#109 - John Dudley: The beauty in archery, the love of practice, and a model system for life

Hey everyone. Welcome to the Drive Podcast. I'm your host, Peter Attia. This podcast, my website and my weekly newsletter all focus on the goal of translating the science of longevity into something accessible for everyone. Our goal is to provide the best content in health and wellness, full stop, and we've assembled a great team of analysts to make this happen. If you enjoy this podcast, we've created a membership program that brings you far more in depth content. If you want to take your knowledge of this space to the next level, at the end of this episode, I'll explain what those benefits are or if you want to learn more now, head over to peterattiamd.com subscribe Now without further delay, here's today's episode. I guess this week is John Dudley. Before I tell you a little bit about who John is, because I suspect many of you won't recognize his name, maybe a little reminder about one of my obsessions being archery. Probably talked about it quite a bit on the podcast to get a better sense of why I love archery so much and why I think it's kind of an amazing model system for life. I think you'll enjoy this podcast. Now John is someone who, from the day I got involved in archery, I was very fortunate to be introduced to in terms of his work would be another couple of years before I would meet him. He is a professional archer. He's the host of what I consider, hands down, no ifs, ands or buts, the absolute best content on all of archery, including podcasting, TV, et cetera. So the knock on TV station on YouTube, the knock on podcast, his ability to teach archery and do archery provide the rarest and smallest eclipse I've ever seen in performance. Which is to say it's very rare that someone who is the top 0.01% of a performance is also at the top 0.01% of the ability to teach, distill and communicate that. And somehow John manages to do that. Now I could pour you to tears with all of his accolades. He represented the U.S. archery team for many years. He's won more medals than I can count representing Team usa. He was the Rookie of the year as a professional national champion, multiple time national champion, European Grand Prix gold medalist, British National Indoor champion, et cetera. Honestly, it's just. I'll turn most of you off by reading this because this introduction will be even longer than it probably is already slated to be. I was introduced to Jon through Joe Rogan when I was on Joe Rogan's podcast a couple of years ago I let Joe know just how much of a huge fan I was, and Joe was just kind enough to introduce us. And I had the real privilege of getting to spend a bunch of time in person with Jon. So in this episode, we don't go too deep into how I got started in archery and how I fell in love with it, and how even though when I started, I had absolutely zero intention of hunting, and how over time that changed, and now I view hunting and archery as the two beautiful bookends of this incredible continuum. John had already interviewed me for his podcast, and so we'll simply link to some of the highlights from his podcast interviewing me, where I get into a lot of that stuff. Obviously, I wanted to focus on John and his story. And so in this episode, we talk about a lot about John and his athletic background and how he made what can only be described as one of the craziest decisions in the history of a collegiate athlete, which is to turn down A Division 1 football scholarship 1 week into school and go and work at an archery store for $4.10 an hour building arrows. And that's exactly what he did. We talk a lot about life in a sense as well, because a lot of John's personality comes across in this, and you get a sense of sort of his philosophy on life, which, frankly, I just find wonderful. I love being around John, his family, and we can go back and forth between talking about these things in life and then talking about these things in archery and how amazingly they seem to converge. So what it is that we're talking about in terms of technically improving something seems to then converge on what the application is in life. So the last thing I'll say is we asked John to help us curate a list of content from his unbelievable curriculum, such that if any of you listen to this and come away thinking, you know, gosh, to listen to these two coconuts talking about archery for so long, I at least want to give this thing a try. You will get all you need from John's content, but we thought we'd simplify it a little bit by curating a step by step set of videos that he's put together that will make it easier than trying to probably navigate from all of his content. So without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with John Dudley. Well, John, it's a little bittersweet that we are at the end of our archery camp here together.

I know that bonfire you have over there is big enough to either burn Darth Vader or start the new Braveheart movie.

I mean, seriously, if the listener's wondering what the context is here. When John interviewed me, he spent, I don't know, at least a full minute griping about the fact that I reneged on my offer to light a fire. So tonight I was like, well, I'm not going to be outdone. So there is a fire burning that you can maybe hear through this mic. It's a little hotter than I planned.

Yeah. If on August 8th, you hear there's a wildfire lighting across Southern California, there's a good chance it started behind this big fire pit of Peters in his backyard.

Well, look, man, it is a real pleasure to be kind of sitting here talking with you. And I've been. We talked about this over dinner the other day that I've been thinking so much about how to convey to an audience that is obviously very interested in performance and health and longevity, how two of the biggest interests in my life kind of come to this intersection with. With one of them being archery. And there's probably nobody that's listened to this podcast that hasn't figured out by this point how much I love archery. Certainly anybody who's ever taken the time to follow me on social media will notice that probably maybe a quarter of the things I post are photos that have something to do with that. So in the introduction, briefly, I already kind of explained a little bit about who you are, but that just doesn't do it justice. And I try to keep the intro relatively short so that the listener can hear in sort of your own words, what it is. But take me back to kind of maybe some basics. Right? So what does it mean to be a professional archer? I think most people understand what it means to be a professional baseball player because you turn on TV and you see people playing baseball. But what does it mean to say John Dudley turned pro as an archer in this year and for the next X years did A, B and C.

In the big picture, it means nothing. That's the reality. I realize I'm fortunate that there's light being shed on archery right now because this was this small thing that if. What was it? Espn? The Ocho? Like in dodgeball? Archery would probably be on that if that was real. But I started out learning to bow hunt from family, and it was just part of the culture, coming from the Deep South.

You grew up in Mississippi, right?

Yeah, I was born on Fort Bragg, grew up in Mississippi for a while, then moved up to the Midwest, and I learned archery, I think, when I was 9. First bow hunt was when I was 10, and I don't know. Looking back, there's been a lot of times where I've tried to decide why I really liked it. And a good friend of mine who is a former Navy seal, retired Andy Stump, there was this time someone was asking me the same question, and sometimes I struggle with why I really loved bow hunting and archery. And he just looked at me and goes, have you not figured it out by now? He's like, it's all over your personality. And I said, no, why? And he goes, because it's hard. He goes, that is why you do it. Because there's days where you're good at it and there's days when you're not. And he's right there. Several different points in my career where I took different steps, because in my career started out learning to shoot a bow, bow hunting, not being good at it, wanting to be better at it, deciding to start shooting some target archery because I wanted to be a better bow hunter, realizing I sucked as a target archer, wanting to be better at that, becoming better at that, then becoming a better bow hunter, then kind of getting a little bit bored in the one aspect of competitive archery I was in. So I jumped into another field that was a different types of targets, different distances, different type of competition. Did that until I kind of got complacent again. And then kind of, I just, every time, I don't know, I like to jump into something that challenges me. And archery is one of those things where I think golfers understand that there's days where you go out and you play and you feel like, you feel like you had the perfect game. You feel like the next day if you go out and play another nine, you're going to do the same thing. But then all of a sudden you realize, no, if everything's not clicking, I can't just do this continually. So I just have made a career out of being poor at a certain aspect of it and making it a mission to become good at that. And then over the course of 33 years, I've got to the point where now I feel like I have a very good understanding of the game and I've learned a lot from a lot of mistakes. I mean, that's kind of the truth of it.

Well, we're going to come back to kind of a lot of the things you've learned and more importantly, how you've figured out a way to teach them. But you've glossed over some things that I know a lot of detail about. And I think for listeners, it will be interesting to Understand that. So this is the first time I've ever recorded a podcast outside. And is that just me or is there like some loud airplane that's going.

Yeah, there's an airplane, man, we're outside.

I know, but normally I don't hear them that loud in my backyard. I don't know. I guess I don't have the microphone.

Yeah, there's. It's called a microphone. Amplifies sound. Apparently we're podcasting, but we're thoroughly enjoying each other's friendship. We're out here, we're drinking a protein shake that hopefully you're monitor gives you some kind of data that you can satisfy your listeners with. Meanwhile, I've also got wine on the backup. So this is real.

We're drinking Jocko's Mulk and Clio wine and everybody always wants to ask me what my favorite wine is. And this is 2012 bottle of Clio.

Yeah, I was familiar with it.

So you were an all American and you lettered in 12 sports. I mean, you. Some of the athletic stories that when you were in high school and you're, you're a big guy. So for listeners that maybe don't know what you look like, you know, you're 6 foot 5, kind of a wall of muscle. You told me about a high school combine that just blew my mind. Where tell a story of what the coach said to all of you prospecting quarterbacks that were trying to get Division 1 scholarships.

Yeah, I was at U of I. I was at a camp there that the fighting Ally and I were putting on and I went there by myself. My team wasn't with me. It was a kind of a thing where there's quite a few recruits that were all brought in there. And I remember Greg Landry was there as the quarterback coach and, and during that first day, there was a ton of people down. I think we were either on the five yard line or somewhere in there. And it was the first day of camp and obviously the first day of camp. A lot of guys are jacking around as it starts and the coaches kind of gathered everybody up and he goes into this serious moment where he's saying, we're here to look at all you. We're here to teach you, but you're here to learn. But you're also here to put on your best in front of some big coaches. And he said, a lot of these coaches are only going to look at you one time. And just like in any big game, sometimes you only have one time to shine. And what you do with that one moment is going to define what you get out of this camp. It's kind of that type of thing. And he was talking about it and everything and I was paying attention and sitting on the. I think I took one knee. I actually have a picture, but it's on a little microfiche. I should try to get it and see if we can blow it up. I'm pretty sure I had like a play band on my wrist. And he just kind of looked over at me randomly and he grabbed the ball and he just threw it underhand and he's like, you, what are you gonna do with your moment? And so I did all I knew how to do, which was huck a football. So I just stood up and took about two or three steps and just heaved this ball from. It was about. From the nine yard line and landed it in the end zone on the other side. And I just said, I throw footballs. And he's just like, that was perfect. Sit down. And he just looked over at the other guys like, what are you going to do with yours? And then later on they came up to me and they said, what else can you do? And you know, you got quite an arm. How do you throw like that? And I always had insomnia. I've always had that. I've struggled to sleep. I've always really enjoyed training and if I can't sleep, to me, I don't know, it feels like I've given myself a reason to get out of bed if I go and do something. So. And it's been that way with archery. A lot of times if you watch my bow builds, I'm building it crazy times in the morning because I can't sleep. So I get up and I'll just start put a record on and I'll just start building a custom bow for someone and I'll do that. But back then, my coach had gave me a key to get into the gym. And I would pull the laundry baskets out of the washer room and I would put laundry baskets in opposite ends of the gym and I would just throw footballs. I had a bag of footballs when I was a junior. My coach gave me a whole bag of footballs and I had them in the trunk of my car all the time. And I would just do three step drops, throw it in the laundry basket, three step. And then when that laundry basket had all the balls, I'd go over and do the other one. And then outside it was always, they're called black routes, but it was a black Right route was like in my. When I'd be under the center, if I ever called an audible, if I ever called black, it would be a 73 pattern, which is just pretty much a flare pattern. So it was a quick three step drop to outside shoulder. So I would always go to the 20 yard line, put the garbage cans from the football field in the corner, and I would go out there and just throw footballs, do three step drops, throw footballs in garbage cans. That's just what I did. So all that stuff led up to that moment of he's like, here's your moment. What are you going to do with it? I'm going to throw a football.

And so fast forwarding a little bit, you end up getting a Division 1 scholarship to play football, which is, I'm sure your parents are just over the moon, overjoyed.

It was a little bit different. I remember the first school that recruited me was Ball State. And me and my mom went there. My parents were divorced at that time. My mom was, I think I was a sophomore. And I really had no idea what the heck we were even doing. We went to Ball State and then a lot of different things came in. But I decided that I really wanted to go to a Carolina school because my dad was from Fort Bragg. My uncle was a pilot. At the time, he was in Greenville, Spartanburg. Most of the Dudleys were all from that part of the area. So I really wanted to go there. And honestly, I really liked Western Carolina. Their offense was really, really similar. I had choices, but that was really where I wanted to go. And I think if you would have asked any of my family members what I was going to do, they were going to tell you I was going to play football. I didn't care anything about school other than the fact it allowed me to play sports. And I played sports all the time. I mean, every single semester in school, I was in a sport. It didn't matter. I ran track, did basketball, did football, played tennis. It didn't matter. All I wanted to do was. I just wanted to play. I loved it. I loved camps, too. When my parents got divorced, my mom traveled a lot. She worked for Baxter Healthcare. I told you that. And she traveled a lot because she was overseeing plants in Malaysia and Singapore and Puerto Rico. So she traveled a ton. So she just, she left an open checkbook in her house and she just said, if I'm not home, just don't get in trouble. Do something productive. So I just took that checkbook and signed up for every single football camp I Could. And I was traveling to football camps without my teams. I was just going, going and being a guy without a team, just sitting there and just. I loved, I loved having coaches around me. Honestly, I performed. I liked having people yell at me. I liked having a very specific purpose. Like, you're getting up, we're doing this from seven to nine, then you get a breakfast, then we're going to go out, we're going to freaking run for two hours. Like, I just love that. It was awesome. And so the archery thing just blindsided me because during this whole time, during all this high school sport part of my life, which when I first went into high school, I had no business thinking I was going to be a good athlete because I was very skinny, I was tall. My dad told me I was like, he goes, when you ran up and down the basketball court, I always was afraid of you tripping because I thought it was be like a chandelier hitting the ground. I was skin and bones. I worked hard and I grew into it. But during that time, I didn't get to shoot archery very much. I liked it. I was fairly good at it. I would make gas money going to parties and shooting. I would put eggs on the top of 2 liter pop bottles and I would shoot them off these pop bottles at 40 yards. And I'd just, I'd be like, you think I can hit that? And people, you can't hit that. And then I'd bet me five bucks and I would make gas money at parties. I didn't drink. I drank one time when I was 10 or 11 and then I got really sick off of it and just said, I'm never gonna drink again. And I didn't drink until my 20s. So I would go to the parties because I loved and I would have parties, but I just, I wouldn't be the partier. I would be there and I'd kind of take money off my drunk friends.

And yeah, it's sort of funny, the first time in my life I ever got drunk, I was 12 or 13, working at my dad's restaurant on a New Year's Eve. And it was me and my best friend Mike Douglas. We were bussing tables and washing dishes and the whole night we're sneaking in drinks here and there. Like we're sneaking behind the bar and taking a drink of this and a drink of that. And this is the ultimate low, is at the end of the night when everybody's gone. It's like three in the morning or whatever and we're cleaning up, we Drank every bit of remaining alcohol that was left on the table. And sometimes you'd finish a drink and there'd be a cigarette butt in there and you'd be like, oops. And you'd pitch the cigarette butt and just keep drinking. So we had this cocktail of booze in us and my mom, she came to pick us up to take us home. She saw that we were just hammered and she was so pissed at my dad. She's like, how could you let these two knuckleheads do this? So she drives us back home. And I distinctly. It's one of those. It's amazing that I could still remember something so vividly from so long ago, because 13, 12, whatever. I remember being in the back of the car and sort of understanding why all those don't drink and drive commercials existed, because I was like, oh my God, I was like out of my mind. And then we got home and then she had to do what I knew she didn't want to do, which was leave us there to go drive the babysitter home. Because there's a babysitter babysitting my younger brother. And so now there's these two drunk 12 year olds and beyond drunk. And she has to leave for 20 minutes, which is what it's going to take to drive this babysitter home. And we managed to find, I don't know, a bottle of beer or wine or something in the house and took it in the back, drank it and started playing catch with it, which of course resulted in it breaking and smashing all over the place. And then we puked all over the kitchen. And she came home to that. Had to clean that up. It was a disaster. Point being, I didn't have a sip of alcohol again until I was probably 22.

That might be me. Mine was a blessing. It was one of these things where I got convinced that we needed to get drunk. I went to one of my neighbors, I had 20 bucks. Went to one of my neighbors who I remember he had a big red, like a Firebird or Trans Am or something, A red one with T tops. He looked like he just got out of a warrant concert. He had like a white leather jacket with fringe down it, long blonde hair. And I went over him like, hey, dude, me and my buddies want some booze. And he goes, he said, House takes 50%. And I go, I don't care, just get me as much as I can get a whatever with this. And he came back with a big jug of off brand peppermint schnapps. And I Remember this? And then on top of that, like, everyone was supposed to bring something to get bombed to this event with me and a couple of my buddies that were just thinking, we're cool. And one of my buddies brought some snuff. And I had never smoked a cig or nothing, but he's like, just sniff it. So the first time I ever got intoxicated was on peppermint schnapps and snuff. And I don't remember most of the night. I just remember waking up and praying that, God, if I make it through this, I will never do this again. And that was it. I was, like, upchucking, just peppermint schnapps. That was black from the snuff. And that was, like, that was it. So I did not party. That's the moral of the story. I didn't party. I went and I shot archery a little bit on Thanksgiving every year, we went down to Mississippi for a family Thanksgiving, and I would bow hunt down there. That was my time to be a hunter. I loved doing it. And I would shoot my bow. I'd bow fish some in the summertime, because at that time, we lived in Illinois, and my focus was football. This is totally my focus. Well, during my senior summer, I'm scheduled to go to school. I actually moved. I think I went to Carolina one time, and then I ended up hurting my right knee. This knee right here. I hurt this knee. And. And it was mainly because my growth spurt was so severe that my ligaments didn't grow with the rest of my body. So they. We kind of came up with the plan for me to redshirt at a JC school that ran a very similar. I think the coaches were somehow affiliated, but they said, this is your opportunity to learn the entire playbook. You're going to rehab there. We've got some stuff there. So I was like, okay, this is all cool. So as this is going down, this is in the middle of summer. I've got my bow in my truck because, like I said, sometimes I would just randomly get out and shoot carp if I saw carp. I grew up on the Fox river in northern Illinois. And so I Driving down this road, and I see this sign that says archery shoot. So I thought, oh, what's that? So I went down. I turned down this road. If you went there now, it almost would be like, a weird way to lure someone in, because you're turning down these cornfield roads, like, going into this place, and all of a sudden I pop in. There's a bunch of Cars there. And I walk up, I'm like, hey, what's up with this archery shoot? And they go, yeah, we're having a 3D shoot. And I said, what's that? And they're like, well, 3D targets with scoring rings. Like, oh, I haven't really seen those. And it was three dimensional deer targets, which now you have. And there's molded rings molded into the foam. So the smaller ring is a certain score. And the bigger rings, obviously the more outside of the kill zone you get, the poorer your score. And if you miss, it's a zero. So I go out with this scorecard, get with this group of three guys I don't even know, and I start shooting. And you have to guess the distance of the target. You have to know where the scoring ring is. I didn't have any binoculars. I don't even know if rangefinders were around. So all this is going on. Well, needless to say, after halfway through this course, I'm out of arrows.

And because you've missed so much, I've.

Literally missed practically everything. Didn't know the distance. I grew up hunting with, if you can shoot a paper plate at 20 yards, you can hunt. That was our thing. And meanwhile, hitting a paper plate meant go out and shoot 10 arrows if you can kind of hit it some. So I'd got better than that. And I could have very specific pins to shoot exact numbers. But the in between stuff like, I hadn't filled the gaps right. So I went out and just was terrible. Lost all my arrows, blanked a bunch of targets. The people I was shooting with was looking at me like, wow, this is sad. And I said, sorry, I gotta go, I'm out of arrows. I'll be back. And I left. And I remember just driving up to Wilmot, Wisconsin from this Illinois shoot. The only shop I knew of was in Wilmot, Wisconsin, which is where my dad would take me to get some of my first bows. And drove up to this gander mountain and I was pissed off the whole way, like, I am never gonna suck this bad again at anything. And I drove up there, bought another dozen arrows, drove back and picked up where I left off, shot the course, and by then they were already handing out trophies. I was like, last in and they were already handing out trophies. And the guys that were on the podium had polo shirts on with embroidery of what shop they were shooting out of. And I remember the two top guys had these bright yellow shirts on. It said Gat Guns, Dundee, Illinois. So this was on a Saturday or a Sunday, Monday morning, I'm in Gat Guns. I'm in there. They opened at 1 o'. Clock. I was there by 11. I just sat around in my car for a few hours. And then when they opened, I came in and I was like, hey, I went to this 3D shoot. They're of kind. Couple guys that won. I want to ask them about their equipment and what they're doing, and they're kind of like, oh, yeah, it's probably so and so. They normally shoot at night. So I just lurked around there until people started to show up to shoot league. And then I was just this kid with all these questions. Why do you have a colored bow? Why does your sight have a lens in it? Why are your fletching shorter? Just all these questions. And went on a few days, and all of a sudden the guy at the shop, the manager, his name was Mike Donovan, he grabbed me and said, hey, kid, are you doing anything? And I said, well, yeah, I'm asking these guys questions. He said, no, are you doing anything? And I said, well, I go, why? And he goes, I need your help. And he pulled me in the back room and he said, hey, I forgot to do these guys arrows. Do you know how to fletch arrows? And I said, no, I don't know how to do any of this stuff. And he said, okay, I'm going to show you how. So he handed me some feathers, gave me a fletching jig, told me to put the feather in here, put glue down it, clamp it on the arrow, set the timer, do the next six in line, and then when the timer went off, take the clamp off, turn this little dial so that it rotates 0120 degrees to the next position, Put another feather in, put glue on, right? Repeat that three times. You got three fletchings on your arrow. And he's like, when these dozen are done, come out and get me. So I did that, and two hours later I came out and I said, hey, these are done. He's like, okay. And I was like, all right. He goes, okay, do those. And he pointed over in the corner and there was just this like a hundred tubes of them with orders wrapped up and kind of in there on what colors they got and everything. So this went on for weeks of me, just, I would show up at 12 o', clock, I'd jump in that little room and just start fletching arrows for this guy. And then all sudden he kind of told me like, hey, we got to replace this bowstring. And I'm like, well, how do you do that?

At some point, has he said, by the way, you work here now? No, no, this is all just pure apprentice mode.

Yeah. So this is kind of where it gets good.

So I think it got good about five minutes ago, by the way. I love this story.

So meanwhile, my dad is saying, hey, what are you doing for work? Which I was pouring concrete in the morning for an archer buddy. One of the guys that I was more or less stalking in this range. His name was Mike West. He had West Concrete. While I was talking to me, he's like, hey, what are you doing for job? I'm like, I don't know. He goes, well, I need help with my concrete company. You want to come? I'm like. He goes, we start early, kid. And I'm like, yeah, that's fine. And I said, I just want to be in here by night. And he's like, okay, we start early. So I was just running wheelbarrows full of freaking concrete every morning. And then when it hit 11:30, I'd be like, I gotta get to gat guns. And I would leave and go there and just fletch these arrows for free. And meanwhile, several weeks went by where I watched Mike hand out checks to other employees. So finally I told Mike, I said, hey, when am I going to eat my paycheck? I remember he just looked at me with this look of surprise. And he just. He goes, you want to get paid? And I go, yeah, I've been here for a month, from 12 to 8 o' clock every day. And he just said, you can't put a price on what I'm teaching you right now. And he was like, cold serious. And I said, that's cool, man, but I've got to put gas in my car. So he's just like, all right. He goes, let me think about it. And then he came back and he goes, I'm gonna give you four, ten an hour. And he goes, you'll have to work from 12 to eight every day. And I said, sounds awesome. And I went. After about a week, I went back to my dad and I said, hey, I've got. I think I want to change what I'm going to be doing. And he said, what do you mean? I go, I've got this job at this archery shop, and it's just the best. I love it. And meanwhile, everyone's teaching me better shooting techniques, right? They're teaching me shooting. I'm meeting sales reps from arrow companies, sales reps from Bow companies, I'm in full dork mode. So I tell my dad, yeah, this is what I want to do. And my dad said, I assume they're paying you a lot. And I said, I'm getting four, ten an hour. And I remember my dad because he's a psychologist, so he's looking at me as if he's kind of wanting to say, I really want you to make the right decision right now. You're 18, I don't want to tell you your decision. And so he kind of just said, I think that's a terrible decision. And like most 18 year olds, I just decided to freaking run with it.

I mean, is it safe to say that part of this is you're pretty good at a lot of things up until that point in your life athletically? How much of this is you getting bit by this bug of a month earlier? You're at this 3D challenge, you're the worst guy there. And there's like a lack of familiarity with being so bad at something. I mean, is that part of. Let me rephrase the question. I suspect that is part of it. Is that a small part of it or a large part of it?

I don't know, man. I think that same sort of things in you. I think that same sort of things in a lot of our friends. I think a lot of our friends are very similar in the fact of, if you give us something athletic to do, we won't necessarily be awesome at it, but we're definitely going to be above average at it really fast. Or if we're not, we will make sure we at least get above average at it before we say, yeah, that was cool, I'm going to move on. Other things, I don't think I've ever done anything where I just totally suck at it. Maybe there's a few. If someone got me into competitive limbo, I would probably be like, yeah, okay, I frickin suck at this. And I would maybe take a few lessons and I'd be like, you know what, I'm 6 5, I'm not meant to limbo. So I gave it a try. But for the most part, I think that stuff just in competitive people, like people with drive, they have drive all the time, right? I think, yeah.

I don't know. I mean, look, my hope is by the end of this interview, I want to understand this better. Because as much as you and I have spoken about this stuff over meals and such, I find your story remarkable. I mean, I interview some really amazing people on this podcast and they're amazing in their field of a particular science or something. You know, lots of different things. And I have friends who are among the best in the world at something. So you're in pretty rarefied air. Like, I can't compare to that.

I feel like I shouldn't even be here.

No, no. I mean, I'm saying the opposite, actually. Like, I can't relate. I've never, never been exceptional at anything. I've never been as good at anything as you are at Archie. Let's put it that way. Let's just.

But I'm not exceptional. I've just. I've made it a lifetime passion to give everything I have to master it. I'm not. Except there's prodigies. I feel like I was born with a talent to do it. Because as many times as I've kind of been burnt out by it and walk away from it, all of a sudden, for some reason I come back to it and then I do it. And I realize, man, there's a lot of people that work tirelessly to try to achieve this result. And I really didn't have to put that in and I'm getting it. So I feel like this is what I'm meant to do. But I. I don't know. I feel like. I feel like you're cutting yourself short, not saying that you're 100% that way. You're just that way. In a different light. Just that way with a projectile.

I mean, well, look, we could split hairs on it. I would still argue that you, at your best, were better at your craft than I've ever been at my craft or ever will be at anything that will be my craft. And that's okay. I just mean that it's. I'm always interested in understanding how people. What kind of passion people bring to their craft. Now, backing up for a moment. You've spoken only once that I've ever heard very briefly about something that I was sort of. This was a couple of years ago, I think it was on Rogan. You talked very briefly about something in your childhood that you guys didn't spend a lot of time dwelling on it, but it really kind of gripped me, which was what happened to you when you were about 9 years old with your house. Yeah. We've never spoken about that.

Yeah.

Are you comfortable talking about that at all?

Yeah, I'll talk about it. I mean, it haunts me. It haunts me in the fact that. So just like most kids and this. Everything happens for a reason. I'm happy that happened I've talked to Joe in depth about things that are super close to me. So sometimes he's going to know how far we should go down a rabbit hole. This rabbit hole doesn't really. It doesn't matter. It's part of my past. And it's honestly something that allows me to. When I'm around friends that have kids that are bad. Not bad in the fact that they act up, but bad.

Just rambunctious.

Yeah. I tell them, I'm like, hey, I was way worse than that. And I said, you got to just give them a chance. Something will happen to where they'll change their direction. And a lot of people have looked at me and they're like, oh, yeah, easy for you to say. And I'm like, no, man, let me tell you.

Yeah, right. Because at the surface, they would say, easy for you to say because Your son, who's 20, is.

He's like, well, even looking at me, like them knowing me now or knowing me for the last 20 something or 30 something years, they would never realize that me growing up, I grew up on skateboards. I grew up on BMX bikes. I grew up taking money from my mom's wallet so I could go buy, like, fireworks. And, I mean, I was Beavis and Butthead. Like, that's what I was. I was Beavis and Butthead. And, yeah, I played with fire when I was nine years old, Called myself in sick from school, was at home while my mom was in, I think, Puerto Rico, visiting a factory. My dad was at work. And, yeah, I started playing with matches. Ended up catching something on fire in the house. Panicked. And honestly, I tried to use the fire extinguisher. Didn't work. Guess why? Because I had been playing with firecrackers I wasn't supposed to have months before that in the garage and almost burned the house down. So I put them out with this fire extinguisher and just stuck it back up in the house without telling anyone I had completely used it. So then fast forward, playing around with fire, whatever, primal, say what you say. We got the fire going over here. Looks cool. Yeah. House started on fire. Started in a bedroom. And I called my dad. He was on the other side of town, middle of a session with the patient. Told him, there's a fire in the house. It's pretty bad. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, blah, blah, blah. And he just said, what's it like in the house? I said, it's just black. It's black everywhere. I put it out. There's Black smoke everywhere. And he just said, get the smoke out of the house. Get the smoke out of the house. So I open the windows and then open the front door and just, like, let the air blow through. And I was just kind of crying, frantically running around the house, like, trying to kind of prepare myself for when my dad was getting ready to come home to this thing. And then by the time I went back in the bedroom, it was even smokier than it was that time. And then I remember I was just, like, opening the window even wider and ripping the screen out. And keep in mind, I was a punk kid. I was, like, super. I still like heavy metal, but I was into heavy metal. I was a skater. I was a troublemaker. That's what I was. And I wasn't into sports. Didn't like sports. My dad was an athletic prodigy, pretty much. And I know that that's probably what was in my genes. That wasn't what I wanted to do. So all of a sudden, I look in that room. I'm in there, and I'm trying to get the smoke out. And then I look up, and through the smoke, I can see there's just flames all the way around the entire ceiling. And that, like, fell down kind of right in front of my legs. Luckily, I was able to get out of the house. And, yeah, the whole house burned down. The only thing that we had was what was in my mom's car at o' Hare Airport and what was in my dad's. My dad's car that was at work. That was it. So, yeah, I mean, I. I dealt with this.

You have an older sister, right?

Yeah, my sister was at college, so, I mean. Yeah.

Considerably older.

Yeah. Dealing with all of her stuff, being lost. And my little brother did this, and I was dealing with all this stuff. And my parents were really good about. I've never asked them what their conversation was, but they never really. They never really rubbed it in. I remember my dad telling me I was. I was struggling dealing with it, honestly. We were living in an apartment, and my dad told me, you know, hey, you should, you know, try to get involved with school. And I think he said something like, isn't there a dance coming up this weekend or something? And I said, yeah. And he goes, you should go there. Go see your friends and stuff. So I remember going to this dance, and then one of the kids in the school ended up, like, making a request to play burning down the house. And so I ended up kind of raging out on this kid. I was never really a fighter But I went a little nuts on this kid. And then I think my parents just realized, we need to get him out of this town. So we moved to a completely different town. And once we got there, I told myself, I'm like, I got to make my dad proud. And I knew the only way I was going to really do that was basketball, football, or golf. And so that was totally my passion, was jumping in there and becoming as good as I can. And I remember when I first started basketball, I wasn't like, I had the size, but I wasn't natural at it. And I remember my sixth or seventh grade basketball coach, even though I was the tallest or the second tallest, I remember seeing him, like, kind of crack jokes that I was uncoordinated and stuff like that. I kind of remember that. And then all of a sudden, fast forward three or four years later, when I was in high school and I was the starting quarterback for our varsity team already, I remember going back to the junior high for something. And I remember running into that. Or maybe I ran into that coach somewhere in town. And I remember he's like, well, what are you doing with yourself nowadays, Dudley? And I just said, well, I'm coaching varsity with the high school. And I remember him laughing at. He's like, yeah, right. And so, like, all those little things kind of, they just fueled me. So at first, I just. I wanted to do something to pay my parents back for being that kid that burnt the house down, literally. And then, I don't know, just. I think it began this drive to just be fully committed to. Honestly, fully committed to training, because I never had raw talent. I just had size to start with. So then it just. I realized, like, if I knew every person's positions, every single person, if I knew what they needed to do every play, I would be a leader. I could look at them. Do you know what you need to do? No. Okay, you're gonna pull, you're gonna come across, you're gonna pick up the first defense event. Like, I knew every X and every O on the playbooks. And so that was. I don't know, I think some of that, looking back, thinking about it now, some of that probably rolls over into just what molded my personality of going deep into this stuff.

Do you ever talk to your dad about your mom, for that matter? But maybe your dad just because he's a psychologist by training, about kind of the wisdom they had to that. Because I know I've heard you talk about this a little bit in the past, and it sounds like your parents Handled this as well as any parents could have. I mean, I have to think that if a hundred parents had 109 year old boys in that situation, like 99 of those can end up a lot worse. Where that kid never recovers from that. For example, like if one of my kids burned down the house, I'm just not. I don't know. I don't know how I'd handle that.

It's hard. It's hard to think about.

Yeah. Yeah.

What's hard is not having my dad losing all of his stuff from, from his military. Not having any baby photos. Everything your parents had. Like all that stuff's haunting. It is like no one could tell me anything that wouldn't make me feel bad about that. Because in the end I know that they never had to tell me that. My dad's never said. Oh man. All my.

Well, that's the part that amazes me. Right.

It's sort of like that you're never did. Yeah.

That your parents had the understanding that you, you were going to beat yourself up in eternity over that they never needed to vent their frustration to you. That to me is. That's remarkable and it's kind of an amazing testament to them. And I'm sure they weren't perfect. No parent is. But that may be their single most exceptional parenting moment or event.

Yeah, for sure. And it's another one of those, another one of those perfect examples of when negative things happen. It's an opportunity to, to really change full direction or make something out of it. If something blows up, there's new pieces there. You can build it in a new way because the pieces wouldn't be there if that wouldn't have happened. Right. It would still be kind of a solid object that wouldn't have anything. So I've just, I've kind of taken that and dedicated myself to just really want to make my dad proud in that aspect and then kind of rolled it into. For whatever reason this archery thing was all of a sudden, this was the same sort of thing from the training, from the dedication. The competition was still there. I wasn't good at it. But more importantly, the archery was for me. I think that was the first thing that was really for me again, because that was what I loved, not what I think I was worried about my dad really loving. And I don't know, it was in a small way. It was also when I knew people thought it was a bad idea. It was a lot like when that coach said, you're never going to be a varsity player because that same sort of thing happened with archery. People told me, they're like, I asked about what's these national events or world championships. You're never going to be that good. That's what I was told. I was told that. And then a year later, I was already at my first triple crown as an amateur. Two years later, I was already at a world championship as an amateur. Three and a half years later, I was already in the pro class. And by the fourth year from that day, within four years of that day, I was a rookie of the year in the pro class.

So I want to just pause for a moment and make sure people understand some of the nuts and bolts about this, because if we were talking about football, people would understand what the sport is and what the quarterback does and what a wide receiver does and what a touchdown is and all those things. I think in archery, I mean, even it's sort of funny, like, how many hours a day do I do this? And my wife still doesn't actually know anything about archery. We were kind of laughing about it the other day at dinner, right?

No, every day at dinner you're like, let me put this in this perspective every day.

And God bless her. It's not from a lack of interest. It's just the reality of it is if you're not out there behind a bow, looking at something at a distance and knowing what those distances are like, I don't think a normal person walks through the world thinking about what is the difference between 50 yards and 60 yards and 100 yards and 20 yards. So can you explain how the competition works? What is the actual event? What does an actual event look like?

There are several events, but yeah, there's so many. I've shot on probably four or five different types of pro tours over the years, and all of them have different rules. The one thing that's consistent about football is you're always on the same field. You always have four downs, you always have four quarters. With archery, each event has a certain number of arrows that you shoot. And once that score happens, some events, when it's done, top three, that's it. Some, once the top five scores at the end of the ranking round or qualification round, then the top five will go in, they'll shoot down to a winner. Some have more like an Olympic style round where you shoot a ranking round, they rank Everybody, they rank one to 64, and then number one will shoot against number 64, number two shoots against 63 type thing and you'll have brackets and you shoot all the way down into a gold medal match. And depending on the event, some events are multiple distance through multiple days, some events are fixed distances, the maximum is up to 90 meters. So back they've actually canceled this round here recently. But back when I competed, a full feed around was 30 meters, 50 meters, 70 meters, 90 meters.

Feet stands for. Back then it was Federation International.

Yeah, it was French. I don't even know what it was. Now it's called world archery. They made it much simpler, but yeah, you would shoot rounds at 30, 50, 70, 90 meters and then once the quals were done, the head to heads would all be shot at 70 meters, which is 77 yards. That was for that type of event. My favorite event was the field archery formats which is multiple size bullseyes proportion depending on the distance that you're shooting, anywhere from 20 meters out to about 80. And you would shoot one round that had marked distance, one round that was unmarked distance. And then you'd go into qualifications that were half and half.

So let's put some specs to this so people understand what we're talking about. So most people know how long a football field is. That's just a touch over.

You put it on the one yard line. Honestly, this almost goes back to like me hooking that football. Right, right.

So you're on the one yard line of football field. The other end zone is 99 yards away, which is 90 meters. Okay, so a professional archer, one of the top professional archers can hit with their bow at that distance. If they took 10 shots, what size diameter would they be able to land? 10 shots inside of this Jocko coffee.

Cup right here is about the size of the 10.

So the 10 ring there is about, that's about two and a half to three inches.

No, that'd be wider than that dude.

Looks like about four inches max, right? That's three inches.

Yeah, yeah. We could look up the exact diameter.

But yeah, it's pretty small. So take your coffee, the jocko coffee mugs. A slightly big coffee mug.

Yeah, it's a larger coffee mug. But if they shot 10 shots, most, I would say most pro archers are going to hit that 8 out of 10.

Okay, let's pause for one more moment here and now explain another distinction which we have yet to explain to the listener, which is we talk interchangeably about bows. But if anyone ever turns on the Olympics, they're watching one type of bow. But most of what you shoot and all of what I shoot is a different type of bow. Can you explain that difference?

So if you're watching The Olympic Games, they shoot recurves. So those bows are very long, and it's a handle with wooden limbs, which are the parts that bend, and there's a string that's a recurve bow. So what we're shooting is what's called a compound, which is a bow that has round wheels on it that essentially store energy. So as you pull it back, the limbs of the bow flex. But they also have this cam system that's I guess, for layman's turn. Imagine like gears on a bike, where as you're going through those gears, you have the ability to make it easier at some point. So as you pull this back, the cam rolls over into kind of a different position to where it gets easier as you get closer to your fully extended position. That's probably the easiest way to say it. Right. And it's a little bit easier to hold it at full draw. But because of that, you're also able to shoot much more poundage at the. The beginning of that pole cycle. So, in other words, in the Olympics, a heavy recurve shooter would be shooting about 50 pounds, because as he pulls that bow back, every inch he pulls it back further, that weight continually increases as he pulls it back. So once he gets to full draw, that in no way gets easier. Whereas ours, we could shoot a 70 pound bow, and as we start to pull it, it'll peak at £70 fairly soon. And then it gets easier and easier and easier and kind of it drops back. You can be much more accurate with the compound bow, and you can also achieve much longer distances because the energy stored is greater.

So the typical speed. So your bow or my bow. My bow. I just know this because it's. My bow is 292ft per second is what I would call the muzzle velocity.

Close to 100 miles an hour.

Yeah. Which the way I describe it to Olivia when you. She's watching me shoot, is if I shoot 50 yards, it's taken about half a second to get there. What's the speed on a recurve on an Olympian's bow?

Way less. Like, way, way less.

And in the Olympics, they shoot what distance? 70 meters, which I've only ever fired a recurve at 20. I don't even understand how those guys fire recurves at 77 yards.

Yeah, it's impressive. They use the same type of process that I teach, just with a different system. And actually our. Our US Guy, he's a close. I can't say he's a close friend because I've Known him since he was a kid. I liked his dad a lot. His dad was a very well respected person. And I gave Brady his first recurve bow. He was shooting a compound, but he wanted to get into shooting Olympic style archery. So I gave him his first recurve bow and he just set a new world record with it. He's won, I think, medals the last two. He's phenomenal. He's an amazing archer, but he just set a new world record this morning.

Wow. Explain what the world record is.

I think he shot a 701 out of 720. So that's the exact same scoring ring I just talked about. So out of 720 points, he shot 701 in this coffee cup with that recurve bow. So that's phenomenal.

You get 72 shots.

That's 72 shots.

72 shots. Every time you're in that exact 10 ring, which is the inside of a coffee cup, 77 yards away, you'd get a 10. So that means presumably he got nine nines and the rest were tens or some combination there.

Yeah, I mean, and what's impressive about it too is a lot of times when you're off with the recurve, like if you make a really poor shot with the recurve, it's really poor.

So it's possible one of those was a one and then probably not with him.

But yeah, it would have been easy to do on a 70, 22 arrows, which is why those scores, even though people might have the pace to do that, the reality is because they're shooting with fingers too, they're not allowed to shoot a mechanical release. So it's pretty phenomenal. It's amazing to watch it. But as amazing as that is, that was never a pursuit of mine because these guys train for four years for one event. And although there are world champs and world cups in between, Sad part about archery is the money pays out a lot more in the compound pro class than in the recurve class. And there's more people there. The cost of getting it in is higher too. So although that's the Olympic sport, the Olympians, their paydays are when they win medals. And that paydays really only every four years. Now they'll. I'm sure they're getting compensated to shoot, but like for me, for example, my rookie year, if I won a pro event, the guaranteed payout was 10,000. By the time you got some of your contingency checks, you were making 15 grand a weekend on a win. World champs were 30,000. Shooter of the years were 50,000. If you win the Vegas indoor tournament, which is every February, that pays about 50,000. Whereas with the recurve, they may make 5 or 10. I don't know.

Does anybody hunt with recurve? Oh, yeah, There are guys that'll still hunt with the recurve. Yeah. I was wondering if that was also part of the reason you favored compound, which was you started as a hunter.

Yeah.

Then became an archer. The two go hand in hand. I mean, they feed off each other.

Yeah, yeah. I always said. And you and I talked about this, and you told me, you said, now that I'm doing this and I've kind of became a target archer. I went to Lanai, I hunted Axis. You said, I understand that saying that you have. Which what I tell people is I'm a target archer in order to be a better bow hunter. And I'm a better bow hunter because I'm a target archer. I feel like there's a very, very important puzzle piece to being ethical that involves you giving everything you have to be in the absolute best archer you can be and being able to know your limitations on shots. And the reality is, we talked about, like, when Sharon was going to run that half marathon, she prepped for it. I just. I just decided to do it. I didn't know my limitations. I just went and did it. Did I do it? Yeah, I did it. But in a hunting situation, guys that just know how to shoot a bow and then go out and then just take those shots at animals, I feel like morally there's going to come a point where if their shot doesn't connect where they want, that's going to be hard to deal with. So I've always felt like, ethically, I need to know my limitations, because when that moment happens, I'm going to be able to make. Ideally make a perfect shot, or the more I've done it in practicing in weird conditions, the more you realize this might not be a shot I should even take, even though I know I can technically shoot this far, which you learned from me.

The list of things I've learned from you, John, is unbelievable. And, you know, we'll link in this podcast to the interview where I was on your podcast. And of course, I don't want to chew up any of our time here retelling stuff I talked about there, which was sort of how this all spoke to me and what this all. Why what you're saying resonated so much. And that's something that to this day, I still can't answer. You know, you asked me that question. I gave you the best answer I had. And in the end, I still don't know. I just think there are some people for whom that degree of perfection is so blissful. There's such an amazing state. And, you know, my wife said something to me about six months ago, which she's never said about any of my obsessions because she's known me for 19 years now, and she's been through many seasons of obsession. We were talking about the anastomosing and surgery and swimming and cycling and archery and race car driving and all these things, both past and present, that are my obsessions. And she said, you get so pissed off when you're having a bad day in your given sport. I used to call her every morning after swim practice on my way to work. I'd go early, swim Masters, and then I'd drive into work and she'd be heading to work, and I was just calling, say, hey. And she's like, I could tell from your voice how the practice went. And you have to understand something here. We're talking about masters swimming, like, nobody cares, okay? Not on the national team. Right. I don't have a Wheaties contract. Like, nobody cares. In fact, nobody else in the pool can tell if I was 1 second off per hundred that day. Like, it's just not at that level. But, I mean, my day would rise or fall as a function of that and the same thing. Like, if I'm in the simulator for two hours and I come in and I'm surly and pissy, she knows, like, you just didn't drive well. And she's like, I don't know what it is about archery, but she's like this. I've only seen you twice pissed off for shooting bad. Usually even when you. If you come in and I say, how'd you do? You'd be like, I sucked, but you're not pissed. It's almost like there's a benefit to archery for my psyche that goes beyond the performance. There's something about the act of doing it that is in and of itself beautiful, even if I don't meet the objective. So the journey seems to matter as much as the destination in archery as anything I've ever done. Do you feel that way or because you have done it at such a high level, do you struggle more with those days or those seasons, which I'm sure there have been seasons or months or whatever when you've been off your form.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's Certainly times that there's been times where I have felt it, but there's also times where I quickly realize that when I do that in archery, it makes it worse. Worse really fast. The thing with archery is it really is a sport of Zen and clarity. You shoot better when you're trying, less so when you get mad you only get worse at it. And so this was something that I talked about a lot in my training is I was really fortunate to have a coach walk by me one time. And he was a coach. He was a well known coach that worked with some athletes, but he wasn't one that was kind of sanctioned. I don't even know how he got with some of the athletes that he was with, but he was with a few really high level athletes and he worked with maybe two or three in the archery world. But he was there watching one of his guys shoot and he kind of saw me make a bad shot on a target and I came unglued, which I've talked about this in football, if I threw an interception, I could just run after the guy and if I couldn't get to him, I could just hit someone. And then, especially in high school, guess what? I played offense, defense, kicker, punter, I could just hit someone, I could get it out somehow. There was release, whereas with archery there wasn't. So my release would be snapping an arrow over my leg or breaking a stabilizer or when the chute's all over and I know I'm not making the shoot off round, like wait until everyone's walking in and fricking hammer tossing my bow through the woods and walking away from it. I mean I've, I had those moments where I was young, sometimes I wasn't even 20.

I want to go back to that for a moment because if you're 20, that means you're only one or two years post making this crazy decision to force go, oh yeah, a football scholarship to work for four, 10, an hour to try to become an archer. And so when you're breaking an arrow, snapping your stabilizer and throwing your bow into the woods, are there moments of doubt where you're saying I could be the starting quarterback in Carolina? Like were you ever looking back saying no? What was your self talk in that moment of, of anger?

Something defeated me that day and it wasn't going to do it tomorrow? That's what it was like. I wasn't looking back. I was always right there. What's happening now is what I'm focused on. And this coach told me, he said, you're never going to be any different than you are right now until you realize that the only arrows you have control on are those ones that are in your quiver. And I kind of looked at him and he goes, do you know how to get that arrow back? That's in. Down there in that five ring? I kind of like looked at him again and he goes, do you know anyone that can pull that arrow back to this shooting line from that target? And I just said, no. And he goes, and you never will. He goes, the only thing you have control on is what you haven't shot yet. And he goes, you gotta let that go. It's the past. And that, like, was so changing for me because it got to the point where I started just I was talking to arrows in my quiver. One would shoot. I'd make a bad shot and think, well, okay, I shot a five. Now I'm gonna need at least three twelves to dig out of that hole. So I'd look into my quiver and be like, which one of you son of want to shoot a 12? Because we got some work to make up for your asshole down there.

So.

And I'd just be like, are you the one? And I'd grab it. And I just started doing that and things started to change.

But.

But what I learned about archery and what I liked about it and the reason why I went into a lot of different techniques or form of archery is because I really liked the training aspect. I loved it. I like prepping. I really like to prep. So I think that's a big reason why I like to cook. I love to eat at the end. But I also like when you say, hey, let's cook. I kind of just let me prep.

So, by the way, have I at all been successful this week in convincing you to create a sub channel on your YouTube channel for cooking?

Maybe.

I'll just interject for a moment. Those of you, obviously, you've heard this in the intro, but School of knock knock on TV on YouTube. Unbelievable.

Knock on Archery on YouTube.

Is it knock on archery? I just click on the link. I don't even know what it's called. If you just go to YouTube and put knock on, it shows up.

Yeah. And it's not, don't put a K at the beginning. It's N O C K. Just like an arrow knock. Not like you and your.

We need to be clear. We need to be. We need to be clear. We might not have the. But your cooking is. It actually reminds me so much of my father. So, you know, I grew up in a restaurant. People always say to me, like, I like to cook as well. And people always ask me for recipes. Like, they'll come over and have like that salmon that we had the other day, and they'll be like, which was the bomb. Thank you, I appreciate it.

That was the bomb.

And people always say, like, hey, man, can you give me that recipe? And I actually finally one day wrote up the recipe for that. But I know that whatever I wrote is not actually what I normally make because I'm always just doing it by a pinch of this, a pinch of that. If you ask me, like, what temperature I'm cooking and that, or how long, I don't know, I just watch it. I just. Like my dad, I remember him literally telling me like, once the salmon starts to sweat, it's done. And I remember trying to explain that to somebody once. They're like, what the hell are you talking about? And I was like, it just made sense.

The oil bubbles, bro.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like. And so you're a lot like my dad. When my dad's here and he's cooking, it is so enjoyable because it's just. I call it street style cooking. Like, it's just a little bit. What do you got? Just show me what you got. I'll make it work. And you are awesome, man. We have.

That's what we've done.

We have consumed. We've eaten really well this week, by the way. I've lost £4 since you've been here.

Are you kidding me?

Which is crazy given how much I've eaten, dude. But it's because, like, part of it is I've eaten so well. Well, we fast a lot during the day. We're probably fasting a little bit longer than normal, but. But it's like our dinners are super clean and a lot of times if the entree is not that great, I'll end up nibbling on my kids leftovers and crap, like their Mac and cheese or whatever junk food they're eating. But like, there's been none of that this week. So it's just like. Yeah, it's. Anyway, you do have a gift for cooking. I mean, I'm not just saying that. It's really, really been a pleasure to watch the way you interact and think about stuff. Like, even last night, you just had that idea out of the blue, which was, oh my God, like, if you put this sugar free maple syrup into this type of mustard and glaze it on the salmon, like, boom, we gotta try that.

Oh, I've gone Further than that, I woke up thinking, if we infuse that, if we smoke that syrup and then infuse it into like some frozen whiskey balls, imagine the old fashions we can make. Dude, I woke up thinking about that.

You have got to pursue this. This is a non negotiable back to the more serious stuff. So.

Well, yeah, because I'm trying to get to like. So all those processes that I was talking about, I just started to realize that I was, I was very task driven. Like all this stuff has always been about. It's always been about tasks. Now it's hard. I will say it's hard for me to. I can't. I shouldn't say I can't. But it's hard for me to be at my absolute best as a performer during practice because I do perform better when I. As soon as I turn around and I see people putting cameras on me, that's a drive for me that I can perform better than. I need that push. But I did do a lot of research and I kind of started. I read a book. I read a book called Mind Gym. And I don't read a lot because I don't have a lot of time.

Gym G Y mm Because I was.

Really trying to figure out. So this is something that's been interesting to me for a long time because I really struggle with ADD and I've been clinically tested. I went through a psychological full evaluation for my ADD and my ld, which was a full day going through as a teenager.

As a, as an adult.

Yeah, because I struggled. Part of the problem was once I was working at that archery shop, I did want to still go to college. But I realized really quick it was. I realized I had never really taken a book home. I just always got passed in classes because I was excelling as an athlete. And so I really, really struggled with that. And I struggled with attention. I struggled with certain things. There's a lot of things that were distracting. So my dad's like, I'm going to take you to one of my friends. We're going to really test you for this. So I have a pretty severe case of ADD and I have an LD as well. And so I started realizing that what.

Is the particular ld? Did they define it clearly?

Probably, but I would not know unless I gave you my evaluation. It's kind of a thick eval and I probably have it somewhere. So what I learned was in archery, I kind of zone out in archery. I really feel like that's a big part of why I'm Good at it. And I'm the same when I weightlift. Like, I can do something repetitive so many times that I almost get into a trance in it and it takes someone to like snap me out of that. And in competition, it's been that way too, where I've been competing. And for example, like a cameraman or a videographer says, hey man, sorry for bumping you during that shot. And I'm like, when? And he's like, I bumped your elbow. And I completely oblivious to it because to me, I'm so zoned out on that. So I really started diving into this. I really wanted to find out some of these people that write sports psychology books. I was really curious if there's some type of connection between high level athletes that have add. In other words, they're hyper focused. They're hyper focused just kind of by makeup. And there's certainly times where if a lot's going on, I can be distracted, but during those same times, I can be having a conversation with you and people can be trying to get my attention. And equally I don't get it. So I was kind of diving down this road of is this ADD making me better? Me getting into my own zone? Because I also got to the point where during certain practices, when I would practice with certain music, there were times where I could get into flow states that were honestly that most people don't believe. I mean, I've had times where I shot 99 shots where one time into the same arrow hole without stretching it. It took an hour and a half of doing it. But I remember I had, I had like kind of a meditative type album playing. It was just. I didn't even know it, but it was on repeat. Like it was on repeat on my playlist. So the same song had been playing for an hour and a half and I never knew it. And then I would just get into these flow states like that. So I started looking up, is there a connection between people that have these types of hyper focusing? And are these people also people that get into a flow state better? Because then at that point I was almost at the point of retirement and this stuff was starting to become clear to me. And I'm thinking as a coach, if I get to the point where I'm coaching national teams, I'm going to be looking for this. I want to be able to find this. And so then at that same time, I started going into these books and I started to see the difference in personality types between ego driven and task driven personality types. So. And then Clearly I am a task driven mentality. I looked at a lot of times the task driven personality type. Athletes are normally the ones that kind of go down at their peak levels for the longest period of time. They might not peak as high as the ego driven, but as fast. Fast as the ego driven can peak, they can also dissell. So when people are looking at, do you want the superstar? The ego driven is like your route. Do you want the task driven? The task driven is what you build a team off of. Yeah, it was pretty interesting to go down those. Have you looked into that stuff? Have you ever dove down those roads?

I have and there's other things that I think, I think about when I hear people like you talk about things that shape them. So you said already a couple of things that I think are really relevant to my observation of exceptional performers. One of them you said, you just said it outright. But a lot of people don't articulate it as directly. You love to practice. I have yet to meet a world class exceptional performer who didn't love to practice. So when you talk to Lance Armstrong or his teammates, Lance's teammates will, you know, spoken with at least one of them. They'll tell stories about how it just didn't matter. Like when it was early season training and the ride was supposed to be a six hour grueling ride, at the end of six hours Lance wanted two more. Sometimes he would just go do it by himself. And again, it's so funny to me. It just. Nothing makes me sort of more annoyed that people simply want to dismiss the natural talent of these cyclists because. And they also happen to use performance enhancing drugs. You know, I've interviewed Apollo Ono on this podcast as well and his appetite for training was just unbelievable. I've worked out with Apollo and it's just so much fun to work out with him even as a. He's 10 years post his Olympian life. But he just still like has this complete love for training even though he's not at that same level. And so this is. It's this love for practice and it's this ability to practice deliberately and to practice correctly and to appreciate that. And I just don't think you can get to an exceptional level without that. Of course, my other favorite example of that is Zayartensena, greatest driver in the history of motorsport. And when you talk to people who were around him, who I've spoken with many people, I've obviously never knew him or speak to him, but people who are around him, they all say the same thing, which is just his attention to detail was second to none. When every other driver had left, he was still there. He'd spend the night in the garage talking to the mechanics. He knew as much about the car. Car as they knew, more than any other driver could know about the car. So the two feed off each other. I don't know which one's the chicken and which one's the egg, truthfully. In other words, I don't know if the best of the best are the best because they do those things or if because they're doing those things because of something else that is making them the best again. For me, personally, it's just I've never been at that level, so. But I feel grateful that. Especially when it comes to something like archery, like, I enjoy the process. I. I am saying to jr, we were talking yesterday, we were out there shooting when you were working with Josh, and I was like, I've never once stopped practice shooting practice out of boredom. There's only two reasons I've ever stopped shooting in the past two and a half years, and it's either I just have a time constraint, like, I have a phone call I got to get on or something, or I physically just break down. Like, I can't hold the bow any longer, and my form is deteriorating so rapidly. And I never thought of that until, like, the other day. And I was like, man, that is. That's really fun. Like, that's so cool that there is something I can be that you can love that much. Because you can't say that about a lot of things. Most things, yeah, most things, like, you can get bored of. You can only watch so much YouTube before you're like, I'm kind of done with this. I can't watch one more Jimmy Kimmel video or whatever it is. I gotta go do something else.

I think those attributes are so important to just lifestyle. I mean, we're talking right now about sport, but there's times, luckily, I've got to the point where I work independently. We have a business that, me and my wife, I kind of do the educational side, and then there's a product side that she runs our E. Commerce. But I still work independently for a lot of people as a consultant, and having something to do and being active in that stuff like that is part of a personality type. And it's part of a personality type, I believe, of someone that gets successful in not just one thing, but a magnitude of things. Because there's a lot of people out there that want to be a successful business person. Or they want to have a successful business. And there's times where people will come forward and say, hey, if you do consulting or if you do brand representation, what do you normally charge? And. And we'll talk about that. And then all of a sudden they come forward. And then I realized really quick, wait a minute. This is like being on a team where the coach doesn't know what we're doing for practice. No one knows when to get here. And I just tell them really fast, like, hey, this isn't the right team for me. I'm here to. It's like having that person that wants to lift with you, but they never show up. If you're someone that has drive, you just. That's not part of your equation. That's a disruption. And it's amazing to me how many people that have really good concepts, have really good investors, and then they come forward and it's almost like if I look at it as a sport, there's no task, the task portion, or the work portion of this thing, which a lot of times having a product reveal is. That's like being at the World Champs. But not having all the preparation going into that, really, in the time that goes into that and start to see that bloom. And essentially you see the fruit of that if you don't have it. It's just, I don't know, it's not my DNA to want to be part of that. And the amount of people that I know that fail because they are really good about the start, and they're really good about wanting to know how they want to finish, but they kind of lack the in between. It's just a destructive path. And it's unfortunate because I've seen good business concepts, I've seen good people, and I've seen good investors fail. And I normally see it pretty quick where I'm like, hey, I'm out.

There's another thing you've done that one can never fully project this or convey this to people without them knowing you. But I do think there's still an ability to convey it somewhat. And that is your podcast, even in your opening line to the podcast, says, this is a podcast for all archers of all interest, skill levels, independent of the equipment you use, this, that, or the other thing. And I want to come back and sort of sing the praises of why your podcast is sort of one of the most important podcasts for me. But there's something that you do that I know a lot of people aspire to be able to do, which is you are someone who can sell something honestly. And that's not to say you're the same. I aspire to it. I don't know if truthfully I convey as much of it as you do, but I know, like, I just know anytime I see something on your site, I can just buy it. Like, I don't have to say, I wonder if Dudley's just selling this because he's getting a kickback on it that's bigger than if he was. I think that's rare. That's just hard to do. It's hard to do that because we're humans and I know we're even subconsciously we can be motivated by things we don't see. But do you spend a lot of time thinking about the choices you make? Because, I mean, I even told you this a while ago, but when I was buying a Target bow a year ago, I mean, I was torn between two companies and I tried both of the bows out and I spent a lot of time and a lot of reps on each bow. And I mean, in the end you reviewed them and there was. The one that you went with is the one I went with. I mean, in the end it was just going to come down to that. So it was that leap of faith. I probably even paid more for the bow. And that's the type of leap of faith I think you take when you trust what somebody has to say about something. And of course, in my world, it's. There's different types of products.

Oh, yeah, yours is a million times worse than mine.

Yeah, there's more snake oil in my world than yours for sure. I guess what I'm getting at in a long winded way is your credibility is enormous. There's always people out. I know there's a lot of people that just. They're incredibly jealous of the success that you've had, because your success has really been as a teacher, something we haven't even talked about yet, but we're going to. But the reality of it is, anybody who I've ever spoken with who's got even a half decent head on their shoulders and who's honest, they can say, look, I don't agree with everything Dudley says, but he's the real deal and he is on it. I mean, he is. He's credible. You can take what he says to the bank. How deliberate is that for you to cultivate that?

Well, it's super important. I mean, it's really, really important. I was really lucky that when I was 18 and about to turn pro, I went to an archery trade show. And I walked by a company that I had just kind of started working with, but I really wasn't working with them. But I walked by and I saw him in the process of building their booth, and I could tell they were late. And this is at a trade show, so if you've ever gone to any type of trade show, you know, you go in one or two days before people build this thing. So I walked in and it was Matthews. It was Matthew's Archery. And I could tell that they were late and that they were building this new booth, and it was a brand new one. They couldn't quite figure out how it all went together. So I walked up and I said, hey, do you guys need help? And they said, yeah. So I jumped in there and I helped and ended up building this booth up. And then the next day I was in there and just started talking about product to different people and expressing my opinion. And then when that trade show was over, since I was already there, I'm like, well, hey, I'll help you guys get out of here and I help tear it down. That was just kind of what you do, right? That's just part of personality types, especially the ones I like. And the next, I think it was on the Monday, I got a call from the president of the company, and he just said, hey, I'd love to hire you as a sales rep. You had unbelievable people skills. And so. And so. And eventually I went to work for that archery company at 18 and a half or 19 years old, which was very small, very few employees. Fast forward 10 years. Inc. 500 business twice. Massive company. We recruited the largest ambassador team in the history of archery, had the largest payouts in tournament archery of anybody. And because I was internal in that company, I saw a lot of our people that we were paying to represent us make really poor judgment calls that not only not only made themselves look bad, but also at times made the company look bad and then also forced the company to make to make quick decisions on them to where looking back, we were like, man, did we really need to cut this guy loose? Maybe we didn't. But at the time for him to release confidential information, yeah, it wasn't good or so. Because I was young and saw people making mistakes that we were essentially hiring as pro staffers. And I was a pro staffer as well. And then also because I was a pro staffer that worked for the company, so I was directly employed by this company that employed this massive pro staff. So when I would go to an event I had rules on me that were ten times everyone else's. Like, if I made a poor call on someone's arrow, there was, like, a pro calling in, saying, like, hey, what the heck? You guys are my sponsor. And Dudley called my arrow out this weekend. I thought it was in. So I kind of started to have to deal with that stuff. And because I dealt with all those little things, it just really started to mold me on looking, dotting, my I's, crossing my T's. Understanding that your integrity is. The archery world is very small. And these bridges, there's only a few bridges, and when you burn them, they're burned. That's it. So the company I work for now, Hoyt, they were our biggest competitor. And when I worked at Matthews, and I had lots of opportunities at sales conferences or product reveals or trade shows to talk poorly about the product, even though they had a good product, I could have easily talked bad about them. I could have talked bad about the employees because I really didn't know them. But in the end, I always told him. I'm like, hey, this is a small world. There's only a few archery companies. I said one day we might be working together, maybe. Who knows? And honestly, the day that I left Matthews, the first company that called me was our biggest competitor. They're like, is it true you're not with Matthews? Yes, it is. We would like to talk. And that was very clear to me, that me being straightforward and truthful all the time, especially owning up to when I make mistakes and publicly telling everybody about when I make a mistake about this or that, I think it's just critical. And I don't work with products I don't like 100%.

How do you handle it when, let's say you were at Matthews or you're now at Hoyt, and there's a product that comes along and you don't like a piece of it. I mean, I guess maybe now it's different because of who you are. You alone are a force of nature within the archery world. But before you were the John Dudley, how did you sort of handle that gap between. This is something I'm not happy with. Guys like, I can't go out and sell this product, and them say, hey, man, like, do your job.

Well, there's two things to that. One is, if I really didn't like it, I can always shot what I shot last year. The good thing is they've all trusted me enough to where I'm normally shooting stuff three to six months before anyone else anyway. And I normally know about it a year before.

And you're putting feedback into it.

Oh, yeah, no question. But the other thing is, when stuff comes out, there's times where competitors have brought out products that. That are definitely inferior to ones that I like. The bottom line is you don't talk about what other people do bad. You don't talk about what you do bad, you talk about what you do right, or you talk about what you do better. And that's how it always was when I would go up and have these PR press releases in front of the media, I would be going up and talking about what we had at Matthews that was better than anybody else. I didn't have to say, These guys are 5ft slower per second. These guys have a 1 inch shorter brace height. This bow has 7% more vibration in it. What I would do is be like, we have 7% less vibration than some of the models on the market. We've got a more generous brace height. We come in at 5ft per second faster. This bow shoots a lot smoother in the hand. For me, I always feel like if you focus on either what you're doing right, what your company's doing right, or what you want to do right, you're just going down a super shady road to pick on the things that people might not be doing right at that time. And if it's a product that I feel isn't right, you're just not going to see me do a review about it. I'm not going to do a review to say it's poor. All I'm going to do is find another product to distract your attention to something that is a better option for you.

Well, it's great because again, now you are at the point where you have the gravitas that you can just sort of curate what is the best, and then that makes life a lot easier for people like me. And I talk about this a lot on your podcast. But there's 10 different turns of complete luck that just allowed me to, from the day I got my first bow, to be sort of plugged in straight from JR right into your YouTube channel and all of your videos. And by extension, then the methodology, which sort of leads me to my next question. When did it become clear to you that you had a knack for teaching, which a lot of people who are exceptional at the craft are actually not the best teachers at it. So there's a very rare overlap between people who are in, say, the top 1% of doing something and then the top 1% of teaching, that's not a huge overlap.

I don't really know how that came to be. I think some of its personality. I mean, I'm a good PR person. I like communicating with people. I think I'm easy to engage with. So I think that naturally helps any teacher or any coach.

Even donkeys. I mean, I've seen you interact with standing donkeys.

I was debating whether you're going to release that to your followers, but I'm.

Hoping by the time this podcast has come out, the donkey video is already out and we will just be linking to it through this podcast.

Okay, it might be. But I've also been really fortunate to be around really good coaches, too, that did a great job of leading by example of teaching. And like I said, I've. I've always thrived to learn how to do stuff better. It was that way. Even about weightlifting. Like, earlier today, I was at Frank Zane's house. He's a former Mr. Olympia, and Frank and I have been friends a long time. We met because he loved archery, and him and Arnold shot archery as their R and R during their kind of golden era. Bodybuilding, right? And so we met at an Arnold Classic, and him and I hit it off and he kind of asked for archery lessons. And I said, yeah, sure. And what was funny is he said, well, I'm doing a bodybuilding, or I'm doing a training seminar up at a gym in Minneapolis. So he said, what I might do is rent a car. And I said, actually, I'll. If I can sit in your class, I'd love to drive up. So I went up and sat into his class, and I saw how he delivered. And I'm like, man, I said, you have such a really cool presentation technique. And then he just said, well, up until the last three years of my bodybuilding career, I had to have a job as a teacher. He's like, that's what I do. And he was perfect at it. So he gave me pointers about delivery and how to put things in front of people to where they can see it and understand it, or you can express it and understand it, or also how you can. If you're really good at what you're talking about, you can find a way pretty fast to relate it to something that, you know, the person you're coaching also likes. So I didn't know a lot about you. I knew a few details. I knew you're into F1. I knew that. I knew you're into swimming, biking, obviously with. When I worked with Jocko, I knew Jocko's background as a seal. So when I explain certain things, I might not be the best at relating it exactly of how you do it within your field, but I can give you just enough to where all of a sudden, hopefully, you grasp what it is I'm saying just in case I'm talking on a level that's, like, outside of your world. When we talked about the speed of your shot execution, I told you, I said, you're making a great shot, but you're making your shot at a very accelerated pace. And so I told you it's a lot like if you have a group of people in a car. And I say, hey, let's go 100 miles an hour. But I don't want anyone in the car to know that you did it. I said you would throttle at a pace to where you were continual and gradual, and you would be there, but you wouldn't be there with snapping everyone's necks backwards. And I said, right now, with your release, you're putting your finger on the trigger and you're wanting this shot to happen so fast, even though you're executing it properly, you're executing it too aggressively. So I said, I want you to make this happen without letting anyone know that it's happening. And then the next shot, I'm like, dude, that's it. And then. And right away I thought, oh, okay. I said, how much did that relate to you and your car simulator? And you're like, oh. Instantly it clicked.

Well, not only that, I think what was the very, very first thing, the very first insight was about the elbow position. We talked about this quite a bit on your podcast, and you put a video together that's really nice. That explains this. And I know that many of the people listening to this aren't. A lot of stuff won't make sense, but the example, the point you were making was, look, right now, Peter, with your hand that's in the back, your release hand, the elbow is probably about 5 to 8 degrees off where it need to be rotational degrees, so very little, grossly looks like it's in the right spot, but at that angle, your lats and deltoids and biceps are doing the work when you have to release the shot. And you said, I want you to put your elbow here. And that was. That felt like a very unnatural position to me, even though it was only five, seven degrees back, like two inches.

Like, looking from the back, it was like two inches.

It's so subtle. But you said, now I'm putting you in this position. And I want you to notice all of a sudden, your bicep is totally relaxed, your lats totally relaxed. And now all of the stress of holding that bow and that release is on your rhomboids, which is a tiny little muscle. And now you're going to release this arrow, just contracting those rhomboids, which, by the way, were partially being contracted before, but it was being dwarfed by the larger muscles. And you said. And this was what really amazed me was you said, think about how, if you are driving a car, you can easily use your quads, glutes and hamstrings to move between the throttle and the brake. But wouldn't it be more effective if you could just sort of use the heel and the toe going back and forth, and the intrinsic muscles of the foot and maybe a little bit of the calf and the anterior compartment of the leg? Which, of course, is exactly how you drive. You drive with finesse. You drive using the smallest muscles possible, and not stomping in a binary fashion where it's all or none, but having that gradation of the difference between a 10 pedal and a 7 pedal. And there's a big difference between a 10 brake and a 7 brake. Yeah, I think that just impressed me. And I. One, I got it immediately. I mean, it just spoke to me. But two, I was like, you don't even know anything about driving. Like, you're not obsessive about race car driving. It was very interesting to me that you picked that up. And I guess I never realized that you've been thinking about this so much, because I know you've done the same with Jocko. Like, Jocko has talked to me about, first time you told him how to shoot, like, you immediately related it to a rifle, because, you know, he's got more experience shooting a rifle than virtually anybody. And you could immediately put something in those terms. And within minutes, Jocko's, like, getting something that he just probably wouldn't have got for a longer period of time if you weren't able to connect it to him. And I don't know. I think I've just always been impressed by that. And I think your generosity when it comes to teaching is really amazing. I think. Look, I think everybody. I mean, to me, archery is a beautiful sport. It's one of those sports like tennis, where you can do it for a long time. It's not like football. You know, the reality of it is, if you'd gone to college and you'd played football, you wouldn't be playing football today in Fact, you might not be doing anything.

You might not be in archery today. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I really hope that my kids get into it because everything you said about it, this Zen idea, this flow state, all of these things are beautiful. You never want to hunt an animal in your life, which was. I certainly had no intention of hunting when I started. It teaches you a lot about yourself and it is a beautiful metaphor for life in so many ways. This ability to understand that the only arrow you have control over is the one that's still in your quiver. You can't turn back time. That's such an explicit thing. Your ability to teach this sport is. I think somebody could literally study your videos and get 60 to 70% of the total theoretical benefit that one gets. Could get having a great coach standing over their shoulder, which is, oh, yeah, hard to believe when you consider how nuanced the sport is.

I mean, the list goes on and on, but the number of students that I have that I've worked with less than a dozen times that are shooting at a level that back when I competed, there were such a small percentage of shooters that were even at that level, you get someone like Jocko, worked with them for a day. Coach a little bit through the phone, gave him a little bit of practice. He showed up here, I wouldn't guess a lot, maybe a few times. And then took him to his first tournament style event in July. We went to Big sky and I let him set up a course with me. I actually built a course that some of our followers were shooting. And I asked Jocko, I said, you want to come out and set this course? Because I said, I'll teach you why I'm building the course this way and what you'll learn from every shot. And he's like, absolutely. So we went out, I talked to him, told him all about different techniques, what you do, what people that lay a course out do to trick you and so forth like that. And he went out there, and the day before the real shoot started, I went up with Jocko and another SEAL buddy of ours, Trevor and Sharon, my wife. And I said, let's go up and shoot. We won't shoot from like the competition stake. We'll move closer. And I said, because I just want to talk you through something. So after we did that, we shot probably 20 or 30 targets, shooting pretty close, then also a little bit further back, then further back. Then I'm like, hey, this one isn't bad. You want to try this one from the steak? And he's like, yeah, no problem. And then the next day, we show up and I had a private event where people had booked private shooting times to shoot with me and some of my VIP friends that I had there. And so my intention was to shoot four or five targets with each of those groups. So the very first group that I shot with was Jocko and another mutual friend of ours, Andy, and the people that had signed up. So I shot five targets with them. Jocko was hitting all the targets, and he was shooting them from the proper stake, which was that course that I laid out, averaged 71 yards. It was super technical, super hard. And I told people the stake is the hardest shot here. You're always welcome to walk closer. There's no scorecards here. This is kind of a learning event. And I got to the end, and I remember asking Jocko, I'm like, how'd you do? He's like, I missed one target. And he knew exactly why. He knew exactly why. And I said, dude, that is unbelievable for you to be shooting at best. If he was adding up his arrows to what I would do in a day training, when I was serious about it, he might have shot three of my training days. Right. And to be able to learn the techniques and the basics and be set up that perfectly with your equipment and then to have the understanding of what you need to do, it's amazing. But I really feel like it's a necessity not only to archery, but to any sport, for people to recognize the fact that the fundamentals is what makes people good at things. And when people are good at things, they stay involved. So I've always said, like, my boy Harry, he had some video games and stuff that he played in high school, and normally for Christmas, he'd ask for video games. And I noticed really quick that the video games that he played all the time were the ones that he was good at, the ones that he didn't win and the ones that were, like, failed. Those ones just went back in the drawer and they never got played again.

And.

And it's the same way. And as parents, especially now, I look at any kids, and I'm like, what you need to do is you need to make this fun, and you need to make sure that they're doing well at it a lot so that they stay involved with it.

But that wasn't necessarily the case for you. I mean, that to me, is where.

But I was also older yet I remember.

So do you think that that's sort of what you're just describing is what's necessary when you're dealing with kids that are in their early teens or preteen.

Preteens for sure, like yourself, you're nerded out right now with archery, right. And you really want your kids to maybe be involved. So if they said, hey, I want to shoot, it's highly likely that you would probably be a little bit more intense with that practice than what I would say is get the best biggest bullseye possible. Put one target that's 10 yards away, even if you're shooting at 70 or 80, and let them shoot at 10 yards all the time and just say, okay, you shoot for the gold, and I'm going to shoot for the gold. And then they're going to hit nine out of 10 and they're always going to be beating dad, right? And. And they're gonna like that. When I started archery, part of the reason why I did it and liked it, but also didn't get super serious about it is because my arrows were all the ones that my dad had lost, bent, or picked up in the lost and found bucket at the archery range. So I was just shooting a smorgasbord of arrows and getting a smorgasbord of results down on the paper. So it's amazing to me that I really stuck with it because I probably would have been more infatuated with it. And honestly, I probably looking back, because naturally, I think you said it the other day I went out and you made a shot, and it was super peaceful in the morning. And you made this shot and was like. And you go, do you think there's something primal about that sound? And I said, yeah, absolutely. Like, that is a primal sound. And you were excited about that. You had that excitement. I feel like there could easily have been a good chance that me turning into this punk kid, it might not have ever happened. If I would have really got into, like, going to an archery range with my dad, if I would have been good at it, really liked it, like, that could have been my thing. So I don't really know. But I think that's important for. Especially for me working with kids now. And I'm pretty limited on who I work with, like yourself. But when I do work with people, I tell parents all the time, I'm like, you can't acclimate your kid to. As soon as he shoots looking at you for you to tell him what the score is, I'm like, that is a really bad training thing for you to do. Because I'm like, you're imprinting your result, him immediately wanting your Feedback for whether he hit or missed or she. And I just think it can't be about that. I tell the parents, regardless of what your kids score, watch them on the shooting line and tell them when they're shooting good or tell them when they might need to make technique changes if they're. If maybe they're not executing properly. I think finding that balance, I think it really helps not only the kid, but I think it helps the sport, all sports, because I think people will be involved in it more when they are that way.

Let's pivot a little bit to hunting, because it's hard to talk about archery without talking about this extension of archery, which is hunting using the tools of archery. And as I talked about in some length, I guess, on your podcast, when I got into archery, it was purely for the desire to shoot paper targets and learn a new skill that would meet the Peter Aytea criteria of you could spend your entire life trying to get the last 20% of value that'll be so incremental, no one will notice but you, which gave you a huge kick. But eventually I did decide to go out and hunt, and it has changed my relationship with archery for reasons you've already somewhat alluded to. First of all, the stakes are much higher now. So now every time I miss a shot on a paper target, it hurts a little more. I imagine for a moment any one of these shots I take could be a shot in the field against an animal. And if I miss that shot and I injure that animal, non fatally, or injure that animal or cause that animal to suffer, I've made a mistake. And that, of course, is exactly what got me interested in the sport in the first place, was that concept, even though I never wanted to apply it to hunting, if that makes sense. You've spoken a lot. In fact, I think that when you and Joe Rogan have spoken about hunting on his podcast, which you've probably been Ron Rogan like five times or something, I've heard every one of those podcasts. They're super enjoyable. I think you and Joe have some of the best back and forth on this because, I mean, one, I just. I think Joe is a really smart human being and he's always good at seeing sort of both sides of every discussion. So it's not what a lot of people might expect, which is two knucklehead bros talking about how hunting is the best thing in the world and anybody who doesn't like hunting is a hippie or something. It's not at all like that Right. It's a very nuanced discussion. So one of the things that you've often alluded to is the yin and the yang of this sort of tension that exists. So I've been thinking about how to talk about this, and there's so much in my mind around this. But I'll start with just maybe explain to someone who's listening to this, who's never hunted, who's never thought much about it one way or the other, which is effectively where I was two years ago. I'd never really given it a thought. How does hunting fit into conservation? Like, what does it mean to hunt? And who decides what animals get to be hunted and when and in what quantity? Like, is it the Wild west, where can anyone just go shoot anything they want? How does this whole thing work?

No, so each state has Department of Natural Resources or Department of Game and Fish. They do a lot of studies on where that species is at and what the population numbers are at. And with that, they also decide how many need to be taken to keep that herd in proper management. And then with that, they sell those tags. And non residents often pay a multiplier more than the residents. And those funds end up going back into conservation to a magnitude of programs. I mean, if you look at national parks that you have, or if you go into a lot of the public wildlife areas that we have in Iowa, you'll see sunflowers planted CRP grasses, you'll see row crop that's planted in there. In certain times, obviously there's waterways with fish and so forth in there, and the monies from fishing licenses, that's what pays to restock those ponds or dredge those out or put them in those wetland programs. The sunflowers and stuff that I talked about, that's probably an allocation that came from the pheasant tags or the upland game tags. So a lot of that stuff that they get, it's to put back in and to also be able to employ those game wardens to be out there policing that and checking people's tags and making sure they're not overtaking their quotas and etc. Etc. So there really is a check and balance system that's out there, and I totally get it. When earlier today I was down on the beach cruising around on a scooter that I was renting for whatever it is, a dollar every 10 minutes or whatever, and cruising around down there on the beach, I might have seen one person's cat and a seagull. Well, I saw a lot of seagulls so it would be totally understandable for me to see that person's side of the story to say why do you need to shoot a deer? Why do you need to shoot an elk? The difference is you go to a place like Iowa, for example, where I'm at. Where every year? Well, Wisconsin. I knew when I lived in Wisconsin, I knew that. So every year I think there was about 750,000 deer that were shot. But that was every year and it had to be. But there was still millions and millions of dollars paid out every year for insurance claims for deer collisions with vehicles and six deaths a year on average. Oftentimes more, I think it's hundreds of deaths nationwide a year for animal collisions.

And this is, we will put together in our show notes the exact numbers. But my recollection is it's. It's a little over a million collisions a year between deer nationally.

Nationally, yeah.

Between deere and automobile in the United States, about a million2. If my memory source correctly, it's about 100,000 collisions a month between deere and automobiles nationwide. And the dollar amount of that is about 4 or 5 billion.

Was it?

I could be wrong and we'll put the numbers in here, but it would be great. It's higher than I recall, sort of higher than I would have guessed.

And my wife, she's from England, she's from just north of Liverpool. And when we met, we kind of talked a little bit about hunting and she was awesome with the fact that I told her, I'm like, hey, I get it over here. When I'm in Europe, I wouldn't hunt deer over here. There aren't any. I'm a hunter. And all I would say is we need to find a way to get your numbers up. Like, let's get your numbers up. As a hunter, I would love to get the numbers healthier so that, yeah, maybe there is an opportunity. Opportunity to regulate down the road. I don't want them to go away. I don't want them to decline. That's really not what we want. When we look at the numbers of whitetail deer, wild turkeys, elk, all those things, these are based on programs that.

Have been probably the boar and the wild pigs might be some of the most destructive animals.

Oh, they are the most. Yeah, they're definitely. You can't keep up with their numbers. Their numbers are staggering. If you look at the life cycle of one female pig and how many pigs she could be, a multiplier of it will blow your mind and you can't keep up with it.

Right. Very short gestation cycle, very quick with.

The high litter count and with a.

High survival of litter.

Yeah. And then they're also. Her foal are already breeding, and within six months, once they're born, they could potentially breed again in six months. Right. So, yeah, it's different. And I told her, I said, when you come to the states, you might see things a little different.

Which.

Yeah. Once she came to the state, she realized there's 20 deer a night in our garden. We can't grow food fast enough to eat because the deer eating it every night.

I don't know if you were here when she was talking about it. When we were having dinner tonight, we were getting a bunch of stuff, right. And she was saying to your son, she's like, God, like, what a dream it would be to actually be able to grow all of our own vegetables. But it's like you just can't do it where you live because the deer are going to smoke them.

Yeah, they would. So I get it. But I also feel like we fill two freezers a year with animals that I trained for all year. Buy a tag, put money back into the natural resources, shoot this deer, process it, put it in my freezer, and I know everything about it. I didn't provide and I guess support commercial farming. I didn't do that, which I feel pretty good about. I know exactly where it came from. I know who touched it start to finish. And also, it just. I don't know, it means more to me. Part of the reason why I'm passionate about cooking is because I'm passionate about. I'm passionate about taking something I've put a lot of work into and finishing it by serving it to people that are important to me. And if we waste it and throw it away, to me, it's. There's a lot of hard work that went in that if I get an elk, that means I've lifted weights all year prepping for that time. I've shot my bow, I've worked on my equipment, I've probably bought equipment. So I've invested. I went out and then I put on the miles. Like last year, I think. I think when we shot our first elk, I had hunted with my buddy Andy, who I talked about earlier. We started hunting, I think, August 24th, and then we shot his bull on 9 11. And I think at that time, between the two of us, we had put. I think it was somewhere around 200 to 250 miles on the ground on our GPSS before we got that Shot. And I mean, it was such a reward. And then to break this whole thing down, package it all up, pack it out, three mile pack out. How many trips it took three of us, two trips.

Well, how many pounds of meat?

Heck if I know. A lot.

I mean, easily 500, right?

Yeah, yeah, quite a bit. And then through that we've used it. And then I shot a bowl a few days later. I took my bowl, took the prime cuts, took them home, have used those on my family, took all the trim actually grounded into burger because I knew I was going to be having that event in Big sky where I was going to be at that big archery tournament. And we really wanted to have a community. Thank you to the people that follow us. So I think Sharon packed and cooked over the course of a few days, close to 500 elk burgers at that place that we gave out to people for free. And every person that was like, that's the best burger I've ever eaten. I thought every freaking mile that we packed that sucker out of there was. It was totally worth it.

That's a very remarkable and special experience which we talked about a little bit on, on your show when I was in Hawaii. And the Axis deer, which are very invasive there. Axis deer, just for you folks listening to this, are a beautiful, beautiful deer. Probably when you think of a deer, I mean, at least when I always thought of Bambi, it was really an access deer. It's a brown deer with the white spots, and they're. I mean, they're simply gorgeous. Actually, I've never seen a prettier animal in nature. But they're not native to the United States. They evolved in India, and they evolved with only one natural predator, which was the tiger. And there's few things that will sharpen your skills of evading than a tiger. So these animals evolved to have remarkable vision. Not color vision, but remarkable vision. They can basically see things in frames per second. We can. Their sense of smell is preternatural and their hearing is from another planet.

And their muscle twitches. Imagine being able to recruit any type of cornerback or wing back or a halfback with that kind of muscle twitch factor.

Yeah, they're a muscle. They're an animal that twitches so much that even long after it's dead, it's still twitching like crazy.

Yeah, they're so fast.

And then it was brought to the United States or at least brought to Hawaii maybe 120, 150 years ago, which is a speck of time in terms of evolution. So as far as it's concerned, the tiger is still what it is built to evade. And then you've got clowns like us trying to track it down and such. And in the process, because it has no predator in the entire state, it has multiplied at a rate that on the three islands in which it's present, it outnumbers people by, you know, anywhere from 2 to 1 to 10 to 1. And it's basically destroyed the land such that now the livestock don't have what they have. So the government of Hawaii has basically said, look, we've got to get rid of this animal entirely. And so the compromise is to allow it to be hunted in an ethical way rather than just a wholesale slaughter. Which is some really interesting stories about that. Which maybe for another time, but point I wanted to make was the people of Hawaii know this. Everybody I spoke with who worked at the hotel or elsewhere in the city, they understood that this is a problem, this animal is a pest. And when I remember the first day I went hunting there and I brought back a deer and I took it to the restaurant there and I met with the chef and we became friends and she cooked it up for our family and for the restaurant staff. And she said, this is the first time I've ever been able to cook an Axis deer. She's from Hawaii, she lives there, but she'd never cooked it before, she'd never had someone bring her.

Mind blowing.

Yeah, it's. Well, because it's not commercially available, right? Like if you don't know somebody who's hunting it, you're not going to get it. You can't go to a store and buy it. And then fast forward a couple days, we got a much larger animal and it was enough to be able to feed all the staff of the restaurant. This is a smaller scale version of what you were talking about, but what a really special feeling to be able to say, this is a circle of life here. This a beautiful animal, but it's now out of balance with our environment. And this is a little part that we can do to bring it back into balance. And in the process that those amino acids, that carbon, that nitrogen is going to come back into the people who live here, who have lived here and who are now working here. So I just don't think I would have ever understood that. If someone tried to explain this to me five years ago. I think I could have intellectually understood it, but I don't think I could have viscerally or emotionally understood it. And maybe someone listening to this now, who hasn't done. It will feel the same way, but.

I'm certain they will. It's an impossible thing. You can try your best to talk about it in a way where people will at least embrace the idea of it and they'll be curious about it. I don't know if I've ever been with someone that decided to pursue it and see what it was really about. And then they did it and then said, I didn't like anything about that. Most people, it triggers something to where they just. They end up saying it was so much different. I feel so much differently about food that I'm buying in a store. I kind of want to ask him, like, what it came from, what it was like. And you just realize you're missing out on this huge, huge piece of. What's weird is, think of the wrappers we read, especially you. But I walked in. Everything we're eating. We're label readers, which you should be. You should be. But people don't read. They don't read that on red meat or chicken. I mean, they might be like, well, I want organic chickens. I don't want any type of steroid in my turkeys or whatever. But other than that, there's not a lot more questions asked besides that.

You know, it's funny. I actually had the privilege, I guess, to go and actually see a place where the cattle were slaughtered. And this is considered about one of the most humane places it can be done. I don't want to tell necessarily where because this is such a polarizing top. I understand. And it's true. As far as cows being commercially raised and allowed to eat grass and not given hormones and not given antibiotics, it's about as healthy as it gets. But you couldn't help but be struck with the stress that the animals were under when it came time to be slaughtered. Cows might not be the sharpest tools in the shed, but they know that something's wrong when they're walking through this sort of steel barricade that's funneling them and getting narrower and narrower and narrower to a point where they're being slaughtered. One, you know, they're not truly wild animals still. They haven't really lived. We could debate the consciousness of animals all day long, but even absent consciousness, I still think an animal has. There's different qualities of life that can be given that experience coupled with actually seeing what a wild animal looks like and watching how if you can be an exceptional archer or hunter, if you're using a gun, if you can end that animal's life without it suffering. And it's basically lived for four years in perfect nature, eating exactly what it's supposed to be eating, behaving and moving. Exactly. It was supposed to move. And then in a moment, its life ended. It just strikes me as the single most ethical and healthy way you can consume that. And what you said a moment ago really resonates. When I got back from my very first hunting trip, I simply. I didn't know what to eat when I was at restaurants. Like, when I went out and didn't have control over what kind of meat was being served, it was very difficult for me to eat, to just order a steak off the menu. In fact, I really lost my taste for it because I was like, you can just sort of maybe. Of course it was maybe on my mind, but I could almost just taste the unhealthiness of, like, what that animal lived like. So paradoxically, and it was a long winded way of saying this, paradoxically, it gave me a greater appreciation for the people who oppose the consumption of meat based on the ethical treatment of the animal. Which is odd, right? You wouldn't think that hunting would make you more compassionate and more considerate of how the animal is treated, but for me, it has done that. And for many people, I know it's the same for you. I know it's the same for many of my other friends in this. In this world. That's exactly the effect it's had.

Yeah. There's so many things that hunting has showed me in nature that I would have never, ever got to experience. Just timeless things. I mean, it's kind of like when you watched Forrest Gump and he was making that. That run back and forth across the US and they kept showing these parts of America that were just breathtakingly beautiful. And a lot of people just take for granted some of that scenery, some of that nature and how amazing it was. But being an outdoors person, I see that stuff a lot, and I don't take it for granted. It's something to where I want to go back every day. I want to see it all the time. And more importantly for me now is I see that first moment when someone goes out and actually bow hunts for the first time and makes a shot and kind of sees it and watches the breakdown and puts in the effort to get it out of there. And then you kind of grill their first piece. It's like as soon as you see him take it, you can see in their face, wow, this is the most meaningful meal that I've ever done. That is What Thanksgiving should really be. That's kind of what it was, is when everyone came together with this group effort to have this big feast. And that's kind of what digs out of you primally. When you go out and, and have your first hunt experience with people that are close and then all of a sudden you cook it for the first time and give it to your family and explain to your kids where it came from. And all those little aspects that you were telling me you did, I think all that just plays into being more meaningful.

Yeah, we talked about this a lot on your podcast, so I won't repeat it and we'll link to that so people can go back and hear it because I think we had a lot to say about it. And I don't think I said this on the podcast, which is why I'll repeat it now. One of our guides in Hawaii, uka, who's. All of those guys are like, they're magical. They're like sorcerers to me. You know, they definitely have a sense of that. The rest of us, that certainly I don't have. When my daughter was there, when I shot that buck, he was amazing. Like, he was amazing. The way he talked to her. My knowledge, UKA doesn't have kids. I don't know that he spent that much time around 10 year old girls, let alone. Right. In fact, I'm pretty sure he didn't because at one point when Mike and I went off to hike, UKA and Olivia went off and he let her drive the Polaris like up and down the hills. I was like, oh my God, how do they not die? But I remember him saying to her, he's like, he looked at her really seriously and he goes, you know, this is in your blood, right? And she was like, kind of looked at him like, what do you mean? And he goes, like, he said, you are a hunter. You wouldn't be here, Olivia, if this wasn't a part of who you are. And she really got that. He really said it in such a profound way. I knew what he meant immediately and I think it took her one more repetition to do so. But then she got it. She got it. Which was, yeah, there was a day when you didn't go to the grocery store. Like, there was a day and it was tens of thousands of years ago or even thousands of years ago when this was the only way you had to be able to do this on some level. And the pride with which he was able to speak about that to her and share it with her, I just Thought it was delighted she was there and couldn't imagine waiting to do it again.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, if you look back to how long ago was it really when on that island where you could go to a grocery store and buy food? I mean, if you go.

There are people that are still there now, especially on islands, like, they're less.

Populated, where they may never have.

I know people there that subside exclusively on what they hunt and fish.

Exactly. Yeah. Well, I get it. I get when people don't understand it.

Have you ever been confronted harshly? Have you ever found yourself in a situation where there's been a really harsh confrontation when someone is really just sort of aggressively saying, john, how dare you do this? This is an awful thing that you do?

Yeah, I've had a few people that have been pretty disgruntled, mainly in Europe. But sometimes I feel like it would be like me trying to talk with Jocko deeply about what happens in war, even if I have an agreeance or disagreeance with it. We're not even on the same field for that. I don't feel like I really would have a right to. And he probably, with me being a friend, maybe he would go a little bit into detail. But all I can do is just say, I see your point. You're somewhere where just isn't going to be clear to you. And I think that's the best way, really, to address it. I tell the hunting community a lot. We don't really want to provoke you. Kind of don't want to poke the sleeping bear, so to speak, because there's a lot of people that'll never hear a podcast like this. There's a lot of people, People that will never understand the necessity behind it. We talked earlier about Frank Zane. Like, Frank's as Zen of a dude as you could ever get. He's totally Zen. But I remember we were talking one time because he's. He's really into meditation. They love animals. They rescue animals. And we were kind of talking about the hunting, and he just said, yeah, you know, he goes, they hunted a lot. And I don't know. I just. He's like, I'm okay with it. But I just. However he said it, he was being cordial, but I could tell he would have no interest in doing it. And he kind of, deep down, he didn't like what could easily be portrayed as, like, cruelty to animals, shooting them. And what's crazy is the night that we drove home from Minneapolis to my house, we freaking smoked a deer. I was driving like a Hyundai accent. And I smacked this deer and it bounced off the hood and off the windshield. And he was like, holy, how's the deer? Is it okay? And I'm like, are you okay? Are we okay? And so he was like, oh my God. And I just said, yeah, it's really bad. I said, it's really bad around here this time of year. And then I turned on the lights and. And we might have seen another two or three before we got back to my house. And he was just like, I can't believe we hit a deer. I can't believe there's so many deer. And so I told him like, hey man, when I tell you we need to shoot deer, or I went out and shot a deer, this is, it's something that needs to happen. And. And he told me, he's like, yeah, honestly? He goes, honestly? He goes, that was crazy. He said, obviously there's too many. So he had a very visual wake up call. Some people will never have that. And as a hunting community, the best thing we can do is realize that we need to speak positively when we have an opportunity. And kind of going back to what I said before, the easy route is to talk negative and to talk bad about what the opposing people have. Whether and what we should be doing is just talking positive about what we have. And we have a very sustainable and in my opinion, ethical way of feeding ourselves. And we welcome people to it. I know it's not for everybody, but I think the people that do come here, I think they find a different meaning to eating. And it's made me eat cleaner, it's honestly made me eat less junk. And it makes me more focused on supporting what our environment puts in front of us, more so than what some type of refinery does or a chemical does.

Yeah, I would agree with all of that, John. And as we kind of wrap up here, I just, I want to thank you very much for the incredible work you've done almost single handedly. You have a team with you and you couldn't do what you do without them. I know that. But you really are kind of changing, I think forever the way this sport is taught. And I feel so blessed to be in this point where I can be in this complete sync, this back and forth balance between the pursuit of excellence within the sport of archery and how it feeds into this completely separate thing called hunting, which by the way is about 1% taking a shot and 99%. All of the other stuff we didn't even talk about, but we've talked about it a lot on your podcast, spotting animals, stalking animals, all of the strategy that goes into it, all the physically, the grueling physical stuff depending on the terrain that you choose. I just don't think this sport for me personally would be nearly as enjoyable if it didn't have the educational component that you've single handedly provided. So I feel like if I'd had someone like you, that could have taught me the equivalent of what you're teaching me in archery in any of the other things I'd done, I can't imagine how good I could have been in those things. So I thank you on behalf of a lot of people and my hope is that if even one person listening to this, and I suspect there'll be a heck of a lot more than one, but if even one person listening to this considers this the opportunity to go down to their local bow shop, check out a bow, take an archery class, maybe buy a bow, start watching School of Knock and all of your stuff on. Is it Knock? It's Knock on Archery then for the YouTube channel. For the YouTube channel, yeah.

On Instagram it's knock on TV. And on the Instagram, if you go to my IGTV, the knock on TV IGTV, I have the school knock, the 12 week sessions. Most of those are all under 15 minutes, I think.

Yeah. You can do that whole thing in less almost two hours, right?

Yeah. And it'll pave the way for you to have really good fundamentals and basics. It's actually beyond basics.

We're going to link to this so much. In fact, what we'll probably do, John, is even before we put up the show notes, we'll send it to you to look over and make sure you like the order in which we've laid it out so that anybody who says, hey, I want to get started, we will curate every link in order that you would suggest people go to. And I mean, I'm already looking forward to school and OC again in January. It's an unbelievable curriculum you've put together and I think you're only at the beginning of what you have the potential of. I mean, again, we've talked about cooking, we've talked about all of the stuff we could do around exercise and conditioning with respect to this stuff. So anyway, man, thank you for everything, both on a personal level, but also just on behalf of all those of us that benefit so greatly from your wisdom and generosity.

Oh yeah, man, thanks a lot. Thanks for having me too. For sure.

First of many, thank you for listening to this week's episode of the Drive. If you're interested in diving deeper into any topics we discuss, we've created a membership program that allows us to bring you more in depth exclusive content without relying on paid ads. It's our goal to enjoy ensure members get back much more than the price of the subscription now. To that end, membership benefits include a bunch of things. One Totally kick ass comprehensive podcast show notes that detail every topic, paper, person thing we discuss on each episode. The word on the street is nobody's show notes rival these monthly AMA episodes or Ask Me Anything episodes. Hearing these episodes completely access to our private podcast feed that allows you to hear everything without having to listen to spiels like this the Qualys, which are a super short podcast, typically less than five minutes that we release every Tuesday through Friday, highlighting the best questions, topics and tactics discussed on previous episodes of the Drive. This is a great way to catch up on previous episodes without having to go back and necessarily listen to everyone. Steep discounts on products that I believe in but for which I'm not getting paid to endorse and a whole bunch of other benefits that we continue to trickle in as time goes on. If you want to learn more and access these member only benefits, you can head over to peterattiamd.com subscribe. You can find me on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook all with the ID PeterAttiyamd. You can also leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast player you listen on. This podcast is for general information purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical advice. No doctor patient relationship is formed. The use of this information and the materials linked to this podcast is at the user's own risk. The content on this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Users should not disclose, disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice from any medical condition they have, and they should seek the assistance of their healthcare professionals for any such conditions. Finally, I take conflicts of interest very seriously. For all of my disclosures and the companies I invest in or Advise, please visit PeterAttiamD.com about where I keep an up to date and active list of such companies. These.