night before. I had, you know, 50 bucks. I got enough. Put that, and the next morning, six o'clock in the morning, taped that to my door and out the door I went with a backpack, a shotgun and, and that's about all I had. Hitchhiked, got down I-75 and started-

   26. JRJoe Rogan4:52

       Somebody picked you up with a shotgun?

   27. JRJohn Reeves4:54

       It was in a case.

   28. JRJoe Rogan4:55

       Oh. (laughs)

   29. JRJohn Reeves4:56

       Got me in trouble in Seattle. I got arrested for being the I-5 sniper.

   30. JRJoe Rogan5:00

       Whoa.
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   The machine? …

   1. JRJohn Reeves15:00

      called Resource Associates and was just a guy hauling a drill rig around. And from there, I started getting more interested in the mining end of things and keep in mind, I'm still a young guy, I'm not married yet and, um, we'd go to Costa Rica. I bought a farm down there, decided I'd be a coffee farmer. Wasn't worth a shit at that either. I had some lemon trees growing and the first deal I made, I sold 500 lemons for three bucks. I said, "I don't think I'm gonna make money not farming." So I go back to Alaska and I protected my... The little wealth I had, I was able to protect by going to Costa Rica and this... Costa Rica is named Costa Rica because of its beauty, not because it's got a lot of treasure. But when you have conquistadors going by going, "Let's call this place Costa Rica." These murderous guys going totally... And the Incas and the Aztecs can attest to this, they were there for its treasure. And so I got back to Alaska, started getting serious. My wife's name is Ramona, we got married when I was 28 and we have five kids of our own. You met the youngest out there, Elora and Drew is my CEO and her, her husband. And her part- her, uh, sister, you know, uh, just older than her, they own a company called Gold Daughters. And my wife and I bought a... an old dredge after I'd gone... I went... decided to go mining for somebody else as an equipment operator. So I went up and I drove a loader, 7-12s, and was able to get paid in gold and that would help get me through Costa Rica and the gold... price of gold when I started was 250 bucks an ounce and when I ended, it was 800 bucks an ounce and I said, "Oh, this is gl- this is glorious." So I was making money gold mining and learned a lot about gold mining and I learned a lot about how to do it and I learned a lot about how not to do it. And so after that, I decided, well, I got to get into something else and I was driving back to town and I was... had to stop, had been drinking some beers and I had not had a beer all summer and through the, through the, uh, trees, I see these big metal... big metal pipes sticking out of the ground. It was the fall time, so I walked back there and it's a gold dredge. Are you familiar with what a gold dredge looks like?

   2. JRJoe Rogan17:26

      The machine?

   3. JRJohn Reeves17:27

      Yeah.

   4. JRJoe Rogan17:27

      Yeah.

   5. JRJohn Reeves17:28

      It's a big, huge floating barge with a digging ladder and a tailing stacker and a trommel. This one was about... It's a six cubic foot dredge, meaning each bucket would hold six cubic feet of dirt. And while I was there, some other people drove in, they walked in and that was... I'd never seen one. I didn't even know it was there just outside of town and these people were going on it and I said, "Man, this, this would be a cool tourist attraction." So I found out who owned it and I got a hold of the guys that owned it and I said, "Hey, you guys want to buy... uh, sell that dredge?" And they said, "Sure, we'll sell it." We were gonna turn, turn it into a tourist attraction, but we bought some, uh, leases in a... in a place called Prudhoe Bay.... oh, okay. You guys don't, you guys don't wanna be in tourism anymore." He, they had some of the best leases in Prudhoe Bay where the oil was coming from. So I bought it, we bought it, moved a bunkhouse over there to it, turned it into a really nice tourist attraction. It's ... And then I said, you know, Carnival Cruise Lines owned a company called Holland America West tours. They came up and said, "Hey, you're..." I was in my 40s. And they say, uh, "You're a pretty young guy. We don't think you should ever have to work again." (laughs) I said, "I've been thinking the same fucking thing." So they bought it from us. Okay, now I'm out of tourism, and I wanna go mining. And I got to know the owners of a company called Alaska Gold Company, who prior to that was called Fairbanks Exploration Company, and the parent company to that was called United States Smelting, Refining, and Mining Company. So I was the next guy in line. It was a privately owned company all that time. And, um, at the, at the time I bought that company, I became the largest private landowner in Alaska with 10,000 acres of patented land with proven reserves close to 800,000 ounces, and gold was low. These guys were tired of it. They'd run it from 1925 until I bought it and took out over eight million ounces. Uh, I'm gonna say over eight million, but records indicate a little bit different. And in the process of that, I went down to Utah and got all their archive material, which included the, all the notes and the correspondence files and exploration files and stratigraphic files and the researches, all the, all the paperwork they had in Boston because Boston is where USSR&M was headquartered. So I had kind of a, an advantage of in the gold mining business because now I have 10,000 acres of land, a lot of it already mined out by the dredges, but the dredges only took what they could make at $20 an ounce. And when they stopped, it was $35 an ounce. And I didn't check today, but I think it's close to $1,800 an ounce, and they only mined what was good at that time. It's like if you imagine a, a chicken. You got the, the white meat, which is where all the pay was, and then you got your drumsticks and your wings on the margins, and this, that's the kinda stuff that was left, and it wasn't worth mining back when I bought the company, but it is now. So, now we have some really good properties and the exploration files that cover the entire state of Alaska. And Drew out there, he's got hard rock claims in Valdez that we picked a file out of the exploration files and identified an area that no one even knew about except our, our company engineers who died decades ago. Um, we're ... Our consultants are all dead. All these, all these, all these reports that we read were written in the '20s and '30s and '40s. The ... They're all gone, and they weren't trying to promote mining. They were trying to find gold. So if they say there's gold here, there's gold there.

   6. JRJoe Rogan21:36

      Okay.

   7. JRJohn Reeves21:38

      And that's what, that's what we're doing now. We're a mining company, but now we've morphed into a land management company because we- we've got a half a dozen mines that are on different pieces of our ground, mining, and we just manage the land, make sure that, you know, we got legitimate people mining.

   8. JRJoe Rogan21:58

      Okay, so this is how you get to the land.

   9. JRJohn Reeves22:00

      This is how-

   10. JRJoe Rogan22:00

       Now how do you get these bones? How does this all start?

   11. JRJohn Reeves22:03

       Well, I'll get into that.

   12. JRJoe Rogan22:04

       Okay.

   13. JRJohn Reeves22:05

       And, uh, the way I discovered the bones was after I bought the property. Uh, there was a, a stripping pile done by, uh, an adjacent miner that was dumping overburden on this, on these flat tailings, and I had a tour guide, and I ... A big guy. I said, "Josh, run over there and find me a mammoth tusk." I'd never found a mammoth tusk, but I'd heard they were finding 'em over there, and the ground they were dumping on was on my ground. So he, he went and he, he says, "What do they look like?" I said, "Well, they're ... They look like tree trunks, only they got a curve to 'em." So he went, and he was gone half an hour. He comes back with a seven-foot tusk over his shoulder. I went, "Holy shit." I said, "Go get me another one." He went and came back an hour later with another one about three feet long, a broken one. So I walked over there to look at this area where the mining was gonna take place, and they ended up mining it, and they had a right to mine it. The company took out about 3,000 ounces out of this one little area, and I was like, "Goddamn, this stuff stinks." So one day, we were walking around the area after they had mined it and moved on to another place, and we followed the smell. We walked around the side of this hill, and we got up in this little draw, and we were picking ... My kids were with me too. We were picking bones off the, off the ground, little shards, little leg bones and stuff. So, we filled up a garbage bag with those. We went back again and again and again, and then I took a excavator back, built a little road around the side so we could get back to it with a machine, took a couple dirt digs out of the muck, found a mammoth tusk. I said, "Oh, boy. Let's get something going." So then we got a big floating barge and put a pump on it, 471 Jimmy, with a giant. They're, they're called giants, but they're ca- actually hydraulic monitors. They look like big long pipes that you spray water out of, and our pump was a eight-inch intake, six-inch outtake, and we nozzled it down to two, two inches, two and a half inches.We could fire the water way out there and wash the overburden away. And the overburden there is about 60 feet high. It's permafrost, silt. And underneath that, you have your gravel layer, and underneath the gravel, you have the gold and the bedrock. And the, uh, gravel layer and the muck interface is where most of the bones are. So, we started finding lots of bones. I mean, a lot of bones. And in the first three years, we found thousands and thousands of tusks and bison heads and bones. And by the way, your... all those skulls you got out there in your- in your building here?

   14. JRJoe Rogan25:00

       Yeah.

   15. JRJohn Reeves25:00

       You ain't got a steppe bison skull. I'm gonna fix that shit.

   16. JRJoe Rogan25:05

       (laughs)

   17. JRJohn Reeves25:05

       (laughs) Okay?

   18. JRJoe Rogan25:07

       Okay.

   19. JRJohn Reeves25:07

       I'm gonna. And then, uh... I don't even know how many we have. We've stopped counting. And mammoth tusks, same thing.

   20. JRJoe Rogan25:16

       And when did steppe bisons go extinct?

   21. JRJohn Reeves25:18

       12,000 years ago.

   22. JRJoe Rogan25:20

       Wow.

   23. JRJohn Reeves25:21

       And these- (laughs)

   24. JRJoe Rogan25:22

       And so, the permafrost is slowly melting, and you're hosing it down and pulling it, so the stench is literally, like, this ancient, rotting biological material.

   25. JRJohn Reeves25:35

       It stinks.

   26. JRJoe Rogan25:36

       Wow.

   27. JRJohn Reeves25:37

       It's organic.

   28. JRJoe Rogan25:39

       But it's been frozen forever.

   29. JRJohn Reeves25:41

       Thousands. 20,000 years, 30,000 years, 50,000 years.

   30. JRJoe Rogan25:44

       So, this is, uh, you with the hose, spraying it onto the side of this wall.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   (laughs) …

   1. JRJohn Reeves30:00

      this.

   2. JRJoe Rogan30:02

      (laughs)

   3. JRJohn Reeves30:02

      But everybody's so interested in it and I said, "I'll talk to Joe Rogan. That's it." And I've had countless opportunities to talk to newscasters and- and network reality TV people that wanna do blah, blah, blah, blah. No, I ain't gonna do it. I'll talk to Joe Rogan about it.

   4. JRJoe Rogan30:19

      Well, thank you for that.

   5. JRJohn Reeves30:20

      No, thank you for that.

   6. JRJoe Rogan30:22

      My pleasure. Well, it's just so unusual. At first, I just thought, "Oh, you probably found a couple things on this place." And then, as I'm going over your Instagram page and I'm seeing all the stuff that you're pulling out of there, I'm like, "This doesn't even seem real." Like, how could this one area have so many bones and so many tusks? Like, h- how many tusks do you have? Mammoth tusks?

   7. JRJohn Reeves30:47

      We stopped counting. Not because we can't count that high. It's just because, what's the point?

   8. JRJoe Rogan30:56

      Thousands?

   9. JRJohn Reeves30:58

      I have a friend that says I got 10,000 dead wooly mammoth on my ground.

   10. JRJoe Rogan31:02

       Wow! In five acres?

   11. JRJohn Reeves31:05

       Yeah.

   12. JRJoe Rogan31:06

       That's insane.

   13. JRJohn Reeves31:07

       I-

   14. JRJoe Rogan31:07

       Has, uh, have any of these paleontologists speculated on why this one area would have so many dead animals?

   15. JRJohn Reeves31:16

       No. If they have, they haven't told me.

   16. JRJoe Rogan31:21

       And w- so, you, you dated a few of them. And what were the dates from those few?

   17. JRJohn Reeves31:25

       They went from as recent as 3,000 years ago to 22,000 years ago.

   18. JRJoe Rogan31:32

       Wow.

   19. JRJohn Reeves31:33

       And the reason this site is so interesting to 'em is because it's from all from one little area, so the context is there, and it spans what's called the extinction event. Y- uh, Graham is-

   20. JRJoe Rogan31:49

       Yeah.

   21. JRJohn Reeves31:50

       ... and Randall.

   22. JRJoe Rogan31:50

       Yeah, the Younger Dryas Impact Theory.

   23. JRJohn Reeves31:52

       Yeah. And so, I'm kinda going along with them because it would-

   24. JRJoe Rogan31:57

       But that wouldn't make sense why they're all there.

   25. JRJohn Reeves31:59

       Well, you gotta remember that the world, the Pleistocene started, what, two and a half million years ago.

   26. JRJoe Rogan32:05

       Mm-hmm.

   27. JRJohn Reeves32:05

       And stopped about 11,800 years ago.

   28. JRJoe Rogan32:08

       Yeah.

   29. JRJohn Reeves32:10

       So, that whole area was ice except for a ice-free corridor between Siberia and Alaska and the lower 48 that went right through where we're at. So, there was migration happening, coming through there. And these animals lived there for tens of thousands of years, the grazers. Well, wherever there's grazers, there's gonna be carnivores. You have the short-faced bear, you got the cave lions, you got... We found all that stuff.

   30. JRJoe Rogan32:40

       You found short-faced bears?
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   A bone rush? …

   1. JRJohn Reeves45:01

      which was just 17 million more yards than they dug outta the Panama Canal. And so all those bones, there was a guy named Childs Frick in New York, his father was Henry Frick, the US steel magnate with, uh, Carnegie, they decided to get ahold of th- the USS R&M Company in Boston, and they said, "Hey, how about we finance to get these bones out of Alaska and bring 'em to AMNH?" So they worked a three-way deal with the University of Alaska Fairbanks, uh, President Bunnell up there, and a guy named Otto Guice started going out with a bone wagon, and they collected bones for, from 1928 till 1958. Now, they were only supposed to s- collect scientifically important bones, and for those, they were supposed to do research on 'em, and write reports, and submit 'em to my company. Well, they didn't do that. They collected the bones, sent 'em to New York City, where they just languished in the basements of AMNH. When I bought the company, I started going through my files, and I found this deal, and I got ahold of the University of Alaska, and I said, "These are, these are our company bones. Let's go find out what's, what's going on with 'em. They haven't done the reporting they're supposed to." So myself along with, uh, a guy named, uh, uh, what the ... I, I got the reports right here. Dick Osborn, who was the author of this report. I'm gonna give you this report, by the way, because I've told everybody that I'm gonna start a bone rush.

   2. JRJoe Rogan46:47

      A bone rush?

   3. JRJohn Reeves46:48

      Yes, sir.

   4. JRJoe Rogan46:50

      What does that mean?

   5. JRJohn Reeves46:51

      Well, they took 500,000 or so bones from Fairbanks to New York City, left 'em in the crates, and there's a picture on there someplace when I went there to visit, in crates that have yet to be opened. But in the '40s, they took about a whole boxcar load of these bones, they ran out of storage, and they dumped 'em in the East River.

   6. JRJoe Rogan47:22

      What?

   7. JRJohn Reeves47:23

      In the East River. And I've told everybody that, again, with Joe Rogan, it's the only place I'm gonna divulge that location.

   8. JRJoe Rogan47:32

      So all that stuff in those pictures is all from your property?

   9. JRJohn Reeves47:35

      Yes, sir.

   10. JRJoe Rogan47:37

       What a crazy piece of land you stumbled upon.

   11. JRJohn Reeves47:40

       It's unbelievable.

   12. JRJoe Rogan47:42

       And so they dumped how much in the East River?

   13. JRJohn Reeves47:45

       I'm told by Dick Osborn a boxcar load, 50,000, or 50 tons.

   14. JRJoe Rogan47:50

       Just threw it in the water?

   15. JRJohn Reeves47:51

       Yes, sir.

   16. JRJoe Rogan47:52

       Is it still there?

   17. JRJohn Reeves47:54

       I don't know. That's what-

   18. JRJoe Rogan47:55

       Could it, could it be still there?

   19. JRJohn Reeves47:57

       Could be.

   20. JRJoe Rogan47:58

       Some of it maybe?

   21. JRJohn Reeves47:59

       Certainly the tusks.

   22. JRJoe Rogan48:00

       Do you know where it was?

   23. JRJohn Reeves48:02

       Yes, sir. Let me t-

   24. JRJoe Rogan48:03

       So you gonna hire some divers? What are you gonna do?

   25. JRJohn Reeves48:07

       I've told a ... Now, you have a lot of people that follow you on your Instagram. I got, I got a lot of people that follow me thanks to you, and, uh, I said, "You know, those bones, as far as I'm concerned, that they dumped in the East River, they're, they're no longer mine." They're finders keepers, so if any of you guys wanna go out and find some bones, I'll tell you exactly where the fuck they're at, but I'll only tell Joe Rogan.

   26. JRJoe Rogan48:34

       So I have to tell people?

   27. JRJohn Reeves48:36

       Tell 'em right now.

   28. JRJoe Rogan48:37

       Okay, tell 'em right now.

   29. JRJohn Reeves48:38

       Yes, sir.

   30. JRJoe Rogan48:39

       Where's it ... (laughs) Do you know what street they pulled up to where they dumped 'em off?
5. 1:00:00 – 1:15:00

   Well, I know I…

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:00:00

      You know that, that website? I think they get their videos taken down. I think there's a lot of, uh, the, the faint-hearted amongst us that think that there's something wrong with watching videos of animals killing other animals, that somehow or another it's cruel.

   2. JRJohn Reeves1:00:15

      Well, I know I get accused of climate change and global warms and stuff and...

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:00:20

      You do?

   4. JRJohn Reeves1:00:21

      Yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan1:00:21

      'Cause of mining?

   6. JRJohn Reeves1:00:22

      'Cause we're melting the permafrost.

   7. JRJoe Rogan1:00:24

      Oh, that's hilarious.

   8. JRJohn Reeves1:00:25

      It is, but they go and-

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:00:26

      You're literally a part of one of the greatest paleontological discoveries ever.

   10. JRJohn Reeves1:00:31

       I know. And-

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:00:32

       Oh, you... but the global's warming.

   12. JRJohn Reeves1:00:35

       Yeah, and, uh, I'm pretty s-

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:00:37

       It's warming.

   14. JRJohn Reeves1:00:39

       (laughs) It happens.

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:00:40

       Yeah, well, but just people are just out of their fucking mind looking for things to complain about.

   16. JRJohn Reeves1:00:44

       Yeah, it's cr-

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:00:45

       I mean, it's 50 degrees below zero right now in Alberta. I just got a message from one of my buddies.

   18. JRJohn Reeves1:00:50

       It was 50 below at our house two days ago in Fairbanks.

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:00:53

       (laughs)

   20. JRJohn Reeves1:00:53

       And it warmed up today to 14 below.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:00:55

       Nice.

   22. JRJohn Reeves1:00:56

       Nice.

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:00:56

       You brought a little of that weather here. It must be-

   24. JRJohn Reeves1:00:57

       Here it is. Boy, this has been-

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:00:58

       ... you're, uh, balmy 20. (laughs)

   26. JRJohn Reeves1:01:00

       You know, one thing I notice about this town is you got some blue sky.

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:01:04

       Oh, yeah. It's nice.

   28. JRJohn Reeves1:01:05

       This sky here is really blue.

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:01:06

       Yeah, it's beautiful.

   30. JRJohn Reeves1:01:07

       And-
6. 1:15:00 – 1:25:28

   Yep. …

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:15:00

      will take property.

   2. JRJohn Reeves1:15:01

      Yep.

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:15:01

      Yeah.

   4. JRJohn Reeves1:15:01

      And he, uh, he will take their life. He doesn't like them.

   5. JRJoe Rogan1:15:06

      Well-

   6. JRJohn Reeves1:15:06

      I've on- I've only shot one bear.

   7. JRJoe Rogan1:15:08

      Yeah.

   8. JRJohn Reeves1:15:08

      I tried to shoot a grizzly once and my rifle jammed.

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:15:14

      Have you ever eaten bear?

   10. JRJohn Reeves1:15:15

       No.

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:15:16

       Tastes good, believe it or not. Especially black bear. Black bear's good. Uh, my friend, Steve Rinella, um, said that some of the best meat he's ever eaten is black bear that had been eating blueberries.

   12. JRJohn Reeves1:15:27

       Oh, I bet.

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:15:27

       And he shot him up in Alaska, too.

   14. JRJohn Reeves1:15:29

       Yeah.

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:15:29

       That's where he got it.

   16. JRJohn Reeves1:15:31

       I woulda probably eaten black bear f- ... That day I shot the black bear at the cabin if we had had more time, but we were running up to the cut to go to work and I cut a couple of his claws off and we buried it. Just didn't have time. But he was, again, life and property, tearing the door off to get in-

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:15:48

       Yeah.

   18. JRJohn Reeves1:15:49

       ... inside where the food was.

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:15:51

       Yeah, well, they're predatory, too. They'll kill people.

   20. JRJohn Reeves1:15:53

       Yeah.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:15:53

       Black bears will kill people. A kid got killed at Rutgers University and he was in the woods outside of Rutgers University a few years back in New Jersey. Yeah, New Jersey has the highest amount of black bears per capita in the United States. How crazy is that?

   22. JRJohn Reeves1:16:09

       That's crazy.

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:16:10

       Yeah, and they banned hunting. "We have to stop the bear hunt. The bears are your friends." And then bear-human encounters increased by over 200% over the term of this new governor, and then he finally relinquished and now reopened the bear hunt, and now they're gonna extend the bear hunt. They're gonna hunt more of them. 'Cause bears are not easy to hunt, too, un- unless you're in open fields in the v- in the spring where they're coming out and they're eating grass. Generally, they hunt them in thick shit with bait. And people are like, "Oh, that's so wrong, you're using bait," but it's literally the only way they control their populations. You won't find them. Like when, when we're up in Alberta, when you go through the woods, you hardly ever see black bears.

   24. JRJohn Reeves1:16:53

       Yeah.

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:16:53

       You hardly ... But they're everywhere. They're all over the place. They just smell you coming a fucking million miles away and they steer clear.

   26. JRJohn Reeves1:16:59

       Yeah, they do. So, so do wolves.

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:17:01

       Yep.

   28. JRJohn Reeves1:17:02

       We got a lot of coyotes out there at the, uh, boneyard, yeah.

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:17:06

       I'll show you a picture that my friend, John Rivet, sent me from Alberta. He sent me this recently. A couple of weeks ago, there was, uh, wolves up there in front of one of his trail cams, and, uh, it's, uh, pretty fucking cool pictures. Let me find this. I know he sent it to me recently. Oh, he might have sent it with Jen, too. Uh, but they live in a very remote part of Alberta where it's, you know, it's all what they call crown land up there.

   30. JRJohn Reeves1:17:41

       Mm-hmm.

Episode duration: 3:04:20