2248 - Michael Waddell

High-Level Overview

Michael Waddell, the Georgia-born host of the long-running hunting show Bone Collector, sits down with Joe Rogan for a warm, rambling conversation about bowhunting and everything around it. They start with Bigfoot, Graham Hancock and arrowheads, then move through the history of archery, the realities of predator and wildlife management, the difference between hunting on TV and in real life, bow sights and shooting psychology, and Waddell's unlikely path from a carpenter's son to a hunting-TV personality. The last stretch turns to authenticity, fame, politics and the character of the hunting community.

The tone is friendly, funny and sincere. Waddell is a born storyteller with a thick Southern delivery and endless anecdotes, and Rogan matches his enthusiasm with his own conversion story as a city kid who fell in love with hunting. The conversation flows between history lessons, hunting-camp comedy, gear talk, conservation arguments and heartfelt reflections on gratitude and family.

The Discussion Explores:

• Bigfoot, the Ark of the Covenant, ancient civilizations, and the thrill of finding arrowheads and buffalo jumps
• The roots of modern bowhunting: Ishi, Saxton Pope, Art Young, Fred Bear and Chuck Adams
• Why archery feels different from rifle hunting, and what city newcomers experience in the woods
• Predators, wolves and mountain lions: why Waddell and Rogan think wildlife policy should listen to people in the field
• Bow sights, rangefinders, releases and the mental game of the shot
• How Waddell went from guiding turkey hunters for $100 a day to creating a new style of hunting TV
• Authenticity, politicians, Trump, and why real people beat polished performers
• Hunting as therapy, the true meaning of "trophy," and a community that welcomes everyone

Deep Dive into Main Ideas

Bigfoot, Lost Civilizations and Arrowheads

The episode opens with Rogan's Bigfoot shirt and his skeptical line: "I think hunters are the number one argument against big foot being real." With trail cameras everywhere, he notes, someone should have gotten one photo by now, yet even mountain lions are rarely seen. Rogan mentions Gigantopithecus, a giant ape that lived around a hundred thousand years ago, and the two turn to Graham Hancock. Waddell says he binged Hancock's Netflix series after hearing him on the show. Rogan explains that Hancock's interest began with the Ark of the Covenant, rumored to be kept in an Ethiopian church whose guards reportedly develop cataracts, and that he believes there's physical evidence of an asteroid impact around 11,800 years ago that set back an advanced civilization. Jamie pulls up a photo of a replica of the Ark displayed at Mar-a-Lago.

Finding arrowheads, both agree, is holding history in your hand. Waddell says Georgia arrowheads are mostly quartz, that Jeff Foxworthy is obsessed with collecting artifacts, and that forgeries are common now. He describes hunting a Montana ranch on the Milk River with a buffalo jump where hunters once wounded bison with small points and drove them off a cliff. He says the landowner banned cameras so it wouldn't be turned into a historical site. Rogan relays that at such sites the pile of rotting bison could get so large it caught fire. Waddell says resharpening a knife while butchering an elk makes him complain less, knowing earlier hunters had to knap every blade from stone.

Ishi, Pope and Young, and the Soul of Archery

Waddell traces modern bowhunting back to Ishi, a Native American from California who taught two doctors, Saxton Pope and Art Young, to hunt with a bow. Pope and Young, in turn, inspired the Pope and Young Club, whose record book celebrates mature animals taken with archery equipment, much like Boone and Crockett does for firearms. His favorite book is The Venturous Bowman, which he reads to his son at night. He loves how candidly those early writers described their misses and experiments, like the pioneers of bowhunting African game. They shipped dozens of bows and tubs of arrows on months-long voyages, with no idea what it would take to kill a lion. They watch 1926 footage of Art Young arrowing a grizzly at very close range.

Rogan credits Fred Bear for promoting archery when rifles had made it seem obsolete, including Bear's idea that concentrating on a target clears your mind. He suspects there's a genetic memory in humans that makes hitting a target with an arrow so satisfying, "tenfold" different from shooting a rifle. Waddell names Chuck Adams as his childhood hero, recalls buying his first compound bow at 13 for $200 with money earned at $2 an hour on his dad's job sites, and describes his boyhood rifle hunts on Georgia timber leases with his uncles. He also shares his work taking 15 to 20 Navajo youth hunting every year with the Navajo Nation's game and fish department, lamenting that many kids there, like kids everywhere, are glued to snack cakes and Xbox.

Adventures Abroad and in the Jungle

Waddell recalls a hunt in Zimbabwe during a violent election under Robert Mugabe: the internet was cut off, about $7,000 in cash went missing from his bag, and he realized people around him were struggling to survive while he was chasing Cape buffalo. Rogan recommends the YouTube channel of Spanish bowhunter Pedro Ampuero, whose travels include hunting elk from a yurt in Mongolia while rifle guides begged him to just shoot. They note that hunting is illegal in China and bowhunting is banned in the UK, and Rogan points out that the Robin Hood legend was really about poaching the king's game when people were starving.

On an ocellated turkey hunt in southern Mexico with Troy Link of Jack Link's jerky, Waddell found himself calling turkeys beside an unexcavated Mayan pyramid. His guide shrugged that such ruins are everywhere, though outfitters keep quiet because it's their hunting ground. Jamie pulls up the recent LiDAR discovery of a lost Maya city, called Valeriana, in Campeche. Waddell says hunting has shown him places he'd never otherwise see, and that the more he does it, the more humbling it becomes.

What Newcomers Learn in the Woods

Rogan describes his own first hunt with Steven Rinella and Brian Callen in Montana's Missouri Breaks: dropping his first mule deer and eating backstrap cooked over a fire, and knowing he'd do this for the rest of his life. Hunters in movies are almost always the bad guys, he argues, and people who buy fast-food burgers look down on someone who hunts. The wilderness teaches you "You're not special, just one of many living things trying to get by. He also criticizes hunting shows that boil a ten-day hunt down to 22 minutes and make it look easy, and says There's nothing fair in nature."

Waddell has great stories about guiding first-timers. Theo Von, looking through a red-dot sight on a turkey gun before dawn, asked whether the dot would turn green and "who's on the other team." Jim Breuer shot a turkey and, while Waddell celebrated, cradled it like a puppy, overwhelmed. A sweepstakes winner on a Hormel-sponsored hunt, shown coyote and bobcat tracks, asked if there were any Cheetos around, thinking of the cartoon cheetah mascot. For Waddell, these moments show how disconnected many people are from nature and how cartoons shape their picture of animals. Both say opening morning still feels like Christmas; Rogan even scheduled a Netflix special early so it wouldn't touch his September elk season, and Waddell tells how he turned down a glamorous awards-show invitation his wife wanted to attend simply because it fell in turkey season, and later apologized.

Predators, Wolves and Who Should Manage Wildlife

Waddell says an adult male mountain lion may kill 80 to 100 deer a year, and praises Utah's wildlife agency for listening to ranchers, outfitters and houndsmen. One outfitter showed biologists a business card to make his point: of ten lions he had taken, three had come from an area that small, busting the theory that one male controls a territory 28 miles across. With more lion tags, Waddell says, Utah's deer numbers are recovering. Rogan contrasts California, where he says wildlife policy is driven by animal activists and one ranch pond's trail camera recorded 18 different lions. He adds that in the Bay Area about half of the diet of lions killed there has been pets.

Both object to Colorado's wolf reintroduction being decided by an urban vote. Waddell says it cost around $5 million, that wolves which had already been killing livestock were relocated, and that tourists will never see them anyway. In decades of hunting across North America, Africa and Mexico, he has seen only one mountain lion in daylight that wasn't treed by dogs, and two wolves. After learning to trap (Blake Shelton got him into it), he caught 22 coyotes in one season on his 500 acres in Georgia, plus foxes and bobcats, despite rarely seeing them. Rogan argues that wildlife decisions shouldn't be put to a popular vote at all, and that people should understand what they're voting on from the perspective of people who actually spend time in the field.

They also discuss nature's brutality: old elk with worn-out teeth that would otherwise starve or be eaten alive, bears that kill cubs, rabbits and hogs that kill their young, and dolphins, which Rogan explains commit infanticide, leading females to mate widely to protect their babies. Rogan argues a well-placed arrow is a far better death than a wolf pack or mountain lion, and both describe bulls still bugling with broken antler tines lodged in their necks.

Sights, Releases and the Mental Game of the Shot

The two get technical. Waddell recalls when rangefinders didn't exist: his first Bushnell was as big as a car battery. He also credits Chuck Adams with first explaining angle compensation, since a shot uphill or downhill needs a shorter yardage than the line-of-sight distance. Rogan describes his Garmin rangefinding bow sight, which ranges from full draw, compensates for angle, and shows a single dot, though he notes Utah has banned such sights. Waddell prefers a multi-pin sight because he can see the arrow's whole arc and spot branches in shooting windows. He likes a hinge release for disciplined practice but thinks hunting demands a more deliberate shot. Rogan compares that to the difference between shooting free throws and scoring in a live game. They praise Levi Morgan as perhaps the most decorated archer ever and a genuinely lethal hunter.

On nerves, Waddell admits he still gets buck fever "almost every time," and compares it to Elvis pacing backstage. Rogan says doing something difficult you care about will always make you nervous, and that pushing through that pressure helps in every part of life. Both insist on positive visualization; Waddell was stunned when Chuck Adams and motocross rider Kenny Bartram, the first to land a motorcycle backflip, told him they always expected to fail.

From Guide to Bone Collector

Waddell's mother died when he was 16, and he grew especially close to his father, a hardworking carpenter. Winning turkey calling contests introduced him to Realtree's Bill Jordan and David Blanton. By 19 he was guiding turkey hunters for $100 a day, amazed that he'd also be reimbursed for mileage and snacks, and in 1996 Blanton offered him a full-time job in production. His blue-collar family staged something like an intervention, urging him to stick with his secure job in heating and air conditioning; only his dad understood. Realtree sent him to an editing school in Maine, where classmates protested his hunting footage, his first real encounter with anti-hunting sentiment, which he says devastated him.

When the Nashville Network dropped hunting content and the Outdoor Channel launched, Waddell told Blanton that hunting TV felt stiff and sanitized, with everyone in starched khakis, and that the real magic was camp life and fun. Blanton told him to host it himself, and Realtree Road Trips (shot in 2002) was pitched as "a different kind of hunting show." Rogan credits Waddell with being the first to show hunting as friends having a good time, which he calls what hunting largely is. Waddell says the relationships are the point, and that some people with huge trophy rooms are lonely because they forgot "the trophy is relationships and the adventure."

Authenticity, Fame and Politics

Rogan argues that personality can't be manufactured: Waddell succeeded because the fun on screen is who he really is. They agree people like Jelly Roll and Luke Combs are exactly as they seem, while Rogan wishes Robert De Niro would stop talking politics so he can keep enjoying Taxi Driver. Actors pretend for a living, he says, while comedians like Theo are the opposite. Waddell describes meeting Donald Trump in Las Vegas before the 2016 election. Trump admitted he lacked the patience for hunting and asked directly about the wolf problem, which convinced Waddell he was talking to a real person rather than a politician. He contrasts this with senators he met at lobbying events and questions how lawmakers on modest salaries become multimillionaires. Rogan points to Nancy Pelosi and calls it "transparent legal corruption" on both sides. Rogan says he has more hope for the country after the election than he's had in a long time.

On wealth, Waddell says you know you're rich "when you don't know what a gallon of milk costs," and Rogan shares a friend's rule that the only wealth that matters is being able to order anything at a restaurant without worrying. Both note that even a do-it-yourself elk hunt can cost several thousand dollars per person once gear, tags and travel add up.

Hunting as Therapy, Trophies and a Welcoming Community

Rogan dislikes calling hunting a sport, since it involves taking a life to feed yourself, and quotes Ted Nugent: "It's food. It's trophy. It's sport." He explains that mature trophy animals are the hardest to take, and older animals are often near the end of their lives. Waddell adds that for many working men sharing a small lease, hunting isn't about record books at all. He calls it a cheap anti-depressant, a chance to turn off the phone and clear their heads after a hard week.

Waddell tells a story from that morning in Austin: a man on the street was screaming at two charity workers when Waddell told him, "we on your side, and he calmed down and thanked him. Waddell concluded that the dude don't even really want to be understood. He wants to be heard. He describes his own family worries, from relatives who doubted his career to his own reaction when his son moved to Charleston, and realizes that people doubt you because they love you. Rogan warns about the crabs in a bucket" who attack anyone who takes a risk because they never did. Waddell also recalls what he told his daughter to do if there was ever a school shooting: get out into the woods, then flag down a beat-up truck with an NRA sticker, because a stranger like that will protect her. For him, that instinct to help anyone captures the rural hunting culture he's proud of.

Conclusion

This is a big-hearted conversation about why hunting matters to the people who love it: its roots in Ishi, Pope and Young and Fred Bear, the humility the wild teaches, the hard realities of predators and wildlife policy, and the camaraderie that Waddell turned into a career by simply being himself on camera. Rogan's view of it as difficult, meaningful and deeply connected to human history pairs naturally with Waddell's gratitude, humor and stories of first-timers from Theo Von to Jim Breuer. The throughline is authenticity: in hunting, TV and politics, real people are what people want. Anyone curious about bowhunting, conservation debates or a genuinely joyful storyteller will enjoy the full episode.

This is a summary of "2248 - Michael Waddell" from The Joe Rogan Experience, giving you the GIST so you can decide if you want the REST. Listen to the full episode.