Levi the Real Prepper - A.M.P. Classic

Christian ; Follower of GOD Servant of CHRIST        
Decorated Combat VeteranCorporate; U.S. Marine Corps Urban Warfare Instrictor;       
S.R.T. Commander Active Shooter Response Team 
Law Enforcement Los Angeles Police (L.A.P.D.) Police Officer / Fugitive Recovery
F.B.I. Instructor N.R.A Instructor 
Competition Shooter; Multi Time State Rifle Pistol Champion 
Hunting; Life Long Hunter Proffessional Hunter and Guide 
Private Security Contractor; Several Agencies,  Current. 

GOD Provides / JESUS Saves

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
What is going on.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
Alpha Males, Strong dominant made in the image of God.
Gonna shake it up a little bit today, change up
the format. I'm gonna put in some short clips of
today's upcoming episode and then we'll get into it. A
winner can tell you as easy as a bullet can
and a slow, miserable death of that.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
I haven't had a heter power for three years.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Now, get enough calories hunting and fishing and foraging, I
think to survive.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
It is what it's gonna be. And then and then
you either have the skills and hopefully like the fitness
level and the mindset and the flexibility and adaptability to
deal with that. No amount of gear, no amount of
anything is gonna like prevent that from happening.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
Saddle Up Man for Alpha Male podcast where we talk
about what it means to be a man the right
way with God at the center. Today's a bit of
a departure from the norm as in it's an interview.

(01:11):
I'm gonna call it an interview with Levi, the real
prepper as opposed to what I think is a lot
of times this prepper fantasy culture where you got to
buy the next survival widget on Amazon or some kind

(01:32):
of echo chamber forum where you got to have the
latest and greatest and it's all kind of survivaling in
this theoretical physics of survival land. Levi's a man who
I believe really does the things he practices. He does

(01:55):
survival bugout exercises, he does practical shooting, and normally I'll
put in a bio, but not today. Today's not about me. Today.
I want to let Levi share his experience to help
you out. Levi is one of the patrons, and I'm

(02:19):
very humbled that we've gotten to know each other before
this interview and talking back and forth. That's one of
the cool things about being part of the Patreon tribe.
And I want to let him talk about himself today.
So it's not really about me. There's plenty of other
episodes where my bio is in there if you want
to go listen to it. Today's going to be about
Levi and his adventures. Now did this you know from

(02:44):
very different places in the country. The audio quality sometimes
is a little choppy, but I don't think it takes
away from the importance and the quality of information that
is conveyed in this episode. So with that, here's Levi
the real Prepper.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
Okay, so my name is Levi, A lot like you.
I grew up so I'm in northern Illinois, pretty far
outside of Chicago. In the seventies. It was an extremely
rural area, sown five hundred people. We grew up right
along the Rock River. Super common to see, you know,
ten twelve year old kids out with twenty two's twenty

(03:28):
gay shotguns. Everybody hurt by. Lots of kids had, you know,
motorcycles out in the middle of the cornfields along the river.
Some weird things in my background. I was a childhood runaway.
I did go almost through my entire high school year
living in a crackhouse. Wow. Yeah, I never got involved

(03:49):
in that. But and I was really lucky to stay
out of trouble. Dropped out of school a couple of times,
but they were gracious enough to let me go back
without too much hassle. So I did still get my diploma,
did still do it in four years, stayed out of
enough trouble I could go into the Navy. I went
over right after Desert Storm, so I was in from

(04:13):
ninety two to ninety six. Uh there for Operation Desert Shield.
I was on a carrier, so I didn't mostly just
stood around and watched planes land and take off.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
What was your mos?

Speaker 1 (04:26):
I was an aviation electronics technician. Oh cool, but as
far from U BU as far from any kind of
combat thing as you can get.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
Oh that's still still more than the vast majority of
the population does that. It still astounds me the less
than one percent of the population is served in the
military wildly.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
Oh yeah, sorry, got back, went into the trades, ended
up running, uh, just for for fitness, and I was
I was tired in the trades. I got high enough
that they started wanting you to be like a foreman
and supervisor on things. And I just couldn't handle the stress.
I was I was gonna either have a heart attack

(05:08):
or or or hurt someone. So I'm getting out of that.
And I met this guy while I was running, and
he was basically a CAG guy, and he became friends
and started training together. He's partly responsible for some of
my interests. Obviously, we've been friends now for decades. But

(05:33):
and now, like here, I am so moved back. I was.
I've moved all over the place, been all over the country,
traveled to Africa on my own tried to join the
French Foreign Legion but failed to run. I did. I
did when I was thirty eight, as the last year
you could go. After thirty eight, they didn't want to
let me in the gate, but I finally got in there.

(05:54):
So but I've failed out on a run, didn't make
it in there. That was pretty disappointing. Came back and
now I'm trying to pretty much do what you're doing,
which is I want to, you know, have some kind
of mobile like home that I live in at an airstream. Now,
I'd like to get more of a motorized camper van

(06:16):
and just travel around the country and work for cash.
And I think that's the way to go, and I
really like it.

Speaker 2 (06:23):
Yeah, it certainly is a much better American dream for
me than the white picket fence and whatever else goes
with it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:34):
I tried that while while I was in the trades.
That didn't work out well for me. I'm just not
in property or like a big house or fancy cars.
It's just not what does it for me. I like
being outside, I like hunting, I like fishing. It's what
I've always liked. As I'm getting older, when i'm fifty
and I would like to kind of semi retire. I

(06:56):
kind of front loaded everything so I have a good
retirement already through the trades. Nice. Yeah, So I'm just
I want to stay as fit as I can be
and and you know, going into my sixties so I
can collect. It's so hard for.

Speaker 2 (07:12):
The Just a brief aside, I just did an episode
called Progress. I put it out on Patreon before it
goes out to everybody else. And one of the things
I started off with was I've seen this several places
that when they study our ancestors and hunter gatherer societies,
they usually work fifteen to twenty hours a week.

Speaker 1 (07:31):
So if you wanted to keep that, that would actually
be a really interesting segue because when when when I
talk about like the trips that I do, which like
they don't seem that bad for me, some people think
they're pretty crazy. But that was one of the reasons
that I got into these trips. And this was, man,

(07:51):
I don't know, probably twenty thirteen or twenty fourteen that
I really got interested in starting doing longer trips. At
the time that was like three four days. You know,
it's hard to squeeze in with jobs and eventually I
like changed my life so that I could not work
during the winter and do longer trips. Fascinated me.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
I was gonna ask, kind of got you on that
road of preparedness where you're always on it? Or or
is that something you stumbled into later in life. I imagine,
like a lot of us, when you were younger, you
were chasing girls and doing whatever. But what got you
into kind of the preparedness bug out that whole genre?

Speaker 1 (08:29):
I think like a lot of people, I actually saw
doomsday preppers.

Speaker 2 (08:33):
Wow, cool, that's I don't know that I've ever actually
heard that answer. I mean, I've definitely seen it, but.

Speaker 1 (08:39):
Yeah, so I saw that, and I just thought it
was really interesting that you could take that as like
you're going to try to prepare for potentially the end
of the world. So I kind of got involved on
like social media, started following some people and looking at
at it, and what I found was that a lot

(09:00):
of people seem to be preparing to take the life
they live now in this this unknowable future. Like there's
this line in the sand, you cross that line, that's
you know, the stuff hits the fan. It's completely different world.
I don't think you can take the life that we
live now in the United States, which is an incredible
life of like luxury. Never been anything like it.

Speaker 2 (09:23):
Yeah, it's very it's very different as far as human
history goes. Even around the world today, it's unusual, let
alone throughout history. It's a very strange culture and society
we live in for.

Speaker 1 (09:38):
Sure, absolutely, And so I've got interested and I wanted
to do like a more realistic take on it because
I really see some great things, especially in like the Instagram,
YouTube social media world. What people think are is possible,
it just wasn't my experience. And especially if you're looking

(10:00):
like a bug out or you're gonna do any like
long term solo, especially living like out of doors without
shelter or anything else. Yeah, even worse like seasons. So
I do all my trips in the winter. I'm always unsupported,

(10:20):
so I don't have anybody dropping off food anything I
want I have to take for the duration I may
or may not to, you know, stop at a town
or something like that. And I don't think it's it's
it's totally doable. You can hunt, you can fish, but
even that it's extremely.

Speaker 2 (10:43):
Rely on that I'm gonna piggyback off that for a
for a little bit. I do think that hunt. I
do think that as a man in general, you should
know how to hunt and fish, as you probably know
from listening to the podcasts. But I will I think
a lot of people have this fantasy of I have
an AR fifteen or a Bolt Action three eight, and

(11:06):
I'm just gonna head to the woods and just frolic
around and live without worry. And that's that's, I think,
as you know, totally unrealistic. If you look at the
deer populations in the US, there are a lot now,
even by a lot of accounts that I've studied, even
more than when when Christopher Columbus landed. There are more

(11:28):
deer here because we create a lot of good habitat
for deer. A lot of that is predicated, I think,
on the production and planting and harvesting of massive amount
of crops and grain. But that's not going to be
the case of society collapses. No, no, yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 1 (11:49):
There's a whole infrastructure like this, and if just the
town that I live in, which now is like you know,
fifteen thousand people, there's there's no way that there's enough
to support that if there's no food being delivered.

Speaker 2 (12:07):
Yeah, and that being said from research that I've seen
also and from just talking to old timers. The you know,
the deer population during the Depression east of the Mississippi
was almost to extinction, and there were a lot less
people than than there are now. So you got to

(12:30):
think about that. I don't know how long and sustainable
that is, at least east of the Mississippi.

Speaker 1 (12:38):
I don't I don't think it is. Yeah, I don't think.
I don't think that works. I don't think people I
still hunt. The longest that I've gone recently, just hunting,
like not buying any food, having no other food other
than what I hunt was two weeks that that was
during the winter. That was shooting rabbits with a ruger

(12:59):
mark too. I'm lucky that I got a dog. He's
not good at catching things, but he is good at
like keeping things still nice. I got a I got
an Australian cattle dog. Oh yeah, he's super easy to train.
He's good at that. But he's not gonna run anything down,

(13:20):
I'll tell you that much. So, and that was just rabbits,
and and that's extremely difficult. I don't think people understand
what it's like to go like a solid week without food, yeah,
or three days where you know you're by whatever reason
for me, I'm putting myself in the situation. But where

(13:41):
you you have three day where you don't have the
ability to get water, You can't boil it, you can't
chip it out of the ice, you can't melt it.
If you can, what it does to your head. I
went three day no food, no water. I ended up.
I was trapped on a sandbar and on a high wind.
We had that dratio. I was out on the Mississippi

(14:03):
when it happened. I ended up launching the canoe into
an unfrozen part of the river with the dog during
the lull in the wind, and the wind kicked back up.
It sank the canoe. I ended up. Now, I wear
a dry suit, I wear full dry suit. I'm pretty
well prepared for that. But there was no way at
midnight that I should have done that. It's so fatigued.

(14:28):
You know, if you if you are up straight for
like three days, no food, no water, you're not in
your right mind.

Speaker 2 (14:36):
Yeah. Yeah, I can't test to that.

Speaker 1 (14:39):
I don't think people like experience that in today's world.
Very few, very.

Speaker 2 (14:47):
Few, you know, in the military, and I don't want
to take away from people that have suffered and done
like that. But the average American, for sure, I don't
think I can't. I've never been three days without water.
That's pretty hardcore.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
You end up. So I ended up when I when
I got to the next island, which was a kind
of a nightmare. Then I ended up. I didn't want
to go out on the ice originally because I was
going to fall through and the wind had blown all
of the snow and everything else off. I couldn't make

(15:21):
a fire. There was there was no grass, there was
no nothing, my my camping stove. It was too cold,
so the camping stove wouldn't work. I had a MSR
pocket rocket. Problem was that the rubber gasket had gotten
so stiff. I couldn't screw it down tight enough for
the gas come out, and so I just laid in

(15:42):
the canoe. I build everything. Most of my stuff I make,
so I make my own tent goes on a canoe,
and I just laid in there and stayed in there
for days. So I ended up drinking Mississippi River water
without it. So it's a I made it about another
two weeks after that, and then I had to call

(16:03):
it for the trip I was I was too much
of a mess.

Speaker 2 (16:06):
Is that is that this most recent trip or is
that your first trip?

Speaker 1 (16:10):
My little recent You would think it would get better.
But every time you every at least for me, every
time I take a long one and the next one's
going to be about eight hundred miles, I think I've
got things kind of nailed down that I'm up for
that challenge.

Speaker 2 (16:27):
My wife actually joked with me, half joking quite a
while ago because she's been out with me on a
couple of my expeditions, and she's like, it's it's like,
it's not adventure for you unless your chance of dying
or something like that. And I'm like, well, yeah, kind of,
I mean that does kind of add something to it
for me. That does kind of add a level of
enjoyment for me in some kind of way, because I'm

(16:48):
pushing myself. If everything was safe, I might as well
sit on the couch and watch Netflix.

Speaker 1 (16:53):
Yeah, I just take a hike. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:55):
Yeah, it's and that's what a lot of people, I think,
sadly that I run into when you talk to them
about like adventure and getting outdoors. Their idea is like
going for a stroll in a park with a marked trail,
which for me is it's better than Netflix. But that's
not what I'm talking about.

Speaker 1 (17:13):
Yeah, No, I I don't have uh So I'm actually
I communicate with a couple other preppers, and uh I
like to think that I've been helpful to them. I've
certainly got them more on the fitness track, got a
little bit more interested in actual performance, shooting gone and
actual actually shot with them, helped with like gun selection,

(17:36):
and they're exactly it's it's the exact same thing is
it's they're not they're there. They are completely unprepared for
for anything. But like what they would call body.

Speaker 2 (17:48):
Yeah, it's a lot of that is prepper fantasy. They
think a gun is like a security blanky where if
they have it, they're going to be okay, and.

Speaker 1 (17:58):
That we don't get to choose, Yeah, we don't. We
don't get to choose the disaster. We don't get to
choose the apocalypse. It is what it's gonna be. And
then and then you either have the skills and and
hopefully like the fitness level and the mindset and the
flexibility and adaptability to deal with that. No amount of gear,

(18:19):
no amount of anything is gonna like prevent that from happening.

Speaker 2 (18:24):
And I don't want to get on the gun sting yet,
But to your point, I mean, stuff, stuff comes and goes.
I've been in a situation where I've done the canoe before,
and I remember a friend of mine and I, and
this was a long time ago, we ate a raw
goose because similar situation, Like I shot it. I did
have a gun, I shot a goose, but it was
so wet and miserable we just couldn't couldn't keep a
fire going to cook it. You can lose stuff. I mean,

(18:47):
you could find yourself running for your life with nothing
but the clothes on your back or not even that.
So a lot of that, a lot of that mental
and physical mental and physical conditioning and being in those
kind of situations before really can't help. I think in
America we have a lot more of this Amazon culture
where oh, if I click this button, then I'm good,

(19:09):
Like if I buy this new knife, then oh then
I'm ready for the apocalypse. I don't see it being
like that.

Speaker 1 (19:17):
No, I think I think in a perfect world, experience
drives gear selection.

Speaker 2 (19:21):
Yeah, and gear gear is important, and good gear it
can go a long way. But that just the mere
fact of having the gear doesn't do anything I could give.
I could take a Navy Seals complete kit and put
it on a dude and then tell him to go
into an active shooter with the same exact kit, but
he could freeze up in the doorway and get shot

(19:43):
in the face. The gear is not gonna win that fight. Well,
first of all, I guess it's a backup. Why do
you live in Illinois city? Went all over the country?
Is there a reason that draws you to Illinois or
is it family? Or is there an actual like preparedness
reason family? Okay, yeah, I got you. And is that

(20:03):
your You said you've been all over the country. I'd
like to pick that apart. Is there any place that
you really like for especially maybe culture, but especially like
the survival aspect of it.

Speaker 1 (20:16):
For me, I think parts of northern Missouri, kind of
northwestern Missouri. I'm with you. I think you know, you
can get out into like Nebraska, South Dakota places and
you can find some really nice places there that are

(20:39):
really sparsely populated. I gotta think that would be the
way to go. I know that like the entire East Coast.
I've driven almost the entire East Coast, and it is
so different now than it was in say, like the
early eighties. It's just a never ending city. It's never
ending city and never ending strip malls, and it's that

(20:59):
all the way to the Mississippi.

Speaker 2 (21:01):
Yeah, I'm with you an agreement there. There's a few
small pockets, but I in general right off anything east
of the Mississippi as being a good choice. Obviously people
will survive there.

Speaker 1 (21:12):
Have you been?

Speaker 2 (21:12):
Have you been west west, like the Pacific Northwest, and
like Idaho and then over Washington, Oregon.

Speaker 1 (21:20):
No, No, I haven't Texas a little bit, but no,
my work never never took me out there, So I'm
completely unfamiliar with California, Oregon, Washington.

Speaker 2 (21:31):
Or I would love yeah, northern California. Obviously it's got
California politics. But you talk about sparse, because I've been
all over. I've been in Nebraska and Wyoming and Montana.
The winners there, though, are brutal, and as you probably know,
without infrastructure, a winner can tell you as easy as
a bullet can, and a slow, miserable death of that, so,

(21:53):
I mean, those areas are probably certainly better than east
of the Mississippi, but the Pacific Northwest is very sparse populated.
I mean, Oregon has seventeen people per square mile, which
is pretty sparse, and there's a lot of I literally
have gone in the woods and just eating what I
could find there, and it's pretty doable because it's it's
a rainforest, there's a ton of resources.

Speaker 1 (22:16):
Hopefully, my girlfriend and I are gonna hopefully soon take
a trip out that way. We've got some other preppers
that were supposed to meet that she's familiar with from online.
That would be a great place.

Speaker 2 (22:30):
So yeah, let me know. I'll give you some Well,
you already have access if you're on Patreon to some
of my bug out locations, welcome to. If you have
a more specific spot picked out, I'll give you some pointers.

Speaker 1 (22:41):
Oh nice, thank you.

Speaker 2 (22:42):
The cool thing about out West, if you've never spent
any time out West, is you are part owner of
giant swaths of public land. I mean, like literal millions
of acres, And as you probably know from your excursions,
most people like stay on a trail. You can go
to places where you may never even have any indication
anybody's ever even been before. Obviously they have fifty years

(23:03):
ago or something. But you can get into some pretty wild, remote,
rugged places out west that are totally legal to be
on and stay on.

Speaker 1 (23:12):
Oh for sure like that. That's part of my plan.
I would like to live here. Work. I do have
a good job. My boss is a really good guy.
I enjoy. It's a really small, like family owned business.
I enjoy helping the business grow. If you're going to
have a job like you might as well be interested
in it and take part.

Speaker 2 (23:31):
Yeah, yeah, I agree.

Speaker 1 (23:33):
Oh so that keeps me coming back. But I have
like four to five months off every year.

Speaker 2 (23:40):
That's cool.

Speaker 1 (23:41):
I definitely want to hit the b L on the
land for sure.

Speaker 2 (23:44):
Planning on going to Alaska here, God willing, and so
I'm going to check that out because I've never been there.

Speaker 1 (23:49):
I think it would be absolutely fantastic.

Speaker 2 (23:51):
That seems like one of the few places where, I
mean they literally have where you can survive on hunting
and fishing legally. You could do it a lot of
places illegally, but actually legally get enough calories hunting and
fishing and foraging, I think to survive.

Speaker 1 (24:09):
What a life.

Speaker 2 (24:10):
Yeah, I'm gonna. I'm gonna, By God's grace, the wife's
agreed to go with me on that adventure. So we're
gonna try it there and try to living there for
a while and see how we like it, and see
see how that works out. If not, Idaho was a
good second, I was pleasantly surprised that my wife really
liked Idaho more than I thought she was going to.

Speaker 1 (24:27):
So nice.

Speaker 2 (24:29):
I've lived all over the country and I keep going
back to Idaho. I've been there several different times, lived
several different places, so I really like that.

Speaker 1 (24:44):
So how bad are the winters there?

Speaker 2 (24:47):
Well, southern southeast Alaska not bad at all. From what
I understand. It almost never even freezes or snows as
far as like sit cut in those kinds of places.
It's a rainforest, so very very temperate. Lot I'll lot
less than the continental winners you get in Illinois.

Speaker 1 (25:04):
Because I don't I don't heat or have power.

Speaker 2 (25:06):
Now, yeah, that's brutal, man.

Speaker 1 (25:09):
It's really not bad like people think it's much worse
than it is. I haven't had heater power for three years. Now,
do you do?

Speaker 2 (25:17):
Do you do woodstove?

Speaker 1 (25:19):
No? No?

Speaker 2 (25:20):
No heat? Wow, that's that's hard core man.

Speaker 1 (25:24):
And then I just walk. I'll actually pull a sled.
It's two miles to Walmart, but obviously I'm not using
the work truck. Yeah, I just pull a sled and
I'll get bottled water. And if it's really bad, so
if it gets blow zero, I'll get a thing of propane.
And I got a little propane heater.

Speaker 2 (25:43):
Yeah, that's that's what we have when we're in the cold.
We have a propane heater. That's that's hardcore man. Pulling
a sled.

Speaker 1 (25:51):
Yeah, I had COVID. I did it with covid there
for about a week. I had COVID and then pneumonia
in course to get groceries and everything was was pretty rough.
I had friends afterwards that were like, dude, why didn't
you call. I'm like, yeah, the point is to do it,
you know.

Speaker 2 (26:07):
Yeah. Community is a big part of survival. Though if
you look at I mean, they're you the lone wolf philosophy.
But if you look at you talking about history, we
we're tribal people, so we generally thrived as a tribe,
not as an individual. So there's there's something of that too.

Speaker 1 (26:23):
Not that I want to make your job any harder
to leave it in if you want to. So one
of the reasons that I that I started listening to
you because I came across your podcast just through like
a random search, but because of my my friendship with
my friend who who is really like a direct action,

(26:46):
you know, like guy that was his job for years
and years and years while we were friends, you know, going.
He was constantly go. His his pop tempo was just insane,
and and the things that you say line up exactly
with the things that he said about about guns, you know,

(27:07):
wapp in selection. Usually what I hear is I hear
a lot of a lot of bullet from people who
who really haven't done it. I just wanted to say
as an aside that I don't see that with you appreciate.

Speaker 2 (27:20):
I'm very humbled by that God's gotten me through a
lot of sticky situations, not because I think I'm special,
but he obviously has a purpose for me, and I
try and walk that out. As I say sometimes in
the intro to gunfighter life from real world, firsthand experience,
there's a lot of people that have podcasts and YouTube
channels that there's nothing wrong with that, and they have
their things on guns especially guns that somebody sent them

(27:41):
for free or whatever, But how many of them have
actually been on both sides of sending rounds and receiving rounds,
and and that kind of changes what you view as important.
You know, like a lot of things sound good in
theory but don't really pan out in real life. And
I think that real world first hand experience a lot

(28:03):
of times is lacking in this kind of fantasy gun
fighting prepping world.

Speaker 1 (28:11):
Totally.

Speaker 2 (28:12):
I appreciate you saying that, I probably will keep that,
and I really appreciate that. Again, that's one of the
reasons I started the podcast is because a lot of
there's a lot of gun channels, and a lot of
way bigger gun channels than mine right now, but a
lot of them don't have real world first hand experience
or they have a very narrow view. They were one thing,
very rarely are they police, law enforcement, you know, private contracting,

(28:34):
all all the things, so and even I'm not all
the things, but pretty well rounded, and that is something
I see as as sadly lacking in the firearms community.

Speaker 1 (28:45):
I hear I hear people talk about the gun, you know,
I hear people talk about a lot of different things.
The chest rig. You can find tons of videos about CQB.
You can find videos and you can actually go get
training about like the control and all sorts of different things.
What I don't hear those people talking about is setting
up all your stuff so that you have it when

(29:06):
you're when you get back, because if you spend it
time like in deep woods with a lot of stuff,
that's the thing is if you don't have it firmly
attached to you and take a fall, it's gone.

Speaker 2 (29:18):
Oh yeah, dummy. Courting is a big thing for sure.
Now at this point in the interview, we had to
kind of get off and reset everything and get back on.
So I wanted to give you a little bit of
a segue. Next we're going to start talking about kind
of firearms and shooting and gear with LEVI. I think
he's got some good information we can all glean from here.

(29:44):
What got you into the more practical aspects of shooting
as opposed to just being a guy with guns or
just growing up, you know, hunting small game and stuff too,
looking at being more effective with a firearm. What howd
that journey kind of start?

Speaker 1 (30:00):
Part of that I was getting interested, I was getting
getting out of the uh, out of the trades, I
was looking at doing some other things. I had a
friend who owned his own or or didn't own it
was running sort of the United States component of a
I mean a private military company is what it was.

(30:22):
So we started shooting together. He was, I believe I
know for a for a long time he was a
foreign equivalent of a Navy seal. So we started shooting together.
That that gave me a lot of improvement, but it
didn't give me. What it didn't give me is it

(30:42):
didn't give me like the tools to like teach myself.
And so he got into competitive shooting not too long
ago and kind of got me interested in it. And
so then you really get into the practical shooting side
of things. Like as soon as you're competing, then it's
immediately down to like how do I train the best?
What gives me the biggest bank of the buck? You know,

(31:03):
how do I how do I fix my grip? How
do I correct the problems? You know? How much dry
fire can I do? How to make it effective? All
of that.

Speaker 2 (31:11):
That's that's great. And when you say practical shooting, I
kind of know what that entails, But what's what does
that entail. What practical shooting disciplines have you?

Speaker 1 (31:20):
Have you tried so strictly usps a pistol. Right now,
I'm gearing up and buying some more things so that
I can get into three gun.

Speaker 2 (31:31):
Ooh, the spendy habit.

Speaker 1 (31:34):
Yeah yeah, I feel like I can borrow some stuff.
We'll see.

Speaker 2 (31:38):
Yeah, yeah, three gun is I I did it briefly.
I've done a lot of that. As you probably know
from the bio, I've dabbled in three gun. But it
is quite time consuming and expensive, especially when you get
into reloading all the shotgun slugs and uh and reloading
the rifle and the handgun. It can be it can
be quite a daunting thing. So but not to say
it's not great, it's it's a great. This plan is

(32:00):
just quite the endeavor. So I applaud you in that.

Speaker 1 (32:05):
Yeah, I don't. I usually get a work truck, gold
places and do things. So I this year my goal
is I want to get like a solid class E
in the pistol side of it. And I built the
nineteen eleven, and then when I get into the three gun,
which hopefully is towards the end of the year, I
pretty much just want to dabble in that for now

(32:27):
and see what I need, and then I can I
can train at home and set up some things to
just dry fire. What do I need for like chest rigs,
What I need for like belt rig shell carriers, all
that stuff.

Speaker 2 (32:37):
Yeah, and then yeah, it'll it'll learn, You'll learn a lot,
just like with pistol. There's quite the learning curve for
that as well.

Speaker 1 (32:45):
Yeah, but I still I would argue that that competition
is one of the best ways to go and judge
where you're at.

Speaker 2 (32:54):
I would agree. And there's kind of a stigma in
the tactical industry and they say, oh, that's petition, that's
kind of a game. But there's a lot in the competition.
And I think the people that say they either have
never done it, or they did it and were really
bad at it and they didn't stick with it, so
they just make an excuse of why it's not relevant
because it's competition.

Speaker 1 (33:15):
Yeah. I saw some of that last year, and I'm
currently an ongoing discussion with another YouTube channel. He's got
another prepping channel. He's ex military, ex army infantry guy,
and he's all about the tactical side, and so we
have this ongoing discussion, and apparently this year he's finally
going to try a competition, and I think it's going

(33:37):
to be a eye opener.

Speaker 2 (33:38):
Oh, it's an eye opener if you you've probably heard
me say it before. But I thought that I was good.
I was a state rifle champion, and I was a
police officer and not fairly competent, like on the a
decent as far as police standards go, pistol shooter. And
I went to my first USPSA competition and I got
humbled big time. And yeah, that kind of got me

(33:59):
into the realization of, hey, these it's just because somebody's
police or military does not make them necessarily a great shooter.
In my opinion, they're generally twenty years behind as far
as techniques, and not especially in the police side of things.
Not necessarily the best shooters.

Speaker 1 (34:16):
No, No, And I shoot with my friend and we
shoot with you know, law local law enforcement. That's pretty
common to see range and unless they on the unless
they're on the hobby side of it, so they're a
competitive shooter or doing something like that, the quals that

(34:37):
they do aren't aren't going to make you like they're
not driving you to be that fast and do all
the things that are necessary to really be a good
competitive shooter.

Speaker 2 (34:47):
Or a just good shooter period. I would argue people
that often say that like, oh, it's it's not tactical
or practical, I would say, which part the being really
fast to being really accurate? Which part of that is
not practical.

Speaker 1 (35:00):
Once you get into it, And I've I've done some
some tactical training with my friend uh So there there
was the former Blackwater North facility uh in northern Illinois
up in Mount Carroll. Been there a few times, was
a member of the range there for a while, so
got to do some stuff there. And people that aren't

(35:23):
doing competitive shooting and are more into the tactical side
of it, they they I don't think they understand that
it requires a lot of awareness so that that you
have to be good enough so that your shooting is
just kind of running in the background and you're aware
of like where you're going, what your next run is,
where you're going to reload. I think it's really realistic,
And like when I shoot with people who are not

(35:44):
competitive now, it's really a different thing.

Speaker 2 (35:48):
It really is. You're right, I mean, even a competent
competitive shooter is better, in my opinion, than the vast
majority of quote unquote tactical military law enforcement shooters.

Speaker 1 (35:59):
I'm not knocking anybody because I don't have the experience
to do it. But when I shoot with those guys,
like if I shoot with a local cop, generally he
is extremely slow and extremely static, and he's not doing
you know, running reloads. He's not doing like retreating bill drills.
He may he may be better, more accurate than me.

(36:20):
You know, he might shoot a better group than me,
but like I could shoot a better group if I
chose to have his like draw a first shot and
split times, you know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (36:30):
Yeah, there's a lot into that. And I'm big on
accuracy too. I'm not going to put down anybody in particular,
but I've said many times police officers are not gunfighters.
Police officers are administrators that happen to carry a gun.

Speaker 1 (36:44):
Yeah, And I don't know, Like, I think a lot
of that just depends on your job, and some people
just won't ever be interested in it because if you're
gonna get really good, that means a lot of times, Like,
I don't know, but kind of my understanding is that
it's maybe the budget isn't there. And I know how
much AMMO I go through. You know how much AMMO
I've gone through in the past, And it could get

(37:05):
expensive and more work, you know what I mean. He
might be working like ten hours a day and then
you're going to tell him, you know, hey, you got
to put in another you know, forty five minutes of
drive fire and you're going to go to the range
on the weekends.

Speaker 2 (37:18):
There are plenty of cops that are good because they
do it on their own. But like you and I
are into fitness, if you only worked out once a month,
which a good good department calls once a month, you
wouldn't be very fit. If you worked out once a month,
you're not going to be very good shooter if you
shoot once a month. Their perishable skills.

Speaker 1 (37:35):
Absolutely absolutely, Maybe four or five years ago, like me
and my friend were like splitting money on like small
pallets of nine milimeters ammunition to train and I got
extremely apt and extremely good, and then I went through
like a four year period where I didn't shoot at all,
and when I restarted, I was terrible. Definitely perishable.

Speaker 2 (37:58):
You mentioned the drive fire. I think we both know
how important that is. But can you speak to your
kind of improvement. Once you got to dedicate a dry
fire routine.

Speaker 1 (38:08):
Oh yeah, so I think drive fire like it's the
only way. It's the way you know you can. You
can break things down into such small, trainable segments that
you can go to a match, or you can go
to the range, you can run some drills. You can
shoot a match and then take notes afterwards and then

(38:29):
come right home and drill down into what the problem is.
It's it's kind of easier in training than it is
in the matches. Matches are kind of hectic.

Speaker 2 (38:39):
Ma'ses are a big, a big mental game too. It's
not just a shooting. The shooting is important, the fundamentals
are important, but there's a lot of mental memorization tactics
that goes into those matches.

Speaker 1 (38:50):
Absolutely, absolutely, you can game it. You can game it,
and you have to if you're going to be competitive.

Speaker 2 (38:55):
You could be the best shooter technically, but you have
let's say, well, you know, you judge a target array
and do it the least. You don't do it as efficiently,
and you could be the worst on the stage.

Speaker 1 (39:06):
Absolutely, if the other guys are good too, you bet,
you bet. But the dry fire allows you to take
a lesson that you can see when you're actually shooting
the gun, bring that lesson home, and then break down
into really tiny segments how to fix that, and then
just wrap that and then you can you can fix

(39:27):
that by the next match, or at least have it
a lot better. And so it's it's the biggest bang
for your buck.

Speaker 2 (39:33):
Drive fire definitely is the biggest bang for your buck,
literally because once you have the gear, it doesn't cost
you anything except for time. Going back to the practical shooting.
People love to talk about the gear, even though you
and I probably know it's not the most important thing.
But what pistol did you start with? And what are
you going to say?

Speaker 1 (39:55):
Ruger Sr Nine and had like a lot of problems
with that. That gun was old. It was extremely beat up.
I'm surprised it didn't come apart. So during matches I
would have like three or four malfunctions that I had
to clear, not really the gun's fault, and I just
over the winter built my own nineteen eleven.

Speaker 2 (40:18):
Yeah, I know, for the people that don't know, this
is the second time recording this section of the interview,
because the first time was my fault that got messed up.
I didn't get saved properly or something. I'll take the
hit for that. Is there a reason you went with
the nineteen eleven as opposed to just getting a glock
or getting an MMP or something like that.

Speaker 1 (40:37):
So I wanted to my friend some of his guest,
I kind of liked the nineteen eleven. I didn't want
the nineteen eleven, and I wanted to be able to
shoot single stack minor, and I went with that for

(41:00):
the weight, just for the weight, so I have a
full uncut slide. Yeah, I would basically like fighting to
fix my grip if I could have fixed my grip
and shot better with the s R nine. It was me,
but I had decided at that point, Okay, I can

(41:21):
do this, and I got the frame basically free, so
it was kind of a no barker for me.

Speaker 2 (41:29):
Yeah, that's the way the triggers. All nineteen elevens are
just phenomenal. They're they're hard to compete with for pretty
much anything else.

Speaker 1 (41:37):
Oh, it's a whole different world. It's it's an entirely
different thing. I mean, yeah, for me, like you know,
a nice rifle, like a nice you know, like a
nice over and undershotgun and they have that just crisp
you know trigger with like hardly any travel to it.
And I love it. Yep.

Speaker 2 (41:58):
Yeah, they're they're phenomen well. I think people that grew
up in the glock generation they kind of don't get
it unless they actually kind of run one on the
clock and realize how smooth and beautiful those guns run
when they run.

Speaker 1 (42:11):
Well. Yeah, mine mine's running really well. So I've I've
had it out a couple of times, you know, put
some rounds through it. I was surprised the way I
built that thing, Like I built it in the dark
hold and like you know, flashlights and the crook of
my neck. I did some of it literally by like
you know, with a head lamp on. A lot of
fitting and filing and then you know, emery cloth and

(42:33):
getting everything polished. It runs great, So I'm super thrilled
with it.

Speaker 2 (42:39):
That's fantastic. I'm happy for you there, And that's a
probably a good transition into survival guns because you're also
a prepper and a survivalist obviously, is that going to
be your survival handgun as well?

Speaker 1 (42:50):
I don't even know that I would take a handgup
if I was going to I do have Ruber Mark two,
I would be more tempted to bring that, honestly.

Speaker 2 (43:03):
Yeah, that's a that's a solid choice. That's a solid choice.

Speaker 1 (43:07):
Yeah. And and really for that I'm going to be,
you know, hunting with a long gun probably be well
for sure going to be a shotgun. I'm looking at
my next end of the world, you know, also competition shotgun.
Right now, I'm going to get that JP sour s
L five. No, I don't say that.

Speaker 2 (43:30):
You you you before this interview, you came to that
conclusion on your own right that the shotgun is kind
of the ultimate survival gun long gun.

Speaker 1 (43:40):
Yeah. Now, I I grew up and I've done quite
a bit of hunting, quite a bit of uh you know, shooting,
and so I know how far out I can get
a slug kind of have enough not great, but have
enough woodscraft that when I'm doing something. So if I'm

(44:01):
out find like a two week trip or something, whenever
I want to I can get close enough to pretty
much anything that I want to that I can pretty
much take a really safe shot with a shotgun.

Speaker 2 (44:10):
Yeah, that's a good call. And as you probably know,
feeding yourself is a big deal in hard times. And
I don't think anything rivals the shotgun for feeding yourself.

Speaker 1 (44:23):
I don't know of anything.

Speaker 2 (44:24):
It's so versatile. Upland game two doves to grouse to waterfowl.
I mean, waterfowl is a great source of calories and
fat and good healthy protein. A lot of people overlook.

Speaker 1 (44:37):
Yeah, and so I know on this last trip that
I did, every single day, I was within like, you know,
fifteen twenty yards of you know, geese, ducks, you know
pretty much you name it, woodchucks, squirrels, rabbits. Yeah, you know,
I could have had any the cheapest you know, skiper

(45:00):
would have been put to the table like daily.

Speaker 2 (45:02):
So yeah, yeah, And a lot of people focus on deer, deer, deer.
But I think we mentioned this but it didn't get
recorded that. I'm not so sure how viable that's going
to be post apocalypse with a bunch of people east
of the Mississippi or even in even in areas now
that have a lot of deer because of agriculture that's
predicated on mass production, mechanized farming. If that goes away

(45:26):
and all that wheat and corn and soy goes away,
those deer are probably going to greatly reduce on their own,
let alone because of human predation.

Speaker 1 (45:35):
Yeah, just going from my own experience, not this last winter,
but the winter before. I did three weeks for weeks
where the only thing I ate was what I hunted.
That was during January. And even though there's plenty of
deer around here, see them all the time. I was
out on a farm, it saw deer all the time.

(45:57):
What I ate every day was rabbits because you could
go out in the snow, easy to track. They don't
go far, you know. They they have like a small territory.
You don't need a lot to get them. And so
I would just go out with a flashlight and pop them.

Speaker 2 (46:12):
Mm hmmm yeah nice. What uh and why so why
would you not take an ar in that scenario as
opposed to a shotgun. I'm just.

Speaker 1 (46:23):
So there there's there's a weird like fantasy where people
are going to you know, have like gun battles and stuff,
and uh, if that, like, maybe you do, I would
probably still want If I'm gonna if I'm just going
for gun battles and I get any gun I want,

(46:45):
I'm probably gonna want something bigger a little bit bigger
than an AR. But that's just me. I don't mind,
like you know, heavier guns, bigger recoil. Never had a
problem with it, but for for for what I want
to do, Like the I don't know, Like the AR,
you can't You're not gonna shoot a rabbit with it.
You're not gonna maybe a goose. But man like hope

(47:06):
you don't. You know, it's gonna make a mess of it.
They're just too zippy.

Speaker 2 (47:11):
Yeah, and then yeah, the point the point when you're
hunting small game is not just to kill it. It's
to eat it. And if you shoot it with a
three thousand feet per second varmint round, it's not it's
designed varmit. Hunting is designed to destroy the animal, not
to eat the animal, and that's what that round was
designed for. So it kind of defeats the purpose of
hunting for food.

Speaker 1 (47:31):
Yeah, And I just don't if I have to be
in a in a self defense situation anyway, I have
shot in AR. I've certainly shot lots of rifles. I
just feel like, especially around here, that's gonna take place
within our if we're going from a prepper like like
this is the societal breakdown we're going to defend ourselves
or do something else for me that has to take

(47:53):
place within a realistic range. Anyway, run around and zip
off three hundred yard shots with an ar, do you?

Speaker 2 (48:00):
Because I think, in my personal experience and in research
that I've done, the vast majority of defensive or even
justifiable gunfights, you know, happen well inside of three hundred yards.
What do you think a realistic distance.

Speaker 1 (48:15):
Is for me? One hundred yards? Okay, if I'm I
have shot enough that if I'm going to reliably have
a chance of shooting something like like, let alone if
it's moving, Because if if a person just just lays
down at one hundred yards, they're an incredibly small target.

(48:37):
You know, whip up the three x magnifier and like
your dot, you know, so much goes into that. And
I've tried to do that and it's just doesn't seem realistic.

Speaker 2 (48:48):
And a lot of that. People that go and shoot
steel at three hundred but steel is usually painted so
it stands out and it's not moving. People, humans or
anything else that you shoot at generally moves, and oh absolutely,
that's a different thing. I have practice shooting rifle at
moving target pistol at moving target. But that's a that's

(49:11):
a skill set, and and that's a that's a big deal.
And I don't know that you're gonna have time to
be doing all the messing with gear and dialing dope
and messing with magnifiers. And my experience usually that stuff
happens fast and quick and it's over and you're either
breathing or you're not.

Speaker 1 (49:27):
And and I don't have any I have been shot at,
like by someone with bad intentions with a rifle. I
ended up in a cornfield and then they blind fired
into the cornfield. Yeah, and I was laying down, So
so I do know what happens. I do know, like
I experienced the after effects of that where you get
like tunnel vision, your heart feels like it's beaten out

(49:49):
of your chest, your legs.

Speaker 2 (49:52):
Absolutely, that's a real thing. Slow motion timing, tunnel vision,
that's that's absolutely a real thing.

Speaker 1 (49:59):
Just use that experience. I have to be realistic with
myself and know that I don't have twenty years of
experience doing this stuff. So if I'm going to take
a realistic gun for this, like my best chance is
something that's going to be complicated. You know that that
the chest rig and everything isn't complicated. It's just not

(50:21):
going to work for me. Some guys maybe they can
make that work. I think that's going to take a
lot of time, a lot of training. I may learn
some of that in three gun, but for right now,
I don't. I if I had an ar here and
I had the sun.

Speaker 2 (50:41):
Yeah, there's a lot to be said. I think the shotgun,
because it's not as tacticol or as as you know
as I don't know, hip or Instagram cool, it doesn't
get the love, but I think it's by far the
most practical of the weapons.

Speaker 1 (50:55):
Yeah, most of those, most of the social media stuff
that I see, they're they're not on a timer, they're
not ever showing the targets, but they're not showing the results.
They're certainly not you know, showing any kind of like
indication of like time versus accuracy anything like that. So
who knows really what's going on. I don't think most

(51:17):
people are as good as they think they are. That
goes for like ars and stuff, even some guys that
are that are sort of famous for it, you know,
because I have gone and shot with it some guys
and trained with some guys that are pretty you know,
you would consider like, you know, tier one unit guys,
and it's not as sexy as Instagram. It doesn't look

(51:38):
anything like that. You know. It looks like a lot
of reps. You know, it looks like a lot of
you know, very specific training to like correct certain things
or maintain certain things. It doesn't look like running and
shooting backwards, you know, like none of that stuff.

Speaker 2 (51:56):
Yeah, I wouldn't argue with that for sure. A lot
of that, A lot of that is just kind of
more of a prepper fantasy or you know, kind of
a four show thing as opposed to a reality thing.
What about knives, you have like a go to knife

(52:17):
that you use. I know people will probably be curious
about that.

Speaker 1 (52:21):
For big trips, I take a kershaw camped fourteen okay,
and I strick. We'll use that to baton firewood. Usually
i'm out, well, every time I go on a trip,
I'm out during the winter, and so you'll have a
period of like rain or snow, things a little bit wet.
So what I found and I take a silky saw

(52:41):
with Katana boy because I just don't want to me
A lot of times if I just went through the ice.
Now I'm getting out of the ice. It might take me,
you know, depending on what's going on, you know, five
minutes to get out of the ice, even with your
ice suit. So by the time that five minutes was up,
I might have my left leg soaked like up to
my knee. And so you want to make a fire

(53:03):
like right away, you know, you don't want to mess around,
And so I just but I cut big chunks of
wood and I baton down to the drywood, and I
want to do that as fast as inefficiently as possible.
So I carry the camp fourteen. And then so there's
a guy exodus knife and tool. I pretty much bow

(53:24):
his knives, had nothing but nothing but love for him.
So I have an adventure craft which is like a
three inch small knife, and then those are really my
two main knives. And then I'll usually just to experiment
take something else. So right now I'm using an acting
on burba M seventy three, which is a D two
knife kind of a kind of a combat knife. But

(53:46):
you know, he's inunds more on the practical side. Really,
anything that's practical, like there's no gimmicks, there's no like
scout knives. There's none of that. Yeah, just a good steal,
you know, A find enough edge to do some utility work.
I've had problems with like super steels where they were

(54:06):
so difficult to sharpen, and I'm not the world sharpen anyway.
Most of the time. When I'm sharpening something, you know,
it's ten degrees, you know, in the snow. I don't
want to mess with this thing for a while, you know.
So let's get a good you know, medium like rough
edge on that thing and call it good.

Speaker 2 (54:26):
Yea, So what about I just transition out of that?
What about packs? What's your your go to pack that
you have?

Speaker 1 (54:36):
So I don't I don't really believe in the get
home bag, the bug out bag, like any of that stuff.
I have like one bag and that that has all
of my face like stuff in it. If i have
to head out the door, That's what I'm gonna grab.
I have a Burlostock F one mainframe pack just for

(54:57):
its It sits so well on your hips, so solid
on your hips.

Speaker 2 (55:00):
Yeah, they're nice. I also run an everly Stock. I
run the gun Runner and I have one before that.
But the everly stocks are they're they're really good packs.

Speaker 1 (55:10):
And then so I run that and then the J
type zip in dry bag and then I sew. So
I've got my own. I actually used to make a
gear like semi professionally. I do all my own like
molly panels.

Speaker 2 (55:26):
Pretty cool, any other like things that you normally wouldn't
think of, but through your your time in the field
that you're like, this is important. Uh.

Speaker 1 (55:40):
The only thing that I've ever really had problems with
with places that I just couldn't make fires. So so
if I'm on a sandbar or something and then yeah
MSR pocket rocket, it'll actually get cold. You won't be
able to have that burn. It can also have problems
at altitude. Oh, any of the like jet boils. This

(56:02):
is a different MSR. I forget the the name of it,
but it's it's pretty expensive, but it's it's basically it's
designed to work in the cold, like that specifically what
it's for. So that and and really like there's some
new fabrics out there that really really well. So like

(56:26):
I made my own sleeping bag. It's it's six grams
per yard, like climbate shield apex, you know with uh
per text fabric outer you know, and like a and
they they it actually works. So you can just lay
lay down in the water in that thing and you
can go to that wet and you'll wake up it'll
actually dry you off. Oh wow, fully fully dressed, wet

(56:50):
and it still works. And I have not.

Speaker 2 (56:54):
Yeah, I'd say that you have a lot more experience
on the cold weather end than I do. Yeah, that
that's pretty amazing. One thing that I would mention that
is water purification. Just a simple water purification tablets of Sawyer.
Many those things can be really really important. Everybody thinks
about the tactical, the AMMO and everything, but when you

(57:15):
need water, you can't shoot your way into clean water.
You know, that's important.

Speaker 1 (57:20):
No, I'm looking at a new one. I forget who
it's made. But I've actually had the Sawyer minies. I
wear them on a necklace inside the dry suit, and
I've had I've had those freeze and had the ceramic
element shatter in the time it took me to like
take it out start running water through it. On one trip,

(57:40):
I went through two of those, so that can happen.
I typically just pre filter, like through a sock. So
if I'm Mississippi, I'll pre filter through. I'll save one
sock for bathing and one for pre filtering, and I'll
pre filter the water and then just boil it. I've
never had a problem.

Speaker 2 (58:01):
That that's a good call. I the water purification tablets
are small and simple and easy. I've never had any
I've never gotten sick with water. I've used those in
so far, Thank the Lord.

Speaker 1 (58:11):
When we go out places, we're probably going places like
where the water is better anyway, even here when when
I'm in the Mississippi, my main concern would be would
typically be uh, agriculture runoff, so you know, fertilizers besides

(58:35):
like that during the winter, that's not really the problem
around here. Those have those have mostly flushed downstream, so
dirt is the problem, you know, just the the cleanliness
of it.

Speaker 2 (58:48):
Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (58:51):
I saw your post about night vision and that that
does come up in prepping circle, and it goes along
with guns. The only thing I'll say about really quick
is that I have used one one time. I believe
it was a PBS fourteen or like a digital version
of a PBS fourteen, But the only one that I
precried just for a few minutes, would have been like
incredibly difficult because of that, Like I can't even imagine.

(59:13):
It was weird to look at your feet.

Speaker 2 (59:15):
I think they have merit outside, but in an indoor application,
especially CQB where things are fast and dynamic, I see,
I see less practical application there. Hopefully you alpha males
out there that listen and are into guns and defense
and hunting and survival, like that portion of the episode

(59:36):
about guns and shooting. Now we're going to transition again
to another segue into another part of the interview.

Speaker 1 (59:45):
Okay, so there's there's in the prepping space, just kind
of fascinated by the whole thing.

Speaker 3 (59:53):
There's been a really leadover with with military or or
military style that there wasn't there a decade ago.

Speaker 1 (01:00:03):
So you'll see things. And one there's one thing that
I recently saw is it comes across randomly on my
Instagram feed, but it's this guy. He's he's driving like
a Cabota tractor. He has any meals for the last decade.
Fitness is not a priority. He's got his wife daughter

(01:00:24):
standing on the floorboard. She's holding an ar and oddly
enough a shotgun bandlier but there's no shells in it.
I'm driving down a kind of a forested trail, obviously
on their property, probably in the back forty somewhere. Yeah,
and it says in little a little caption, coming to
get my stuff after s HTF and and it's got

(01:00:45):
that song playing. It's like dumb Ways to Die or
something like fantasy Land of of. I don't know if
you could do anything worse, Maybe you could like run
around shouting and banging pots and and that that's why
podcasts like yours other reality and performance based and I

(01:01:07):
will add morality and ethically based things are so important now.
There's so much across the prepping space the two A
community that it's just complete fantasy. It's not helpful. In fact,
I would consider it harmful, actively harmful. And I want

(01:01:28):
a strong community. I want the people in my area
to do well and be okay.

Speaker 2 (01:01:34):
Yeah, yeah, I agree. I would like everybody to be okay.
Talking about this conspiracy theory on FEMA, they do tell
everybody to have like two weeks of food and water.
I believe, I mean most people probably don't do that.

Speaker 1 (01:01:49):
No, not around here, not around here. I can't believe
how many people around where I live, even in the
trailer park, get food delivered. Yeah, so that's.

Speaker 2 (01:01:59):
Most Yeah, that's that's a pretty it's a pretty rough deal.
I mean I see it too. People they're just like
they're just they kind of go to their life oblivious.
And as you alluded to in the beginning, we live
in a very strange and very different time and culture
than almost anywhere throughout history. It's you know, it's not

(01:02:20):
normal to order something along Amazon and have it in
two days. That's a very strange thing in human history.
Or to have food delivered, or to go to a
Walmart and be able to get food from literally all
around the world and put it in the shopping cart.
That's a strange thing.

Speaker 1 (01:02:37):
Yeah, and there's there's there's not enough stress anymore on
Like we don't have jobs anymore. I do. You probably
like what you do for work kind of keeps us fit,
but we've never had access to like the calorie dense
foods that we have now. I don't think we're meant
to live like this. I think that's why preper the thing.

(01:02:58):
I think it's like a subconscient realization that that you
can't keep going like this indefinitely. People want to prepare,
but they don't know what to do yeah, And so
you end up with people who, because of the society
we live in, are not inclined to actually go do
the things. They just want to be shown in like

(01:03:21):
a five minute video how to do it. Yeah, and
then and then get that magic bullet. But the magic
bullet doesn't exist.

Speaker 2 (01:03:28):
Yeah, they want to they want to buy their way
out of a problem. They want to click a button
on Amazon and say, oh, I'm good now I have
a fire kit. You know, but as you as you
probably know, if you're freezing on the side of a
river or a mountain or whatever, that kid's not gonna
help you if you don't know what you're doing. There's
a lot more to it than that. Just if you

(01:03:48):
look at history, civilizations collapse, they all do, they all have.
You know, our American society is very young compared to
something like Rome. But even Rome collapse, and it's society
is not this lineary progression up and up and up,
or like an escalator. It's a lot of ups and downs.

(01:04:08):
If you look at ancient Rome, they had hot and
cold running water to the public. We didn't have that
again until like the nineteen forties or fifties. We went
you know, almost two thousand years without it. Stuff happens,
and to think that you're always going to be able
to go to Walmart and throw a sack of potatoes
and ground beef in your cart is not really realistic. Now,

(01:04:29):
maybe that happens tomorrow, Maybe it happens in one hundred years.
That's kind of the thing is nobody knows.

Speaker 1 (01:04:36):
Well, the probability isn't zero.

Speaker 2 (01:04:41):
Yeah, for sure. The probability, I would say, is it
one hundred percent. Whether you look at science or history
or anything else, it's just a question of when. And
I take the Biblical approach of watch and be ready.
Nobody knows the day or the hour, certainly not me.

Speaker 1 (01:05:01):
So that's that's why my girlfriend is a prepper, because
you know, she believes that that the Biblical end times
may be approaching. She literally believes that.

Speaker 2 (01:05:13):
Well, I mean, Jesus himself says, nobody knows that they
or the hour. And I'm not going to pretend to.
But one thing is a reality. Every day is one
day closer to that. Certainly, I look at the Bible
for truth number one. But this is a place where science, history,
the Bible, they all agree that one day this will end.

(01:05:38):
When that is I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:05:41):
Right, And it's so it's it's it's our job as
men to be as prepared and capable as we can be. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:05:53):
Yeah, Providing and protecting for those weaker around us is
something as a man we should be ready to do.

Speaker 1 (01:06:01):
And and so I think what happens is is once
you're actually serious, you start looking around for serious, realistic
solutions to like and and improvements to yourself.

Speaker 2 (01:06:12):
Mm hmmm.

Speaker 1 (01:06:14):
Something I hear really common in prepping circles is people
talking about, well, who do I want on my team?
And my question is like, do you want yourself on
your team?

Speaker 2 (01:06:24):
That's a that's a good question.

Speaker 1 (01:06:26):
Are you in a position where where you have that
that leadership skill not just because of charisma, but but
from actual experience. Yeah, And most of the time the
answer is no.

Speaker 2 (01:06:40):
Yeah, And a lot of people they I think a
lot of people put themselves in these prepper fantasies where
they're the leader. But all the thing about leadership is
if you've been a leader, leadership is often a heavy
burden and a lot of times you get the short
end of the stick.

Speaker 1 (01:06:57):
Oh for sure, it's not what they like.

Speaker 2 (01:06:58):
They want the glory of this prepper fantasy of being
a leader. But like in the Marine Corps, when you
get promoted, if there's not enough coow, if you're the leader,
you don't eat. If you're a good leader, then you
often do the harder things. You get less sleep, you
get less food, you get less you know, you don't use.
A good leader shouldn't be there to take advantage of
the people on the team. They should be there to

(01:07:19):
serve the team servant. Leadership, as Jesus teaches us, is
a thing, and it's the right thing.

Speaker 1 (01:07:26):
It is. There's there's a lot that goes into that.
You you see, I see people all the time who
want to be in a leadership role. But the second
that there's a problem, they don't want the responsibility. They'll
turn to someone else who who is capable of that leadership.

Speaker 2 (01:07:46):
Yeah, and a lot of times, a lot of times,
as a leader, you don't have many friends, especially if
you're a good leader, because you have to make hard choices.
It's it's a real thing, man, It's tough. I've been there.
I think a lot of people have this fantasy of
prepping in their head where the warlord and because they
bought beans and rice. They have people throwing themselves at
them like they're a genius. But I don't. I don't

(01:08:09):
think that's very realistic either, as.

Speaker 1 (01:08:12):
Far as like you're going to stand at your gate
and you're gonna have some desperate person who's been him
and his wife and his two kids have been stepping
over corpses for the last forty miles, they haven't eaten
in three days, and you're gonna stand at the gate
and ask that man what skills does he have? What
does he bring to it? Yeah, like he's gonna come
over that gate and strangle you. Five minutes ago, his

(01:08:37):
wife gave him the speech, you know, and she said,
you are the man because roles are going to change.
She's she's gonna say, you are the man. Go do
your man job, and we're done bringing us food and water,
and don't come back.

Speaker 2 (01:08:52):
You don't bring it, and you can attest probably being
hungry and sleep deprived and crazy cold. That can change
you like that. That that's a that's a hard that's
it's different. Then then sitting back watching Netflix and saying
I would do this.

Speaker 1 (01:09:09):
It's it's not it's not even the same thing, not
even close.

Speaker 2 (01:09:13):
Yeah, it's it's rough man and a lot of that.
I again, I think there is a big disconnect with
with UH, with that whole thing, Which is kind of
funny that you should be came to prepping from watching
Doomsday Preppers, because obviously that show is meant for drama,
and it's meant to kind of paint those people as
crazy and and but maybe if it gets people into prepping,

(01:09:35):
it's not all bad.

Speaker 1 (01:09:39):
Yeah. I recognized the drama aspect of it, but I
was just curious to see if it was if it
was possible to prepare for something like that. And then
over the yearclusions and at the same time I was
I was becoming really fascinated with how ancient people moved
through the land landscape, so so that truly minimal, like

(01:10:02):
I make it as I go toolkit.

Speaker 2 (01:10:04):
Yeah, I love studying like ancient cultures. One thing I
learned that they were talking about ice age people here
in the United States, and one thing they discovered is
when they killed a big animal, they would take one
of the femurs. You're talking to these think megafauna, you know,
a mammoth. They would take one of the femurs and
they had a way to split it with a rock,

(01:10:24):
and this doesn't happen naturally, so they could tell people
did this. They would take the femur and split it
and make a large knife out of the femur and
butcher the animal and then just leave the femur there
when they were done.

Speaker 1 (01:10:35):
Can you you've skinned things? I've skinned things larger animals, goats, deer.
Can you imagine? Well?

Speaker 2 (01:10:42):
I can because I've done it. Like I was a
professional big game hunter and guiding. Part of that was butchering.
And if you get an animal fresh, a lot of
times you can kind of turn them inside out and
only really use a crew blade when you need it.
You know a lot of people back east like hang
a deer and cut it. But if you're in a hurry,
you can kind of just grab and pull really hard,

(01:11:03):
and if it's fresh, you can take a you can
take something off. So I mean, I can see that
being viable, especially, like you said, if you're a minimalist
and you need to cover a lot of ground to
kill or find a hurt of mammoth, you probably don't
want to carry a bunch of tools. Talking about primitive culture, also,
I heard this story. I don't know if it's true,

(01:11:23):
But it makes sense that the Eskimo, the Inuit, they
would have like a rifle and they would shoot their
seal or whatever, and they would take their brass casing
from their thirty thirty pound it out, sharpen it all
on a rock and butcher the animal with the casing
they shot it with.

Speaker 1 (01:11:38):
That, I can totally see like brass is a good
solid thing. You can you can definitely put an edge
on brass.

Speaker 2 (01:11:44):
Yeah, yeah, well, if you shatter a bone the right way,
I imagine it can get pretty sharp too. I've never
done it. If you have a lot of skill, you
don't need as much stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:11:54):
No, absolutely not, absolutely not. Too much stuff is a detriment.

Speaker 2 (01:11:59):
It is like we talked to out with your pack.
If you can't climb a fence with your pack, that
pack's probably getting left behind, especially if somebody shooting at
you where you're or like you're trying to climb a
riverbank and you fell in the ice. If you got
too much stuff, it's absolutely a detriment.

Speaker 1 (01:12:13):
And that's one of my current focuses is to go
absolutely as minimal as possible, and it's for comfort, honestly. Yeah,
you know, I have a nicer time while I carry
the pack and while I walk.

Speaker 2 (01:12:26):
Yeah, I mean, if you talk about an actual end
of the world scenario, if there's people that are actually
trying to kill you, if it's miserable for you to
carry your pack, which I'm sure you know, if you've
carried a heavy pack and your head's down and you're distracted,
that's that just gonna get you in a lot of trouble.

Speaker 1 (01:12:44):
Well, one thing that I've learned from combining all of
these things is that I can't carry like heavy weight.
Just from experimentation, for say like five six miles, I
can carry it that far. But what I'm not going
to do is I'm not going to do the same
kind of moving and shooting at the end of that
as I would do in a pistol match. Yeah, and

(01:13:04):
that's what I want to do. When the time comes
to actually do that, I need to be capable of
doing that, and I have to learn from other people
who have the experience, and then experiment myself actually go
out and do it, and create a system that allows
me to actually do that.

Speaker 2 (01:13:21):
Yeah, as we alluded to earlier, I think about thirty
pounds and I've certainly rocked a lot heavier, but about
thirty pounds is my weight limit. I want to be
able to run with my pack.

Speaker 1 (01:13:33):
Well. So I've been in pretty good shape all my life.
I'm fifty now and I feel pretty good. I feel
pretty good. I Unfortunately, I went through that sickness and
I had a couple other things happened. I lost a
lot of weight. So I'm down about twenty pounds, but

(01:13:55):
I'll build it back up. You can still do it
at fifty.

Speaker 2 (01:13:57):
I have received a pretty griev injury and I couldn't
even walk for a while. You can certainly get it back.

Speaker 1 (01:14:05):
Yeah. Yeah, it all comes to work. You know, your
your focus, your discipline. Discipline is something I struggle with
and so I'm that's That's one of my main focuses
right now. Is just when I write it on the board,
when I write it on the calendar, I do it
no matter what.

Speaker 2 (01:14:22):
Yeah, showing up is often the hardest hurdle in physical fitness.
Does a matter if you're tired or you don't feel
like it. If you don't feel like it and you
did a push up, you still did a push up.
If you're really tired and you do a push up,
you still did a push up a lot of people. Well,
here's the way that my wife likes to put it,
and she's big in a fitness does like she's just
got done with a half marathon last weekend. If you

(01:14:44):
look for a reason, you'll find one, whether that's a
reason to not do it or to do it. Like,
if you look for a reason why you can't work out,
then you'll find one. If you look for a way
to work out, then you'll do it.

Speaker 1 (01:14:56):
Yeah, I find that I just have to make it
a thing and then just keep doing it until it's
something that I just kind of automatically do. So I
wake up, I'll do like part of my workout for
the day, I'll drive fire, go to work. My work
is pretty physically difficult, so a lot of times I'm
blown up. So then I'll dry fire again, do the

(01:15:17):
rest of my workout, maybe go for a walk. I
usually like anywhere from five to some bad days, like
ten miles a day on the job actually walking.

Speaker 2 (01:15:28):
Yeah, that's that's hard. That's pretty physically active.

Speaker 1 (01:15:32):
So it's it's extremely hard for me to do any
kind of like intense workout after work. And not enough
people in the in the prepping world do that, and
not enough people who are presenting the content, who are
who are the teachers? Literally they're taking on the mantle
of teacher an instructor, and they don't show anything, demonstrate competency.

(01:15:52):
They won't show themselves working out. I have conversations with
them all the time. They always end the same, want
to show that kind of thing, you go do it,
don't watch this channel. This is a channel where we
sit and talk. You know, if you're if you're already
videoing yourself and you're already doing these things, if you
were actually putting in the work, you would be showing

(01:16:14):
yourself doing that. I feel so I'm you have a
YouTube channel, but it's kind of like the dark side
of prepping, and it's designed to like call out to
actually do the things, but to also kind of call
out kind of the fantasy side of it. So it's
not going to be popular.

Speaker 2 (01:16:32):
No, that's okay.

Speaker 1 (01:16:33):
What is it?

Speaker 2 (01:16:34):
I'll well, we'll definitely put a link in there.

Speaker 1 (01:16:37):
It's it's greater counter preparedness. I don't know if you should.

Speaker 2 (01:16:41):
Okay, well, that's up to you. You let me know
before the episode comes out. There's gonna be a lot
of editing, so you let me know.

Speaker 1 (01:16:47):
Okay, I don't. I don't know that it would it
would go well with your your conk.

Speaker 2 (01:16:54):
I mean that that doesn't matter to me. I'm not
here for me. I'm I'm here to serve. So if
if you want it on there and you want me
to promote it, I certainly will put a link in there.
Anything else you want to want to say before we close.

Speaker 1 (01:17:06):
If someone is listening to this and they are a prepper,
you know that that you don't don't pay any attention
to any of the fear monitoring. Just do the things,
get better yourself, become more fit, whatever you can do,
like do that and the restividuals kind of fall into place.

Speaker 2 (01:17:23):
I think, good advice, man. I really appreciate you being on.

Speaker 1 (01:17:28):
Oh no problems, man, It's my pleasure, right.

Speaker 2 (01:17:32):
Cool, Thanks, thanks man, I appreciate you. LEVI have a
blessed weekend. So I think there's a lot to chew
on in that episode and be circumspect and consider and
pontificate on. So no particular additional tactical tip at the
end your verse of the day I think goes rather

(01:17:54):
well with this. Get wisdom, get understanding, do not forget
my words or swerve from them. Do not forsake wisdom,
and she will protect you. Love her and she will
watch over you. Wisdom is supreme. Therefore, get wisdom proverbs

(01:18:15):
for thanks men, and have a blessed day.