Joe Rogan Experience #1340 - John Nores

... next month.

Ready? Boom. All right, we're live. Hello, Jon. What's up, man? How are you?

Hey, Joe. How you doing?

Thanks for doing this. I really appreciate it.

Thanks a lot for having me, man.

Well-

It's great.

... I heard you on MeatEater podcast, and-

Yeah.

... uh, it blew my mind. I mean, I c- I could not-

Yeah.

... believe. L- let's just let everybody know what this is about. You were a game warden, or you are a game warden.

Right.

And what that normally entails is like, you know, you find a guy and he's got three trout when he's only supposed to have-

Right, right.

... two. It's, uh, normal stuff, like catch-

Yeah.

... catch, catching people doing something they're not supposed to, or just making sure people follow the rules.

Right.

(smacks lips) Along the way, you guys started discovering these illegal grow ops-

Right.

... where cartels were growing marijuana.

Yeah.

And you turned from being a regular game warden to essentially... Well, uh, why don't you let us know what, how it worked out?

Yeah, Joe. It was, it was a crazy journey because you don't think of game wardens doing the type of work we were doing when it come to the, the trespass grows-

Right.

... and the cartel issue, you know. And what do everybody think? They think game wardens check fishing licenses-

Yeah.

... check your deer tag or elk tag, look for too many, you know, animals, poaching, spotlighting. And honestly, when I started the job, I got hired back in 1992, that's what I dreamed of doing, you know. I grew up hunting and fishing, and I got my hunter safety certificate with, with dad's help at nine years old, so I was all in the woods. You know, the woods are my church. I just loved it because three generations of family, my grandfather's career Navy, my dad, you know, as an army guy. And, you know, we just had conservation in our family, you know, um, for generations. So I got the job, did it, and I did all the traditional stuff to start. Came down here to Southern California to start my career in Riverside County. (smacks lips) So it was just over the hill, you know, from, from LA here, and working all the traditional stuff, fishing regulations, night hunting, you know, working deer openers. It was really cool to be a deer hunter for all those years and then actually go w- you know, talk to guys on the other side and see all the good guys out there, and some problems. Um, and then in, uh, 1995, I got to go back home toward the Silicon Valley. That's where I'm originally from, born and raised. So live in the suburbs, kind of the foothill areas of, uh, the Silicon Valley, south of San Jose there. And in 2004, I f- I stumbled into my first, uh, you know, cartel, what we call a trespass marijuana grow site. And, you know, to specify this stuff now, now that we're regulating, you know, the last couple of years here in California, these are not sanctioned marijuana sites. This isn't the legitimate industry that's doing it by the numbers and trying to. (smacks lips) This is kind of always illegal. Uh, these are always here, you know, on public lands, destroying our environmental waterways and our wildlife, and on private land as well. And on that situation, I had a good friend of mine that I grew up with, um, that was doing his master's thesis at San Jose State University, both of our alma mater, on steelhead trout, endangered species, red-legged, yellow-legged frog, and all the aquatics in these two creeks. And this was right below Henry Coe State Park, where I really met my first game warden that was an inspiration to get the job. So these waterways are really sensitive. Headwaters coming down through this stretch for like three miles, all these endangered species in it, black-tailed deer, you know, all these other great animals we like as conservationists, they're thriving on this creek. And he called me one day in April and said, "Hey, Jon, this is weird. One of my two creeks is bone dry and all the fish, the steelhead fry are dead. You know, everything living on this creek is dead. There's a bunch of like debris and plastic lining and looks like camping stuff that's down at the bottom of where this creek feeds out." So I get him in the truck and I figure, I'm thinking, "Okay, someone's diverting water up there. It's probably a rancher needing it for cattle operation, whatever." We go to the top of the hill, Joe, then we start the hike down and I'm by myself. You know, I got my, I was, I got my rifle, got my gear, don't have any radio coverage, don't have any cell phone coverage, and I have an unarmed civilian, my partner, a biologist, with me. And we're expecting to find something very predictable that I'd seen up to that point, and that would have been a normal water diversion. And when we found the water source in a beautiful canyon, I mean, crystal clear water, trout creek, the whole nine, start hiking down it following this, uh, we see the dam, we see the water line, go about 100 yards down this beautiful little Grand Canyon-like creek, and there's a bunch of marijuana plants. And they're, they're short because it's early in the season. They're only about two feet tall. And we see two growers, and they're not the growers I'm typ- you know, that I would have suspected. These guys are, you know, they got rifles, they got handguns, they got knives, and they're kind of cruising, working their plants, coming toward us. And that was that oh shit moment, you know.