Wild Takes

Hunting Is For Everyone

• Calem Bushway • Season 1 • Episode 7

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Sean Fong is a champion Jiu jitsu competitor, key note speaker, world record breaking swimmer, new hunter and double amputee. 

SPEAKER_01

Hi, I'm Sean Fong, and this is Wild Takes.

SPEAKER_03

Today on the show, I have the honor of talking to world champion jujitsu athlete and swimming world record holder Sean Fong. Today's Wild Take is that hunting is for everyone. Where is Fong from?

SPEAKER_01

Fong is Chinese. The story is my great-grandfather left China when he was a young man and went to Fiji for sandalwood and beach de mer, which he wanted to send back to China and make money that way. So he arrived there, met Fijian women, and had 21 odd kids. Twenty-one? Yeah, he was an underachiever. So that's that's the history of my family. So on my dad's side, he's got Chinese mixed with um Fijian, and on my mum's side, he's got some European blood mixed with Fijian.

SPEAKER_03

Interesting. The Asian entrepreneurs, they did there was a lot of that. There's in Broome, there's a a big contingency of Japanese people that moved for the pearls. And there's also a lot of sandalwood there.

SPEAKER_01

Mm-hmm. Uh sandalwood was one of the main things that they used to make incense. Yeah. So both on my mum and dad's side. Um, whether it's copra, so drying coconut products to make soap, oil, whatever it is, yeah, or wood. Just using the natural resources of the land to make money.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, amazing. Amazing. So Sean. Um a little bit about you. So you are a jujitsu, I believe you're a brown belt now. I am competitive. I haven't competed for a few years. Competitive. That's true. When I say competitive, I mean not current, but brown belt. So you are uh you're not a hobbyist, you uh No, I'm I'm deep in the game. You've definitely tussled. Um also swimming world record holder, am I correct?

SPEAKER_01

One-time world record holder, yeah. Um in a short course 25 meter pool, I once had the world record in my class for the 100 butterfly.

SPEAKER_03

Wow, that's amazing. And also uh a keynote speaker.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, um, I'll share a bit about my story. Um it's nice that kind of through sport I've built um I've built a somewhat interesting story to a lot of people, yeah. And um if individuals, companies, organizations want to want to hear my stuff, yeah, they can always reach out. And it's something that's picked up in terms of business for me, especially after COVID. Yeah. I had um people and places reaching out to me, like how you deal with adversity, how you bunt bounce back from serious tragedy and you know what the the thought process is behind it, and if people can get something out of my story, I'm always happy to share.

SPEAKER_03

And you've achieved these amazing accolades after going through quite a serious accident.

SPEAKER_01

Uh yeah, it's it's it's a funny thing. Looking back on it now, it's I kind of lucked my way through a lot of this stuff. But yeah, um I was born and raised in Fiji. When I was seven years old, I had an accident with a sugar cane train where the train ran over my right leg and I also lost my left arm as a result of that. So that was a very, very difficult time in my life for my family and I, but yeah, we managed to bounce back and come through it. And then some.

SPEAKER_03

And not only that, but bounce back, it bounced into greatness, in fact.

SPEAKER_01

Uh thank you. I I don't think um I don't think anybody that um has been through something like that can tell you that they they knew it was gonna work out this way.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Um for the longest time, I never thought I'd be an athlete. I think for the guys that grew up with me or or who knew me when I was coming up, they wouldn't have guessed that I'd be an athlete either. Um so my story. My accident happened when I was seven, and to be honest, I didn't really like school. Yeah. Um my grandparents owned a farm in the countryside in Fiji, so they had cattle and they had pigs. Yeah. So I grew up very, very active, swimming, running, fishing. As I'm sure you know, Fiji is a religion. Excuse me, rugby is a religion in Fiji. Um, everyone grows up passing the Sevens game in particular, yeah. Every afternoon we meet up and we play games, it's a big thing. Anytime there's a break in school, people are playing rugby, they're talking about rugby. The Hong Kong Sevens is this weekend, it's a big deal, everyone's already planning where they're gonna be when they watch the game. So when I had my accident, the biggest shock for me was I couldn't participate in a lot of the stuff that all my friends and family used to participate in. Yeah. They used to ask me to sit on the side in school while Caleb and all the boys are gonna go play rugby, and it used to eat me up inside. Couldn't play soccer, couldn't play basketball or anything else that had to do with running. Now the um the great part about growing up in Fiji is it's 330 odd islands. So I could always retreat to the water, either a river or some kind of waterway or the ocean. And I used to love the weightless feeling. Um, a lot of people don't know this, but as an amputee, you're constantly looking for trip or slip hazards as you're walking around on the ground. Yeah? Whereas when I'm in the water, I could just relax and I love the weightless feeling of it, and that's what I used to do. School was very difficult for me because all the subjects that I wanted to do, so for example, woodwork, metalwork, PE, I couldn't really express myself to the level that I wanted to. And I was always told, I remember having a meeting with a woodwork teacher, and he was like, mate, I've got 20 to 30 students in this class. I'm gonna need another teacher just to be with you, and we don't have the budget for that. So I'd suggest you go to go to drama or go to English or go do one of those things. So school was different for me. I found like a I felt like a round peg trying to fit into a square hole. Just generally speaking, how did it affect your happiness level? Um I wasn't happy at all.

SPEAKER_02

No?

SPEAKER_01

No. I never had um when I look now and I see kids are so lucky to have sports or something that they can throw their energy to. Yeah? Um, something to get better at. Team sports, individual sports. No, I didn't do any of that.

SPEAKER_03

So would you put it down to your lack of ability to participate?

SPEAKER_01

My la my lack of ability, but the world was a very different place too. Losing my arm and leg, that was in 1989. There was no um there was no talk of inclusive sports or there weren't even disabled toilets or ramps or kids with wheelchairs weren't the same. So for the just after I had my accident, I didn't have prosthetics for a year and a half to two years. So if I wasn't relying on a family member or friend to carry me somewhere, some of the boys found a um an old skateboard in an old bin. We cleaned it up, and I would just sit on that. I'd have my arm on one side, my leg on another side, and I'd try and wheel myself up and down.

SPEAKER_03

Wow.

SPEAKER_01

That was how I got around.

SPEAKER_03

They I've now I did hear that there was um a people some people who ran an orphanage and said generally speaking, when they have people who kids who've had quite severe accidents, their happiness level, once they've got over the initial trauma of it, is generally similar to like they kind of get over it in that regard. But I think that's in a place where there is a level of inclusivity or you know, there are other factors that aren't at play there. And it must be it must have been very hard back then. So how old are you exactly?

SPEAKER_01

Now I'm 44.

SPEAKER_03

44. So you're talking back in the 90s, early 90s. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Um I have a cousin who's his mum's Fijian, but his father's from Eritrea. And he recently went back a few years ago to visit where his father is from. He says he was on a bus in the middle of the countryside and they pulled over to stop, and they were outside like a um an auto-wreckers place. And he said there was like 50 to 60 amputees just outside this place, and he's like, What are they doing? He said, Oh, they come here to strip all the rubber off the tires and the upholstery off the seats so that they can wrap it around their arms and the legs, and that's how they crawl to get around and beg for money. That's how they survive. And my cousin rang me to tell me that story, and he's like, How lucky are you to get out of the third world? And how lucky are you, all the opportunities that you've had? And when they actually came, you you took advantage of them and lived it to the fullest. I was like, Yeah, it's pretty amazing. There's some people out there. I've been all over the world and traveling them. I'm very, very lucky as a double amputee, yeah. So from there, so when did you come to Australia?

SPEAKER_03

I assume that's where you went from Fiji to Australia, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, um I had my accident in 1989, and uh the Rotary Club in New Zealand first sent me a wheelchair, then they sponsored me to go to New Zealand for my first couple of prosthetics. My parents split while I was quite young, and many years later my mum met an Australian expat working in Fiji. Uh, this was when I was around 11 or so. So his family was based here in Newcastle. So after their relationship started, I used to come over here to go to the hospital in Newcastle to get my prosthetics. Eventually, my family migrated over here, and I finished I finished the last few years of high school in Australia.

SPEAKER_03

Right. Interesting. And I noticed that you have you went you use a hook. Now, was that an early prosthetic that you had? And is there not an upgrade that you could have had in the modern era of technology? Do you prefer to use that?

SPEAKER_01

You know what's funny? I've only had this hook for about three years. I've only ever been using arm prosthetics for about three years. Uh the leg was something that I needed to get around for mobility, but when they presented me with an arm, and again, in the early 90s, the technology was very different. Uh Fiji is ridiculously hot and humid, and the way that they used to attach the arm was they would attach it to my stump, then it it really looks like a bra, where there's all these straps and buckles that go from this shoulder behind my back to this shoulder, and it was so hot and uncomfortable and used to chafe my skin, that I was like, I can't see the benefit of this thing, just I'm not even going to use it. Only years and years later, now they have carbon fiber and they can attach it with pins and silicon liners and all this other different stuff that I'm like, it's actually made I've had back pain my whole life just because I don't quite have the balance and symmetry as uh somebody would when they have two arms and two legs. As soon as I got this arm, I'd say 80 to 90% of my back pain just went away.

SPEAKER_03

Wow, just to balance you out, just to balance. Just to balance, just to give me a bit more symmetry. So, how did jujitsu and swimming come about that?

SPEAKER_01

Uh swimming, I've always um been in the pool, and um I've always been into martial arts. I was born in 1982, and when I was growing up, Mike Tyson was the man. And his early fights where he'd just get people out of there in the first round. I remember my dad and one of my uncles being in a room, like so excited to put in a VHS tape and watch highlights of Mike Tyson just destroying people. And I thought it was amazing. Um I was always into rugby growing up in Fiji. Yeah. So physical sports kind of appealed to me.

SPEAKER_03

I find I hear the Mike Tyson, usually it's Mike Tyson, Bruce or Bruce Lee that people bring up initially, because not only were they so excellent in their field, but the any prejudices or like or those bridges were all those, sorry, those boundaries were all broken down and the bridges were built over excellence. Like people want to talk about the best way to um stop prejudice uh is by going through these ways and doing that. It's people like Bob Marley, it's people like Bruce Lee. These people are the true bridge where you cannot help but admire them. And Mike Tyson was just such a force to be reckoned with. People don't understand, and Mike Tyson's had some some situations recently with Jake Paul and whatnot, but people forget what Tyson was. It was um it was truly was excellent.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, for me, he was so far ahead of everybody else. Yeah, and I remember even as a young kid, I remember thinking like he's not that big. 5'10. He's 5'10, he's an inch shorter than me. And I remember the Pinklin Thomas fight stands out. Pinklin Thomas was like 6'6, 6'7, and it wasn't a fair fight. Yeah, the little guy was doing this to the taller, bigger, heavier guy, and I was like, wow, that's that's fantastic. But there was an energy about him, and there was like he changed the whole atmosphere in the room when everyone knew that the Tyson fight was gonna be on. Yeah. I was also that kid that I loved Bruce Lee movies, um, Jackie Chan movies. It's funny, I asked the kids the other day, do you guys know who Jean-Claude Van Damme is? And no one knew. Richie and I were so upset. No, they didn't grow up with the stuff that we did. Swimming, I got into by accident. So one of my first jobs out of high school, I used to work at the RTA selling e-tolls. And after work, I'd just go to the pool, local pool in North Sydney, and just do laps up and down. I'd get to the pool, take off my prosthetic leg, put it on the side, do my laps, and leave. One day, there was an older Aussie guy just sitting by my leg. He's like, mate, I don't know if you know, you're very fast. Have you ever had any training with like the Australian Paralympic team? I said, No. Then you've never had any coaching? No. Because well, I think they'll they'll want to see you. Here's the number for the Aussie coach, give them a call, see if you can go out and do a time trial. So I did that, and that took me to the northern beaches. At the time the coach was at Waringa. And I did a time trial, and he said, Okay, the bad news is that's the shittest thing I've ever seen in my life. But the good news is you're very fast. That time probably gets you top 20 in the world. I think you should move here and start training with me. So was he talking about your technique, you mean? He was. Yeah. Very raw, very just okay, you focus more on power than anything else. Yeah. I also think because I was wearing a pair of North Queensland cowboy footy shorts, he wasn't oppressed, yeah, because he was a Sea Eagles fan, so he just wanted to give it to me. But that's how I got started in the team. So I moved to the Northern Beaches, started training, yeah, and that was it.

SPEAKER_03

Amazing. And you started, you didn't go, you started with other disciplines of martial arts and ended up finding jujitsu a bit later. Would I be right thinking that?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, well, I started when I was very young. My my dad and my uncles were always into boxing, and some of my dad's uh good friends used to box in Fiji and they used to travel around. Um when I got recruited to the swim teams, that was my focus for a good four years. So I started in 2008, I started swimming competitively, and my goal was to represent Australia at the London Olympics in 2012. I did well, um, but nine months before the games, I tore my rotator cuff in my right shoulder. Having only one arm, that's my main weapon to pull me through the water. When I spoke to people, they said, even if you have surgery in the recovery, you're you're not going to make the Olympics, your dream is over. So I used to swim with quite a few guys that when they'd retire from swimming, they'd balloon up from say 80 odd kilos to 130 kilos, just because you get when you're training, you get used to eating a certain way, and when you stop, you still eat a certain way, you're just not doing the training anymore. So I knew I needed to get into something to stay fit, and honestly, I was looking for a Muay Thai gym, and I looked up the martial arts schools around me less than five minutes away, was a jiu-jitsu school. As soon as I went in, I put on the giant and that was it. It was a love at first sight, literally. Amazing. Um I compare it to rugby without the running and without the ball. Tackle him, get past his legs, do what you can.

SPEAKER_03

Understanding the dynamics of it is uh the first step and that, yeah. Um so did you compete solely against was it like a a uh para jujitsu thing when you competed, or were you competing in a normal open division? How did it work?

SPEAKER_01

Um when I started, para jujitsu wasn't a thing. I started in 2012. Um even now, I still don't know maybe two or three people in the entire world that have one arm and one leg. So when I started, honestly, I didn't get into it for competition. I got into it more for the stress relief, and I just love problem solving. That's literally how I think about jujitsu. So I thought all my competitive stuff was behind me in swimming. But then you, as you start to get better, you start wrestling against the guys in the academy and they're going in competitions and doing well. So one day I tried it going against able-bodied people, I did pretty well. I got a couple of medals, bronze and silver. Going against able-bodied people, I still haven't won gold, and that's more a fatigue thing. If I have three, four, five matches here with one arm and one leg, the lactic acid buildup, it's very, very hard. So it wasn't until I was a purple belt that one day I had all these miss calls on my phone, and it was a black belt from Brazil that said, um, the chic in Abu Dhabi is putting together this tournament, and he wants all the best para-Jiu Jitsu athletes in the world. We've heard about you and seen some videos online. Do you want to represent Australia? And this is exactly like a Bruce Lee, Jean-Claude Van Damme movie. I was like, I've been training for this my whole life. So I got to go to Abu Dhabi at a couple of tough matches, yeah, and faced an athlete from the UK in the final. Yeah, I managed to win. I was one of the first para-Jiu Jitsu world champions in Abu Dhabi in 2017. Unbelievable.

SPEAKER_03

That's that's amazing. No, that was an amazing trip. Wow, crazy. Um, I just yeah, I mean, I can understand how it would also be it would be debilitating for obvious reasons, but then you would have an advantage of sorts because you're you would limit the other person's game and your game would be so finely tuned. Mm-hmm. I imagine that you've got what have you got a particular style?

SPEAKER_01

Like is there a certain moves that you're uh I do have a particular style, and my style is based on you expecting certain things. So I'm willing to bet that 99.9% of your training partners have two arms and two legs, and everybody has habits, you might be a person that goes out and look to capital capitalize on a left-handed grip. So if you're trying to grab my left arm and I don't have a left arm, all of a sudden you're out of luck. So it's the speed chess analogy. Now you have to resort to your B, C, and D game, and I know exactly what to expect. So often I'll have somebody try to go in for a sweep where they're trying to go for a leg, but if I don't have that leg, by the time you're figuring out, oh, that's not normal, I've already changed positions and I've moved on. You're now on the back foot.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. And it would be unexpected because I know Jean-Jacques Machado, he's got one one of his hands is got something, hasn't it?

SPEAKER_01

I think he's missing a couple of fingers. So he's developed an uh Olympic level overhook on that side to compensate for not being able to grip properly with that hand. Hasn't stopped him. He's one of the best jiu-jitsu fighters of all time.

SPEAKER_03

I had no idea that it was a thing. I've watched many of his instructionals and seen him compete, and it wasn't until someone mentioned it that I then went back and I looked at footage I'd already seen and and noticed that fact. It's uh it's so he's so finely tuned and so good you can't even tell.

SPEAKER_01

100%. Yeah. And in my travels, I've got to roll with people missing limbs, blind people are very interesting to roll with. Yeah, I'm sure you have the opportunity. Just because their sense of of touch and knowing where everything is is next level.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I saw actually an amazing competition. He was a Brazilian and he did a flying armbar. As soon as the guy he liked sensed his arm was coming, as soon as he he he just was on him, it was a three-second match. He won instantly. That's right. Amazing stuff. Yeah, so you've actually, and and we could talk about jujitsu for the whole day. I've actually just attended a class, a very well-taught, wonderful class here at Aspire Martial Arts. Aspire MMA. Aspire MMA. So you focus predominantly on mixed martial arts, correct?

SPEAKER_01

Well, Aspire MMA was started in December of 2024 by UFC veteran Richie Walsh and his wife Dara. Um, I'd moved out here to the area just after COVID, and a couple of years later, somebody in the community actually was like, Hey, you know Richie Walsh? Used to be in the UFC. I'm like, yeah, why? Because he's here now. So Richie and I eventually met up and he's like, Do you think we'd do well if we opened an MMA gym in the area? And I was like, Yeah, I think it'd go down really well. Sure enough, they started the gym and um they run boxing, Muay Thai, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and grappling programs, and he's done very well, yeah. Um I'd first trained with Richie maybe 10 to 12 years ago while I was in Sydney, yeah. And I followed his career from a distance, so now we're all here on the Midwestern region, right? I help out with some of the admin stuff here and a lot of the grappling MMA classes.

SPEAKER_03

Um that's spectacular, and you would not expect such a high level from both of you being in a small town like Mudgy.

SPEAKER_01

You know, it's uh But you know what's you know what's funny? Everybody says that. They're like, Why why would you come to Mudgy? I'm like, why wouldn't I come to Mudgy? It's gorgeous out here.

SPEAKER_03

It is beautiful, and it's also um not only that, but it's the center of what is some spectacular hunting country around here, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01

It is. Um I came to Mudgy by accident. My mum bought a place out in Golgong Many years ago and after the first lockdown, I used to live in freshwater and we weren't allowed to go outside or they didn't want us going outside for four months approximately. And in that time I came out here and had a look around, I was like, if I have to quarantine, I'd rather do it in the country. So that was it. My partner and I packed up when we made the move. Um when I saw how gorgeous it was here, it's funny how acclimatized I've become because now I think I spend four or five days in the city and I'm already missing the mountains here. I don't start to feel like I'm home until I'm this side of Lithgow. When I see all the green open up and the mountains in the distance, then I start to feel centered again.

SPEAKER_03

And it's such a gorgeous town. I didn't know what it to expect when I came here for the first time. My friend Marbuck lives around this way, and it's like a real nice rural town, but it's got cosmopolitan vibes.

SPEAKER_01

That's true. Nice coffee shops, beautiful coffee shops. Um, I think there's 33 odd wineries around Mudgy. So if you like your wine, please come pay us a visit. Yeah. The landscape's beautiful, Windermere Dam is not too far. Um, the hunting, as you said, yeah. Py and Bong, there's deer in this country, so please come pay us a visit. We'd love to have you. There's a a decent amount of red deer, correct? And there are some fallow deer. That's right. I think there's more fallow in this area. I have heard of some red deer around Pyambong and Ralston, but I'm not trying to give away too many of the local secrets.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, please don't. You know, we do I try very hard not to give up too much on I know there's people at home with their pen and paper trying to uh work out where some of the locations I go to and speak about are, but gotta keep them uh gotta keep them secret. But you have relatively recent. When did you first get the desire to take up hunting?

SPEAKER_01

Um, to be honest, I think it's always been there. Growing up in Fiji, um we were always fishing, we're always looking for yabbies, prawns, doing things like that. Um's which is the underground way of cooking ovens. You dig a pit, heat up the rocks, and throw everything on top. They're uh kupmurry in Australia. What are they? It's called a kupmurray. Are they? Okay. They're called um umus in Samoa um Hungi's in New Zealand. How do you go about making them in Fiji? What's the the process? You dig a pit, you build a fire, you heat up all the rocks. Normally the best rocks are found on the riverside, yeah. You get it blazing hot, then you wrap all your food, meats, veggies, yeah. You usually mix it with coconut milk, onions, capsicums to get all that good flavour, ginger. Wrap it all up. Wrap it in a banana leaves or foil, most people use nowadays, yeah. Throw that in the pit and cover it up.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Most people will start mixing kava or have a few beers while that's ready, and then you dig it all up and enjoy. Amazing. It's a beautiful way of eating food. If you haven't tried it, we'll have to organise to do some for it.

SPEAKER_03

I've I've been very fortunate. So I do a lot of work with remote indigenous community. Oh wow. So um but up in the northern coast on multiple places, I did one which was a a really amazing tiered one where we dug a massive pit right by the beach and it was the levels of so there were like stingrays and fish and wallabies all progressively going up through layers. Yeah, beautiful. Um we did that in the neo-traditional style, so they do it with uh with corrugated steel, covered up with sand, is a lot. But I also was I was up in Pompeo and we did one fully traditionally, so we dig dig dug the a dee a di one we dug the pit and then lined it with teramite mound, it was heated up. We heated that up, that's um really good. It's almost like using volcanic rock, and then on top of that, there is uh a layer of really nice plant that gives it like an aromatic, and then that keeps it off the sand, and you put the food on there, cover it up with paper bark, cover it over with sand. He had some pigs and some uh wallabies and stuff in there. That was pretty good. How'd you find it? Did you enjoy the maze? Sensational the best. Pull it off the bone. Love to try it wrapped in a banana leaf. Does that affect just keep it clean? Does it affect the flavour? Uh I think so.

SPEAKER_01

I think the insulation is really good, but the flavour is different. Is it big big fishing in Fiji, yeah? Big fishing. Um It's funny. Um, I was thinking of this the other day because I knew I was coming on the show. I listened to this thing, I can't remember who exactly was on, but a hunter was on Joe Rogan's podcast, and he was saying, Isn't it funny how people have a certain hierarchy of what animals are acceptable to take? Like some people their heart goes out, you can't kill bears, you can't kill deer, you can't kill this. But fish, fish a fair game, we can do whatever we want to fish. I think it was just a natural progression for me to grow up fishing so much and foraging, getting stuff out of the rivers, whether it's eel, prawns, or whatever, that animals were just another food source.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I think the problem is that or the problem for the fish is uh that they don't display emotion. Yeah, maybe. They're kind of cold, there's no No eyelids, no vocal cords. Like the thing with people's what they call a love for animals, which is the reason why they can't hurt them, is really it's the their own concerns for pain. There's their own affliction to pain. Because when when something is pain is afflicted on them, they react in an a in a way which is similar to them. Yeah, they they cry out, they their eyes fall at the sides, you know, they show all of that that response, so they therefore empathize with it, and really they it makes them imagine themselves being in pain. But when there's a fish, you can hit that thing on the head all day and it can wriggle and die, it doesn't matter because their eyes are uh are not gonna um are not gonna express that pain. Right.

SPEAKER_01

So for me, I was always in the hunting, and um to be honest, on going on all these trips, I was always more interested in learning about the land and I'd say glassing, stalking, and then once the actual animal is dispatched, whether by a uh bow or rifle, I was more interested in what are we gonna do with it. Sure, we take the meat to eat, what do we do with the skin? What do we do with attendance? What do we that's what I'm more interested in, yeah? Um I just love being out in the mountains, and I think it's the experience that comes with if you go with a crew of boys, men, family. Um I think the last trip I went on it was two and a half hours to get to where we were going. I connected with the guy in the car, like we've never talked about that, from fatherhood to martial arts to work, career choices, to you know, how we want to raise our kids. Like it's the whole experience. I think to the uninitiated, they focus so much on the killing. It's like, guys, that's that's not even why we're there, yeah. Sometimes we go out on these trips and we won't get anything. But it's it's all the experiences that are around that that like give us the best memories.

SPEAKER_03

I think there's something that it goes hand in hand that fighters hunt or want to hunt, and hunters fight, and it comes down to self-reliance and instead of relying on yeah, it's self-reliance, and instead of expecting the world to provide for you, you're gonna protect yourself and you're gonna feed yourself.

SPEAKER_01

It's funny you say that, yeah. I'll while you were literally saying that, I'm thinking to myself, you're making me think of the type of people that I admire and I like to be around. And being self-sufficient is probably right up there at the top of my list, yeah. I like going out with guys that can put food on the table. And if something goes pear-shaped, they know how to do first aid and they know how to find water. But for me, those are just basic life skills, right? I grew up, I just rang my sister yesterday, she still lives in Fiji on a 15-acre sugar cane farm. Uh, a couple of cyclones have gone through Fiji in the last week. So they haven't had power or uh running water for over a week. But I'm used to that growing up in the tropics, yeah. Most properties have a couple of 44-gallon drums, so if you need to drink, cook, wash, yeah, that's just how you grew up. So being self-sufficient, especially in the Pacific or in rural communities in the country, yeah, that's just how people grew up. I think if you grew up in the city and the only way you get food is by going to the supermarket, you're kind of out of touch. You don't really know, like, yeah, this is how we've existed for hundreds of thousands of years, guys.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. You really don't appreciate life in the same way, and I think there's something beautiful about it that people don't understand. 100%. When you do find yourself in that position where you are having to be self-reliant and you're less reliant on society providing it for you, you're considerably happier. Considerably happier. There's actually there's a small community of um, they're in Siberia and they farm caribou is what they do out like free range, and there's zero depression or anything, any assaults or murders or anything like that for the nomads. But as soon as they come into the town, the suicide rate, the murder rate, the alcoholism, everything shoots up and goes crazy. And then those same people get age and they're fun.

SPEAKER_02

You know what? I was thinking about it. I really think that that's the way that we're supposed to live.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah? Get up at the crack of dawn, getting out there, using the land, trying to, you know, provide for your family off of it. And I think why so many people nowadays are either sick or they complain about depression or not is because we're not kinda in aligned with how we're supposed to be anymore.

SPEAKER_03

I live so when I first came to Australia, that what I c well, when I first came here to live here, now I live here, uh I lived out of the bush for a year. I lived off-grid off the land in a one-room stone hut with no running water or electricity, and just had a bow and arrow, goats, and a few things to forage for, but it was in the middle of a drought. But it was the happy I really enjoyed lockdown. I really enjoyed I had 36,000 acres.

SPEAKER_01

Wow There's just no concerns. Just well, isn't it funny how we've become such a um voyeuristic society? Yeah, when we chat to the kids in some of the kids' classes, it's not they don't even play video games anymore. They watch videos of other people playing video games. It's like second or third, third removed enjoyment.

SPEAKER_02

I'm like, hmm.

SPEAKER_01

And we're consuming so much, whether it's online content, we're taking, we're taking, we're taking. Like, when was the last time you got up and it was dark and went out and watched the sunrise and walked all day and exercised, and you know? Um, I think is it unfair to kind of say that a lot of our relationships too, we're not really based, our lives aren't we don't have to live in a close-knit community where we need a few men to help us chop wood, bring in the animals, provide for the food, food, sorry, skinning, tanning, all those skills that are kind of lost nowadays, yeah?

SPEAKER_03

Not only like as you say, not as there um that intense um attitudes with the kids, but also narcissism is a massive one. If you were to have a camera, when we first had digital cameras or polaroid cameras or film cameras, and on that camera was 150 pictures of that person taking a picture of themselves, you'd think they'd had a mental issue. No, 100%. Nowadays, people don't enjoy the sunset, they enjoy themselves. Taking a picture of the sunset. In a picture with the sunset. People don't go to concerts, they film themselves watching the concert, or they look at the concert through a we're through a a quite shoddy screen when they are right there, just enjoy the concert. Isn't that crazy, yeah?

SPEAKER_01

But how quickly the the human experience has changed because of technology.

SPEAKER_03

It is quite amazing. Now you recently had a hunt, didn't you?

SPEAKER_02

Uh how did that go? That was amazing. Um managed to get my first deer, it was a chocolate fallow.

SPEAKER_01

Um I'm just thinking like it makes you feel very much alive. There's something primal about going into the mountains and walking around for hours and hours, and um there was also a profound sadness when I first got it, which I wasn't expecting.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Like it's a beautiful animal, and to think like this one survived it's it's lived for so long, or it's uh its bloodline's carried on for so long, and this one's died now because of my hands, yeah. You're like, oh wow. So no, it was very surreal. And uh the boys that were around me that helped me do it, I'll be forever grateful for, is memories I'll always remember. But no, I had a ball.

SPEAKER_03

I think that's such an important part of the process, and in a strange way, it's a part that I enjoy the most because you've got this elation on the one hand that you know you've done it, you made a good shot, managed to succeed, and you've you're bringing home the bacon. But also it's stirred in with all of these real deep visceral feelings of remorse and sorrow. And I I like the reminder because I was always quite I call it soft when I was a kid, you know, like the thought of hunting was something that was I just couldn't do because I couldn't imagine killing an animal. But that reminder that I'm still a moral and good and quote unquote good person. Sure. Um, and that going into my food and you appreciate and you enjoy the food so much more because you every time you hunt, you have to go through those feelings. You have to fight the the urge not to hunt, in a sense, you know, because you do feel that connection with the animal. You see them and you see them going out, and you don't really want to end that animal's life, but you understand that this this is your ethos, your morality, you're um harvesting the food, you know it's the circle of life, and you've come to terms with that. And it's just that I think is one of the most special aspects of hunting.

SPEAKER_01

I think you've hit the nail on the head, the circle of life thing, yeah. Um yeah, my my friend Tommy, who I was with, he was like, it's normal to feel a little bit of sadness, but that it shows you there's something good about your character, yeah. We're not just trophy hunting, we're not just dispatching them and you know being careless with what we do with their bodies. No, no, I love it.

SPEAKER_03

You said you want to know what was going on with the rest of the animal. Do you ever do any tanning with the uh with this?

SPEAKER_01

I haven't. I'm I'm very new to this game, yeah. Um my family keeps me busy. I have two young girls, one's two and a half and one's six months old. Um thank you to my partner for letting me go on the last trip. But um no, uh the thing that appeals to me about this whole lifestyle is there's so much to learn, and I love that beginner white belt mindset.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Um I probably stay up now till 1-2am in the morning just looking up silly things on how to read wind and thermals and understand the lay of the land, and then I'll take a deep dive down on different types of blades, and you know. Um, I would love to get into tanning, please. If you can help me with those types of tanks, yeah, I do tanning, yeah.

SPEAKER_03

If you've got any tips on getting into it, I preserve most of the most of the things that I shoot. I've got all the skins and stuff.

SPEAKER_01

I also grew up loving to cook, yeah. So taking all the different parts, like I think I've shocked a few butchers when I asked them if they have any ox tongue, ox tail, or a few of those, yeah. Not a lot of people eat that stuff, but I grew up eating it. Same with these animals, yeah. I'm constantly looking up different recipes. How do you go?

SPEAKER_03

I was just gonna say, have you ever tried towel, which is the uh the stomach lining? A bit like trite, but it's like the trite side, but I haven't tried one on the actual stomach, so they call it the towel because inside the stomach's got like a towel-y kind of texture, but it's highly sought after. Some of the like the older fellas would say they like it's still a bit green, so you leave a little bit of that kind of intestinal juices and a bit of grass in there. Let's go. When you start getting into it, when you start, you know, you're chucking out the guts, and you're like, oh like I've turned the intestines into cordage, and you can eat quite a lot. You can eat more than you, I'm sure you know, you can eat a lot more than you anticipate, but just the kidneys and the heart, there's more stuff. If you dig down deep in there, you get elbow deep, there's other stuff you can uh sure you can tell about nutritional value. Well, there's a bit called the spider, which is a cut of meat that people don't often anticipate is going to be as good as it is, and it's called the spider because it's the flesh around the anus. So that meat, which is directly around the sphincter, those lines going out, they you can tell why it's called the spider now.

SPEAKER_01

I'm I'm picturing a whole bunch of people listening to this in their vehicles or whatever, just like laughing. Yeah, like listen to these two.

SPEAKER_03

There's probably 30% of people that are saying it's disgusting, 30% of people that are uh laughing, and 30% that are dying to try a bit of spider. Try that. All about a bit of spider. How did you go about it? What did you how like what was the process? How did you go about harvesting your chocolate fallow?

SPEAKER_01

No, I had a friend uh help me with that, yeah. Yeah. Um I think if anything, that might be the most confronting uh part about hunting for a lot of people. So you could have an animal standing up there on the side of a mountain, and then next thing you've put a bullet through it, and then you start skinning it and taking off the limbs and taking off the sorry, taking off the backstrap, taking off the limbs. I think it's most people and and the sight of blood or what they're about to do. I have no problem with it. Um I really have to get a better understanding of equipment, and I don't know if whether I need better knives or I need better prosthetics. So, for example, for those of you that are listening to me, I've lost my left arm at the elbow. So watching the boys skin and cut the meat off the carcass of this animal, it's like I don't know if I need attachments with certain dexterity or tackiness that the skin naturally has to pull while I'm cutting with the other arm. So I'll watch a couple of the other boys do it, and I'm problem solving in my own head how I'd go about all these things. So then the options we'll talk about is do we string the animal up and use a tree branch and use gravity to assist? Yeah? They're all the different types of things that I need to figure out for myself.

SPEAKER_03

That it actually excites me the fact that you have that as like an added level. Like I was diagnosed with ADHD just a couple of years ago. I never realized, and it hasn't changed my life. I don't take drugs or anything like that, I just rule dog it, but it's good to know my limitations and my advantages in this process. Sure. And I think one thing I I need with any hobby is that it's unmasterable, it's unobtainable. Jiu Jitsu, I'm never gonna master it. There's no such thing, really. And hunting is limitless as well. But now you've made yours even more limitless. Like I love tech, I love finding the bells and whistles, and that added element of you know, what do I need an attachment? How am I gonna do this? And it's another obstacle to overcome, which I think is cool.

SPEAKER_01

Well, see, I was born left dominant, I was left-handed. Really? So after my accident, I had to relearn how to do everything with my right arm. So when I'm going out, everyone's asked me, well, what's your dominant eye? Like right. And they're like, Well, if you were with a rifle, you'd hold it this way, but if you're with a bow, you might go the opposite. Are you definitely left eye dominant right eye dominant? Sorry. Yeah. So there's probably nowhere else in my life that I've thought about which eye I'm dominant in. And then based on that, how I would stalk quietly or how I'd use prosthetics to get within range to get, you know, to drop on an animal. And then everything else from how do we make the best use out of it, I can go on a deep dive that lasts a couple of weeks just thinking about that.

SPEAKER_03

And what do what knife did you use? Did you get did you help with the skinning of it at all? No, you didn't? No.

SPEAKER_01

Again, I'm I'm very, very fresh.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, that's definitely gonna be something.

SPEAKER_01

If you need any help, you want any any uh oh, but I was gonna say, like, I was lucky that on one day I just got to watch a bunch of people shoot, and the next day I went out with a bow hunter.

SPEAKER_03

That was gonna be my next question.

SPEAKER_01

Sorry if I jumped the gun.

SPEAKER_03

No, no, no, you've jumped you've jumped into the into the topic. That's great.

SPEAKER_01

So watching him use the lay of the land, using cover to stalk this animal, get within say 30 meters of it, and then watch everything from the flight of the arrow to the animal going down, like it was a beautiful, beautiful experience. Yeah, then of course, watching him um skin it. Um there was probably about 10 or so different things that I was paying attention to, like, okay, I need a better leg for the side of the hill so I can scale up and down. Obviously, I don't have the mobility that a lot of people with two arms and two legs have, um, then how I would manipulate a bow, yeah. At this early stage. See, I don't even know what's out there. I've heard of people with one arm using some kind of system where they draw back using their mouth, and there's all these different pins that they can manipulate to let the arrow fly. Um, I'm not sure now if my left arm, where there's the prosthetic, if I'm holding the bow with that one and I'm using my right arm to draw back, yeah, or if I'm using my right arm to hold it because it's probably going to be stronger and I have more dexterity on that side. If I come up with something on this arm to pull the string back, I'm literally a one-week white belt.

SPEAKER_03

I love that you've come up with I'd love that you've you've uh you've considered this notion. So if you're right eye dominant, you would use your um right arm to draw. Wait there, let me say. So yeah, you'd use your right arm to draw, so your left arm would be attached to the bow. But I would really like to know, I'd like to check your dominance because I would actually like you to be left eye dominant, because then you would be able to have maybe a back tension release that is connected to the same thing that uh it works your claw. So what would happen is when you got to full draw, you would have a back tension or you would push a little thing to Get you ready for the shot, and all you would do is pull through, and then the shot would naturally break. That would be spectacular. But yeah, there is the mouth tab system, which I know John Dudley and I think Remy Warren, they both had shoulder injuries, so they moved over to a mouth tab system. I think Remy Warren was pulling a 60-pound bow with his mouth, so it's definitely very doable for you to be able to shoot a compound bow. Do you do more bow hunting than rifle heads? I do, I predominantly bow hunt. So I started off compound bow hunting. Then I got into I I started off shooting just recurves. I bought myself a compound bow when I was in England with no ability to hunt, just I was going to, I knew I was going to. Then I got back into shooting the trad bow. My partner, she just shoots with a traditional bow. I'm trying to get her into compound bow hunting, but she shoots it with a trad bow. So then I got into that and I now make all of my own points and arrows and doing the whole full primitive thing. But yeah, my pr my 99% of my hunting is with a bow, with a compound bow at the moment. Um I've got a rifle for doing culs and for doing just meat harvests when I need to go out and just pop a 308. But uh yeah, I'm a bow hunter in my heart.

SPEAKER_01

Nice. Well please you have a very willing student if you're willing to throw any of these ideas at me. I'm I'm willing to go out and do it.

SPEAKER_03

I'd absolutely love to. Because you've got the options. I mean, I it would it's it's an intriguing concept how you would uh yeah, maybe from hides climbing in a tree stand.

SPEAKER_01

Um I think it's possible. I think it's possible. Um depending on how far up we go, it might sound silly, but I'm also quite happy to take the prosthetics off and climb it. It's just carrying them up there with me, depending on what I need to do. So I often need to, you know, before we go out on hunts, I'm thinking a lot of the attachments are interchangeable. I can take them off, I can add them. It's just me being prepared for what job I'm supposed to do. If I'm just stalking an animal, if I'm just glassing, yeah, it's fine. Um again, the the the idea of killing an animal isn't the the best part for me, it's what I'm gonna do with it after.

SPEAKER_03

That's amazing, and I think because you are actually used to moving around at a lower level, I I think that might even work as an advantage, but I would love to know how you would be able to overcome using a bow. And yeah, I don't know. I suppose if you had you would have tested it and you know that you're right eye dominant, so that would be the best side for you to do in that way. So yeah, you then you would have an attachment that holds the bow, which actually I'm sure would make you a much better shot because you would be able to uh 100% eliminate torque. So when you hold the bow, your hand moving from side to side is gonna give you variables in your shot. The hand actually gets in the way. The bow is perfect, it's the archer that ruins the shot. So good dynamics and yeah. So if you had something which had the bow on a on a perfect structure, you're just then pulling in, breaking the shot. Yeah, I think yeah, I think you could be exceptionally good at doing artery.

SPEAKER_01

Let's go.

SPEAKER_03

Let's do it. That would be great. We're gonna have to organize a trip. So but you used a gun before, that's correct, yeah?

SPEAKER_01

I've only used the gun, yes.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. What what caliber was it?

SPEAKER_01

Uh I think I've used the 22, use the 308, yeah.

SPEAKER_03

And you used the 308 to harvest your fallow. That's right. And how did you go about it? Did you have a rest system?

SPEAKER_01

Did you shoot the gun? We crawled up and I used a uh a tree trunk that had fallen over. So I rested on that, buried it deep in my shoulder, and that was it. Right. Put sights on the target.

SPEAKER_03

How did you get in? So I hear there was you were actually fortunate enough to be in an area where there was a lek, an area where the fallow deer were congregating. There was. I didn't know this at the time.

SPEAKER_01

This says something about the quality of my friends, yeah. I'd never even seen a deer. Yeah. But they said, Hey, do you want to come hunting? Yeah, sure. When are we leaving? What time? What do I need to have uh ready? We left at about 3.30 in the morning, and Tommy, my mate, who was driving, was like, mate, I'm so excited. You know this is like the mecca of deer hunting in New South Wales. I'm like, no, I have no idea. Never even seen one. He's like, Really? No, never even seen one. I think we got there around about six in the morning. I shot mine just before 9 a.m. So I'm spoiled. I'm I'm also some of the guys that were there, they were like, mate, we've been out for two, three days on hunting trips and we've never even seen a deer. You got one in your first couple of hours.

SPEAKER_03

I was gonna say you you'd never seen one before. There's a lot of people that have been hunting for years that have never seen one. It's uh it can be hard graft, and you're in an area that apparently is it backs onto or is very near a large property that a guy called Adam Greentree, who's a local Australian hunter, he hunts on um Big Billionaire's property there. And yeah, uh for people who don't know at home, a lek is a and is usually referred to when it talk when you're talking about birds. So it's an area where birds will congregate and they will compete through dance and display for females. And with fallow deer, generally speaking, what they'll do is they'll have a a rub line and they will scrape at the floor. So there's a rub line that they rub their atmosphere on and they scrape on the floor and they croak to attract females to their particular area that they will the females will come over and find the best suitor and congregate around him. And what a lek is is when they will all gather in one big area and they will, like birds essentially, all croak and try and compete for females on the same dance floor, like going to the nightclub, you know? And to be able to hunt over a lek is very rare because what it generally happens is they get ruined by hunters or by colours or whatever, you know. So yeah, that is amazing. So were there lots of deer? Hundreds.

SPEAKER_01

Hundreds. Hundreds. So yeah, I'm um it's it's really being hammered home now, just how lucky and spoilt I am. Yeah. No, hundreds of deer.

SPEAKER_03

Hundreds of deer. Yeah, I yeah, I can't even imagine it. I've uh my hunting's generally slim pickings. I've just done a hunt, and my friend sent me a video in the pre-rut era in the beginning of March, and there's big reds they're kicking off and they're croaking and croaking, they're roaring and they're gathering up the females, and by the time I got there, like a week before, he's like, mate, I'm gonna have to break your heart, but they've all gone. Oh no. I didn't hear a single single I didn't see a stag, didn't hear a single roar, unfortunately. I did get in on some fallow deer. But the problem is down there is the fallow are all silent, and there are so many there's such a high dough to buck ratio that everyone's contented, they've got their females, they're not really even bothering with the process of croaking and um scraping. They're just just they they they they're non-vocal, so it's not quite as easy as it could be. But yeah, you're very fortunate. And if you can Yeah, if you can keep going there, then you're gonna be a lucky guy indeed. You're gonna be a very envious guy indeed.

SPEAKER_01

Well, let's see. Um I'm learning more and more about all the different species and all the different areas that I can go to hunt. Yeah, like I've definitely got the bug now. Um I was gonna ask you, have you ever hunted in Hawaii? I've not ever hunted in a while. It's big big pig hunting, isn't it, ever? I I've heard, yeah. But I just did a deep dive the other day on um what's the deer, Axis deer? Yeah. They're that fast, they're that nimble, that often, you know, the arrow will be in flight and at the very last second. You see how they escape?

SPEAKER_03

Like, wow. So they move about uh like so if you've got an arrow which is moving 350 feet a second, you're shooting a powerful bow, they can react at like a thousand, thousandth of a second. Uh yeah, so they're like I was talking about this the other day on a podcast. So I've got a an equation which is uh how hard an animal is to hunt is predator relative to the prey divided by the amount of young offspring that they have. So if you look at something like a pig, which is it's intelligent, but they're not particularly fine-tuned to avoiding being hunted. They're relatively easy to hunt, comparatively speaking, but they have eight offspring twice a year. And then if you look at other things, which have a couple of offspring once or twice a year, then you get down to things that have an incredibly tough predator, and they only have one offspring a year. You know they're going to be super, super hard to hunt. And Axis deer, they get hunted by tigers, so they are incredibly fine-tuned to being hunted incredibly, incredibly fast. Like, and then you get to the, you know, you get into uh things that are hunted by lions and leopards relentlessly, like in Parla, and they are crazy how like they're they're almost impossible to spot and stalk. I tried spot and stalking in Parla in Africa, and I got close to one, but it was more it was totally luck that I almost got into him. I did get into two that were fighting. They were in the middle of a full-on fight, and I was acting as if they were spooked. I was stalking in like that, and they still managed to be aware enough, even during the a massive fight, to know that I was stalking as quietly as I possibly could.

SPEAKER_01

That's crazy, yeah. Just how um well, I guess their lives depend on it, yeah. Their awareness and like everything that's going on in their environment. So um just wondering, do you have a book? Uh no, you know, it's funny, a few years ago I was asked to do a couple of books. I've been asked a few times now. The only one I've seriously considered, he was something to do with the Anglican Church. And his approach was, have you ever heard of post-traumatic growth? And I said, No. Well, you've heard of PTSD, right? And his basic angle was bad stuff happens to good people all the time. But his gift that he wanted to leave to his grandchildren was a series of stories of all these people that have had bad stuff happen to them, and they actually came out stronger or more resilient, yeah. And I thought, I like this guy's angle, yeah. So he sent me a manuscript. I'll have a I'll have a read. To be honest with you, I don't think that I've done enough to kind of get into writing a book yet. So I think you're very humble.

SPEAKER_03

Which is which is a which is a virtue, but also it can be something that can hold people back. I think you've done such amazing things that you you you should definitely have a book.

SPEAKER_01

Uh thank you. Um let's see. Let's see what the future holds. Yeah. My my big thing at the moment is I'm lucky enough to do what I do through the martial arts. Yeah, I get to travel around and share my my story with the world. Um if it helps people get through whatever they're going through in life, then sure. Maybe you can help me draft a manuscript or something. Let's disappear into the mountains and let's make it happen.

SPEAKER_03

Let's definitely do it. I mean, overcoming adversity is hard in itself, but overcoming adversity and then choosing to smash life as well is uh is something else, and I think it is very inspirational. Hey, you know what?

SPEAKER_02

Um it didn't start off that way.

SPEAKER_01

And um I just wanted to be included, that's how it all happened. I used to watch all my friends and I grew up with a lot of phenomenal athletes, yeah, that had the potential to play for Fiji, that had the potential to play for Australia. And I think because sport was denied to me for so long, when I finally got the opportunity to do it, I was like, I'm gonna put my everything into this. I've I've got all these funny stories, yeah, and wherever I've gone in the world to compete for either swimming or jujitsu, I always feel like the universe is trying to tell me something. And once before I went to America, I was on a flight and I've never been a big sci-fi person, but I was watching The Lord of the Rings, yeah, and there's this scene where Gandalf is talking to Frodo. Frodo is basically like overwhelmed and doesn't want to do his mission anymore, yeah. And Gandalf has this conversation with him where he's like, hey, you know, the only thing that we can do is the best we can with the time we've given. That's about as simple as it is, yeah. Now that I have young kids, that's gonna be my lesson to them. Despite all the things that have happened to me, me losing an arm and a leg, yeah. All I ever wanted to do was adventure and try and get the best out of life. Right? The people that baffle me, I'm like, what are you into? What are you interested in? They're like, nothing. What do you mean, nothing? Not food, not culture, not art, not sport, not travel, nothing. Nothing moves the needle internally for you. The world's so beautiful and amazing. Yeah, I feel like it'd be a disservice to everyone around me if the biggest part about my story was me missing an arm and a leg. Life's still pretty amazing, yeah. Please get out there and get into it.

SPEAKER_03

I think it's one of the most depressing things that I encounter far, far too often is when you try to meet someone on their level and they you realize it is non-existent. They don't have any interest, they don't there's nothing that ignites their soul. They go to work that they don't particularly enjoy. And then they sit and scroll on their phone or watch I I've been in restaurants and bars back in the day where I would overhear conversations, and all it is is two people talking about the accolades of other people. I love that m director, I love that actor, that singer, don't you like that soccer team, don't you like that thing, which is fine. They're all wonderful things to enjoy, but when that's you talking about your personality and your interests, and all it is is interested in what other people are doing, or other people are interested in. I think it's quite unfortunate. And uh It's quite sad. Yeah, that you don't even try to explore your own potential. Yeah, I mean, we have this notion that for someone to be intelligent, they need to own books, and they need to be interested in intelligent endeavors. Like that's achievement is achieving in what would be considered his classically intellectual pursuits. But personally, I find it much more interesting if someone has a real strong passion and knowledge about cop fishing, let's say. They can tell you about boilies and what sweet corn works and the best time to go out, and their eyes light up and there's a passion in their soul about something that people consider to be an arbitrary pastime. But if someone's just talking to me about astrophysics or whatever, and they're not particularly into it, it's just their career or just something, it it's relative and yeah, it's understated. And when people are really into things like martial arts or hunting, it is so it's it's such an important thing that I think other people generally, through not understanding, will dismiss or look down on.

SPEAKER_01

Um if there's anyone listening to this, I think that's a great takeaway, yeah? Try and live through whatever your passion is. And I remember listening to Steve Harvey, the um American comedian, and he was saying everybody's got a gift, yeah? If there's something that you do better than everyone else around you, could be frying chicken.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah?

SPEAKER_01

There's big money in frying chicken, look at KFC, look at all these other types of things. If you're stuck in a job that you don't really enjoy and the whole game is just paying the bills and living week to week, my God, that would kill my soul, yeah? I mean, look at me, I'm I'm a double amputee that pays these bills through martial arts. No one would have picked it 20, 30 years ago, yeah? I travel the world competing and sharing my story as a motivational speaker, and I'm lucky enough that I can raise my family meeting people like you.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah? Is there anything that you really had to hold on to? Is there any like uh philosophy or piece of advice or mantra that is something that's stuck with you over the years?

SPEAKER_01

Uh for myself, I always seem to go back to don't die with the magic in you. Everybody's got something.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I I know after this I'll be messaging you like a madman probably once or twice a fortnight, like, hey, I've got this idea like for hunting, fishing, knife, uh you know, skinning techniques, tanning techniques. Um Everybody has something to offer, and it's a shame that some people just don't see that in themselves, or they haven't had the right people around them to be like, dude, you're you've you're good at this thing, yeah? Let's take this little spark and fan it into a flame and let's see where this takes us.

SPEAKER_03

Please do kick yeah. I'm always there, I'm always available. Let me know. I'm really uh excited uh for you and for the process.

SPEAKER_01

Let's go. We're gonna have to do another one in a couple of years and see how far we've come, yeah? A hundred percent we will. Sean, I can't thank you enough for uh thank you, thank you, brother. Thank you for reaching out, it's been a pleasure.

SPEAKER_03

Thank you, everybody. We hope you enjoyed the show. Wherever you are, whatever time of day it might be, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, and good hunting.