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Meet Jake And Maui Nui

George Blitch 0:32

Jake, welcome to the Son of a Blitch podcast. How are you doing today, man?

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Uh, doing so well. Thank you very much for having me. I'm excited to share a few stories.

George Blitch 0:40

Yeah, man. I am too. Listen, for I guess, you know, a little bit of introduction for folks who might not know about Maui Nui and your involvement. I know this is a very broad question, and uh I know that this answer could go in many different directions, but why don't you just kind of give people a little bit of basis of Maui Nui, what it's all about, how it kind of got formed, your role there, and then, you know, we're gonna jump into some nuances and and kind of the intricacies of what you got going on, but I'd love for people to kind of get a little bit of an overview first and then we'll dive in a little bit.

Why Axis Deer Need Management

SPEAKER_01 1:09

Sure. Uh Maui Nui helps balance access to your populations on Maui to support uh community ecosystems and and honestly like video themselves. Uh I am on year 19. Uh so coming out of college, very long story short, became kind of irrationally obsessed with this animal. Uh grew up in northern Canada as like a subsistence within the subsistence hutten family. So, like always had that strong connection of like wild game being valuable as food. Um, that denominator in kind of how I um oriented myself to that animal ended up being uh a very, very long obsession with Axis deer and turned into um eventually a process with the USDA to be able to harvest them in the wild. Uh, with the intent being, we never really were like, hey, let's shoot some deer and make some money. The intent was always how do we figure out how to utilize this food resource, even though it's named an invasive species, like this is a this is seen as a resource here locally, where it is in a lot of places, um, at a scale that could actually support balancing populations. And Axis deer are ultra unique as a tropical species in that they can breed year-round and are just crazy intelligent animals. Um, I was just uh I was just reading yesterday, there's a study that came out a year and a half ago that Axis deer can differentiate between the four alarm calls of a langer monkey in India. So they actually like speak the monkey, so they pair with other animals like for to help with their defense systems. I mean, when you evolve with like a bangle tiger and a leopard, like imagine a bangle tiger on the ground and a leopard in a tree. Like, you're gonna figure something out real fast, but they can actually understand the different alarm calls from the different animals in India and they respond differently. So, all of that to say is we got like this animal gets introduced to the Hawaiian Islands that obviously evolved with no large land mammals or herbivores, like um, and they're crazy smart and they can breed year-round. We're looking at population increases of about like 31 to 33 percent a year. Um and so I had to design both uh design both systems, but ultimately like a business going all the way back to like our operating agreement 16 years ago that said, how do we how do we actually solve the problem, not just make some money shooting deer? Um so again, very, very long story short, 19 years later, we're now in a really amazing place where we are we are seeing healthy population reductions. We've harvested 80,000 plus deer just from the island of Maui. Um and are have been able to kind of like both scale operations as a function of our D2C and e-commerce businesses harvesting, but also scale how we support um sharing that resource with our community. So just really lucky to have landed where we're at after a very uh a long but super exciting period of time.

George Blitch 4:31

Well, and I know you know, it's being a period of time, like you and your wife sat down, you have a uh a series of video that you guys are putting out, and I highly encourage people to go and check us out. It kind of gives you the history of Axis Deer, you know, 150-ish years ago coming onto the island and the like you said, too, that proliferation rate, it's just been exceeding in how many, you know, Axis deer have been there over these years, and then the need to like, I mean, it was like I think it was like right at the turn of the century when there was that first cull in in like 18 or 1898 or something like that, where they're like, okay, got some sharpshooters out, and they're gonna go ahead and start culling this because of the effects there of that habitat. And obviously, we can talk a lot about the devastation of, you know, the native plants and the species from all these different um types of introductions that have happened where some people just thought, oh, it might be nice to have this in, you know, bring this animal in or these plants. Well, those can affect and bring on more invasive species and can have a lot more, especially of an area that is the most secluded in the entire world, right? I mean, the Hawaiian Islands there, so you have an infrastructure there that is unlike any other, and all those things are rippling effects. So, you know, I I I encourage people to listen to this. I know part one's already out, part two will be out by the time this podcast released, and that kind of gives that history, and you guys do a great job uh having those discussions. Um it's really cool to hear that back end. But, you know, I remember in an interview I read that there was something where there was someone who introduced uh, I think it was four deer out on the big island, and you were a part of going and taking out and uh making sure that those were eradicated before a a systemic issue became in place, like it is over there in Maui. And I'd love to hear about how that ended up being kind of a catalyst to you getting the call to uh come out to Maui and do some work and then eventually what became Maui Nui.

The Big Island Eradication Mission

SPEAKER_01 6:19

Sure. Uh so all the way back in 2012, uh four deer were introduced from Maui to the Big Island uh illegally, inter-island transport of deer at that period of time was illegal. Um, those deer went uh there somebody just had like a single sighting. Uh and it's super interesting. All the way back in college, I started something called the Access Deer Institute. Um, I was doing like my capstone class for marketing and management and had this idea of like mimicking the New Zealand model of domestication and ended up being completely wrong. You can't domesticate access to your. But over the four or five years, actually collected like probably the largest pool of data on access to ear. And when this project happened, we ended up being kind of the accidental experts of access to ear, uh, and got the then contract to try and find and remove those deer. There had been a single sighting. Um, it's like a hundred square mile area. It's super windy, so all of the wind blown, like it's super windblown, like all of the trees, it's like literally walking, like you're doing yoga all day long. It's a it's a nightmare. Um and we ended up setting up, so there's this sighting, nobody's really sure. We get called in, we set up a little under a hundred camera traps, and we eventually get one image in the dark of this. Like, it's this like I have this thing up on the wall. Um it took us another eight months to find after getting that camera trapping this, it took us another eight months to find that first group of deer, which were two deer, it was a a buck and a dough together. Um it took us another two months to just get one of them because it was just such a dense area. Uh, very, very long story short, we hunted every day for four years except Sunday, uh, and ended up getting what what ended up being five animals. Um it was like I can't tell you how many times I was like, they're not here. Like, I can't tell me, think about like how often you've hunted and gone like on a seven-day hunt, and you're like, oh, I'm going to this basin, and like I know that big buck is there. And on day three, you're like, he's not there, and then all of a sudden on day five, he just pops up. Like you didn't know where he was, right? Um imagine doing that for four years. Like we drove each, like we drove each other crazy. Me and like these two other guys. We're just like, they're not here. But ultimately, what ended up happening is we it's really different when it's your job. And so we ended up our then relationship with Forward Looking Infrared, which was a long time ago. It was in its infancy, right? That's really what like, and now we use it every day, every single night. Um we worked directly with the military with their old systems, and then we got some of our old systems, and forward-looking infrared in the in the end was what allowed us to find and remove those animals, andor find and just keep track of them uh while we were trying to make decisions on how to remove them. So forward-looking infrared ended up being like a huge like key to ultimately completing that project successfully. And kind of what you pointed to early, earlier, like Hawaii is one of the most like fertile, abundant places on the planet. Like literally any animal, any seed, like any human that drops in here, you're just like, oh my god, I feel amazing. We should just like proliferate, right? Um and so there are very, very few invasive species projects in Hawaii that are actually successful. I think the current numbers, there's a new invasive species like introduced every 12 days in Hawaii. Whoa. Um and so, and especially like a uh they obviously Hawaii's been dealing with ungulates of all kinds for a long, long time. So another very long story short, to successfully have completed this project using forward-looking infrared to also like certify, hey, there's nothing left, um, was when we started getting phone calls from some folks on Maui were like, well, hey, if you can do that, we just need you to come over here and and like kill these deer. And that was um that that was the start. And already having a relationship with those animals as food, um, that was the start uh in 2015 of the very, very long process with the USDA, FDA, FSAS. They like to figure out in the field how to turn these, like how to follow all of the rules of a brick and mortar slaughter facility in the field to be able to put a stamp on them to turn them into food for humans. Um so the the credibility or maybe just resilience that went along with that big island project is what gave us kind of the springboard into one rancher saying, like, hey, you guys can try. Uh, because to that point, up to that time, like a bunch of different people have tried different things uh on Maui and nothing was working. The animals were just growing so quickly.

Private Land Rules And Paying Ranchers

George Blitch 11:36

Well, in in that light, I know that you know, in in previous interviews I listened to where you guys are going on to maybe someone's property, maybe it's a cattle rancher, and you are not only when you're taking the access off of that property there and thinning out that that herd net population in that particular area, you're going and compensating them um per pound by what you're taking off that in there in some ways and sometimes that may be more of a profit you know margin than uh actually some of the cattle operations that they have there. But whenever you're going into these places and you know and being invited into uh these spots, is it just private um ranching areas? Is this now like uh the heads of state of that particular island? Are they coming in and saying, hey, you can go to these other areas that may be uh public lands? And I'm and maybe I'm I'm speaking out of term because I don't really know what the context or what it is on that side of things as far as how it's defined, but I'm curious as far as because I know there's like seven, eight different places you guys are going regularly, but how does that uh those areas, especially in in an area that is so widespread of having access all around, how are you going about doing that and and the I guess the permissions there of uh kind of you know moving about saying I'm gonna go to these spots?

SPEAKER_01 12:51

Yeah, so we only work on private land. Okay. Uh the rules that govern like the ability to like turn an invasive species into food is is only on private land. So uh uh axis deer on state public land is still then considered a game mammal on those, on those, on those properties. And like that animal entering commerce is still illegal, very much like anywhere else in the continental US. Um, so we only work on private land. On private land, that animal is considered an invasive species. It's the liability and like essentially asset of the landowner. Um, and that's what allows us to work directly with that landowner. Uh, we do um might have been the worst business decision ever to start, but we like do pay them a price per pound. Um and I think that was just coming back to like I wanted everybody to think this animal had value in the long run. Um and definitely almost killed us as an early business to have to like pay them money to solve their problem. Right. Um, but it in the long run, it ended up being a great decision because now they're trying to make decisions around like, oh, how do we find a balance for this animal and cows? It's no longer a conversation of like, hey, this animal has to go. It's like, oh, we have a we can do surveys now that give us a livestock level understanding of deer. Um, so much so that like a rancher a couple of weeks ago said, like, hey, I'm missing this cow. And I went into our LLM and I was like, hey, is where like, is there a cow sitting out on a pasture? And it's like, yep, it's over here. So like we have a like livestock level understanding of deer. So what we're able to say to the ranchers is like, hey, this is how many deer you have. This is what grass looks like, this is what the rainfall looks like. What's the target for the next quarter? So like we're able to manage them like livestock. Um and all of that to say the to kind of answer come back to answer your question is like we're working directly with private landowners. It doesn't, I'm not naive enough to say like that doesn't impact the availability for public hunting because the the private landowners have like the preferential habitat for these animals. And so there's uh 465,000 acres on Maui. About 100,000 of it is public hunting. And so we work on, we only work on about uh we work on 11, we work on 10% of the landmass of Maui now. Um so we're working on about like 50,000, 60,000 acres. Um but it's the preferential habitat, so deer fill in. So we'll pull water out of the bucket and like water comes into the bucket, right? Um there are eight-foot fences everywhere, but they're band-aids. Those deer can go over them, under them, they break. Um so our job is you know, we want to make sure we're being like good stewards of this resource, but ultimately we're still only working on 10% of Maui, um, with definitely plans to like expand and continue to support like those other landowners and community. Um but the word balance is loaded and nuanced. And like we would, I don't think I'd ever do this without the level of data we have, or else I just couldn't, I don't know if I'd be able to sleep at night. Yeah.

Watersheds, Forests, And Water Loss

George Blitch 16:24

Sure. Well, you when you just mentioned the word water, that was something that, you know, the one of the most valuable things in an isolated land is that balance of water too, and creating balance with that in and what you're talking about. And there is areas where if there is a high rate of access deer in these spots and they are grazing ad nauseum, they're they're eating that understory, and that's something that really can deplete the water resource going into aquifers. And I mean, to I think you had mentioned like that's tens of millions of gallons of water annually, that it's very important to be able to manage those areas. So it's not just maybe the the types of like crops that may be out there or the native forages, that it's also a lot more than that. It's the water, which is it's really important uh uh structure there. So like you is if that is that kind of when you say their preferred areas, is that something where you kind of have to maybe police and work those areas that are kind of a little higher in that land area than you know, because I think it's like the the different elevation ranges are maybe more in watersheds than others. So I don't know if you can what the question is necessarily on that, but this is really cool.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

Oh, this is super cool. So their preferred ranges, they're they're a subtropical species, like um, they don't like the cold, they don't like the cold in Texas. Like, um so their preferred like elevation ranges are like five to five thousand to sea level um for the right temperatures. All of our watersheds, those areas you're talking about that like capture water. So there's these like really robust diverse forests from like canopies to understoreys that both capture cloud. So they're like fog fog capture mechanisms. Um, but they also those really diverse forests slow water. So what ends up happening is it pours rain. All of those plant species slow the water as it's moving towards the ground, and it gives the ground the ability to like capture it, move it into aquifers. We now know um forests that have established ungulates capture 50% less water. You're talking about like eight billions of dollars of like, if you put even like a like a relative market value on the water, like you're losing billions and billions of dollars a year to water that's running off into the ocean when it should be going down into your aquifer, because the understory is completely denuded, and that water doesn't have a chance to essentially like slow down, work its way into the aquifer, it just runs off, including taking all the soil with it. Um, so to answer your question, this is what's really cool. We've been able to track this over like the last 10 years, is they don't actually want to be in there. So all of those watersheds are high elevation, like 6,000 feet plus most often. So they're cold, they're wet, and actually you want to be down where it's like warm and dry. But when that what ends up happening is when the population becomes so dense in their preferred habitat, that's when they start pushing into these like sub-optimal areas for them. But we've done several collared studies where they'll cover about like a mile and a half, two miles a day. And they are not like they will change home range in a single day if they recognize like a preferred habitat that they're like they'd like to move into. So we actually have data where like they'll be in an upper area and they'll move themselves down and re-establish them themselves like in a lower area. So when we're talking about drawing water out of the bucket, even though we're only working on 10% of the landmass on Maui, it's the preferred habitat for deer. And it's actually drawing them down out of these watersheds in the areas that we're working to that are adjacent to these watersheds. Um, and that's the interesting thing about this is like if we thought of them as livestock at the right densities, they would actually like they prefer to live within our food system elevations. So our food systems are from zero to 5,000 feet. That's where we farm, that's where we ranch, that's where we're like um that's not to say like those deer don't need to be managed in those watersheds, and those watersheds are are almost always state land. And um, you know, it's unfortunate, but I like these aren't like our state workers aren't the bad guys, like they aerial shoot, they kill them and leave them. Um and that's okay, like their state mandate is to protect native species in forests. Their state mandate as a as a DLNR officer or dofa worker is like not to feed the community. Um so obviously I'd prefer that like didn't happen, but like that's they're trying to protect those watersheds. Um but the long-term management strategy is allow them to be a food resource for both commercial and recreational, where they actually want to be, which is not in the watershed. Um and so it's been really interesting to watch as the populations have come down on Maui. Uh, we we see, and we can actually measure this uh through the surveys we do, we see ingress from the elevated areas down into the ranches. So we see like population increases in our four to six thousand foot range, not in the lower ranges. And so they're actually like drawing down from these forested areas into the ranches, which is just so cool to be able to like watch and track that data.

George Blitch 21:56

Wow. I mean, I I can only I'm a data nerd too. So just the idea of like you doing this for nearly two decades and being able to see and track and and the success and you know I'm it it's just fascinating. I know we could talk for hours on that too. One of the things that I think it is you know the curiosity of folks who are hearing these numbers of what you guys are going out on any given night when with your you know large team and what this takes and having the you know processing facility there and all the teams, all the UTVs and the USDA guy riding shotgun there and making sure this done in a particular way and kind of like you said too to kind of um in in what ways you can mimic that brick and mortar facility of of you know that

Inside A High-Output Harvest Night

George Blitch 22:38

kind of production there. So I'm curious if you can just kind of walk us through when you guys are setting up to plan for a night where you're going out I know it's kind of you know you're starting at night 8 30 at your so you got the coffee ready the team's getting in getting geared up walk me through the process of what a night like that is and you know how long does this last and how long are these harvest uh moments? Is this a day? Is this two? Is it many in a row? And kind of like how long does it take to kind of organize this team and get everybody on that same page and kind of schedule that out.

SPEAKER_01 23:10

Yeah so uh super interesting we just made a huge schedule shift that you might find really interesting. Uh so we were previously working we had two full teams working seven days on seven days off um and so basically we were running every night of the month and some of the recent surveys at the beginning of the year showed us that population we're having a hard time harvesting the right number of deer. We have to be on a road so the so the inspector can like be in a vehicle looking through forward looking infrared to be able to like view the animal at rest do everything they don't a brick and mortar so we can't leave the road. Well we were getting so good at it that we were habituating the animals to move off the road systems into the edge of the ranches. So like and they were establishing these ultra tight home ranges and they weren't filling in to kind of like the most productive harvesting areas. And so luckily we have these amazing like flourgeur own systems where we can survey on a regular basis. And we started seeing this data and we were like what the like so what we ended up doing is we took the two full-time teams and turned into one giant team. And so now we only work 13 days of the month in the on the dark days of the month dark harvesting is always the the most productive um and then we've created these rest periods where from 12 to 18 days depending on the moon cycle we're allowing deer to fill like we talked about they're filling back into both the overall preferential habitat but their preferred habitat within the ranch as well which creates like more efficiencies than harvesting. And we did that um three months ago and just this last couple nights ago I was out and we're seeing animals in places we haven't seen for like many, many years, like right beside the base yard. So it's really interesting to watch people's behavioral changes and the limited period of time that it takes for those animals to like readjust themselves to both the area, but I actually think it's their preferred feed. So very much the way you can watch like an elk come down out of a mountain and go pick the very best thing to eat off of that off of an alfalfa field or whatever else like there are multiple think of Hawaii as like all of these lava flows that have come down at different times. So 10 feet away very much like Napa wine country there can be a different soil structure that has different like nutritional composition and the deer are like moving into these like preferred nutritional soil compositions to like feed and now we're just allowing them to do that again. So anyway like tons of complexity and data that go into like allowing an animal to be wild and as a and trying to run a business where like you just let your raw material run away from you. And so a typical night for us is like tons of data like constantly looking back to being because we track like we track every mile every bullet every shot each caliber um every location there's deer every time we see deer we have this we've developed our own like data system where the driver is like punching in data. So it really informs uh where we go every single night so that's kind of like step one but then you can imagine 22 guys rolling out with uh nine to 10 UTVs UTVs are like straight mad mat vehicles they're like they're they're all they've all been like essentially custom built for shooting the the USDA official sits below people that are standing above these uh these Polaris systems that we have and then the boys run we start shooting at 11 they're done at six but the night runs from basically like 830 to nine in the morning and it's probably illegal but they don't get lunch breaks like these boys run hard like we we like we like you won't ever see somebody walk to a gate you won't ever see somebody like walk to a deer like there's a very clear performance period like we have essentially like 22 athletes um and they know the faster they move the more deer we get and that's what's required to like make both balancing populations work but all the other things that work within the business. So we go hard for 12 straight hours um and all of the boys live together like we have like a huge base yard uh think of it as like part military part frat house part like um we got bunks and all kinds of stuff we feed them and they stay ultra ultra focused for 13 days we treat them like athletes they got cold plunges and hot like saunas and weight rooms and and we treat them like athletes and they perform like athletes um because to go from starting at 11 o'clock not knowing where any deer is to 6 a.m being done and there being a hundred deer that we did a hundred last night that went from alive to harvested brought back like through UTVs like everything is like skinned clean uh USDA is super particular like you literally can't have a single hair on an animal like in a stamp done on it in like a seven hour period and then all the cleanup required like these boys are like CrossFit athletes, rally car drivers like like we they're they are extreme athletes and it's actually what's required to be able to like be successful every single night and ultimately balance population. So there's lots of nuance within there that like of what has to be done in the right way to meet USDA FSIS standards. But in the end it's just really fucking hard work and a bunch of boys that love it and are willing to like work their ass off to to be

Turning Venison Into Community Meals

SPEAKER_01 28:55

there.

George Blitch 28:55

So end of the day you've got 100 dear you guys have gone through all the processing now I know that one of the things that you talked about and and is this balance and you have created um being able to give back to the community and whether that's in times of need after the fires or there's times where uh you know there may be families who just need some help there, you guys have given back almost a million now meals and I don't know if we've hit that red marker there. If we haven't it's about to be low we're almost there yeah so like that that's just incredible in and of itself I'm curious whenever you know all of a sudden you have all this meat here and you guys you know and I've I'll I'll show more links here but I obviously I have a lot of your product here that that you guys have created um and I'll kind of show some photos in here too of of what you guys sell. But where do you decide at that point where things are going to go from distribution to be able to have that out in a market and sell that in a global way or you're going to have this much that you're leaving behind. Is that something or like I'm sorry not leaving behind but creating it as a resource for the community what how how does that kind of interplay happen in those decisions just kind of curious about like that management of of the meat when it is done said and done.

SPEAKER_01 30:10

Yeah so great question um uh very similar to how we had thought about oh we don't just want to like build a little business here and treat some deer we also and my wife is foundational with this as well too um we wanted to make sure we had built the type of business that was able to share so we actually have this kind of like tiered and somewhat unapologetic like pricing structure. So we we give away we share for sure 10 plus percent of total supply and the way we share that sharing with community is not easy. We have learned this uh has to be like simple and straightforward uh but it also has to be like nuanced uh we have learned that you can't just drop something off at a food bank and call that sharing with community um so we have this like layered structure of like we literally have this amazing person on our team Tamewani who like rolls into people's backyards and houses that we know are not gonna ask and she like drops stuff off. We have a secondary layer that is we set up uh stand up freezers in local general stores like the tiny little general stores and if you're a resident of Maui or Hawaii you can pick up two pounds a day for free. And the and the reason we did that is we were finding through these different periods of need that families that had two full-time jobs and four kids were still right on that poverty line. Like Hawaii is one of the like the most costly places in the world to live um but they were also really proud and and like rightfully so they were not going to go fill out a form that says I need help and go to the food bank and pick something up. They weren't going to go through the standard like state or county filters to get help. These are not people that are like on like they're not getting assistance from the government but they still needed help. And what we found was if we put them in these local general stores they'd go in grab their kid ice cream or grab something small and then take the two pounds and it didn't feel like they were just taking and that comes with a certain level of you have to be completely okay that this happened the other day like and I'm sure this lady needed it like she rolled up in a BMW she had a Gucci purse on she walked in she grabbed two pounds and she walked out I don't know what I don't know what her story is I don't know what she needs or not and so we've had to be really comfortable like sharing freely with community and then the third layer is that filtered layer that is like the food banks and the feed like there are these structured nonprofit organizations. And so we drop off you know thousands of pounds every week to these different locations. So that's like the the beginning layer we basically want to we want to make sure we're sharing at least 10%. But in order to do that like think about like a regular business like that's 10% profit. So right there you're like okay well I have to be at least 10% profitable to give away 10% the secondary layer is we designate what ends up being another like 15 sometimes 20% of supply to something called our commander program which is somebody that pays $50 $60 a pound for something on the continent somebody locally can get it for $8 a pound. So we have this other layer that is like preferred pricing locally where anybody in Hawaii we will ship to you in Hawaii ground and leg medallions and everything else for basically eight to nine dollars a pound and that is like a secondary layer that like supports community. All of that is only possible because we have found customers on the continent that are willing to pay $50 and $60 a pound which we are like so thankful for um because they are like and I and those customers know it. We say thank you all the time we talk about it in our emails all the time like they know that their purchase like A, we believe that product is that valuable like it's substantially more nutrient dense than beef. It's stress-free it's truly wild it's all these amazing things that protein can be um but they also know that purchase is having like huge like impact in our local food systems and economies. We take really good care of our team we've got like 50 plus people now. So I think it's this it's this really interesting I hate I really do not like the like win win win wording um and have to find a better way to say it. But like it it really is one of those things. Like it's this extraordinary food resource that has to be managed that we are trying to do in the right way but supports like multiple layers of like local ecosystems and local people and local food systems. And for the customer that is worried about their protein to calorie intake you can get 10 grams of protein and only 50 calories which is unheard of so um we we it wasn't perfect but we planned that thought process 10 years ago to say like hey we have to price this thing like and I was so scared when we turned the website on I was like oh my God like this is not gonna work. I was just like nobody like who's gonna pay $50 a pound for this stuff? But we're like that's the only way we're willing to do it. Like it has to work this way so that we can support community. And we're just so thankful to have found both customers but also partners like yourself and the Tim Ferris and all these different people in the world that like believe in what we're doing and are willing to say like no no this thing is this valuable both to you personally but to what it's doing to for Hawaii as a whole.

George Blitch 36:15

Sure. No, I mean it it it is that I know you say like find a different word for the win-win-win but this balance and just kind of that that word always comes back to mind and I've heard it kind of talked about a a lot in different videos and things and and interviews and it is a balance and being able to find out okay well this may be a little bit more here but that's able to to give back here and it's you you've sustained there's something that is being able to work at play where I feel like everyone is is benefiting all across the board. And you know I I'd love to have people go over and check out your website and and learn a little bit more about what you guys got doing what you're offering too so that folks around here and other places can go ahead and play some orders and be a part of this system of success. And I just kind of, you know, I mean you have a lot of different products there that you offer that I I'd love to just maybe kind of do a quick little run of some of the things you offer that people can can learn about. And like I said I'll I'll I'll have I know people can't read everything right over here as I'm holding them up, but I will uh can drop in some pictures too and I'll have a couple other posts that will uh come along with this podcast so that they can learn a little bit more too and kind of get some direct links. But uh at the moment I'd love for you to just kind of talk about what it is that you guys offer.

Using The Whole Animal For Products

SPEAKER_01 37:24

Yeah so trying to use the entire animal uh the meat is the the meat industry as a whole like focuses around like hey what do you do with the trim? So we've been able to like we've it was pretty easy early on to find a solution for like the rib racks and the strip loin and the tenderloin. That was like those things could go to food service. One really cool unlock uh about a year and a half ago is finally figured out how to age that stuff properly. So now all that stuff is aged depending on the cut but like a tenderloin is aged like 12 days the leg medallion is aged like 14 or 16 days. And like aging, I'm sure you know this like oh my God, aging venison is just like an accent here is already good but yeah like crazy how much better it is. Like our sirloins are just like one of my most like the they used to be like it was kind of good and now they're just like amazing. So age all of those like amazing fresh kind of cuts and those goes out in your typical box of you can get a combination of ground and all these different cuts to doesn't matter if you're feeding 10 kids at home and all you don't want to do is make spaghetti or you're the fancy fancy folks and you want to make tenderloins which hey everybody wants the tenderloin every once in a while we do that. Solving for trim is ultimately the hardest part. So those sticks that I mean me and you both love um we turn a lot of the animal into sticks and they are just crazy convenient. And when you actually look at their forget our whole story if you just put them side by side with like the other sticks on the market, being able to get like 10 grams of protein all of the phytochemicals all the balanced omegas with only 50 calories is every other stick you're gonna get 10 grams of protein and 100 plus calories. So for a lot of the folks that are focused on like either you know really those macros or even uh my example like saturated fats we know are not good for the heart in the long run. And lots of guys our age are starting to be like hey gotta be like heart healthy and start paying attention and access to ear because they're so lean like literally have like almost no saturated fats. So it's gonna be one of the few proteins that you can actually eat a lot of and not worried about that accumulation of saturated fats. It's long-term effects on oxidative stress and plaque and all the other things. So make a lot of sticks uh and then also do organ capsules like the heart liver kidney was the original multivitamin. Oh my god I was just watching this video of um there's these two different you gotta go see this there's these two different pods of orcas that are teaching all these other pods of orcas to just eat shark livers so they're attacking like great whites and they're just eating their liver dude is crazy. Whoa um and they're like killing these great whites and they're just eating their livers and leaving the rest. Long story short like organs are good for you. Yes uh and so make a really cool organ capsule that I take every day uh and then also we don't preferentially target bucks because large bucks are one of the things that can actually like skew a ground they're the one animal that like can get a little bit of gamey um but what velvet we do shoot during the velvet season we turn into like a super limited round of velvet capsules. Uh and those are you act like antler velvet is currently illegal across our sports like leagues uh they are I take it every day it is badass.

George Blitch 41:02

What are the what are the effects thereof on that for you that you you've been taking it in a longstanding you know form.

SPEAKER_01 41:08

Oh what does that do for you? Huge yeah definitely big increases in like overall blood flow overall energy uh it does have human growth hormone in it so the reason it's illegal in sports leagues is recovery. So it's you're able to recover substantially faster from like workouts and a bunch of other stuff. So I take it every day I the way I think about supplements and stuff is I if I cycle off of it and I notice a difference then I just keep taking it. I don't actually like I that's the best way for me to tell so I do organ capsule, velvet and creatine. That's all I take. Yeah. And then have some partnerships for pet products that are going to be coming out soon. So trachea lung esophagus spleen tripe uh we got our hands in tripe every single night um uh heart antlers end up going to um several different craft makers and do some dog shoes have a really cool partnership coming up with this leather company they're making bags and cowboy boots and like all kinds of stuff uh so really try and do our best to like utilize the entire animal down to like that amazing partnership we have with Kettle and Fire um and all of the bone broth. And I gotta show you after this we just made oh I don't know if I'll I'll get in trouble. We might have to cut this maybe we won't we just made freeze dried bone broth so they take the broth and they freeze dry it and basically that entire carton turns into a teaspoon but freeze drying maintains all the nutritional composition dude and I've been putting it in my coffee whoa and it so because it's naturally salty it's just bones and water but it's naturally salty from the bone marrow it the salt cuts the bitterness of the coffee a little bit but you're and you're literally getting like an amazing cup of coffee that kind of tastes like a you're putting like some something like a creamer in it. But you're getting a whole cup of coffee and a whole cup of broth. And we already know this but like when like our bone broth is 30% has 30% more protein per ounce than any other beef broth just because like it's a wild animal those bones are harder like it's denser right uh makes perfect sense. Um anyway so very long story short we're trying to create as many valuable products for customers as possible utilizing what is for sure like one of the most nutrient dense like raw materials

Scaling The Invasive-To-Food Model

SPEAKER_01 43:44

on the planet.

George Blitch 43:44

So it's been really fun to kind of build all those things and figure out the different ways to utilize that animal as a whole wow man I you know it it we were introduced from you know you know Kent over there at Neuro and he was telling me about his experience going over there and just being a part of this and being your friend and kind of like he's like you you have to reach out and I started kind of doing the research and I was like just blown away and one of these days I I will make it out there in person to kind of see everything as it as it as you guys got going and and what you've built. But I just I with just so much gratitude and respect for you for what you're doing and being able to help others along the way and being able to provide such nutrient rich materials for everyone to be able to eat and cook with and then using all the resources of that animal too and being able to, you know it's Access Deer are a part of Hawaii, right? It's not like you're going to eradicate all of them it's a resource that you guys are utilizing and there's a management and a balance that comes from all this and just to see you what you and your team have built man it um it just is is incredible and I'm I'm just uh I'm honored to have you on here to talk about this and and honored to know you and just happy that you got people like yourself that are doing this and and kind of giving back as you do man. So uh hats off to you and all that.

SPEAKER_01 44:59

Yeah I really appreciate the kind words and um I don't know who said this I think we heard it on a podcast once like it said like don't be the best VD only. Like I just happened to fall into this one thing that like I'm irrationally in love with. And so it makes it really easy to like like it's so fun to do every day from like like this morning I was literally talking about like changing our bullet loads to something a little bit faster. And then an hour later I was talking about like an LTV to CAC conversation around like our customer base. Like vertically integrated with us is just like the funnest and craziest thing ever. And I think what I'm probably most excited about and and maybe hinting at like a few things to come is like I'm gonna do this for the next 60 years. And I think this model can be substantially larger than what it is right now. I think the model of like can we turn in invasive species into food for customers and community can can work at a much larger scale within the systems that we built. And we're we're gonna go build

Where To Follow And Buy

SPEAKER_01 46:05

that. Yeah.

George Blitch 46:05

I love it man well I I know you and I could talk seriously for hours about this and load development and all the gear because I'm I'm very curious about all that that every everything you use in it and I know that there's a lot of intricacies in all that so uh it with with your permission we'll definitely have a part two but I wanted to let you know my listeners know a little bit about what you're going on and and you know I I highly encourage everyone to go check out the show notes below I'll have all the links to all the amazing products of Mount Nui and all the uh videos that you're producing you and your wife and your team and uh once again man I I I'm just so happy that you're here. Uh for those who are ready right now to go and follow you guys on social, check out the website. Why don't you go ahead and give those real quick so everyone can go ahead and uh and find those today.

SPEAKER_01 46:48

Everything is just Mao Nui venison. So whether it's Instagram or the the website or anything else there. We do most of our correspondence via email so sign up for the emails and uh yeah there's a bunch of really fun and interesting stories in there. And again really appreciate the kind words and the opportunity to share some stories.

George Blitch 47:04

Right on. Well hey you're gonna have to come out to Texas. We're gonna search for some arrowheads there. I'll come out there as well too.

SPEAKER_01 47:10

Would love to.

George Blitch 47:11

Cheers. Well Jake thank you again so much and uh appreciate all you got going on and looking forward to having you on again sometime soon.

SPEAKER_01 47:17

My pleasure. Thanks George Cheers