#397 - "We're Under Siege" China's New Deal With The Sinaloa Cartel | John Nores

Summary

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Danny Jones Podcast #397

Episode Title: "We're Under Siege" China's New Deal With The Sinaloa Cartel | John Nores
Release Date: May 18, 2026
Host: Danny Jones
Guest: John Nores (Retired Game Warden, Author of Hidden War)

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Episode Overview

In this gripping and insightful episode, Danny Jones sits down with John Nores—a retired California game warden, tactical unit founder, author, and environmental crime expert. Together, they unravel the evolution of wildlife enforcement, the growing threat of drug cartels in U.S. public lands, and the explosive rise of Chinese involvement in North American black market cannabis and fentanyl trade. Nores shares harrowing stories from the frontline, tracing his unconventional career path from Silicon Valley kid to combating cartel incursions—revealing a shadow war that intersects environmental disaster, wildlife loss, public safety, and global criminal collusion.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. John Nores’ Background and Path to Game Warden Life

• Early influences: Conservation-oriented family; respect for wildlife, "the three W's: wildlife, waterways, wildlands."
• Almost became a civil engineer; a chance encounter with a game warden on a rain-soaked adventure in Henry Coe State Park changed life's direction.
• “Sometimes there's this... some people say divine intervention. Crazy fate.” (John, 05:00)
• Shifted college major from engineering to criminal justice at San Jose State, leading to academy graduation in 1992 and a nearly 30-year career.

2. The Role of Game Wardens—Beyond Wildlife

• Game wardens are state peace officers: “We're trained to do everything that state police do... and then add on two more months of the wildlife forensics, you know, the exotic weapon identification.” (John, 07:15)
• Wardens increasingly encounter not just hunters and anglers, but sophisticated poachers, environmental crimes, and, over time, cartel activity.

3. Conservation, Hunting, and Shifting American Attitudes

• Decline in hunting, rise in fishing as California urbanizes; serious long-term concerns about generational loss of conservation culture (12:15-16:23).
• Hunting and fishing license fees, plus federal excise taxes (via Pittman Robertson Act), are the main revenue sources sustaining conservation programs.
• On the hunter/non-hunter debate:
  • "How can you kill wildlife and love wildlife in the same sentence? I go, because I know I'm doing something really good for wildlife." (John, 21:43)
  • “Our hearts are both in the right place.” (John, 21:29)
• Predator management: Overprotection of mountain lions in CA—resulting in livestock losses and imbalance. Comparison with Montana’s managed approach.

4. Urbanization, Land Development, and Cultural Disconnection

• The pressures of real estate development threaten traditional ranching, public land access, and cohesive conservation management (35:39-39:04).
• "Everything's getting real expensive or... I'm looking for my future... and I have $100 million payout if I sell." (John, 37:40)
• Increasingly, land and wildlife are being lost not just to environmental destruction, but cultural and generational disconnect.

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5. The Cartel Incursion: From Grow Sites to Open Combat

Discovery of Cartel Grows

• Early 2000s: California game wardens begin encountering large, highly technical cartel-run cannabis grow sites deep in public lands. Massive water diversions destroy habitats for fragile species (e.g., steelhead trout, red-legged frogs).
  • “We find the diversion and it was like nothing I’ve ever seen before.” (John, 51:05)
  • First suspected cartel encounter: Two men in military clothing, armed and moving with tactical precision (54:04-56:25).
• Eradication efforts were initially uncoordinated and did not restore environmental damage—until game wardens began to champion site reclamation.

Violent Escalation

• The 2005 Los Gatos Shootout:
  • A joint operation with sheriffs and wardens targeting cartel grows led to an ambush—young warden “Mojo” shot through both legs by an AK-47, survived due to heroic actions and team response (72:54-76:15).
  • “He can't hold up his big heavy M1A that we carry. Drops it, pulls his Glock pistol out and just starts covering himself…” (John, 72:55)
• Over time, multiple gunfights ensued. Grew into the formation of a dedicated tactical Marijuana Enforcement Team—integrating paramedics, military training, and advanced equipment.

The Environmental Catastrophe

• Water theft, toxic pesticide use, habitat damage, and direct wildlife poisoning by cartels (carbofuran, metafos—EPA-banned nerve agents): “They actually call it el Diablo...because they know how nasty it is. But it’s so effective the bosses want them to keep using it.” (John, 87:13)
• Booby traps for law enforcement: Vietnam-style punji pits tipped with poison, tripwires for shotguns, bear and animal deaths.

Scale and Evolution

• Cartel grows spread from California (especially the Emerald Triangle) across the U.S.—enabled by legal-misdemeanor-level penalties after cannabis legalization reforms (Prop. 64).
• When illicit grows are not fully reclaimed, cartels simply replant (see ~95:06-97:59).

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6. China’s Entrée: The New Power Broker

Collusion and Money Laundering

• Since the late 2010s, Chinese criminal organizations have moved into the black market cannabis scene, particularly in Northern California (Siskiyou County).
  • Chinese groups run their own “cartels,” buy land, launder money via cannabis, and seek local political influence.
• Direct collaboration with Mexican cartels: China provides banking, money laundering, and most critically, precursor chemicals for fentanyl and synthetic drugs.
  • “The Chinese came in and they started, you know, what’s... the cartels doing? ...We’re going to get you the fentanyl precursors you need and we’re going to charge you. Instead of 6%, we’ll charge you 5%. You invest in Chinese banking institutions.” (John, 112:42)

The Northern Border Threat

• With tighter Southern border security, cartel traffic (fentanyl, synthetic drugs, laundered money) now flows through Canada and into the U.S. via the unsecured, forested Northern Border.
  • “5,000 miles... the northern border right now is absolutely under siege.” (John, 116:26)
  • Law enforcement is undermanned, and border is just woods—near impossible to police.
• Chinese chemicals and drugs are now being produced in Canada, avoiding the need for risky border crossings from Mexico.

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7. Legalization, Regulation, and Unintended Consequences

• Legalization in California (Prop 64) was intended to squeeze out the black market, but flawed implementation made cartel grows less risky (crimes downgraded to misdemeanors or infractions—even for juveniles).
  • “Now, be a grower... 14-year-old sicario in training... shooting an officer might be a felony, but... growing 40,000 plants is a ticket.” (John, 121:59)
• “We could have been a great example for the country... and you absolutely... you punch the duck on this one, man.” (John, 122:00)
• Other states (Oklahoma, Michigan, Maine) copied California’s weak model, triggering a surge of Chinese operations.

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8. Potential Solutions and The Way Forward

• John’s blunt prescription: National recognition, prioritization, and tactical offensive—“It has to be a national priority... I think it’s the #1 priority over everything.” (John, 125:37)
• Federal/fiscal/technological coordination, school education on real risks (not “just say no,” but realities of poisoned and tainted drugs).
• True federal regulation of quality cannabis could dramatically reduce the black market: “I think it would have a good effect on that part of cartel crime. ...if you regulated quality cannabis right... like tobacco and alcohol ...you wouldn’t eliminate the black market but you would eliminate most of it in weed.” (John, 129:11)
• However, the risk of corporate monopolization, sidelining small organic growers, and shifting problems to other drugs remains.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “We're under siege.” (John Nores, 116:26)
• “Because I know I'm doing something really good for wildlife. And the actual killing of the animal... is the least enjoyable... part of that process of respecting that animal.” (John, 21:43)
• “They actually call it el Diablo...because they know how nasty it is.” (On cartel poisons, 87:13)
• “The northern border is absolutely under siege... it followed me up here [to Montana].” (John, 116:26-119:01)
• “The money out there, Florida and California are synonymous.” (John, 36:04)
• “It’s not just why are the game wardens here? It’s why aren’t the game wardens on this?” (John, 97:59)
• “This is like Sicario 3 or 4.” (John, 112:44)
• “If you look at harmonious life for our children and grandchildren... we have to be safe on the home front first and foremost before we worry about... foreign threats.” (John, 125:37)
• “At some level, you know, nation states are cartels.” (Danny, 132:02)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• 00:00 – 08:20: John’s origin; conservation family; becoming a game warden
• 12:15 – 21:13: Decline in hunting, conservation funding, complex predator management
• 24:12 – 30:32: Preserving balance; urbanization; emotional debates about wildlife
• 39:24 – 63:25: Discovery of cartel grows, environmental crimes, first major operational busts
• 72:54 – 79:42: The 2005 cartel shootout: operational details, aftermath, law enforcement evolution
• 80:15 – 98:21: Poisons, booby traps, Vietnam-style tactics, environmental disasters
• 106:17 – 116:26: China’s new deal: money laundering, fentanyl, seizure of land and northern border porosity
• 120:30 – 130:40: Legalization’s failed promise, lessons for other states, scope and escalation
• 125:37 – end: Proposed solutions; national security framing; ongoing media and education work

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Resources & Further Exploration

• Books:
  • Hidden War by John Nores (2nd edition, updated)
• Upcoming Project:
  • Ironclad's “Change Agents” docuseries
• Related Episodes:
  • Thin Green Line Podcast (co-hosted by Nores)
  • Carlos Alfaro (DCEP Coordinator) on impacts of federal policy
  • Ed Calderon’s appearances on cartel wars from inside Mexico

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Final Thoughts

John Nores reveals a hidden war few Americans see: a battle not just against drugs, but for the soul of the nation’s wild places and the future of its youth. The collision of environmental conservation, global criminal organizations, and lax policy enforcement creates a crisis at once ecological, economic, and existential. Nores’ central message—echoed by Danny—is that awareness, balanced management, and political courage are the necessary weapons in a fight that affects us all.

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“Wildlife belongs to all of us. No one owns the wildlife.”
— John Nores (106:16)

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Transcript

[Danny Jones]

Foreign. How did this whole thing start for you?

[John]

Well, Danny, you hit it on the head. You don't think a game wardens, you know, involved in drug cartels, growing illegal weed, and now they're responsible for fentanyl and meth and human trafficking. It's a national issue now and a national problem, major problem that I'm dealing with, you know, now post retirement, post operational, by talking to you today. So once again, thanks for having me.

[Danny Jones]

My pleasure.

[John]

It's cool to finally meet you. Um, yeah. When I started off as a game warden, I wanted to protect the three W's, wildlife, waterways and wildlands. Grew up in a conservation family. My dad was a hunter, a military veteran, angler, fly fisherman, the whole nine, competitive shooter. Granddad was a World War II vet. He was deployed to Pearl harbor and survived when that attack happened right out of boot camp. But always instilled around his military and life of service, you know, goals that wildlife and wildlands and waterways are really worth protecting. Guys, we hunt. We hunt sensibly, responsibly to consume meat. We respect the animal. We don't take too much of anything, so. And you know, growing up, I just. I grew up in the outdoors. I mean, even where I grew up in the Silicon Valley, what most people don't realize is in those, all those foothills around the Silicon Valley are a plethora of wildlife species and endangered species, waterways, parks, places to hike. So I cut my teeth in California actually doing all of that stuff and really wanting to do something that I could do to protect the things I love so much. The dad and grandfather and our whole family, you know, really instilled. So I went the game warden route. Not directly. I started off going, like I said, grew up in Silicon Valley, went to San Jose State there, went after an engineering degree because I had a. My youngest uncle had a civil engineering firm, and I was a designer and a drafter. I really enjoyed that. And it was, you know, a lucrative profession. A profession where you'd be in the outdoors a little bit. And the only reason I was going that direction is up to that point, I had never met a game warden my entire life of all the hunting and fishing and everything I had done outside. So, you know, sometimes there's this, some people say divine intervention. They call it crazy fape. But I was in my first semester of engineering school at San Jose State. I go to winter break and the first thing I do when I finish my last, like physics or calculus final, whatever it was that Friday, race back down to south county where I Grew up. Meet my brother, Outlaw, best friend, growing up with us, like a fifth member of our family, Jeff. And we have a pack horse all packed up named Lucky that's going to take a bunch of supplies and we're going to go in the middle of winter in December into Henry Coast State Park. And Henry Coast State park is the second largest state park in California. It's about 100,000 acres now. And they had all this new terrain and territory they had bought from private ranches, big corporations that were ranching, cattle company type organizations. And we launched on a Friday and the rangers said, you guys know it's going to like pour rain non stop. There's nobody in this park. I don't know that you're going to have flooded creeks. I don't know if you're going to get the horse through certain places, like can we still go? And Barry, the great ranger that was kind of a, an inspiration to me as well, said, yeah, but I want to know where you're going to be every night. And there were no cell phones at the time. There was no way to check in. There weren't in reach GPS devices.

[Danny Jones]

But he knew no signal out there.

[John]

No signal out there. No. This is, you're off the grid. You're over way into the eastern foothills headed toward the central valley of California. So we go on this hike and we're hiking all night to find this lake we've never been to yet. And it's pouring rain and it is 13 miles of just misery. But we're dumb college kids so we're taking it on as a challenge. And we finally find this lake in the dark. How I'll never know. But we made it. And we all our stuff soaked, so we string everything up to dry out, we take care of the horse, we have a fire. You know you're not supposed to have fires in the state park but nothing's going to burn down in the middle of a storm. And we have a fire to start drying stuff out. And first light the next morning, I hear, you know, the compound low transfer case of this 4x4 coming down the mountain right behind us where this little camp is. And I went, oh no, that's the ranger. That's probably Barry or one of his people. He proved himself right on this one. What are we doing? And it was a game warden that was there for completely random reasons. He just decided to go back there and patrol for out of season deer poachers because we have the subspecies of the mule deer in California called the blacktail. And trophy genetics of that animal are all in that region of that park. And that's that area where I grew up. And a lot of guys will go in way after the rut, way after hunting season is over to try to get those quote unquote, you know, Boone and Crockett trophy sized animals and poach them out of season. And that's what he was looking for. And so when he came down, he thought, are these, Is this a poaching camp? Because nobody would hike in company right now. And so after about 5, 10 minutes of talking to us, he realized we were dumb college kids and told us, yeah, don't worry about the fire, you're not going to burn anything down. Dry your stuff out. Where are you going next? And I go, well, you're not. You don't work for Barry. He goes, no, I'm a game ward. What's that? So you get paid to do this, dude, you're in a 4x4 truck. Maybe you have a dog, maybe you don't as a canine working out of your house. That's your horse, your steel horse is that vehicle. You're back country running into people like us and working where I just thrive to hunt and fish or hike and see this stuff. And he goes, yeah. And so I've been his ear for like two more hours and he had to go. And Jeff's watching me as my eyes are going and lighten up. And when he left, I looked at my bro Outlaw and he goes, uh, oh. I said, yeah, I'm going the wrong direction professionally. And so we finished that crazy hike and it was mind blowing experience, you know, at that age for you have, I'm sure, thousands of them where they're just pivotal with your best friends, your best family members and something just changes. And to this day, the fact that one game warden would be in an area where nobody normally patrols. Even in my game warden profession, coming up at that time of year with the wet, the rain, people don't have access, a little bit of special intervention. I think that we just kind of collided out there. So I didn't go this direction and have a really lucrative engineering career and I would have done well and worked with my uncle. It would have been great, but I would have been flat. There just wouldn't have been passion in it. So I leave the woods five days later and it's winter break at San Jose State and I go right to the criminal justice advisor for that department. And unbeknownst to me, besides being one of the best engineering schools in the country. It's also one of the best criminal justice schools. And this advisor was awesome and he kind of directed me in. Oh yeah, we can place you. You're only half, you're a semester in engineering. You've taken tons of math and science and all that good stuff. Get on the general ed track, go for a criminal justice degree and you be a game ward, an FBI agent, a police officer, whatever. That's what we do here. And we're one of the best schools in the country. And I went. There's another fate driven great thing. Changed my major, never looked back. And five years later I was in the Academy in 1992 to become a sworn peace officer. And you know, and, and Danny, the thing is people think game wardens just work on the wildlife stuff. But we're trained to do everything that state police do, that, you know, Tampa police do, that sheriffs do everything that's public safety related. We have to go through that same level of training through our academy and then add on two more months of the wildlife forensics, you know, the exotic weapon identification. Something I started to get into that I'm sure we'll talk about as we move on with, with the whole Hidmore story is the tactical unit we had to build for the marijuana problem, which we'll get to. But, but yeah, I went to that great academy, great instructors and never looked back.

[Danny Jones]

Yeah, see I don't have that much experience in the woods. I spent pretty much my whole childhood on the ocean like fishing and spearfishing and diving around bridges, you know, when I was young. I hope they don't get in trouble, but I've done quite a bit of poaching when I was very young. I think we all have with know spearing. Cuz there's so many weird laws. Like there's certain fish you're not allowed to shoot, right. But there's like there's this freaking jetty and this, this little channel, this, this pass, very popular pass down the street from here where there's these snook that are like this big and you can go in there as long as you can dodge the bull sharks and you can bring get a snook like this big right off the beach.

[John]

Yeah.

[Danny Jones]

And you know like that's, that was my experience with you know, war game wardens and fish and wildlife people. My whole life was trying to dodge them and coming, you know, come going out fishing for the day and you know, whatever and coming back in through the past, making sure there's no around and like you know, even when I was really young, I spent, I remember I spent a summer in the Keys and I had no money and I was there on like a, a, a video production project and I was staying in this like shitty fleabag hotel and all I could afford was canned. I was get buying canned corn from Publix.

[John]

Okay.

[Danny Jones]

And every night before sunset I would go free dive underneath this bridge.

[John]

Nice.

[Danny Jones]

And just stuff lobster tails in my board shorts.

[John]

There you go. Yeah, yeah.

[Danny Jones]

So that's like living in Florida. Like I never, I never spent much time in the woods or doing like traditional type of hunting. But like in California or around where you started out, like how much of it, what determines whether you're going to be inland or like on the ocean?

[John]

Yeah, that's a really good question. So when I joined you didn't have a choice where you went out of the academy because you have to, you have to graduate the academy first and foremost. And then you go to a field training officer program which is you get with three training officers that are, you know, kind of the iconic, great, great trainers with great careers behind them and you do a month with each of them all over. And hopefully as a new cadet about to go into the field training officer FTO program, you get time on the ocean. Specifically you get time way on the interior mountains like the eastern Sierras where Mount Whitney is in California, up to 14, 000ft. That's the coolest thing about California is

[Danny Jones]

you can be in the ocean and you can be in the freaking snowy mountains in the same day.

[John]

I've done it in a day. I've literally made a ski trip by the evening after fishing on the, you know, Santa Cruz coastline. Yeah, yeah.

[Danny Jones]

That's the coolest thing ever.

[John]

It's the incredible state like as far

[Danny Jones]

as like terrain and like just geography. California is there. Doesn't get any better than that.

[John]

It's incredible. I mean outside of the politics and the way that state's been running, just

[Danny Jones]

get rid of all the crazy corruption,

[John]

you get rid of all of that out there. It is probably, if not the most diverse, one of the top diverse states in wildlife, everything we have the parks and I'm still down there. I mean I'm in Montana full time now. Retired eight years from operations from almost a 30 year game warden career, which is fantastic. Unplanned, you know, through some curve balls, but all for the best, like we're talking about. But, but yeah, I still spend a lot of time down there. Spent a lot of time on conservation projects, spent a Lot of time in the woods there, and spent a lot of time on all the cartel stuff and the weed stuff as well, training on it, working with teams, speaking to the public, working with legitimate grower groups that are, you know, doing it by the numbers and getting run out by these. By these criminals. But the fishing side of what you did is that's the biggest bread and butter we have, like, on the west coast states. So there's more anglers over the amount of hunters. Exponential difference right now, because we're seeing less and less hunters in California because it's becoming less and less of a consumptive state for hunting animals for consumption.

[Danny Jones]

But why is that?

[John]

It's just one of those things. Populations are growing up, regulations are getting pretty stringent. There's just not a demographic of kids being raised to hunt, maybe to fish, or maybe they're not being raised to do either. You know, just in. Just in more urban environments where their parents didn't have that background.

[Danny Jones]

Right.

[John]

They didn't grow up on the ocean. They didn't grow up spearfishing. They didn't grow up, you know, hunting inland, waterfowl, whatever. Like, I started with my dad, you know, at like nine years old. That's one of those things that generationally gets handed down.

[Danny Jones]

Yeah, that's very true.

[John]

Yeah. And if you're not exposed to it, most people don't go. You know, I'm seeing some of these feeds and watching some of these hunting shows, and it looks really fascinating to me, but I've never eaten wild meat. I've never, you know, eaten a sport caught lobster or a rockfish or anything like that, so. And California, unfortunately, is one of those states that's just with the politics and kind of the lens and the demographic of population, it's becoming less and less of a consumptive state. But the fishing still in that state is off the charts.

[Danny Jones]

Is it?

[John]

And that's where most of. Of, you know, revenue is coming in from for the department, from license sales is fishing licenses. Right. Any. Any other licenses that you need to have for any. Any aquatic species.

[Danny Jones]

Yeah, I've seen some incredible spearfishing videos from Santa Cruz area. Yeah, it's like those kelp forests.

[John]

Yeah, the kelp forest, Monterey Bay, it's just so cold. Yeah, my dive certification was in Monterey in that cold water, in that kelp forest. But I'll tell you what, you want to talk about something you can't find anywhere else in the world? That dark kelp forest is creepy, but it's super cool, so majestic. Dive in. Yeah.

[Danny Jones]

Oh, my God. I would be so terrified. I mean, the cold water just makes it even worse, you know, because it's just stressing you so much.

[John]

It's stressing you. You're in a thick suit.

[Danny Jones]

Yeah.

[John]

And you know, you know, sea lions are coming up to your face and disappearing out of the kelp and otters. Yeah, it's. It's pretty crazy.

[Danny Jones]

I remember my last experience in Santa Cruz was probably like when I was 18 years old and we went there for a week and I just surf Steamer Lane every day. And I just remember you have to dodge the kelp. There's so much kelp. You could be flying down a wave and you hit a patch of kelp and you go flying off your surfboard.

[John]

You're done. Yeah. Stuff will lock you up.

[Danny Jones]

Such a great this. Yeah. Again, like the terrain and just nature there is just so like, it's powerful. Yeah. The warmth is in full effect down here in Florida. And it only took me one round of golf to remind me that the warm season is hydration season. And that's why I keep Liquid IV's hydration multiplier with me at all times. Whether it's a day trip on the boat exploring the farmers market or an eight hour round of golf. Liquid IV is superior hydration than water alone. And right now you can get 20% off your first order by using the code Danny at checkout. It's mandatory that I keep a stash with me at all times. I love it because it's so simple. All you do is tear, pour it into your water and you're good to go. One stick with 16 ounces of water hydrates faster than water alone. It's powered by Liquid IV hydra science with an optimized ratio of electrolytes, essential vitamins, vitamins and clinically tested nutrients that turn ordinary water into extraordinary hydration. You're getting three times the electrolytes of the leading sports drinks, plus eight vitamins and nutrients in every stick. They've always got great flavors. My kids love the popsicle firecracker. So it feels like a treat instead of a chore to stay hydrated. So if you're like me and you've got some long days ahead of you this summer, this stuff makes a huge difference. Stay hydrated while you're on the go this summer with Liquid IV. Tear poor live more. Go to Liquid IV.com and get 20% off your first purchase by using the code Danny at checkout. That's 20% off your first purchase with the Code D A N n y@liquid I v dot com. Yeah. And the fact that people are, aren't growing up, being raised to be consuming the wild animals there and consuming the like, what's going to, how is that going to spiral out? What's like the third, fourth and fifth layer domino effects to that down the chain as like, you know, in 40 or 50 years, you know, is that going to be to where is the wildlife going to get out of control or.

[John]

Yeah, yeah. Another really good point. Con the under the conservation model, whether you believe in harvesting animals or not, it benefits all wildlife in the best way.

[Danny Jones]

Yes, absolutely.

[John]

Because every hunter, every angler that buys fishing equipment, that buys weapons, that buys ammo, that gets a hunter safety license, that, that gets license and tags every year, all that money. And from the Pittman Robertson act that was established, you know, over 100 years ago, so much of our funding for managing wildlife in every state comes from hunters and anglers. Right. I mean there's animal rights groups, there's a lot of, you know, species related. I want to protect this animal, I want to protect this, you know, endangered species, I want to protect this type of vegetation. That's fantastic. But how much money is really going into that? Where is that coming from? And what non hunters don't realize is that hunters, whether you agree with the hunting model or the fishing model, you can't deny that in the overall balance. That's what makes, you know, your Florida fishing game wardens thrive. They're getting money for that from the public through that tax base to go out and enforce regulations that are built on biological studies of how many animals do we actually have? Like we talked before the show about the Florida panther being down to just a handful of animals and the wildlife quarters you're needing for those. And that's fantastic because you have Florida panther that's beyond threatened and endangered on that type of list or status. Now completely contradictory to that is the California mountain lion, where back in the early 90s it was taken out of control from our agency and it was, it was legislatively, it was voted in to be a protected species. So there's no hunting for the California mountain lion. And when they start depredating and get too populated or they're impacted by population or freeways and they have to start branching out right then they're not necessarily killing for deer. They're not killing deer and other animals that are normally in their diet. Now it's house pets, maybe it's livestock. I work very closely with really good cattle ranching families, especially in California and in Montana as well. But you look at the cattle ranching folks that take the biggest impact from predators that are overpopulated. Not that they're bad, not that they shouldn't be there, but pretty soon those cats get impacted, and the young and old cats can't really keep territory. With the cats in their prime, that would be taking maybe deer and maybe other big game animals or. Or upland game animals. Now they're sitting on the edge of a cattle field and they're taking out calves as they're born, or they're taking out other livestock, house pets. They're all over UCM in Los Angeles county, on people's cameras.

[Danny Jones]

You know, you've seen it stories all the time.

[John]

They're crazy. So we sit with five, approximately 5,000 cats, give or take, is the last figure I heard of the cats we have in California with literally no pressure on them. The only pressure they're going to get from a game warden is when they cause a fatality of a human, which every now and again does happen.

[Danny Jones]

Really?

[John]

Yeah. I saw. I worked through two of those when I was an operational game warden in California. But it's also the public safety thing where they get a little close to people in a park or on a hiking trail. They don't necessarily attack, but now you've got an incident because they just don't have the pressure. And then look at my home state of Montana now, where Granddad settled and my dad and I've settled there now as a resident. That's where I spend the majority of my time throughout the year. Where we have a thriving mountain lion population, we have a thriving wolf population, yet both in a thriving grizzly bear population, we have every imaginable wild animal that's left in the lower 48, right in the strip that I live in, in the 56 county places. Dr. Dolittle's, you know, farm of super critters. And it's one of the reasons we love it so much and why my whole family settled there. But, Danny, the thing that's crazy about it is you can get a mountain lion tag over the counter as a resident. And if you run across a mountain lion or you want to hunt a mountain lion, you can do that. But it's based on the tag numbers. And our population of mountain lions aren't low, they're not high, they're in a good balance. We also have a wolf hunt, which right now the wolf is trying to. It's been pushed into California, and groups want to reintroduce it and they want the wolf to thrive in California. It's taken us about 15 years in my home state of Montana with hunting being allowed for these wolves to keep them in balance where they weren't just sitting on a ranch and taking out, you know, tens, twenties, double digits of livestock or taking out a whole elk herd, let's say, in the winter. So whether people like it or not, Huntington ethically and legally is a really good thing. And it's going to keep the balance.

[Danny Jones]

And that's the counterintuitive thing that a lot of people does it. You're killing animals. Animal rights people and the vegans and people that don't go out into the woods, they don't understand that, that the hunters are the ones that want to nourish the environment and want to nourish that animal population and conserve it as much as possible.

[John]

Yeah, I liken it to this way. And I. You never want to get in an argument with a non hunter or, you know, a preservationist versus a conservationist. I say, look, our hearts are both in the right place. Yes, we both love our wildlife and waterways.

[Danny Jones]

Right.

[John]

It's a matter of method. Right. It's like an operational method of how are we doing what's best for the animal population. And people go, well, how can you love animals so much? And you know the saying in my family, from my granddad all the way down, it's even carved in my dad's memorial. Where he's buried is the woods are my church. You know, I felt that from 9 years old on doing my first waterfowl hunt with my dad, you know, mom's 20 age and trying to lug that thing through the muck and the marshes early morning to harvest my first duck that we would eat. It was a rite of passage. And people say, well, you kill wildlife, but you love wildlife. How can you kill wildlife and love wildlife in the same sentence? I go, because I know I'm doing something really good for wildlife. And the actual killing of the animal, whether it's by rifle, by pistol, by shotgun, by archery, that is the least enjoyable, if you can even call it that part of that process of respecting that animal, giving thanks to that animal, reflecting on what that's going to do for your family and knowing that you took an animal within the law and the money and the time and effort you put into that and that awareness to be out there when you see somebody doing it wrong. Like one of the things I loved about being a game warden, and this is what sets it Aside from other law enforcement, sheriffs or police is those guys and gals, unfortunately, they're dealing with the worst calls all the time. Domestic violence. People are in conflict, guns are coming out, drug abuse, overdoses, you know. Yeah, we dealt with that a lot. I've done a ton of those cases backing up my sheriffs or running across it myself and having to deal with it till I had some help. But the flip side of that, as a game warden, 90 plus percent of everybody we deal with are conservationists and they're gun owners and they all have guns in the woods, in their cars. But it's like, oh my gosh, everybody you contact has a gun. You know, other le. Law enforcement will get freaked out about that. I go, yeah, but you know what, we do a lot of gun training in the academy. We expose our cadets to like a couple thousand weapons, exotic weapons of we have. We do a class that's like two, three days long and they're going to see weapons from the Nazi era. They're going to see, you know, early, early military weapons in our, in our country's history to the most current stuff we carry now. Hunting, sport, military assault, whatever you want to call it, because we're going to run across a lot of guns. But the flip side, those people are allies. They're force multipliers.

[Danny Jones]

Right?

[John]

I call them. You know, basically, they're our thin green line, helping that thin green line of conservation be a little more powerful and a little less thin because they're going to turn into poacher because they care about wildlife and they care about doing it right as adamantly as we do. And that's the cool thing about being a game warden. You talk to any of your Florida game wardens? I know quite a few down here. They're loving it. They're loving it because they always feel like they've got people at their back. They're not always going into something dark and negative where they're going to be hated. They might have to use, heaven forbid, deadly force and there's going to be a shooting this night or it's going to get fisticuffs or I'm going to be tasing or something like that. So that's, that's the hard thing to sell. And what I don't do, I don't get in arguments, but I always stay calm and I say we can agree to disagree on if you don't think, you know, harvesting or taking or quote unquote, killing a fish, excuse me. Or a lobster or a grouse or A turkey or a deer is something that you'd ever want to do or you think it's completely wrong. I will never convince you otherwise. Absolutely not. But please extend me the same courtesy of understanding that I'm not a monster killer. I respect that animal immensely. And I know that not only have I did a minor career, but growing up in a family of conservationists, which in the urban states, a little bit, Danny, we're losing this. And it's one of the reasons California, which was, well, like you said, it's one of the most, the resources and the beauty of that state is amazing. But when it gets so populated with the LA Basin, the San Francisco Bay area, Silicon Valley, where I, where I come from originally, just generationally, it falls off. And then you're kind of raised with the idea that animals are awesome, protect them, Ooh. You know, don't ever, you know, be a hunter or any of that. And we have to kind of deal with that and it's, agree to disagree, but let's all be in it for the same reasons. Right? Well, let's agree that we can still love animals and play it both ways.

[Danny Jones]

It's also so crazy, the area of California you're in and doing this stuff. It's like one, on one hand you're in nature, you know, regulating all this poaching and trying to do your conservation. And like, on the other hand you got like all the biggest tech companies in the world that contribute to that state being the number four GDP on Earth.

[John]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's, you know, it's, the energy in Silicon Valley is amazing. And it's funny because I'll be in, you know, Lincoln County, Montana, which has 20,000 people out of the four towns in our county. And I told you, all the critters that run around in those woods, it is a mountain town. It is a mountain vibe. Most people hunt and fish, most people live off the land. Timber industry, logging, you know, you have it all. But then they're like, wait a minute, but you're in California part time and don't you just hate it down there when you have to go down there for work? And I go, no, I don't hate it at all. I love it for different reasons.

[Danny Jones]

Yeah.

[John]

You know, and I think I considered a blessing, not a curse, to have grown up in the hustle and bustle of Silicon Valley and gone to school there, you know, and gone to school with engineers and guys that have started IP tech companies, the whole nine. Because something that's really big in the Silicon Valley is a lot of disruptive thinking, thinking outside the box. We're known for it and we're also very open minded, you know, and I think I got an open minded vibe because I was starting to feel that pressure is not only a hunter in California, in and around the Bay Area, even before I was a game warden, but being a game warden there was. I wouldn't trade what I did and where I did it for a game warden career. I wouldn't trade California for the world because I got to see it all, you know, and when I talk to my game warden buddies, you know, that are my local game wardens where I live now, they're just like, we read your book, man. And we're like, I mean it was. And we heard the other stories, but drug cartels and this and that and you actually have honey in there. And I go, yeah, man. Let's talk about tule elk. What's that? Because we got the Rocky Mountain massive, the biggest tule elk species is in Montana. And then there's the Roosevelt, the middle elk. That's a lot up and down the western states. But like we talked about before, before the recording a little bit was

[Danny Jones]

the

[John]

tule elk is an amazing species simply because there's not many of them and they're endemic only to California. So they only exist in California. On the whole globe there's approximately 5,200 of these animals. They are magnificent. And they're on ranches and on public land and parks right around the tech capital of the world. Like in eyesight of the Silicon Valley, in eyesight of the San Jose foothills, going over to the Central Valley, just north, the Tejon Ranch where you have, you know, some of these elk just over the Interstate 5 when you're leaving the LA basin to head north to where I grew up. And it's, it's kind of wild to look at what these elk stand for now and bring awareness to how limited they are in number. Magnificent species. Can they coexist with cattle? You know, ranchers, are they going to be a hindrance when they tear fence up and send cattle out into the freeways or out into other yards? What do you do with these elk? Well, we're bringing them back. It's a species that needs to come back. The numbers are small. Other states want them as well. But what's ironic is to keep those elk alive, just like keeping our cattle calves alive for the beef industry. Working with a lot of great cattle ranching families and friends that I've grown up with and still spend a lot of time with in California is the predators that go after these calves, whether they're an elk calf or they're a cattle calf. When that happens, we have coyotes on some of these ranches that have never had any hunting or trapping pressure. Wild hogs that are utterly destroying habitat and will feed on carcasses of these animals periodically. And so when I'm in California, I find myself, you know, coming from developing a sniper unit as part of the Met team when we formed up the marijuana enforcement team on the cartel fight we're going to discuss. But now it's more of a four legged predator hunt than a two legged and working to thin the number of coyotes which are very hard to hunt, especially when you don't use. You're not hunting them at night like in some states that we can do that or I'm so close to the Silicon Valley populace, I can't be doing things I would do just out of respect for neighborhoods.

[Danny Jones]

I got friends and my brother goes out every weekend and he hunts coyotes and hogs at night.

[John]

Yeah. And it's the same thing we have in California. But the impacts of these elk I didn't get to see firsthand until I retired operationally. And I'm on the outreach circuit like we're doing today and books and speaking and teaching and working with teams and doing cool podcasts like yours. Thanks again. Great opportunity. I appreciate it. But now I'm hunting coyotes like I'm deploying like a delta sniper again and having to outsmart these things. And it's quite a challenge and it's arduous and there's a lot of hiking and walking and sneaking around, which I like to do.

[Danny Jones]

It's best to do it at night, right?

[John]

It's best to do it at night.

[Danny Jones]

My brother says he does it with a thermal scope.

[John]

It's the, it's the best way out here. It's thermal, it's at night, Right. Same thing with hogs where I'm at because of the demographic of when I'm around, it's nothing after dark. It's no thermal, it's spot and stock. You can call them with the electronic calls for a while. But some of these areas are so isolated and they're so, you know, kind of impacted to one type of perimeter that coyotes, like wolves are nothing. They're the most brilliant predators, I think on the planet.

[Danny Jones]

Insanely smart.

[John]

And I respect the coyote, I respect the timber, the, you know, the gray wolf, whatever. But playing that cat and mouse game is a challenge because I can't use calls. I have to spot and stock them. I have to outsmart them on a ranch they're very familiar with, and they can get used to me being in and around there. So again, it's doing something good for wildlife because it's bringing back this balance because those four or five coyotes get on one elk calf that's born and they've taken them out in the past. That animal. What's that animal worth, given the number, limited number of that they have, you know, like a, like an endangered steelhead trout. Let's take the steelhead trout off the California coastline, Santa Cruz coastline, I think. Last figure I was given, if you wanted to put it in a monetary figure. Every steelhead trout that migrates from the ocean, goes inland, you know, lays eggs, does their spawning on inland creeks and goes back out to the ocean and there's so few of them left, I can't even give you a number. But the U.S. fish and Wildlife Service had a monetary value of 35 to $40,000 per steelhead trout from a monetary loss. To put it in perspective of the resources we got to go back in to try to protect those fish. Well, the elk are in that position and there's other animals that are in that position and they're coexisting in cattle ranching operations where cattle and elk co perfectly and coyotes coexist really well with both of them until cabin season starts and then those calves are vulnerable and you're losing animals. So anyway, long windedly, what I'm getting at is that's where you're doing a major, major, major benefit for a threatened endangered species by having to kill other animals to protect that one endangered species. Where, yeah, you don't wipe coyotes out, but they're prolific, 2 to 5 million across the U.S. they're in control. Yeah, they get out of control. So that's. I know we're, we're, we're kind of getting around the preservation versus conservation story. And how do you agree to just disagree but.

[Danny Jones]

Right.

[John]

It's so emotional for people.

[Danny Jones]

Psilocybin mushrooms are getting some serious attention from the scientific community right now, and rightfully so. And there's another mushroom out there that's just as effective, but it doesn't make you trip. You've seen it in popular folklore and it's called Amanita mascaria. I never would have tried Amanita mascaria if it weren't for Amantara. At high doses, it feels sedating and even a little bit dreamy at Lower doses, it gives you sort of a calming patience. I used to take the Amanita capsules most days after work and when I wanted to get creative. But recently I've been taking the Blue Lotus gummies, which are very fun because they put you in a calm, uplifted state and they even act as an aphrodisiac. There's a lot of gas station fakes out there doing lots of harm, but Amantara is the complete opposite of that. With 55,000 customers, everything is lab tested, clearly sourced and fully transparent. There's no synthetics or mystery blends. And they also have a huge range of gummies, capsules, extracts, and even the raw materials. And just now they launched limited Amanita and Blue Lotus beginner bundles with raw materials, plus ready to use products designed for people who are completely new to this and at a heavy discount. And if you use my code DJ11, you'll get an extra 11 off on top of that. So you're getting a pretty serious deal. Just go to the link in the description below or head to amantara.com goSLDJP. Again, that's code DJ11, DJ11, but it's only available for a limited time. The biggest issue with the cattle ranchers in Florida, which is what Carlton Ward was explaining to me, is that the real estate developers are trying to buy up all the ranches and you have these fourth, fifth generation Floridians who maybe got handed down these giant ranches from their great, great, great grandparents. And it's like, you know, am I going to take, you know, $100 million so they can develop a couple neighborhoods here? And one of the good things he was explaining to me that DeSantis did was he, he instituted some sort of, some sort of like gift or whatever.

[John]

Okay.

[Danny Jones]

Or it was basically, it was an incentive for the cattle ranch owners not to sell it to real estate agent or real estate developers, which I thought was really good. But.

[John]

Yeah.

[Danny Jones]

And then that whole thing with the FWC that I was telling you about before we started, I didn't even know about that until this morning about how allegedly there's FWC people that are being paid off by real estate developers for, for whatever reason, I don't understand how that works.

[John]

That's wild and that's, that's an ugly concept. And I hope, hope there's nothing to it. But if there is, that has to get nipped in the bud right away because, yeah, you know, money drives a lot of bad choices, right? It really does. It's Very short sighted. It's more short sighted that you think. And you know what you just mentioned on these Florida ranches, it's the same thing in California. You have fifth generation kids, they're not going to cattle ranch, they went off to school, maybe they were involved in the cattle ranch operation when they were really young, but they're not any longer. And it's getting more and more impacts, more and more pressure to sell to open space agencies or developers. And the money out there, Florida and California are synonymous. And kudos to your governor for backing that and helping that on the cattle ranching side. I know in Montana we have a good governor too, Gianforte, and he's all about that, that traditionalism and trying to hold on to it. Not that we're not going to develop the state, but we're going to try to keep a balance.

[Danny Jones]

Right.

[John]

You know, and I think, brother, if you, if you think of everything staying in balance and you don't get too selfish and skew it one way or the other, you'll be all right. But we never make that choice when the dollar signs start going and when we're not passionately connected to it. Yeah, if I'm fifth generation kid and I'm going to school and I'm not having any plan to live, I'm traveling the world, right?

[Danny Jones]

What do I care about some piece of land in Florida or Montana?

[John]

I'm not going to go work my ranch in Florida. I'm not going to work my ranch in the Silicon Valley foothills or you know, the Montana, the base of the Cabinet Mountains. I'm just not going to do it. But you know what I'm looking at, Everything's getting real expensive and you know, I'm struggling right now or you know, I'm looking for the future for my children and grandchildren and I have 100 million dollar payout if I sell.

[Danny Jones]

Right.

[John]

And we're that's the same, same thing that's happening in those other two states that I'm close to. And it hits me kind of deep on a personal level to see those iconic places that I grew up in and other people like minded rather anglers, hunters or whatever. These beachfront, these coastal access spots that are getting cut off for divers, anglers, you know, certain developments in California and unless you're going to, you know, get on the water from a different from, from the ocean side or from a boat, access is hard in certain parts of those states. So just the balance man. Agree to disagree. But if we can look at the science, logically and not get emotionally. Because I know for anti hunters that are so passionate about loving animals and it becomes a judgment of I hate you because you're going to kill an animal. Yeah. And you know what I mean? And they're not looking at the science of it because we're already blinded by the emotionality of it.

[Danny Jones]

Right.

[John]

And that's where. That's where the debate always goes. So how we have those conversations, like I said, is I'm not going to convince you otherwise. I'm never gonna, you know, demonize you for your view or disparage you and please don't do it for me. And if we can talk about it, great. And if we can't, I respect you. You know, you have. Your experiences have led to how you feel about hunting and that's great. And mine are what they are because of how I was raised. And we're both right.

[Danny Jones]

Totally.

[John]

Yeah.

[Danny Jones]

So you started working as a game warden in the early 90s, is that right? Yep. And how long did it take before you started getting in these shootouts in the woods with cartels?

[John]

Yeah, that. So I started in 92 out of the academy when I graduated in 1992, and I spent my first three years in Southern California. And I was from Northern California. So the only thing I knew about Southern California was where Disneyland was. I had been there, you know, during school a couple of times. And I got assigned to the Inland Empire just over the hill from Orange county, where all that is, and cut my teeth on a lot of stuff. I mean, I was aware that I was hearing rumblings of cartel growers, Sinaloa cartel marijuana growers getting into the state of California, going into, you know, starting to get into the national forests and grow some of this toxically contain weed for the black market and smuggle it and all of this stuff. But where I. Well, I'll back up a little bit. I finished three years down in SoCal. I get the opportunity to come home to my home district of Gilroy, San Jose, Bay Area. Of course, I take it. And now I'm in that spot and I'm doing the traditional stuff. I'm trying to bust spotlighters at night, you know, behind locked gates, hunting animals illegally at night. The guys that really know they're doing wrong. That's a big game warden Case explains

[Danny Jones]

that for people who don't understand what spotlighting is.

[John]

Yeah. So spotlighting is where you're hunting after hours using an artificial light that you're not allowed to use to hunt ever. And you're shining It. To get these animals kind of startled and shoot them in the dark after hours, when it's illegal to shoot them, because it does freeze them.

[Danny Jones]

You see their eyes.

[John]

You see their eyes glow, and they'll kind of stop, and. And, you know, kind of get petrified, and they don't really see what you are. So it's, you know, beyond cheating. But it goes a little further that this happens out of season. This happens during the rut when certain animals are breeding. This happens. Like when that game warden was looking for us that day, thinking we were deer poachers and not stupid college kids in that park. He thought we were poaching those animals out of season, which is when you don't want to take them. Right.

[Danny Jones]

Right.

[John]

It's all around the right season to take them before they breed or shortly after, whatever the case may be. So things like that, poaching crimes like that is what I was targeting. I did a lot of them in Southern California. Environmental crime, water pollution, streambed alteration, illegal hunting, people trespassing on ranches, hunting where they're not supposed to. That's a pretty common traditional game warden crime.

[Danny Jones]

And how much of it was in this Emerald Triangle area?

[John]

I didn't work the Emerald Triangle, like, officially until we developed a tactical team that was statewide.

[Danny Jones]

Okay.

[John]

So. And that's where you get into Mendocino, Humboldt, Trinity, Del Norte county, all of that. And that's where the wardens that were assigned up there that I either went to the academy with or trained or worked with throughout the state, they started to see this stuff, but weren't dealing with it as game wardens, because it really wasn't our. It wasn't our. In our wheelhouse. Game wardens hunting drug cartels, doing drug cases in the forest. Like, isn't that a d. A job or a forest service job? It's not even, you know, what's going on.

[Danny Jones]

Yeah. The whole story reminds me of the Branch Davidians Waco scenario where you have this giant, like, tactical shootout between the ATF and this, like, armed religious militia in a church. Like, it's just like, shouldn't you guys have, like, the military or maybe the FBI or something?

[John]

Yeah, yeah.

[Danny Jones]

And eventually they did get in there, and it was just miscommunication and people died.

[John]

Yeah, horrible. But that's. That's a good. A good, you know, kind of a good analogy.

[Danny Jones]

Yeah.

[John]

But when I got back to the Bay Area and got back to my home district in 95, it was still traditional stuff, but it was good to do it at home. Hadn't found a grow yet. But after 911 when the twin Towers fell, there was a big push with some of us internally, really all of us in the law enforcement side, to get better prepared domestically for another attack. Whether we were military or going to join the military or some of us are reservists going to go back in the military and fight the global war on terror overseas or were we going to hold down the fort at home? That was going to go both ways for a lot of us. But what I started doing, and I didn't know this would apply and be so helpful for the tactical unit that I talk about in hidden war that we ended up building. And it would be a long journey to get there, but we would start finding the first grows. For me it was 2004. So before that though, a handful of us were getting to know tier one SWAT groups out of the Bay Area. And something that's cool about the Bay Area is you have some really good teams that are full time teams, whether they're SWAT teams, sniper units, tactical tracking units, whatever the case may be. And we started to embed with those guys and they're like, you're a game warden. You want to come to training a sniper school, a SWAT school, an entry school. Why would you? I go because someday we're going to need this for our agency. And at the very least by getting this training, if we ever have another terrorist event or an active shooter, when all the active shooters were starting in schools to really pop up then and we all get called and we all just doesn't matter what patch you have on, what badge you're carrying, you all integrate and if you don't have the right training to go in and get the, and do an active shooter drill and get in and start saving lives as shots are being fired and children and, or teachers and other people are dying, that was the catalyst for us to start doing this. And we did that even before we found our first grow. Yeah, yeah. So, oh, 2001, actually April of 2001, before 911 happened, I was in my first sniper school with Santa Clara county sheriffs and with another game warden partner of mine, now retired. Captain Marcos is his call sign in the book. Longtime hunt and partner. You know, been, been buddies for 30 years. We were those Bay Area guys in the Silicon Valley and we were going to every school we could gobble up. Our agency wasn't going to send us, but we would go on our own time, our own dime, buy our ammo, agencies would lend us ammo. You know, lend us weapons, whatever we needed because we built a good reputation of being. They're like, okay, well you guys are in shape and you can shoot pretty darn well and you're really great to get along with. You work really hard, you're team oriented. And we're, we don't have the stereotype that all you're doing is, you know, checking fishing licenses, being that burn bunny cop. I'd like to work with you someday, you know, if it ever comes up. That was an uphill battle for us given what game wardens are known to have traditionally done. You look at game wardens now. Let's take where we're sitting right here in your home state of Florida. Florida, California and Texas. And there are other states that have teams and I'm not, and I know I'm leaving some out, but the big population states, the three I just mentioned, have all had some sort of special operations tactical teams trained to a super high level. And Florida was the first and it came after Katrina and it came after, if you had to do, you know, basically disaster patrol, stop looting, find fugitives. The special operations group, the SOG group here in Florida have been a fantastic team and several teams throughout the state because you're so big and I've worked with your people and had a retired SOG captain on our Thin Green Line podcast that I co host with Wayne Saunders out of New Hampshire, California. We didn't have a, a truly SWAT type tactical special operations unit until I got to stand up and, and co found and lead the Met team, which was all, you know, basically spurred because of Sinaloa cartel weed. But it's giving you a team that can do a lot of different things in a disaster situation, in an active shooter, in a terrorist attack. Texas has a really good complement of teams given what they have on the southern border. And game rooms are part of those teams. So we were starting to get that training. 9, 11 happens. We know we're on high alert. And then in 2004 I get a call from, well, we'll just call him GI as he's called in my books. Family friend, grew up hunting, fishing, went to be a fisheries biologist, get a biology degree. Wanted to be out doing wildlife studies. But a real savvy guy, really proficient in firearms hunts, tactically aware, just a good guy to have in the woods again, like another family member that grew up with, with me and my three siblings and he's doing an endangered species studies on two little creeks coming out of Henry Coe park where I met that game Warden way back and got the job. Now, this is kind of a personal thing for me because Henry Coe feeds into this ranch that's now public property. And GI Is studying red legged frog, yellow legged frog, which are threatened and endangered little amphibians, steelhead trout as well. We talked about that. Because they migrate up to that channel, spawn and go and leave. And hopefully, you know, nothing destroys that creek or pollutes it or poisons it so those fish can hatch and eventually go back to the ocean.

[Danny Jones]

Right.

[John]

And he calls me late April, and I'm out working spotlighters, exhausted. Calls me like a Sunday morning, dude, you got to get up here. What's going on? It's. It's trout season. There's. What's. What's crazy? What's going on in trout season? Like, what's so. What's so crazy? What's urgent here, man? He goes, one of my two creeks is bone dry that I'm studying. I go, that you're studying up on that Paloso Ranch. He goes, yeah. I go, how can it be dry? It's like the end of winter into spring. Water runoff is great. So someone had to have diverted the water. Something big must be happening up top. So I go, okay, that's a problem.

[Danny Jones]

Diverted the water?

[John]

Yeah, like, blocked it up top. And so this whole creek for miles is just. It's a moist mud bed now.

[Danny Jones]

And. And why would that set off so many alarm bells for you?

[John]

Well, for me and for my biologist buddy, for GI, the. The animals that are dead now, like, all the fish had already spawned, and now they have no water. Their eggs are suffocating.

[Danny Jones]

Right?

[John]

They're those. Those steelhead are dead. All those frogs and any other aquatic, you know, they're just dead. And because this water is their lifeblood.

[Danny Jones]

Right.

[John]

You know, and the water can't ever leave that creek because these threatened endangered critters live in that habitat.

[Danny Jones]

I see.

[John]

And they never leave that. And that's what people don't realize when. Well, yeah, can you just, you know, can you block this creek, divert it? But we're gonna, you know, make another creek, like a wildlife corridor, like an exchange. And you go, okay, but does that wildlife corridor, is it habitat for these specific species that are almost, you know, wiped? They're not. They're almost gone off the face of the earth. And that's always the. The issue. And so GI studying this, he's been on it for a year or two, had two great years, and all of a sudden, one side of that channel is completely dry. So he's freaking out. And I know his history because we're close. I said, all right, I'm on it. I throw him in the truck, we drive up to the top of the mountain, dive into a canyon. I've got an AR15, he's an unarmed civilian. I've got my cell phone, I've got my, my handy talkie, my police radio, but there's no coverage of anything up there. It's pretty remote. And I expected to find like another property owner using the water for something, diverting it for maybe an illegal agricultural op, maybe diverting it for personal water to fill a pond, make a pool. You never know. And we got the top of the mountain, found a spot to park, which on the maps told us we'd at least get to where this water should start, you know, the runoff should start. Dove off the channel, and we got to the bottom of what was, you know, beautiful canyon. It was like. I would never know that.

[Danny Jones]

And this might be a really dumb question, but where's the water coming from?

[John]

The water is coming from all the runoff from the mountains from just rains.

[Danny Jones]

Got it.

[John]

Yeah. And, and then it's being pulled up in certain channels that are holding the water in that creek. You know, there's natural pools and then it'll run off and continue. So we climb down the mountain, get into this really pristine drainage, and then we find the diversion. And it was like nothing I've ever seen before. It was like guys had dug up some dirt and rocks and stacked it, made a hand built dam. And then they had lined the bottom of this channel with visqueen, like really, really thick contractor. Like a contractor trash bag, right? Like 7 mil or thicker. And they had lined it to hold the water that was coming in, but diverted into one like one inch water hose out the dam. So what we saw is here's the impoundment. All the water's being stuck and everything down is bone dry. And it's all into one garden hose that would later go to a, that would later lead to a black poly pipe. And that's the telltale signs of a cartel grow, is when you have that black polyethylene pipe, half inch, three quarter inch, one inch. That's used on big landscaping jobs, but notorious ideal. Durable, easy to hide, dark in color, easy to camouflage. That's the water pipe that these cartels use indoors, outdoors, you know, or around rural type grows, but especially the real remote outdoor grows. But we didn't know yet, man, that that's what we were walking into. I'm just like, who would do this kind of diversion?

[Danny Jones]

You had never seen this before?

[John]

No, had never seen it before and neither had he. And he was pissed off. We both were. It was our backyard and he's been doing studies and you know, it was right up above that. Just next ranch over is the park where I met that game warden. So I'm like, these are my stomping grounds, man. I've hiked all over this country. This is home. And I go, this is weird. Spider senses are tingling. Something is just getting real creepy because this doesn't look like anything I would imagine any landowner, any cattle rancher, right, wrong or indifferent would do. So I put him behind me. And we're carefully going down the creek, following the water line line, but tactically staying kind of to the left edge where it's a cut bank. So we have a little bit of COVID and concealment. You know, if we see somebody really aggressive down below and we come around the corner and we follow this water line for maybe 100 yards and then I see the water line just kind of peter out. And now there's other little diversions. And I'm looking on both sides of the creek and brush and trees are gone and there's 18 inch marijuana plants on both sides just terraced. And I'm like, okay, this is crazy. Now, we are not dealing with your standard, you know, water grabber from a private land, right? And a couple seconds after that, we see them two growers in OD green, olive drab green battle dress uniform, circa Vietnam era.

[Danny Jones]

Is it day or night?

[John]

It's daytime. Okay. Yeah, it's daytime, middle of the afternoon. And they're coming out of the brush around the creek because we're following a creek bed slightly downhill. And what they're doing, unbeknownst to me at the time, is they're just making their sweep, probably for their afternoon check of watering the plants, how much water the plants getting marijuana takes a lot of water. Good weed get to get grown, right? I mean, approximately five gallons of of water per plant per day in an outdoor setting. And that's a conservative estimate if you talk to private land growers, ex outlaws, cartel growers, or legitimate industry people doing outdoor operations the right way. So, brother, what, what we're seeing now is two dudes dressed like old school Vietnam military guys. That was my dad's ear and the stuff he wore and my uncles. And they're not talking, they're moving very slow and dead quiet tactically, like we do. Like they've had some Level of, like, training, and they know what the heck's going on. They're of Latin descent. They don't look like anything I would see in the Silicon Valley. They look more like the Sandinista. Nicaragua at the time that thing was all going on, and the pictures and the video of the rebels in the jungle, that's what it looked like to me. And I had no idea these guys were. They were Sinaloa cartel growers. I would find that out later. But as they're working their way down the channel, one guy up front, he had a pistol on his hip. He had, like, a cutting implement, some trimmers, and he was checking water lines, trimming plants a little bit, checking the drip emitters to make sure they were working.

[Danny Jones]

How far away were these guys from you?

[John]

Right now they're at about 50 yards. So about 50 yards from in dense forest, and we're in a cut bank of a creek. And we got a lot of COVID between us, or not cover, but concealment. People realizing that concealment hides you from people, but it won't stop bullets. Cover, like, real thick trees, big rocks, things that can stop bullets are what you want to have. And we didn't have a lot of that between us and them, which was a problem because I can't really back out now because I'm going to give myself away. And last thing I want to have is a gunfight with an unarmed civilian buddy of mine that's grown up as a brother with criminals I've never seen before, or this type of criminal.

[Danny Jones]

Yeah, you. You didn't want to. You didn't even consider approaching them.

[John]

No, we were going to hold, and we were going to hold until we either had to make an act against aggression that was potentially going to harm us or let them not see us slip on by, do what they're going to do, hopefully stay concealed, and we were going to get out of there and not proceed. And so what ended up happening was they kept working their way through. But the thing that was crazy is and then running a tactical unit now and doing all the special operations stuff and growing up as a hunter and being raised as a hunter, you learn really quick to be quiet, to not move real fast, because fast movement, any movement, is a target indicator for people to see you quiet in the woods, wind in your face, all of that. But, Danny, the crazy part was these guys were exhibiting tactical proficiency on a level I only saw with tactical schools I was in, or really experienced hunters. Okay. And they were silent. They were giving little, like, hand taps, like we would hand signals where you don't even whisper. The guy in the back had the long gun. It looked like an AK derivative of some sort. So. And he's scanning and he's actually looking back over his shoulder, checking his six o' clock behind him, which is something we do. We call that the tail gunner position on a tactical unit because you never know. You never leave your back unprotected. Anybody could come down behind him as they're focusing forward. So that second guy was the. Was a cover partner of the man that was handling the plants, dealing with the water systems, but wasn't ready to fight necessarily. So I saw tactical awareness for these guys. I go, these are not your typical poachers. We are not equipped for this. We're gonna just hold our best. And I've got my dot up on this. As they're creeping through, I've got my rifle ready, don't want to shoot. But if they get close, I'm gonna have to announce. And knowing what I know now of how they react when they're surprised by law enforcement in a grow site. Yeah, we've had way too many shootouts to tell me that wasn't a possibility. We would have many more. It didn't happen that day.

[Danny Jones]

You had shootouts prior to this?

[John]

No, I had not. Oh, no, No, I had not. This is. This is one year, year before the first gunfight that we're going to talk about a minute. But, brother, what happened was they got 15 yards from us, which is about. From here to not even the couch outside the studio. It's close. 15 yards is, you know, times three. That's.

[Danny Jones]

You can hear him talking.

[John]

I could hear.

[Danny Jones]

Or they weren't talking.

[John]

They weren't talking, but you could.

[Danny Jones]

If they were talking, you'd be able to hear them.

[John]

If they were talking, even whispering, I'd probably be able to hear him. The way it was so quiet in that canyon and they were working their way down and they checked a couple of plants. And, you know, even when you're really well concealed, when you have something that's looking at you like an animal, or worse yet, an armed gunman, you feel really, really. You just feel naked, man. I'm looking at him with my red dot. I've got a cut bank and I've got rocks in the way and a little bit of brush. But I'm saying if he looks really carefully and focuses, he's going to see something. And I can't move. I'm frozen. And gi, thankfully, is very savvy and he just froze on my shoulder. Yeah. And these guys looked right at us and had that oh crap moment, you know. And then they felt safe not to proceed. And they were kind of at the tail end of that side of the little grow and they just worked their way up and around and went back the way they came. Further down the creek. I let out that sigh of relief. That's one I didn't want to ever have to explain my supervisors that I just got in a gunfight with unknown, possibly foreign invaders. I have no idea. Would later learn that's exactly what they were. Our eyes were as big as silver dollars and we gave them time to get out of there and we crept up and went straight up the mountain back to the truck. And now, now I'm dealing with. Okay, this is not your typical poaching case, but the environmental ramifications of it are massive.

[Danny Jones]

If you've ever shopped online, chances are you've purchased from a business powered by Shopify. It's easy to spot by the purple shop pay button and that's what we use for our merch store. That purple button has all your payments and shipping info, so you don't need to track down your card or hope your browser remembered your payment info. There's a reason why so many businesses use Shopify and that's because they make it incredibly easy to run and manage your own business. It's the business behind the business that truly matters. And that's where Shopify excels. With convenient tools and workflows, Shopay has been the best converting checkout on the planet, meaning fewer abandoned carts and way more sales. That's a game changer and you can spread your brand's word with the built in marketing and email tools. Don't want to build your own page? Shopify has hundreds of beautiful ready to go templates to express your brand and forget the code like daylight computer, which is totally gorgeous. So if you've got a product, a dream and the drive to make it happen, Shopify is the platform that helps you do it with ease. Because businesses that sell sell more with Shopify. See less abandoned cards and more sales. Go with Shopify and their shop pay button. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com Danny Jones all lowercase again that's shopify.com Danny Jones S-H-O-P-I-F Y.com/ Danny Jones this is a study

[John]

transect study that GI is doing for threatened endangered species and all aquatics in a Silicon Valley creek right it's kind of big from an environmental standpoint. And so now I'm going to have to talk to narcotics task force guys. I've never worked with other agencies like Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement. You're going to be talking to dea. And I got to know a lot of people really quick outside of the typical game warden circle. And about three weeks later, myself and another warden, ngi, were working with and kind of coordinating an effort for an anti, you know, grow operation for a B and E joint task force of tons of officers. We had some state park rangers, we had highway patrol, we had sheriff's deputies, and then we had guys from the Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement that were overseeing this. And we had probably 30 people on that operation three weeks later. It was. It was massive. But we were going to just guide them into the general area and then they were going to take over. We were going to get to the back of the line and they were going to go clear it, see if they found any suspects. And then we were going to eradicate it and go through that process, which I had never done before. And we got into position and the two guys we had seen many weeks before were there, but they had heard us and ran. And nobody gave chase. Nobody wanted to pursue or try to apprehend these guys. I didn't agree with that. But it wasn't my operation. I'm just the game warden that found the grow. Right at this point, like, okay, they're running away. I wonder where they're going to go. Do they have guns? Are they going to come back around? Are they going to just get out and go like. Like this and end up in another grow? You know, if. If this is not a one grow operation, I had no idea. Then we ended up clearing the grow and we ended up eradicating, I think 7,000 plants. So we chopped 7,000.

[Danny Jones]

Good Lord.

[John]

The plants were a lot bigger at this point. They weren't quite mature. But it was a lot of work. I got to experience that. And then we're chopping all the plants. And I had asked the task force commander before that, right when we got in and the grow was clear, I said, hey, if we're not going to eradicate right away, you have any issue if I go just try to track these guys the way they went? I kind of know this creek, and my guy really knows it. He said, no, just go do what you do. We don't have time to, you know, chase and try to apprehend, but go ahead, whatever you need to do. And two Sheriff's deputies fell in behind me that I didn't even know. I just saw them at the briefing. They were asked to be part of the team, and they were snipers from the sheriff's department, hunters. You know, one guy grew up in Pennsylvania. He was an avid hunter, an avid angler. They were wired right for what we do. And we followed and chased as best we could with them having a total head start. And we found out where one saw, where one had lost a shoe, where they had gone uphill and went over out of the canyon. We didn't need to keep chasing. But the, the positive of that failure, and I call it failing forward, is I got to meet two of my best friends in law enforcement, that being. That being Snake, and another female officer, as I describe them in the book, that were on that raid with us. And that would lead to just a great relationship with that sheriff's department and going absolutely nuclear on taking out cartel gross with them wanting to work with us game wardens. After seeing kind of how we were wired, that we wanted to apprehend, we didn't think there was any deterrence and not trying to stop these guys because they're going to fear nothing. And most importantly, if you don't give it a. Give it a go, that's one or two people that are. They're back in circulation doing other cartel crimes perhaps, right? So we cut all the dope, we went back up the creek, and I talked to the team leader and I go, what now? He goes, I called in a Blackhawk helicopter. We got the Air National Guard helping us out from Moffat Field because we have the 129th counter drug task Force out there. And when they're not deployed overseas, like in Iraq or Afghanistan, they. They can't run missions, but they can support missions in the US with teams. So I would work with military special forces and a PayPal Blackhawk team. They would come in and they're all going to hoist us out. We're going to fly out on the bird. After we get hoisted and cabled out of the grow, we're not going to hike down, right? Which was an E ticket ride day to get in a Paveh hawk like that for the first time. Being a game warden jumping on this op, I'm like, so like, all right, man. My buddies overseas use these every day. We're using them in my backyard. That was kind of cool. But I asked the team leader, I go, hey, you know this camp with all the propane and fertilizer and all the crap that's in the creek. And I see irrigation sprayers and I, I've no, you know, this place is decimated. Are we going to take any of this out? Are we going to like, at least try to get the creek flowing again and take that water line out? Can I get some guys to go up to the top with me and Gi and we can take the dam out, get the flow back? And they're like, we don't have time for that, man. We're not funded for it. We don't do the trash cleanup. I'm like, okay, you're up. I'm not going to argue. Got on my fun little helicopter ride out, wheel started to spin and I went, okay. I don't know how common this is, but if this is a big problem we're having in California or especially in my backyard, that needs to change. And so how much work would it.

[Danny Jones]

Would it have been to clear out that dam and restore that creek?

[John]

With that many guys, we could have done it in two hours. Oh, wow. They just weren't familiar. They hadn't done it before because fast forward, we end up doing that on every mission that our met team goes and runs, you know, moving forward. So best thing about that mission is what we learned. Even though we didn't catch them, we cut the. We at least we got the weed out of there. We would go back a year later and reclimate it when we'd finally do it on our own and get that flow back. But we lost a ton of wildlife for that year, obviously with the, with the damage. But those sheriff's deputies that I met started calling us directly and wanting to work with me and the game wardens that worked with me, around me and the squad and said, hey, we're doing a grow up here, man. And we really like to work with you guys. You know, you just gung ho, quiet. You like, you're not. You're comfortable in the woods. And friendships were developing. So they were, they were really good, really good guys and gals.

[Danny Jones]

So you guys sort of just developed your own tactical unit.

[John]

We kind of did ad hoc, but we did it. We're helping the sheriff's unit. They were called the marijuana eradication team, and they were all from the sniper team and their SWAT team. But they were dedicated to that when they weren't doing the SWAT stuff. So the next mission we go on with them is a year later, it's the next season, August 5th of 2005, which I'll never forget. That's a day that's kind of carved an infamy from the standpoint of changing our lives big time. Changing a career direction because it was myself and two young game wardens, Mojo and Bulldog as they're codenamed in the books for their protection. Local wardens that worked either around me or with me. And eventually one would work for me because I'd be the lieutenant of the squad. But they always wanted to go on this after they heard what we experienced. They wanted the experience. They were motivated guys. And this was the one I felt, yeah, you know, you guys have been out of the academy for a year or two. You're doing great work. You're like tier one guys, you know, really, really proud of you. Let's do this. And then we had three sheriff's deputies, Snake that we had I mentioned before. And then we had Apache, who was a Marine Corps veteran, another sniper on the team. And we had an unarmed park ranger with a mid peninsula open space that had actually found the grow we were going to go tackle and turned us onto it to scout it. But he wasn't equipped to rate it himself. But a great guy. So there's basically just seven of us on this operation. And then rails another sheriff's deputy that I would get to know that day. And we climbed up the mountain. This is in. This is in the foothills of Los Gatos, which is an affluent kind of mountain town just a stone's throw above the Silicon Valley hub. And hot morning. It's a week from the A zone. Super hot deer season that we have. Like Florida has hot deer seasons late in the. Late in your year. And we're climbing the mountain and I'm seeing Cisco and ebay and Facebook and Oracle. That's everything that's down there. And we have great cell coverage, but we have no radio coverage. And I'm thinking this is kind of surreal, man. We're going to take out a cartel, Sinaloa cartel. Grow a stone's throw from the disruptor capital of. Of the world, the tech cap. What is going on? And it's my backyard. So there's kind of a. An excitement. There's kind of a surreality. And it's not even a word, but it was just. It felt surreal, bro. It was crazy. That is wild. And. But now I feel like we've got a little bit of, you know, gumption behind us and we're working with people, not that other task force. And start working up the canyon, go through a little grow site, small plants, super eerie because it was dead quiet. No animals were Chirping, no birds. You weren't hearing the sounds you would normally hear. So that tells me not only is there a grow, but this is a lit. People are close. And this one was weird because they were putting bustin branch and putting noise makers in the way, so you'd have to move real, real loud noises to kind of creep in, you know. And we got through that and everybody just felt like something was off. After, after what I'm about to tell you went down, we all just felt it coming. We started to clear another grow. Now the plants are almost just my height at 6ft. It's harvest time for these guys. And we're in a skirmish line where we're all maybe two, three yards apart in a line going through it straight. So that if you do encounter a threat and have to fire, you're not going to crossfire with your partner, right? But you can see almost nothing, you know, I mean, I'm seeing glimpses of Mojo. I'm seeing glimpses of bulldog and snake because the plants are so tall and, and you know, butted out. Plus there's manzanita and a bunch of stuff in this. And we got about halfway through that grow and one shot went off ahead of us. And it wasn't from one of our guns because we shoot a big old 762 millimeter 308 caliber M14 and the sheriff shoot an M4, which has a real distinct high crack because it's basically a 22 caliber bullet. And this was like a medium bore, like a.30 caliber, like an AK or 30 30. And it ended up being an AK derivative fired one shot. And then I heard my young warden partner, a year out of the academy, and this is his first raid, all fired up. And Mojo goes, I'm hit. The starts yelling bunch of profanity, the hit me. And then he just dropped. So the second he drops from taking gunfire, one shot from this guy, we can't see ahead of us. One gunman, we don't know who yet. All of a sudden I'm scanning, looking for where this gun might have come from or if this guy's going to pop out. Mojo, to his credit, doesn't panic. He's only been on the job for a year and he's just taken an AK47 round, a steel core round. Bullet goes in his left leg on the outside, penetrates in his through his entire leg, comes out his inner left leg and now it's tumbling. Cause steel core military bullets are designed to tumble and disrupt. And it cartwheels through his right leg, inner thigh and outer thigh, in and

[Danny Jones]

out his right leg.

[John]

Yeah. So four holes, Danny, and, you know, a grapefruit. Size of tissue on his inner right leg missing. And a big exit wound out of the right. We don't know this yet. He's on the ground, he's down, but he's not panicking. This is the warrior in him. Complete hero. He can't hold up his big heavy M1A that we carry. Drops it, pulls his Glock pistol out and just starts covering himself and the team and scoots back as far back to get some distance. Doesn't even know where the threat came from. That was reactive to show exactly what he was made of. Because you can't train that right. That was really, really a testament to how amazing he was that day and why we're even able to have this conversation right now. Because we wouldn't have stayed in the game had he died. Because by the good graces, he survived that ordeal.

[Danny Jones]

But he's lucky he missed an artery.

[John]

A couple millimeters would hit the femoral. But he was bleeding out for. We waited three hours to get an air rescue off that mountain, and he was no more than 15 minutes, maybe even less from going into shock and maybe not waking up. It was. It was an agonizing three hours, brother. And as soon as I'm looking for a. I'm scanning right after he goes down, I hear a bunch of gunfire right to my right from my. Our sheriff's deputies from their M4s. And I'm like, what the heck are they engaging? So I'm scanning again to see they found the threat. And then the bad guy, we figure shooter of my partner comes around the corner. And I see that long gun look like an sks, which is kind of a long version of an ak. And he's coming around to either finish the job or see what he got, what he hit. And then I make an announcement. He turns a gun on me, and I get some shots off, have an engagement. I end up back at my partner's feet as I'm backpedaling because we just. You tactically retreat when you're. When you're that close to a threat as you're trained and hopefully don't get hit. I wasn't hit. And now we're all in a holding pattern. Everybody's quiet, gunfire is done. This is probably 8 to 15 second timeframe, this domino effect. And we never worked with these sheriffs before, you know, not like this. My two young wardens hadn't but everybody did exactly what they had to do. So we didn't have more gunfire from bad guys. We didn't have more guys that had to engage on our side. So we're drinking through a fire hose of learning and processing right now. Especially his first gunfight I've been involved in, first officer involved shooting, the technical term definitely the first one for the younger officers and many of the sheriff's deputies. And three hours later, finally, we get Mojo airlifted out of there. While we're keeping him, keeping him from bleeding out as much as we can with the minimal trauma supplies we had. But we got off that hill, we were all debriefed. Those of us that were involved in the shooting all got interviewed. We went through a six month wait for a grand jury. We were exonerated, of course. It was completely a justified shooting. We were attacked by what we later learned were Sinaloa cartel gunmen in the middle of harvest time up there to defend and oversee the processing of that grow site. That was one grow of like five more on that mountain. That was a 32, 000 plant haul of that whole mountainside for miles was covered with grows that had been there for years.

[Danny Jones]

Jesus.

[John]

They figured somewhere between approximately 20, give or take, growers and armed defenders running that mountain. And so it became national news because never before in the country had any law enforcement officer been shot and hit by any marijuana grower remotely related to the cartels or otherwise. And it happened to be a game warden in the Silicon Valley foothills. So the news, the governor's office, everyone's like, all right, what's a game warden? Why are game wardens in this situation? This is a drug case. Why'd this young man get shot? And what the heck is going on up there? Blah, blah, blah, blah. So our chief, Nancy Foley, held the line, said they did what they were trained to do. There's environmental crime damage like you guys can't possibly understand yet, you know, and that's why we're involved, and that's why we're going to stand involved. Thankfully, he survived. Or I don't. We might not have stayed involved, but that was the first big one. And we could tell multiple stories, but we'll leave that for the books. But we would go through four more officer involved shootings where we didn't get hit. But we had some really close calls before I'd get the green light in 2013 to form up the Met and dedicate a team to this that didn't do other patrol functions, that had the right canines. All the time. We didn't have to borrow. Officers from across the had the right weaponry, had better equipment, better trauma equipment. A tactical nurse, you know, very close to the family, donated a lot of her time and a lot of her money. And working with the PJs, basically the para jumpers, the Special Forces, Air Force, their highest level tier one operators. They're the best trauma medics in the military. They're amazing at the delta level training integrated with them. So we built a trauma program comparable with what our partners were seeing overseas in the global war on terror. Yeah, keep in mind he was shot in 05 and we didn't have the anticoagulant sea locks that you pour into a wound to seal it up to keep like an artery from completely going. We'd have any of that, but we got it quick. And next thing you know, we're not doing, you know, we're not in Kansas anymore. Toto, to date myself, you know, this is like a Wizard of Oz. I'd just got transported to the Bizarro World, man. Yeah, it's a Terminator movie. What's going on?

[Danny Jones]

My God.

[John]

So long windedly. But to get the facts out, to really tell the depth of the new enemy, we were up against that public safety. Kids are hiking up there. This is on hiking trails. We've, we had many grows that were so Stanford University.

[Danny Jones]

So there's like Boy Scouts and stuff.

[John]

Oh yeah. Oh, yeah. Yes. So Stanford University. Foothill county park is in Santa Clara County. Palo Alto is right there. You're looking down at, you know, one of the biggest Ivy League schools in the Silicon Valley, Stanford. And In Foothill park two years later, we would find a massive grow, 20, 30 plus thousand plants live and grow. That's on Foothill park property. And kids are doing nature walks and studies and, you know, wildlife ID stuff. And by the good graces, they had never come across these flowers before you took it out. You imagine what that community.

[Danny Jones]

Aren't these guys also setting booby traps all around it?

[John]

Yeah, yeah, I got there a lot of pictures in the books. Booby traps, punji pits. Vietnam era punji pits like my dad's generation that fought in Vietnam would see, except now cartel are doing them.

[Danny Jones]

Punji pits are.

[John]

So Punji pits are. We first saw them in Vietnam and the Viet Cong especially would put them out on the Ho Chi Minh Trail and any trail that our soldiers would work to interdict their movements, their combatives when they're moving supplies and what they use to dig a big hole in the ground. They take bamboo, cut down bamboo sticks, and they sharpen one edge to be razor sharp, and they put them on a platform so they all stick up just on the edge of the surface. And then they put down thatch or leaf litter to make it look like the trail.

[Danny Jones]

Yeah.

[John]

And then our soldiers walk, and then they fall right into it. And they might fall two, three, four feet down. And that bamboo stick is shearing the ankle. It's going up the Achilles. It's getting into the, you know, your calf, maybe worse. And what they're doing is they put human excrement all over the tips of those bamboo, basically stabbing spears for the punji pits for infection. Because if you take out soldier and you don't take them fatally, think of the internal infection they're going to get from that. You've taken a ton of people out of the war, field doctors, you know, medics. It was a pretty. For a guerrilla tactic, it was pretty damn effective. So fast forward to a little bit later. Whiskeytown National Park, a national park in Shasta county in Northern California, close to the Emerald Triangle that we're talking about. I get a picture and a message from Rumble, as he's called in the book. One of the best canine handlers and canine. Phoebe was on this mission, and we got to talk about. You want to talk about a canine that just dazzles and razzles? She. She was awesome. And I'll get into her in a little bit, if you'll let me. They were on a grow trail going in on a hiking trail in a national park. They were hundreds of yards from a grow site, just on the general trail. And a cartel element had put their version of a punji pit on that trail and covered up with more of the litter and dirt. It looked just like a trail. And one of the snipers for Shasta County, a really, really good operator, was on point, about to walk into that, about to go right into the abyss. And Phoebe, with her great nose, detected something and alerted, and the team stopped. And then Brian looked around, and there was like a kind of like a backpack hanging off the edge on a branch, where that's kind of eye candy for an officer to grab, because you're going to check it for weapons. You're going to check it for anything. And Brian pulled it back. And there's a punji pit made by cartel growers, except now they're like oak sticks sharpened, and they're a little shorter. But what they had put on the tips was the epa. EPA Ban Nerve Agent Insecticides that these guys use in the grow site. Carbo, furan, metaphos, imported, smuggled, across, picked up in Tijuana by these growers. Banned in the US because EPA determined over 20 years ago they were made by tier one insecticide companies even from America. And one 12 ounce like container, pretty solid container because it has this material and it's crystal powder made to be diluted with about 6,000 gallons of water and then sprayed on our agricultural crops in the Midwest or anywhere we got farming going on dissipates and then nothing will get it. Not bugs, not animals, it keeps everything off. Well, when EPA got their technology up where they could actually study the toxicity of this stuff, they're like, oh no, we can't, we can't use this. This is not legitimate insecticide for agriculture. It's way beyond human consumption limits for safety. Even if this one container is diluted with 6000 freaking gallons of water, these guys take that stuff, take a descendant water bottle and mix it up and shake it. Or put half of a whole container inside a backpack sprayer with six gallons of water. And they're hosing down marijuana plants, they're hosing down on the ground, they're putting a couple drops in empty tuna cans all around the grow site as you go in. So that if a black bear comes in, it'll never get to a plant, it'll never get to their camp. Licks a drop of that stuff in tuna oil, 15 minutes is 400 pound black bear frothing at the mouth. Central nervous system seizes, they're done.

[Danny Jones]

Jesus.

[John]

So but these guys had put that poison on the tips of the Punji pits because you could see the stain and it was detected. And the bottles when they later found the gross. So they weren't only going after cops going after their grove, that was an anti personnel thing to say, hey, anyone that gets to this point, if they fall in, they're not going to go any further. It'll take a long time to go figure that grow out. And then we saw about five, I think six or seven total over the next few years of that level of anti personnel trap, which was pretty deliberate. It just, you know, I told my father before he passed in 2013 and anybody that fought in Vietnam, a lot of my elders that I grew up under and they're like, you guys are fighting like a guerrilla warfare out there, Johnny. I'm like, oh yeah, I never thought of it that way, dad. But you know what, when you look at the wooded arid terrain of where we operate in California, I speak to the Vietnam Veterans association, have branches all over the country. And they want to hear this presentation. They want to know what the. What the threat is of if this gets in black market cannabis, which it does all over the country, kids are ingesting this stuff without knowing it. Everything else but the fact that these guys saw that type of combat and they're going, and this is poison weed in our country. And not only California, but other states. Yeah, so I'm doing a lot.

[Danny Jones]

It's crazy that it doesn't kill the plants if it's so toxic.

[John]

It doesn't. It's made to. And you know what? I have color pictures in the book that it's really hard to see what it even looks like on a plant, because if you're not there, right when they apply it, it goes on like an opaque, like a liquid paper or misty white spray paint. And it's kind of blotched, but in 24 to 48 hours, it dries invisible and it just looks like the sheen of a normal marijuana plant. So we went through that stuff for years, having no idea we were going through anything. Much later, when we got the team and federal officers, with Forest Service and state officers, some of our own guys would go through these grows as carefully as they could. And then, like, losing their. Going blind for four or five days, you know, having major, major nerve aches, right? Respiratory problems, vision fading in and out, and they're sick for eight, nine, ten days, and nobody really knew what was going on. And then these cases started to pop up across the country. And then federal OSHA kind of kicked in and said, okay, before, no more grow raids. Federal Forest Service. Yeah, you guys need. We need to button this up and figure out how we can safely, you know, attack this, attack that, before we send you back in. So our protocol, the stuff we wear, how we assess a grow site, if we're going to even eradicate it or not, is all based on those assessments. Now, it's nasty stuff.

[Danny Jones]

You have to wear hazmat suits to go in there.

[John]

If you know it's in there and you're gonna push through to eradicate it, you gotta have. Yeah, you gotta have basically, you know, at least a level one where you have the Tyvek suit and N95 fitted, you know, mass that you breathe completely filtered air through. But on a hot day, you're gonna kill yourself and overheat. So a lot of times, if it's contaminated, we back out until it dissipates and then we can go in with nitro gloves, long sleeves. Just the mass, not the full.

[Danny Jones]

Yeah. How does those guys manage it though? How did the cartel do it?

[John]

That's, that's a great question. And the crazy part is they know just how deadly it is. And I do a PowerPoint presentation on this stuff from many different groups across the country and it blows the mind. They actually call it, they call it the devil. They call that stuff El Diablo. Wow. El Diablo, the devil. Because they know how nasty it is. But it's so effective that the bosses want them to keep using it. And we're starting to see more and more growers on trail cameras with gloves, you know, being a little more cautious, but they're not very cautious. They're wearing that stuff around. They got a backpack sprayer that's just complete poison. I have mind blowing pictures, like I said, that are in the book and color of either on trail camera or what we interdicted. And that just comes to, not only have they dominated the black market industry and they're killing the legitimate cannabis anonymous industry, but they're sending out this neurotoxin, you know, on this stuff and doing a bunch of environmental destruction. So. So fast forward. That's why it became a complete mission focus. And I never looked back after that point.

[Danny Jones]

Months ago I started to realize I was going through a can of nicotine pouches in like three days. I noticed my sleep starting to get worse. My recovery felt slower and I couldn't figure out why. Then I picked up some of these Ultra pouches and I'll tell you the difference. Felt incredible. Ultra gives me the same pouch experience I usually like. The burn, the little kick and the flavor. But without nicotine or caffeine. No jitters, no crash and no feeling wired at midnight. And my favorite part is they're packed with natural nootropics that help with my focus and mental clarity. And what really surprised me is how much better my body feels. Better sleep and recovery actually happening again. And I've really been digging that blue razz flavor. Nicotine messes with blood flow and stress hormones. Ultra does not. It's a way smoother flow state, especially if pre workouts tend to overstimulate you. So I get to keep the habit without the vice holding me back. Ultra is the ultimate guilt free pouch, delivering instant focus and mental clarity without nicotine or caffeine. New customers can use the code danny to get 15% off at take ultra.com that's t a k e u l t r a dot com for 15% off with the code, Danny, after you purchase, they're going to ask where you heard about them. And please help support the show by letting them know we sent you. So in the early 2000s, that was the first one you came across. When do you think or when do you do, you know, when these cartel operations insurgencies started to get into the woods in California and do it, start

[John]

doing it started in the mid to late 80s. Oh that guys. There were grow sites popping up in like Cleveland National Forest and Riverside county in the early 90s. In the late 80s, it was just starting then. Mexico had entered the weed trade on the, on the Sinaloa side. And back then it was a cartel called LA Family Michikana, lfm. And then now, yeah, they were kind of the, the OGs that really started it. And they would produce the same type of grow sites, hidden camouflage water lines, you know, not very visible because the federales were out trying to take them down and trying to get those grows out. But they had a way in the Michigan foothills and in other places throughout central Mexico of getting really good grows effectively done. And then they would still have to smuggle that stuff to America because that's where the big money was for, you know, really potent, although nobody knew, you know, neurotoxically tainted weed to get it to America. And a lot of it was through those southern border quarters. California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas. But California especially, because we were the pipeline. And when I've debriefed and I talk about it in Hidmore in the second edition, getting to sit in on a debrief of what we call a plaza boss. And this guy was picked up by our white dope team of the sheriff's Office for a 22 pound cook of methamphetamine in the winter. But he was also the head honcho for like 50 grow sites on the Caloa side in Northern California, from the Emerald Triangle all the way down to like Sonoma county, so areas that some of us had grown up in. And this guy wasn't one of your sociopathic sicarios. He wasn't one of the guys, you know, we go hand to hand, knife to knife or gun to gun, or a lot of the violence we've had in these grows with our dogs or having to deal with them physically. The guys are, they're angry, they're tough, you know, they're, they're, they're nasty, nasty guys to deal with. But this guy was a boss, he was a businessman and he was very honest, he was very cordial he was very articulate, albeit in Spanish. My Spanish is passable, but I got to sit in on that interview with dea, with our white dope team and ask questions of this man to kind of validate what we thought we knew. And I said, so the growers we find, you know, in these operations, they're not us. They're not us citizens by any means. And half the time we find out they're deportable felons when we run them through international channels or we find out from Mexico they have murder or rape or narcotics trafficking charges, they're on an international watch list. These are the heavies, but these are the tier one guys that are setting up your grows. And we'll arrest them and we'll deport them, but sometimes we'll find them back in a growing a week later.

[Danny Jones]

That quick?

[John]

That quick, yeah. And this was before the, the, you know, this was before Trump's first administration started to tighten up Southern border security. That'll play into the story and kind of what's happened historically since. So I went, okay, okay. I said, so how do you get him back so fast into California? And you know what he told us? He goes, well, we don't really call, we don't call this place, I'm sitting California. We call it Mexico North. You guys called it California because you took it. This is Mexico North. And they basically have.

[Danny Jones]

It used to be part of Mexico, right? Yeah, yeah.

[John]

And they basically have districts that all the bosses kind of cooperate on. And he said, Four to $7,000 cash, I can get any grower across that border in no time. Rather I do it in a vehicle, in a tunnel, whatever I'm going to have to do, I'm going to get my guy. Because that guy with his skill set. And then we got to understand these guys just aren't random growers. I mean, you do get the human trafficking where you get people forced to work in some of these grows from Mexico, if they're of Mexican descent and they're put in there and the cartel is saying, okay, your family's going to stay protected and you're going to get paid. And they, and there is that going. But the guys, normally that will set up a really good legitimate grow site that have all the knowledge. They got vetted down in Michigan by doing it effectively for years, kind of like their probationary period, not getting detected by the federal police or the military. And then they get pushed into California and they're making quite a bit of cash. We found out at that level,

[Danny Jones]

they had the coyotes on the border that can. They literally have like shops. We had a guy on a couple years ago, he was one those of the. He was a young kid, like in his teens, working with his grandma, just making passports and all day for people to get across the border.

[John]

Crazy. So this guy, this guy enlightened us brother to he can get anybody anywhere. There's a lot more grows than we think. We weren't detecting them all. It's a lot more states. They have all their integration and where they're going to put this poison weed. They have it. They have it already pre sold. Eastern seaboard, the Midwest.

[Danny Jones]

Who are they selling it to?

[John]

Everybody on the black market. Black market dealers, gang members.

[Danny Jones]

They're working with like the Hell's Angels.

[John]

They're working with Hell's Angels, Ms. 13. I mean, you name it. Yeah.

[Danny Jones]

Wow.

[John]

And you know, especially in states that had no regulated weed, where the black market. And we'll go more into how regulation has enhanced and exacerbated the black market, unfortunately. But the question that really blew my mind and I just wanted to hear it out of his mouth. And we got that validation. I said, okay, so we notice we've started this reclamation thing where we take out five of your 50 grows and maybe we catch your guys, maybe we don't. Most of the time we do now because we've got the dogs and we've got the skill sets and we're going to probably catch most of the guys if we're lucky, but we're going to take the time to clean everything up. We're going to take the water line out that you've spent hundreds of man hours. It might be two miles long. We're going to restore the creek. We're going to helicopter all the trash out, all the fertilizer, human excrement, grow waste, old clothes, sleeping bags, the kitchen area. We're taking it all. I said, but we noticed that if we don't reclamat a site and we just rip plants and we get our funding to continue this eradication, this weeding operation, no pun intended, that you might have a grow back there the very next year. And he just kind of smiled. And I wanted this question to come out because we had Carlos Alfaro, who was the coordinator for DCEP and it's just an acronym that basically the DEA through the drugs are under. The president has so much money to divvy out to all the counties of all the states doing this type of work. And it was all the money you make is based on plant Count, arrest five armed sicarios, no added money, take out water diversions, killing 4 miles of creek and every endangered species and drinking water for animals and maybe drinking water for a tribal nation, which happens or a community. No, no money increase reward, bunch of guns, AKs, you know, find a bunch of weapons, no credit. It was strictly based on plant count. So what that guy basically told us in front of that coordinator, who's a great guy, we worked hand in hand, he was a very, very proactive DA coordinator to keep us operating financially so we could keep doing the job. Basically verified two things. One, if you reclimate it is deterring them from coming back to that particular spot. So not only are you protecting a lot of wildlife and getting the water back and you're saving millions of gallons of water because that water's just going right to plants, it's not staying in reservoirs. So there was all kinds of fringe benefits and thankfully we would see pressure on the president from the drug czar after that where we started to get funding for people. We caught weapons, we seized reclamation totals like 44 tons of grow site trash, 5 gallons of EPA ban neurotoxin carbo Fury. Yeah, you know what I mean? Guns five guys. So that was a big win. And now it's not just the game board push that started that, what we started with the marijuana enforcement team. Most agencies now dealing with, with this on rural private land or public land are now into that game. And fortunately federally we're being funded for it. But no one had a clue. They weren't looking at this environmentally at all. And so now we're starting to get the point where okay, now it's not why are the game wardens here, it's why aren't the game wardens on this one. Because I need to know how I can restore this and what should I do with this and what impact is this going to have long term down the road? So that was an eye opening bust and he wasn't even busted in one of his gross. He was on a 22 pound meth cook. So, and I, I dissect that too in the, in the narrative to what

[Danny Jones]

other types of drugs are they manufacturing here?

[John]

Oh dude, they're. You're getting mess super meth, you're getting fentanyl, you're getting fentanyl derivatives, a ton of synthetics, you're getting tainted weed. And we kind of got to go into, we can certainly certainly jump ahead a little bit. But the collusion between China and the Mexican cartels, fentanyl and The Northern Border. And, Danny, this is something that just kind of exploded the last couple of years. Really, really exploded. And there's something I've talked about on a lot of podcasts. It's something we're doing kind of a podcast series on right now on the Northern Border. A doc Doc docu cast, if you want to call it that, with Ironclad, which you'll really enjoy, I think, because of what's in it. And I'll make sure I get it to you when it drops in the next 60 or so days. I didn't realize how involved the Chinese were in these clandestine grow sites and the black market. We trade in California, but also many other states until we first started to see this around. I was kind of in my last year. 2018 was my last operational year, and I had, you know, stood up the team, picked the guys, and ran that thing with the best men on the planet, man. I mean, the last six years were the busiest six years of my career, but they were the best because we made a heck of a dent. But in the middle of that, in 2016, we regulated cannabis recreationally for the first time in California under Proposition 64. And we also tightened up some of the medicinal marijuana laws as well. And we knew it was going to pass going into that election of November.

[Danny Jones]

Making it recreational.

[John]

Making it recreational. And we're like, fantastic. Pass it. Pass it smart. Okay, here's what we need to do. And what we had there was like a year grace period where we would get, like, the Emerald Triangle, you know, the Murder Mountain growers that were known for just living off the grid, making a ton of black market money. Were they doing cartel damage? No. Were they using epa, band carbo, you know, nerve agents, insecticides? No. These growers were basically very environmentally conscious. They were just growing really good organic weed.

[Danny Jones]

Right.

[John]

For the black market. And I would go to these California Growers association meetings, and it'll be like a panel talk. And it was like, crazy surreal. Dude, I'm in camos and a polo. I got my canine. I got a computer. I'm going to do a PowerPoint on a panel with, like, the president of the Growers association, this tier one grower from that's now part of a legitimate industry. And I go to these meetings, and people, they're just like, what's he doing here? He's going to look at our license plate and follow us back. I'm like, breathe. No, we're not here for that. We're going to pass. This is passing Prop 64. Is passing, it's passed. This is just, let's work together, all right? We're not here to arrest anybody. It's. We're going to go from handcuffs to hugs and handshakes. If you're doing it by the numbers, just hear out what I have to say. Because in your backyard, I know you guys have dealt with the cartels. You're just not talking about it because you guys were in an outlaw business and you couldn't talk about it. I know some of you have, I've talked to some of you that have. But this is what's going to continue to go on all over around your grows. And if it continues and it isn't stopped and we have such a bad law, it's going to increase and it's going to out produce you, it's going to outsell you. Because to be a regulated grower in California, a regulated grower anywhere in most states, your 10, 11 permits, yeah, you're 80 to $200,000 just to sell your first plant. And all this oversight seed to sale. There's certain necessary things to make sure it's not a poison product. It's going to a legitimate dispensary. No harm, no foul. Good, make it so. But the problem was I told everybody I did this presentation to 30% of my job as the team leader, lieutenant for that unit was to do it like we're doing now. Podcasts weren't really hopping. I wasn't doing podcasts operationally. And that was a long time ago, before this long conversation format dropped and which is so, so good. We can go in depth, but just going everywhere, talking to legislatures, governor's aides, conservation groups, preservation groups, environmental groups, regulatory groups, hunter groups, citizens for, you know, keep kids off, drug groups, whatever. And I would show, I said, said, I'm never going to be big brother cop and come in and tell teenagers in an assembly, don't smoke weed, it's bad for you. You know, not 80s, you know, just say no. I'm gonna say, guys, you're gonna do what you got to do. Please be safe doing it. Let me show you what's really out there. What? Look at these pictures and let me tell you a couple stories. Punji pits, Carbo furan, you know, dead bears, you know, growers. I mean, us in hazmat suits. And I mean, that wakes up a lot of people. It also got the legitimate growers that had never had that experience. People that were multimillion dollar operations and they were in tears. They were like, that is so Disgusting. Lieutenant, we are not doing that. We never did that when we were illegal. The water they're stealing, the poisoning they're doing on this cannabis, the kids, it's getting to. They make us. This all look horrible. And after that first meeting, when they realized I wasn't there to like, bust them all or start a surveillance op. I got my dog, I'm leaving. I'm putting the stuff in the truck, loading my dog up in the back, and like 20 growers are just like coming at the truck. I'm like, oh, here it is. Guess it didn't go so well, dude, I got to just get in and go. And it was the owner of one of those companies. Hold on, hold on, hold on. He gave me his business card, and all these other growers did too. And they said, listen, I know you guys don't have enough resources and money to reclimate all these grows. I know that you're only getting a third of them from your presentation. And the environmental cleanup is something we can all do together. And I've got trucks that can go anywhere. They can leave my Mendo farm. I can have them in Southern California. I can take them out of state. I don't care if you have a grow that you need cleaned up. We will be there. And I went, this is what's so unifying about this issue. I can have hard left, hard right, pro cannabis, anti weed. I could have preservationist, conservationist. And I show him a dead bear frothing at the mouth. And that bears cub, that's £50, a little baby bear, right. That saw that mom wasn't responding and got scared and climbed up in a V of the oak tree like 10ft above her, but had ingested the same poison and dies like this with her head right down. We got those pictures again. Nothing says evil wherever you sit on the animal spectrum. Preservationist sees that, they're horrified. A hunter sees that, we're horrified. No animal should ever die like that. And that is by a foreign invader of a transnational criminal organization that's highly armed in your forest, people taking your water, killing your wildlife. Because wildlife belongs to all of us. No one owns the wildlife.

[Danny Jones]

Right.

[John]

Or waterways as you know.

[Danny Jones]

Right.

[John]

You know water. Right. You know, from all the probably diving you've done and how. How awesome water is. It's open to all of us, and it should be. So that was, that was a real educational lesson. But what's transpired with this, this New China involvement.

[Danny Jones]

Yeah.

[John]

Is we. We can talk about in depth because it's been real. Real relative, real recent.

[Danny Jones]

Yeah. So I've heard stories about how Chinese people, or Chinese, like scientists or chemists or whatever have been making their ways into Mexico and sort of, like training the cartels and this all true in this production of fentanyl and all that stuff. And I know there's been lots of issues with, like, fentanyl being mixed with. I've heard stories of it being, like, mixed with marijuana. Yeah. And other stuff. But from what I have heard is that the cartels don't want the fentanyl mixed with different kinds of drugs because they don't want to kill their customers. Right. They want to keep their customers alive. Like, they want the fentanyl people to be taking the fentanyl. They don't want the weed people to be smoking fentanyl and dying.

[John]

Yeah.

[Danny Jones]

Or the cocaine people to be, you know, snorting cocaine and getting fentanyl and then having some crazy cardiac issue.

[John]

Yeah.

[Danny Jones]

So. So are you saying that China is directly involved in these U.S. covert operations?

[John]

They're directly involved in the weed trade, and they're working hand in hand with the Mexican cartels to help them really flourish in the fentanyl trade. And it works like this. And it. This started. It might have started as back. Way back, as about 2018, like I said, when I was rotating out, because we started to see Asian groups, particularly the Chinese, moving into, like, Northern California, Siskiyou County, a really, really remote county. You got Mount Shasta, Glacier behind you, and you're on the Oregon border. And why they were going there to start get involved in the weed trade? It just wasn't adding up. We couldn't figure out why. One, why would Sinaloa or Jalisco, who, whatever cartel at the time was really dominating mostly Sinalo and the weed trade. Why are they letting. Why is there not more infighting between the Chinese and the Mexican cartels when we're in the most rural, kind of wild west cowboy county in California? And, you know, rival groups just don't tolerate each other. So something's got to be happening. And what China started to do is they looked at the weed trade as. It's a black market. It's not federally regulated. Everything's cash. And the Chinese decided we can make a lot of black market cash if we enter the black market weed trade and we convert that cash, launder that cash any way we want into our currency standard, and we can do that right in middle America. We don't even have to take it to the homeland, and we can amass so much wealth to put us on the grid is dominating the world's currency standard. By 2035, everything flips. That's the base, not the US dollar. But they can take that black market money because it's not really traceable. It's not in, you know, it's not in a digital file, if you will, and make that conversion. And so before I testified twice in Congress in 2024 and 25 and right before the 2024 hearing, and that hearing was called, it was in the Resources Committee, in the, in the U.S. house of Representatives, Danny. And it was called Protect our borders, Save our parks, you know, so it was getting in the environmental impacts, it was getting to something other than the southern border that the Congress and the Senate, everybody was focused on. Stop the southern border. Tighten it up, tighten it up. What's going on beyond that? We know this story from Silicon Valley. We know what John and game wardens, and we know this isn't just there, it's everywhere. So but right before that happened, I got some really, really good information from very good friends at the top of dea, specifically about China's connection and the money laundering exchange. And not only working in the same areas and parallel to the cartels, but working in collaboration and in harmony with the cartels. And I went, this isn't good. This has, how does this even work? And so this is how it works. Six percent of every black market dollar the Mexican cartels make. Fentanyl, human trafficking, gun running, marijuana, you know, whatever, super methamphetamine, 6% of every dollar they make. They are going to have to pay that or lose that to the, to the, to the money. It's going to cost them to launder that money to get it into a legitimate business.

[Danny Jones]

Right?

[John]

Get it into legitimate stuff they can move, right? So the Chinese came in and they started, you know, what, what's, what, what are the cartels doing? A lot of Sinaloa Halisca, new generation especially.

[Danny Jones]

What do they do with all this cash?

[John]

Yeah. And what do they need a ton of. They need fentanyl precursors, right? They need those precursors. Those precursors come from mainland China in chemical factories and they are uber regulated. They're not even used, I'm being told, in their own country, for certain drugs because they are so deadly. Right. Yet the Chinese at the very top have no problem having this stuff land in the port of Vancouver. We're going to get to the northern connection. It's not just coming to Mexico now, it's moving to the north for A couple reasons. Largely because we've tightened up that southern border under this second administration. Right. The wall's going up. We've flooded the southern border. And I'm going to talk a lot about the northern border because Now I live 30 miles from it. And what we just did for this project, I'm talking about this ironclad change agents project. Andy stumps the host, a friend of mine, and great group. So now we have the Chinese and we have the Mexican cartels going, okay, Chinese, like, we're going to get you the fentanyl precursors you need and we're going to charge you. Instead of 6%, we'll charge you 5%. You invest in Chinese banking institutions. We convert the money. That way you buy into legitimate businesses either in Mexico or the U.S. some of our businesses, and we're all going to be copacetic, but we would really like the weed trade where we want to start getting into the black market. That's how it started. And this is.

[Danny Jones]

Holy shit.

[John]

Yeah, right, right. I mean, you can't. This is like Sicario 3 or 4. This is the Chinese buying up a

[Danny Jones]

ton of real estate in the US too.

[John]

There are tons of.

[Danny Jones]

That is our connection there.

[John]

Yeah, they're.

[Danny Jones]

They're, they're getting land.

[John]

Yeah, they're buying a ton of land. They're buying land in Siskiyou County. The growers are coming in because then they have. Not only do they have ownership, they have involvement from driving the politics of that county. And this is a county. I'm using Siskiyou as an example. Youngest sheriff In California, Jeremiah LaRue, a friend of mine, great sheriff. And he's out there being the sheriff for the Wild West. No exaggeration, because he's been overrun with these Chinese cartels that are running completely with impunity. And they're driving. Really, what was the last great generation out of that area? Veterans, cattle ranchers, farmers, all in Northern California that went to that particular pristine part of California to live a rural, great community life throughout their entire life for their kids, whether they serve in the military or not, working cattle, working farms, those people are about gone. That county, that part of California, Southern Oregon, dominated by the Asian cartels. That's insane. And that stuff is going all over where we're sitting right now. That weed now, the same carbohyrin metaphors, all those different, you know, nerve agents. I talked about that. Mexico has to get in Tijuana, then they have to smuggle them up. The Chinese have their own poisons and they're coming in with the fentanyl. They're coming in through the northern border. They are. They're coming in through the northern border. They're using heinous. Heinous nerve agent poisons, antifungals. I have all the pictures of them. We, we dropped them on Congress. We just did a lot of training on it. Excuse me.

[Danny Jones]

You see the, the photos of the northern border are crazy. Yeah, it's just, it's like woods. Empty field. Yeah, Woods.

[John]

Yeah.

[Danny Jones]

There's like no barrier at all.

[John]

So.

[Danny Jones]

Find an image of the northern border, Steve. It's crazy.

[John]

Yeah, it, it is crazy, Steve. And we, we, we talked about this for change agents. Then we got in Andy's helicopter with the production team from Ironclad in January. And I'm 90 minutes from him. He's in the Flathead Valley near Kalispell. And I'm over in, you know, Libby Northwest, real remote corner. And we have Glacier National Park. Yeah, yeah, right.

[Danny Jones]

That's the boundary.

[John]

That's the boundary. And guys, when I, when the, when the footage drops from what we just filmed from the helicopter and we had a little bit of snow and the glaciers of Glacier national park. And it's, it's a two track, just like that international boundary sign. And look at those big glaciers. The, the track of the border is thinner than the power line track behind my running trail on the house on forest service property. It. That's it. And snow covered. And most of. And not only Montana and to Washington, but all the way to the end of our eastern side of the border of the U.S. this is 5,000 miles, guys. And the northern border right now is absolutely under siege because obviously it's super remote. And what would it take, say a Jalisco new generation cartel trafficker with a backpack with up to a million fentanyl pills coming from dirty labs in China or in Canada now not made Mexico, why bother, right? And hike right down that trail and get them into distribution centers. So where I live, or we live in what's called and what's really got attention now, Montana being defined as the last best place, the frontier state. Right, Danny? And we're under siege.

[Danny Jones]

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[John]

I mean, we have fentanyl in our community, the tiniest rural community, you know, left in, in the US and this is what the border likes. Steve, great picture. And we got footage with snow capped in the snow of that type of border in Glacier national park, and it just continuing endlessly. And this is walking distance.

[Danny Jones]

Is there any patrolling being done of this area?

[John]

There's as much as those awesome brothers and sisters and border patrol can do. But I know some of those guys up there and you talk to them and they go, you know, when the southern border was under siege, we were sent down there through pandemic especially. And, and after that, now the focus is up here and they don't have enough bodies. It's going to take an amazing concerted effort of technology and everything, because that border is a lot harder. Look, it's all wooded, it's all mountainous, right? And you know, we, we, we like to say the cartels are like water. We tightened up the southern border and we did a good job. I'll. I'll say that it is tightened up. It's not completely contained, but it is. I mean, the tunnels are still there. People can. There's still some trafficking, but exponentially, never in the history of the southern border has it been as secure to this day. So what does the cartel do? They're not going to fight that. They're going to, like, the water got to the wall, they're going to go around it and they're going to get right up Canada, and they're going to go to the pass elite resistance, and they're going to drop right down, flow like a waterfall, don't fight it, don't fight uphill, flow downhill. And so, like water, they've gotten to that. And the thing about it is Canada, to get in with just a, like a visitor's visa or to recreate in Canada, there's no background check. You just pay money and you've got your visa, you know, and if you look at. It's amazing, especially from a resource standpoint, Danny, with the wildlife, wildlands and waterways of everything north of me in Montana. Canada is amazing. I mean, especially, you know, the British Columbia side, in Alberta, the rural side, which I'm bordering. But now you've got the rcmp, the Canadian, you know, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Force, which basically is the force for the province. And they're not equipped to deal with these cartel threats. I mean, we're barely getting A handle on it with task forces and concerted efforts and you know, classifying them as foreign terrorist organizations where you can use military assets at least to somehow establish, assist, hopefully not get overly involved if they don't have to. But. And it's through no fault of Canada or anybody else. It's just this group of criminal element. They're smart and they've got embedded people and they get the precursors right to Canada. They make the fentanyl right in Canada, bring it right down, shovel it through the northern border, probably going through the forest not too far from my backyard. And so that's where the attention really needs to land, in my opinion. And that's what we're trying to expose one, thankfully with this conversation because a lot of people just don't know this and it's just starting to come to light. So yeah, I never thought I'd see it in, in the most pristine part of Montana. And now it's like it followed me up there, but it's affecting everybody.

[Danny Jones]

How many grows would you estimate are in the United States right now? Like how many states. Oh, wow. Are being covered? And like what, how. What is happening with the problem compared to when you first discovered it in 202005 to now?

[John]

Great question. And the way to, the way to answer that is first look at why the problem is worse now than it was before. We regulated. And we got to talk about that because what Prop 64 did, which I, in our, in our, you know, just excitement of the story, I forgot to mention that when I was doing all those presentations and I said, guys, we know it's going to regulate. Good. Go, go, go. Let's have good cannabis regulation. Let's get. Eliminate as much as black market as we can right now, it's a felony if you're an illegal grower. Trespass, not trespass outdoors, indoors, whatever. If you have more than six plants or you have 60,000 plants, you were. It was a felony. And that's the bite we needed to stay in the law before it was a misdemeanor, before it went, it watered to a misdemeanor in Prop 64. I was told by everybody in the legit legislatively and the people making. Oh yeah, no, we understand that. We understand what you guys are up against. We're going to push for that and just the opposite to get that to pass under the governor's push in California especially, they watered the felony to a misdemeanor. And then for a juvenile grower and we get a lot of little sicarios in training, wannabes that are 14, 15, 16, infraction, $400 seatbelt ticket. Or be a grower inside, you know, be a 14 year old sicario in training, you know, in the Silicon valley foothills with a 4:45 ACP or an AK and you know, the, the weapons might be a felony, but you being out there growing 40,000 plants is a secret ticket, so.

[Danny Jones]

Or shooting an officer.

[John]

Yeah, yeah, well that, that'll, that'll enhance it. We'll finally. Yeah, yeah. But brother, the, what we did in California. And one thing being from California, I'm like, guys, we're like the weed state of the world. We're not even the weed state of the, the, the nation. I mean we're one of six Mediterranean climates were known for growing really great weed, like really great wine in the Napa Valley. We could have been a great example for the country. And you absolutely, you just, you know, you punch the duck on this one man, because Oklahoma, Maine, Michigan, everybody copied us. And guess who ended up in Oklahoma, Maine and Michigan right now on steroids? The Chinese. Unbelievable. They're even out producing I think black market weed in the Midwest in those states than California is right now because they copied our model and they realized there's no deterrence if we're going to. And when they're, when teams now raid a private rural track with hoop houses, say there's four or five hoop, you know, the, basically the greenhouses that look like little white half domes, 2 to 5,000 plants in them each. They go raid and rip 40,000 plants with the Chinese chemicals and 55 gallon vats being sprayed on them. And we actually, in the side of those grove houses, Danny, there's like a little decon room we're seeing where the Tyvek suit is that the growers put on. Then they put on their rebreath. You know, basically they're ventilated breather and N95s and they're there in their hazmat suit as they spray all the plants down. What does that tell you? So they know exactly how dangerous this stuff is, how much the money is. And when you add the math up it's like okay, how, how is, how is China even allowing this? How is this, is this an offshoot of the Triads? Is this just the gangs? And you go, well cartels wouldn't exist in China the way they operate. There's a problem with these guys. They're going to get shot from a military group. That's just the way a communist regime is going to Operate. That's why they can operate so freely in our country, because we're not that for all the right reasons. But when you look at these chemicals coming from mainland China that are regulated and banned and highly structured, but they're exported harmoniously to Canada, to Mexico, wherever, both places they're going specifically for the cartels, that's. To me, that looks like the biggest example of soft power, of trying to erode our national populace within. That benefits China and it benefits the cartels.

[Danny Jones]

And it hurts us.

[John]

Hurts us in exponential most.

[Danny Jones]

And it's, it's the most indirect way, too. It's like a long slow burn. Like it's going to cripple the United States and the population here and poison our, our wildlife. And it's, it doesn't get any national attention. It's like, let the States figure it out. And that's how these other countries win in the long game, you know, because for all the, you know, negative things about living in a totalitarian regime under communism, which is got to be terrible. That is one thing to be said about it is they would, they would address this face on and literally send in, you know, their military to take this, take this out.

[John]

They just handle it. Right.

[Danny Jones]

So if you, if you were in charge of this, what do you think would be the best way to deal with it?

[John]

Well, I've, I've said it for years and years and I said it in Congress. I talked, well, to our mutual friend Joe Rogan, man.

[Danny Jones]

Yeah.

[John]

And thank heaven he got wind of this and had no idea.

[Danny Jones]

Yeah.

[John]

And got outraged. And I've said this has to be a national priority. I think it's the number one priority over everything. I really do. Because I think the buck stops here. If you look at harmonious life for our children and grandchildren, whether you're in the, you know, we're here in Tampa, Florida. We're in Silicon Valley, usa, California. I'm in Podunk, you know, remote Lincoln County, Montana. We have to be safe on the home front first and foremost before we worry about, you know, there's foreign, legitimate foreign threats. I get all these practices. Or Iran cartels like Iran nukes. I hope they find a thousand pounds of depleted uranium soon.

[Danny Jones]

Right?

[John]

I mean, come on.

[Danny Jones]

I mean, how many trillions have we spent on this Iran war so far? Like, how many trillions would it take to get rid of, to take care of this problem here?

[John]

I agree. No, you hit it. You absolutely hit it on the head, brother. And I, if we didn't name the new book Hidden War for nothing. I mean, this has been going on for 25 years. We've done documentaries, we've done reality TV with the Wild Justice, Game Warden Show. I've talked about it all over the country. Thankfully, we have podcasts like yours to continue to educate, but still not enough people know. And it's not just a law enforcement, quasi military action. It's got to be a tactical, you know, a tactical goal. It's got to be a tactical objective and handled on a mission structure where this is something we have to do and we have to have objectival, you know, actual results. We have to have results and we have to make a difference because we're putting a dent in it. I will say that the northern border was a start, but until we look at the northern border, until we educate all our kids in schools, until we deal with the fentanyl especially, man, I mean, the, the Narcan inhalers are free at every pharmacy in rural Montana right now. You just walk up to the pharmacist in my pharmacy in my little hometown.

[Danny Jones]

Is it that bad there?

[John]

It's. It's everywhere. Yeah. And the thing is, I know that these pills are not made to necessarily kill, you know, I mean, targeting. Let's go kill all your children. We want to keep them alive and keep them customers from the Mexican cartel side. But they know what they're making are killing our kids because they're making them in dirty labs. They're not a consistent, like a pharmaceutical grade, you know, opioid, like a fentanyl pill. And a lot of those bottles, if you get that from a dirty lab and it's given to you and it comes out of a prescription looking container, it's a death sentence. It's not a second chance, you know, and I've talked about this with other hosts where, you know, when you and I were in that teenager world and experimenting or not or whatever, you know, a bad joint maybe got you sick, right? A bad joint or a bad pain pill, now you're doing chemicals on them. Yeah. You're just not waking up, you know, and that's what, that's what just. It breaks my heart, man, because. Because we're seeing so much of it directly that people don't see. And we just got to revamp a little bit more of the priorities and take what we did on the southern border and get more into community work as well and, and contain a little bit better. My opinion long windedly. There's your answer.

[Danny Jones]

Now, would a nationwide deregular regulation of this if There if this, if marijuana was made nationwide recreational, would that, what kind of effect would that have?

[John]

I think it would have a good effect on that part of cartel crime. I've always said that if you regulated quality cannabis, right, like Tobacco and Alcohol, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and it was taxed and it was sold to people over, you know, at the adequate age with all the warning labels, et cetera, you wouldn't eliminate the black market but you would eliminate most of it in black in weed. I just don't see how the Chinese or the Mexican cartels would make anything especially with the poisons they put on their weed, et cetera. But then you'd be buying a very, you know, a moderately expensive pack of marijuana cigarettes but you wouldn't be paying these exorbitant prices that some states are doing right now because of the overhead to make weed on the individual basis through dispensaries. Now a lot of homegrown organic farmers that want to grow, I totally get that. And I know some exemplary ones in Northern California that are dem certified. I mean the best of the best, not an inorganic, they use as little water as, as possible and it's the best cannabis on the planet. Then you get into is this going to rub them out? If you know the Philip Morris's or the big tobacco companies get into to weed, which they want to do, produce it at such a standard and sell it on a massive scale and then what do you, what is everybody going to buy? Then they're going to buy that that's probably going to be a little more affordable. It's private business versus corporations.

[Danny Jones]

Insane. The amount of money that are behind these drugs. I was just learning about, I was just reading a couple of an article the other day about the amount of money that has been buying up patents for ibogaine and other these other psychedelics that are getting ready to pass the FDA and getting pushed to the fda nuts. Like there are these billion dollar patents that are being, that are being bought up and these companies that these giant international corporations that are like all getting in position, ready, waiting for this stuff to pass the fda. So you know these people can make billions of dollars off this stuff. It's wild. It's crazy not to say that it's bad, you know, just to. Just because people are rich people are going to get more rich doesn't necessarily mean it's bad. But it's just crazy to understand that machine that's running behind the scenes, you know.

[John]

Dude, it's nuts. No, you hit it on the Head numb. Yeah. Has to be looked at very, very carefully. Because there's too much money involved.

[Danny Jones]

Yeah.

[John]

And there's too much money to be made and too many people to look at the money and not look at the, the bigger picture. Yeah. Some of the stuff we talked about for recording and I think you hit it on the head, man. Corruption is really easy to do if you offer the right amount of money. Mexico's a pro at it.

[Danny Jones]

I mean, look at, at the, the Mexican cartels at some level, you know, nation states are cartels.

[John]

Yeah, yeah.

[Danny Jones]

You know, these people at the highest levels of our society, these politicians, you know, they're taking money. They're not looking out for the people.

[John]

They're looking shell game like their own nation state. You're right.

[Danny Jones]

And it's the same thing from even looking at congressmen all the way up to the bankers that run the world. They're doing the same thing. They're looking out for themselves. They're trying to make more money. They don't want people to be healthy. They don't care about wildlife. Nope. It's the people who are actually have their hands in the game that are actually touching the ground and dealing with this stuff every single day. The people like you who are the people that actually give a shit about this and actually want to like to move the needle in a positive direction. You know, I did this, I did this documentary a couple about 10 years ago about the fishing industry here in, in Madeira Beach, a couple miles from here.

[John]

Okay.

[Danny Jones]

So Madeira beach is like the grouper capital of the world. I guess there's more. At least at the time I made the film there was more grouper being caught and in Madeira Beach, Florida than anywhere in the world. And it's mainly grouper and snapper and it's this huge commercial fishing industry around here. And we noticed these like heroin addicts that were hanging out in the streets and we started interviewing them and they were like, they were broke, spending all their money on drugs and prostitutes and living on these broken down boats. They were just like basically like teenage drug addicts, but like in their 50s and 60s.

[John]

Wow.

[Danny Jones]

And they were going out. They had to. The way it worked, the way the industry works is these guys go out fishing for like 10 to 14 days at a time and then they come back with like a fistful of cash and. And they just blow it all on. On drugs. And the way the system worked was in the early 2000s around here, it was basically like derby fishing. So there'd be like an allotment of fish, Right, that you're allowed to catch in this area?

[John]

Yeah, yeah.

[Danny Jones]

And basically everyone would go out and catch as much fish as they can. You'd come in, you have to declare how many pounds of fish you caught. And like, say, say like that year it was 2,000, £2 million or whatever. So everyone would just go out and catch as much fish as they possibly could. And as soon as that £2 million was hit, everyone would have to stop fishing.

[John]

Gotcha.

[Danny Jones]

So after, I want to say, I

[John]

forget what year was.

[Danny Jones]

I want to say it was like 2000. Around that same time, 2005, maybe. I could be wrong. They. They did this thing where they gave an allotment to fishermen based on their previous catch.

[John]

Gotcha.

[Danny Jones]

Right. So say like I was a fisherman based on my previous catch history, now I'm going to be given £100,000 of grouper quota each year from the federal government.

[John]

Interesting.

[Danny Jones]

Wow. So it's like the best retirement known to man. Yeah, right.

[John]

Yeah.

[Danny Jones]

Some people got like 200,000, £300,000 of allotment each year. Every year the federal government allots you that much, that much quota. But what, how it went off the rails was some of these people now that own these boats and they were catching these fish, they said, wow, I get this voucher every year. Why am I going to keep fishing? I'm just going to lease out my quota to other boat owners and to other people to go out fishing. So now it got so off the rails where this quota started being traded like stock.

[John]

Yeah.

[Danny Jones]

So now you could just be sitting in a high rise on Wall street in New York and buying and selling fishing quota.

[John]

Yeah. 100, 000 a group.

[Danny Jones]

And the people at the very bottom, the people, the deckhands, the people that are. That are catching these fish, no one's looking out for them. These guys are just. And no one gives a. These. We'll hire some homeless guy to come catch fish. Who cares? Save our bottom line.

[John]

Just like a clandestine marijuana grow.

[Danny Jones]

Right, right, exactly.

[John]

Care about those people. Yeah, yeah.

[Danny Jones]

And it's what I learned was it's with the. It's way different in like the Northeast where like the boat owners, the people that are like running the throttle, those are. Catch the fish, those are the quota owners have to be on the boats. It's not like that where you can be so disconnected from it.

[John]

Dude.

[Danny Jones]

But, you know, it's the same. It's the same story. You know, it's just that money, that money corrupts us.

[John]

It does that's a great example. And I gotta watch your documentary now. Yeah, I'm intrigued.

[Danny Jones]

It's crazy.

[John]

I gotta love for fishing like you do, man. I go back and worked a lot of commercial fishermen, you know, most of them awesome. You know, had a few violations, but. Yeah, yeah, that was one of the funnest parts of the job before this started getting western.

[Danny Jones]

Yeah, it's crazy, man. Well, thank you for doing this, bro. This has been, this has been really interesting and informative. What's. What's do you guys. You said you're working on a new documentary with Ironclad?

[John]

Yeah, yeah, we're doing. I've done a couple, three or four change agents. Andy Stumps, the host of that and we've got kind of a, kind of a four part thing that's in edit right now. And I'll get all that information out, make sure, you know, you get wind of it. It'll. I think it's going to be very eye opening, but it's going to cover the origins where this all started with us in California and kind of what it's blown up to nationally and ironically we both ended up settling in Montana and there we are and now it's on that border side. But first book is Hidden War.

[Danny Jones]

Is that right?

[John]

This is, this is my second book.

[Danny Jones]

That's your second book. Okay.

[John]

This is actually the second edition, the updated one.

[Danny Jones]

Oh, okay, cool.

[John]

This one's for you, brother.

[Danny Jones]

Thank you, man.

[John]

Yep. No, thank you for what you're doing. Not only is your show awesome, but man, you're just getting this information out and I can't thank you enough for it. But that'll get a little more, quite a bit more into detail than some of the stuff we hit on today. But it also sets us up for what is next. That's awesome.

[Danny Jones]

It's amazing.

[John]

Yeah.

[Danny Jones]

What is next?

[John]

Possibly another book with what we've encountered lately, going into it a little bit more on the cartel front and some other crimes and just keeping the outreach stuff going. There's a, there's a scripted project right now that's, that's optioned that, that's in development and this thing with Ironclad is going to be really cool and that's, that's dropping relatively soon, so. And that's where we're at.

[Danny Jones]

That's amazing, man. You worked with Ed Calderon too, right?

[John]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know Ed.

[Danny Jones]

Yeah. His story is crazy. It's working in Mexico with those.

[John]

Oh, it's so crazy. It's so crazy. Yeah. And him. What he saw in Mexico and us, what we saw on the California side, we both just. Yeah, more of a show. We just go, wow.

[Danny Jones]

Yeah.

[John]

And everybody, we're both alive to tell the story.

[Danny Jones]

Yeah. It's incredible, man. It's incredible. It's a crazy. Just hidden underbelly that, you know, was. I. I never realized that it was this crazy in America, man. And. And you're doing a great job of exposing it. And we'll link the books below for everyone. Appreciate it, and thanks again, man. This has been really fun.

[John]

It's honor, man. Good to know you finally.

[Danny Jones]

Yeah.

[John]

Thanks for a long conversation. Loved it.

[Danny Jones]

Yeah, me too. All right, good night, folks.