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Home » Transcript: Cameron Hanes & Adam Greentree on Joe Rogan Podcast #2426

Transcript: Cameron Hanes & Adam Greentree on Joe Rogan Podcast #2426

In this episode of Joe Rogan Experience #2426, Joe Rogan reunites with elite bowhunter and endurance athlete Cameron Hanes alongside Australian bowhunter and photographer Adam Greentree for a three-hour masterclass in hunting, wilderness adventure, and mental toughness. The trio swap wild backcountry stories from Alaska to the Australian outback, including close calls with grizzlies, brutal pack-outs, and the kind of near-death moments that permanently change how you see risk and comfort.

Cam breaks down the “undeniable” mindset behind his new book—why he still runs ultras, lifts heavy, and shoots his bow daily in his 50s—and how obsessive consistency, not talent, took him from blue-collar kid to one of the most respected hunters on earth. Adam adds his perspective on conservation, animal behavior, and the ethics of bowhunting, as they dig into what modern life has lost by severing people from nature and hard, meaningful work.

The Mountain Lion in the Lobby

JOE ROGAN: Hey, we’re live. Gentlemen. What’s happening?

CAMERON HANES: What is going on?

JOE ROGAN: Good to see you guys again.

CAMERON HANES: Bow hunting brothers.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, we’re just talking about the mountain lion that we have in the lobby and how insane that thing is. So, Adam, you shot that mountain lion when?

ADAM GREENTREE: I think it was about six or seven years ago now.

JOE ROGAN: And you ate it. And I ate some of it. You sent some to me. It’s really good. Believe it or not, ladies and gentlemen.

ADAM GREENTREE: You wouldn’t think so, but it’s incredible.

JOE ROGAN: Everybody says it’s like, the way they describe it is, I think Rinella said, “this is superior pork.”

ADAM GREENTREE: Yeah, yeah. It’s like, I think of it as a cross between venison and chicken. And I only did it quick on the barbecue, and I’m not a great cook, but it was that tender and that tasty.

A Murderous Mountain Lion

JOE ROGAN: But the story behind the mountain lion is nuts. That was like a murderous mountain lion.

ADAM GREENTREE: It was. I felt a bit funny about it to start with because the dogs do all the hunting, right? The dogs smell it. Dogs find it. They put it up in a tree. But the further I looked into it, I’m like, well, you need the tree because you want to sex it, and you want to age it. You know, you want to make sure it’s a lion that’s old, and it has to be a male to shoot it in Colorado, at least at the time, you had to, anyway.

So it was actually the perfect way to hunt. But then seeing how destructive that individual lion was, at least I was telling Cam about this when we got here, that it must have grabbed the cow like a beef cow. Must have grabbed it on the neck, and the cow couldn’t move, but it was still fully alive internally and vocally, it was still alive.

And when we got there, the mountain lion was eating it from its rear in. And it had been there for at least an hour or two because there was quite a lot of meat that had been eaten out from the cow’s a and kicking its hooves.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

ADAM GREENTREE: And it’s just, but the cow couldn’t get up, so it was literally eating it while it was still alive. And as the dogs are running down there, you could hear this cow off in the distance just screaming, like, mooing, flat out, and you could tell something was wrong.

The dogs got there, the lion ran off. We end up calling the rancher in, the rancher come out, put the cow out of its misery, still screaming on the ground right in front of me. I was teared up. I don’t like suffering like the next person. So it was a very horrible moment. So then it was like, now I’m into it. Now I’m into finding this lion.

JOE ROGAN: It’s like a werewolf’s loose in your town, you know. How much did that cat weigh, by the way?

ADAM GREENTREE: By the way, I held it up for size, and I could hold it for maybe 30 seconds, and I literally couldn’t hold it up anymore. And I was trying to show the size of how big that lion was.

JOE ROGAN: It looks like it’s at least 150.

ADAM GREENTREE: Yeah, it’s giant.

JOE ROGAN: So it’s like 170. That’s what you think it would be on the par.

CAMERON HANES: Yeah. As it were. Yeah, yeah. That’s a big animal.

JOE ROGAN: We were standing out in front of it, going, imagine if this thing jumped on you.

ADAM GREENTREE: It’s a living monster.

JOE ROGAN: It is a monster. It’s a real monster. And he’s like, oh, they kill their animal, their prey first. No, they don’t. Just make sure it doesn’t move anymore.

ADAM GREENTREE: Yeah, just whatever’s good for eating, apparently.

JOE ROGAN: They’ll just start eating it.

ADAM GREENTREE: Whatever’s good for eating. It’s on.

Compassion in the Wild

CAMERON HANES: We’re the only thing that has compassion in the wild. The putting out of the misery, like the rancher did. You know, that’s one thing about hunters, ranchers. We do appreciate life and death. And there is a time where, hey, let’s put it out of its misery.

But yeah, man is the only one who thinks about that. An animal, they’ll just start eating, they could care less about. They don’t even know about pain, really, or being merciful or anything like that. It’s just what we do.

ADAM GREENTREE: Yeah. I always say, like the lion in Africa, it stripes a zebra across the back end, and the zebra gets away, and it’s just got blood pouring out of it and it’s got this horrible wound that it’s going to have to live with.