Robert Arrington - Deer Meat For Dinner | Tom Rowland Podcast Ep. 16

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Tom Rowland: Welcome to the podcast today, guys. By popular request, I have caught up to an exceptional man that is known far and wide on YouTube by the handle deer meat for dinner.

Robert Arrington: Yes, sir. As they all say, deer meat.

Tom Rowland: That's that's what they call you, deer meat.

Robert Arrington: Man. I'm down on the river or driving down the truck. Honk, honk, dearie.

Tom Rowland: Alright, man.

Robert Arrington: Yeah. Vegans yelling, dearie. You know?

Tom Rowland: Do you have any trouble with the vegans online? Sometimes they, sometimes the vegans can be a little bit, aggressive.

Robert Arrington: Yeah. No. I have I have one video. It was actually the fifth video ever made skinning a gator.

And, it gets a little bit of hate, but the hate goes away. It doesn't it doesn't percolate. It just someone will blow up and get all angry, and then it just goes away because we have a real culture of respect on my channel. I was gonna say that, man.

Tom Rowland: You've got an army. You've got 844,000 subscribers. And these guys, girls, people are, are big fans. I mean, you have you have created, an army of of supporters.

Robert Arrington: Yeah. And a lot you know, I have a lot of friends that YouTube and are in this industry. I call it an industry. It's a life for me, but it is an industry because we make a living at it.

Right. But, everyone's always worried about getting more views and getting more subscribers. If if you ever watch my videos, I never really tell people, hey. Subscribe.

I do thank them for sharing my my videos and whatnot. I thank them for the support and the encouragement that they give us, but I'm happy for everyone that I have now. I'm really like, if I just stopped if I stopped gaining subscribers and just kept what I have right now, I'd be very blessed and very happy. So I try to be very content with what I have.

And when I'm you know, when you're content with something, it's very good to you. It feels good to you. You know, if you're not content with it and you're always wanting more, wanting more, wanting more, then it's never it really is never fulfilling. So I tell everyone, hey.

They're like, you're almost to a million. I'm like, yeah. But look. I just passed 800,000.

I'm so happy just to be here. Right. And I'm always thinking

Tom Rowland: Well, that's

Robert Arrington: You know, what am I gonna do? What's my next video? Like, right now, only thing I'm worried about is hanging out and talking with you. I've I've watched your stuff for a long time.

Thank you so much for your your kind words towards me. But No.

Tom Rowland: That's very

Robert Arrington: nice. I've watched you guys. I think your your format with Saltwater Experience and and Into the Blue and those those shows, really intimate, very, very, very well produced, which, not all outdoor shows are. No.

You are amongst Well the very best.

Tom Rowland: That's also very kind of you to say. One of the things that I have, when when we got such overwhelming response, I asked everybody who they'd wanna see me interview and, got a whole slew of list of names. And I have been keeping a list of names ever since I started doing this project of people that I admire, people that I respect, people that I think are cool, people that I don't know, people that I think I could learn something from, and that's really what this is all about. I like to learn.

I've got what I call a white belt mentality. I feel like no matter how long I've been doing this, I feel like I could learn from somebody that just got started yesterday. I feel like there's always something to learn. And so when I start looking at your stuff, one of the things that resonated with me right away two things, actually.

One, family. Two, is that you, you carry yourself with gratitude. Like, you you you say that a lot. Man, feel great to be out here.

I'm I'm so thankful for this. I'm so thankful for that. How does that happen for you? Do is that a conscious thing that you have gratitude for where you are?

Robert Arrington: I I believe it has a lot to do with how you're brought up and what you're brought up doing. And and we were brought up with manners. Yes, sir. No, sir.

Yes, ma'am. And, as a kid, heck, I'd have been perfectly content with a bucket of dead shrimp and a cane pole on that dock.

Tom Rowland: Yeah.

Robert Arrington: I'd figure out how many sheep said we're around each pole and how many mangrove snappers were there. And if they weren't biting, I'd catch a hard head catfish. It didn't matter. To and I say this on my channel all the time.

It's about getting the bite. So I love blue marlin fishing and daytime sword fishing and tarpon fishing, but it doesn't matter if I'm catching a a cichlid on a beetle spin or a blue marlin in Costa Rica. It you've got to figure out how to get the bite. You know?

And how do you get that bite? That that to me is awesome. And so no matter where I am or what I'm doing, I'm really excited to be there. There's millions and billions of people all over the Earth that never get to spend a day doing what I do.

I know the vast majority of my subscribers, unfortunately, won't get to do the things that I do, and I I'm getting to make a living doing it. So you know what? Every single day, I wake up in the morning, I say my prayers. I say, Lord, thank you for today, and thank you for the opportunities that you give me, and I'm gonna make the best of it today.

I never worry about tomorrow. I only worry about what I'm doing today. Mhmm. And when you live like that and when you when you when you are thankful for what you have, you appreciate what you have, and it all means more.

And it all you know, you're able just to appreciate it. And and I appreciate you saying that, but that is, to me, that's so big. It's just to appreciate what you have and be thankful for what you have.

Tom Rowland: Well, that was a I I consider it to be a a big shift in my life when I came across that, that concept of purposefully living with gratitude, being thankful for every breath you're taking, being thankful for every step you're taking. This one, guy told me this this little thing that he does every morning. And I started I started bringing it into my life, and it is you step out of bed, The first foot hits the ground. You say thank.

Second foot hits the ground. You say you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. All the way to the bathroom to brush your teeth or whatever you're doing. And, man, I started that a long time ago, and it what it does is it sets you at at a place for the day that you are grateful for you're grateful for that step. You're grateful for just waking up, and I don't know.

It has been profound in my life, and I love to see it with others that that just they're not taking anything for for granted. And and often, people that live lives like you do or like I do, you get a lot of opportunities to go outside. You may you know, they say, familiarity breeds contempt. You know, if if it's too familiar, I don't wanna do that anymore.

If if if the fish is too plentiful, I don't like that fish anymore. You know? So the to stay grateful and thankful for every opportunity, I think, is is is really good, and I think it's a huge, great message that you're putting out to, to your audience. Well, I appreciate it.

Robert Arrington: So Benita's do breed contempt

Tom Rowland: in me, though. Because they are absolutely too plentiful. But, you you know, you could say that if you went up to the Northeast that they are they are the most prized species. You know?

Robert Arrington: I know. I I know you did a video with with Josh, Jorgensen Yeah. Or a a podcast with him. And when you were you were talking about that, I was thinking, goodness gracious.

Josh and the bonitas, we go fishing. He's like, man, look at all. And I'm like

Tom Rowland: Oh, he he talks about it. He talked about it on for for a long time about about the difference between Northeast and down here. And if those people came down here, they wouldn't believe what was going on. And and and these people down here just you know, he had an interesting idea that I never really heard is that people don't like the most available.

Like, whatever's the most available, you know, whether that's Jack Clavels, Benitos, Barracudas, whatever. But that's an interesting thing that happens, but I think if you're living living with gratitude, you can you can have one slip of a bonita. Don't like this. You you you're you're allowed you're allowed one one fish that you don't like.

Right.

Robert Arrington: Right. Well, let's

Tom Rowland: talk about the way that you grew up because you're saying you grew up with manners. You grew up you're you're you're a self proclaimed Florida cracker. Right? 100% cracker to the bone. So tell me what a cracker is in Alright.

From a from a cracker, What is because because a lot of people that live outside of Florida have another idea what a cracker is. Tell me what what a true Florida cracker considers a a cracker.

Robert Arrington: Okay. True Florida crackers just in a well, we'll back up, and I'll and I'll tell this really quick because we don't have four hours to do this. Back up to, Ponce de Leon when he came to Florida looking for or came to The Americas looking for the fountain of youth. They brought a couple ships, 500 cows, 500 horses.

They were Andalusian cattle and, small, really tough, could deal with anything. They offloaded over in Port Charlotte. As they offloaded, we're getting set up. They got ambushed by Indians, Native Americans.

He was actually shot in the calf by an arrow by a poison arrow. They left the cattle, left the horses, jumped back on the ships, and headed to Cuba. That's where, Ponce de Leon died was in Cuba. So all his cracker all his Andalusian cattle, Andalusian Andalusian horses went wild.

And, I mean, the think about what Florida looked like

Tom Rowland: Yeah.

Robert Arrington: Before anyone was here. You know?

Tom Rowland: It's like your ranch, basically. Right? Yeah. It

Robert Arrington: looked like my ranch with mosquitoes the size of ospreys. And, so all the all the cattle started breeding, becoming wild. Well, then, you know, the the US government was like, okay. Here's the deal.

Whoever wants to go down there and just, tame that land, go for it. Well, when they came down and found all the wild cows and wild horses, they started setting up huge land tracks. And, I mean, there's huge land barons in Florida to this day that originated then, but they didn't have the manpower to to do it. So then they reached out to anyone.

Hey. Anyone who wants to come down here, we'll give you a little little homestead. We'll give you some land, and you come down and hunt these cows. That's why cattlemen in Florida are will never be known as cowboys.

They're always cow hunters because that's how we originated as cow hunters hunting the cracker cows and the cracker horses. So they came down and were just tough, tough men, and we really utilized a cow whip. Most place, they call it a bull whip. In Florida, it's a cow whip used by a cow hunter.

And if you imagine working cows, it's gonna be brutally hot, mosquitoes just really tough, and it's so thick. So if I'm pushing my cattle here, if I'm working around this cypress head here and three of my buddies or two of my buddies are over there, I don't I can't I don't have a cell phone, so I can't text them. Right. And so you're constantly pow, working that, you know, pow, like a really good cow hunter.

It's just it's just amazing how they can just pow, just throw it Pow. And they'll you know, as you're working your cow as you're working your your cows and riding your horse, they'll drag that they'll drag their whip in and pow. Pow. Well, your friends can associate with where you are.

They know, oh, he's there. We'll push around this way. We'll catch up with him there. I believe a lot of it had to do with mosquitoes also.

You know what I mean? Cow. And, but then as you're bringing the cattle in, you'd hear the you'd hear the moose of the cows. But all the women, you could hear that cracking sound from miles away coming, and they would know, here come the crackers because they were known by the sound of the cracking of their whip.

Well, then they'd start gathering up some cornbread or whatever meat was available, maybe stewing some some swamp cabbage, making sure that was good and hot, have meals ready because guys would get in. They wanna get some food back on the, you know, back on the trail working. There wasn't a lot of time to lollygag. And so that's where cracker came from.

And that was that was hard, hard work, and it was very respected work. And so to to be the son of a cracker or the grandson of a true cracker, my my grandpa, all he did was cut lighter knot fence posts for a nickel apiece and and cow hunt. That's what he did. That's what my mom grew up grew up doing, trapping otters and coons and possums and gators and whatnot.

You know? Yeah. And so to to have that heritage and have that lineage is it's a badge of honor to me.

Tom Rowland: So how much time did you get to spend with your grandfather that Tons. Tons.

Robert Arrington: Tons. Tons. Yeah. I he passed away, he passed away about five years ago.

And I from is six

Tom Rowland: So wait a minute. Five years ago, when was

Robert Arrington: he born? Eleventh nineteen twenty one. So in 1921 Mhmm.

Tom Rowland: That well, it would be later, I guess, when when he's actually working and doing all of that. So he's probably 25 years old doing that.

Robert Arrington: Right? 11, 12, 13 years old. Yeah. He had no education. You'd once you're old enough to ride a horse and crack a whip

Tom Rowland: Yeah.

Robert Arrington: That's what you

Tom Rowland: I see it.

Robert Arrington: He had no education whatsoever. His education was far beyond books Yeah. And and writing. Well, the natural world.

Tom Rowland: And then he you spend time with him, and he shows you how to work the land. He shows you how to do the things that you're doing on your videos because I'm looking at these videos. And, man, you're cutting off hog balls. You're and you're making swamp cabbage, and you're trapping stuff, and you're you're you're you're taking everything, and you're you're creating a meal out of it, and you're living off the land as, as other people did with with the with the comforts of a stove and and stewed tomatoes and all of that stuff.

But you're doing this in a way that you're cooking everything from toadfish and and, and and and puffers to, you know, hogs and deer and and I mean, I hadn't seen you eat a possum, but you trap them. Mhmm. So that's all knowledge that comes from your grandfather. Because when I'm watching this, I'm like, how old can this guy possibly be?

I mean, how old are you? I'm 41. So 41. I'm a little ahead of you.

But and and I have gathered some skills in my time, but I'm I'm quite impressed with with the the breadth of environmental knowledge that you have and how you're skinning a gator one day, you're you're you're cape in a hog the next day, You're spearfishing the next day. You're doing all of these things, and I'm thinking, how has this guy developed these skills in forty one years? And that all what you're saying now is that all came from your grandfather. Is that right?

No, sir. Oh.

Robert Arrington: What came from my grandpa is

Tom Rowland: And there's more.

Robert Arrington: Yeah. Well, no. What came from my grandpa is the ability to do your best today. He didn't only thing in the world he knew was the bible and the back of a horse and treat your family like they're everything, treat your friends with respect, and to do your best today.

And so, you know, he showed me some things, like we skinned skinned some soft shell turtles together and and cut some swamp cabbage and whatnot, but I really learned how to cut swamp cabbage for my good friend, Cliff Berg, who is another old cracker. Mhmm. But I I tried to learn something every day, and you alluded to it earlier about we've been doing you know, you and I, we've been hunting and or hunting I know I've been hunting and fishing my whole life, but it doesn't matter if someone's only been doing it for a little while. They may see things from a different perspective and actually have a new take on it.

And you're like, that's really cool right there. You know? Because we we look through our glasses that we've been seeing the world in our way. But every day, I'm dealing with someone, talking with someone, have a conversation with somebody.

I try to learn something every every day. And, you know, my mom says, boy, you got a mind like a steel trap. You know? I'd remember things, and I you know, it's applied knowledge.

If I do this here, then all of a sudden you'll be doing something over here, and you're like, oh, that'll work right there. And and and those could be I

Tom Rowland: mean, I don't know if you do this in your in your thing, but I'll read business books that help me with fishing. I will read some other kind of book that helps me with something else because you're taking these concepts, and you're like, that's interesting how how he thinks about that. And what if I did that over here? Would that work?

Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it's a massive failure. But it's worth a try. You know?

And, do you do you try to apply those different things? Like, the things that you're learning on the land, do you try to apply those to parenting? Do you try to apply those to business? Do you try to apply those in different places?

Because the natural world is a great teacher, I think.

Robert Arrington: 100%. So I can tell you this. I don't read any book. Like, I don't read any books.

I I I read about a chapter out of my Bible every day. That's just what I've been doing my whole life, but I learn a lot in the wild. So I'll tell you this, and and I try to apply this all the time. So we have 3,000 acres just to the north here.

That's our ranch. And if you have a crackhead doe, she will raise a crackhead fawn. And what I mean by that, we call crackheads does that just are panic stricken, paranoid, blow at everything, stomp at everything, run around, just they stress out everything else on the land, and their fawns will grow up exactly like them.

Tom Rowland: Mhmm. But

Robert Arrington: then you have a good old doe that is just a a awesome doe, and she's smart. She's smart as a tack. You know? And she's calm, and she's smart, and she just takes her time.

She will raise a fawn the exact same way. And so with my children, you know, you're a dad, aren't you?

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Oh, yeah. I've got three kids.

Robert Arrington: Yeah. Yeah. So

Tom Rowland: 20 year old, an 18 year old, and a 14 year old girl.

Robert Arrington: Dude, what stress can a a child I mean I mean, it can be terrifying and stressful and but, you know, I always think about them old does that are always calm and collected and smart watching what's going on. They raise their children the same way. And so I, you know, I think the most important job in the world that I have or any parent has is raising your children and taking care of your family. And, so I always try to remember the old doe that's calm, collected, keeps everything under control because that's the way I want my kids to grow up.

Tom Rowland: And you see that the that the one that stomps and and blows and stuff like that either gets taken down or Gets shot a lot. They they get shot, gets coyoted Yeah. Gets something. Right?

I mean, and that's that's the that's the lesson. But there's so many lessons from from from nature that I'm sure that you're you're bringing into your Mhmm. To your your family. So tell me about your family.

How many kids do

Robert Arrington: you have? We got two children. I've got Aria, who's my two year old daughter, and Emma is, almost nine months old, and my wife is Sarah. She's, awesome.

I mean, she's just an amazing mom. She's an amazing wife. Super, super good girl. And, she's taken a huge sacrifice with being a mom because she's, like, the one of the most avid outdoorsmen you'd ever meet.

I mean, hunting, fishing, diving. First day I ever took her snorkeling, she jumped in the water like she'd been doing her whole life. She can, like, legitly go free dive thirty, forty feet, like like, no problem, and she grew up in Wisconsin. But she is so dedicated and passionate about being a mom.

And to me, that's that's the most beautiful thing ever. And, you know, as the girls are almost big enough where where we can do bigger and better things Yeah. Or Yeah. Ask my mom or her mom, like, how you think you want good for a little bit?

We're gonna slip off and do this. You know? But but she's really been she's been amazing. It's it's amazing to watch her.

Tom Rowland: How does a guy like you find time to get out of the woods or the water long enough to meet a girl like that?

Robert Arrington: That's a pretty cool story. I was I was I guide a lot of alligator hunts. And so if it weren't for alligator hunting, I would've went broke, man. When when the economy turned bad and whatnot, people still wanted to go gator hunting.

And and just when I was at my woods end, someone would call and book a gator hunt, which was always that was a blessing. And, the owners of AMS Bow Fishing contacted me and said, hey. We'd like to go on a couple alligator hunts. So, yeah.

Sure. They come down. Tough hunt, but we caught, the first night, we caught, like, an eleven five or eleven six. Nice gator, and we took a bunch of pictures.

And they were uploading it on Facebook, so we became friends. Well, she was on their pro stuff in Wisconsin as a bow fisherman. And so I I get this friend request from this beautiful blonde haired girl. I'm like, well, I hope she's a real human because she sure is pretty.

And, so I started stalking her, you know, poaching through her

Tom Rowland: Yeah.

Robert Arrington: Through her photos and sent her a little message, and we started talking. And ten days later, I said, you know, I wanna go look at a piece of property in Iowa. She goes, we'll fly into Madison. I'll pick you up, and we'll drive over there.

So ten days later, flew to Whis flew to Wisconsin. We spent the weekend together. She quit all her jobs. We started traveling all over the country deer hunting, and she moved to Florida having never seen it.

Wow. You know? She tells her mom and dad, hey. I'm gone.

I'm going to Florida. They thought she was crazy and, came down and

Tom Rowland: Did she make that decision in February?

Robert Arrington: She made it like I mean, we met in October. By November, she was like, I'm going to Florida.

Tom Rowland: It hadn't even gotten really cold yet. No. I was thinking February might be, like No. It was the peak of winter.

I'm going to Florida.

Robert Arrington: It was immediate and without hesitation. She came down here and has embraced the Florida life, like, just I mean, she she knows it so well whether we're out on the buggy, on the ranch. She has a channel called Dear Mom that, you know, she sort of vlogs and shows the kids and and whatnot. But she's man, you'll you'll see her out in the boat crabbing, lobstering, whatever.

She's she's wide open, full throttle.

Tom Rowland: And so, we raised three kids in Key West, We had no family support. Is she is she having any issues with that with her family being back or is her family back in Wisconsin?

Robert Arrington: Her family's in Wisconsin, but her mom and dad her mom is down right now visiting, and her mom and dad are still married as well. My mom and dad are still married. They live about a mile and a half from us. And, so my mom comes over all the time, and and, so we do have some we do have plenty of support.

Mhmm. But Sarah Sarah, you know, she's pretty hardcore. She has some kids with her all the time, and, you know, she does take them over to my mom and whatnot, but, she's a she's a good mom.

Tom Rowland: That's that's a good thing. I I have a similar similar wife with, man. She took good care of our kids, and and we made big sacrifices to to make sure that she could stay home with them. And, one of the best probably one of the best decisions that we've ever made together was to to do whatever it took to make sure that she could stay with the kids because a lot of kids these days are not getting that.

Robert Arrington: Yeah. It's a huge problem, man. Yeah. Huge.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. So, so what's, tell me about deer meat for dinner, because I know that when I first met you, you may not remember this, but long time ago, we met at iCast, and you had something gone called respect outdoors, and I remember that. And then that what happened? It came and went or what Yeah.

So story there.

Robert Arrington: You know, I don't know. I'm not too familiar. I I don't know how well your audience understands the whole time by concept on TV. You know?

Oh, let's go in and buy airtime.

Tom Rowland: Let's tell them.

Robert Arrington: Yeah. So TV, outdoor TV, although it's pretty much run its course and is dying on the vine as we speak, over the past decade or more, go in to a channel like Sportsman Channel or Outdoor or whatnot, and you buy your time slot, and you buy your commercial space, and then you produce a show and go out and sell your sponsor, your commercial ads, and pay your airtime, and then pay your production, and pay all this, that, and the other, and then try to keep a little bit left over. That's your profit. Well, I went out, and I had respect outdoors was exactly what deer meat for dinner is.

It was just me out doing what I do, hunting, fishing, cooking. It was exactly the same thing, although YouTube has brought out a lot more just spontaneous realness because I can do so many more of them. I'm not doing 13 or 26 episodes. I I do two or three or four a week, and, it it's just much more natural.

But the concept was the same with respect outdoors. And all of a sudden, me and Sarah get together, and I'm talking with the networks about what my contract's gonna how much I was gonna owe them for airtime. I'm thinking, man, every time I get a new sponsor, it seems like my airtime goes up equivalent. I'm I'm like, I'm making no money.

I'm working around the clock, and I'm broke is the 10 commandments. And so I was I was sitting in my kitchen cooking deer meat at cast iron skillet with a couple back straps sliced up, and I was thinking, okay. I can't do this. What am I gonna do?

And a good friend of mine, Greg Musenidis, Greg, if you hear this podcast, I love you, brother. You mean the world to me.

Tom Rowland: Mhmm.

Robert Arrington: He's like, man, you need to do YouTube. That's where it's all going. You gotta do YouTube. And I thought he was crazy, but I started looking at it.

And I said, alright. I'm gonna start a YouTube channel. I said, what am I what am I gonna call this thing? I said, what do I really love in this world?

As I'm cooking a cast iron skillet full of deer meat, I'm like, well, heck. I like deer meat. That's for sure. And I said, tell you the truth.

And I'm talking out loud to myself. I said, tell you the truth, I I really like deermeatfor dinner. And I'm just totally joking with myself, and I I look on my phone, deermeatfordinner.com, and it's available. I'm like, oh, man.

I'm like, hey, honey. You got a you got any space on your credit card? She goes, a little bit. I said, well, I need to use it.

I'm gonna buy a I'm gonna buy a a domain name. And she's like, you've got to be kidding me. I'm like, no. No.

I think this will be cool. Deermeatfordinner.com. That sounds awesome. And so we just started going, started going, started going and making videos, and it took a couple years.

Now I was doing other things, guiding gator hunts, then I got into being a captain again, running a big sport fishing boat and but started moving things along, and then it started to grow and grow and grow. And once we started picking up steam, I remember laying there in bed talking with Sarah going, honey, we this ain't a joke. We have a this is bigger than TV ever was. This is what TV what I this is what I dreamed TV would be.

Yeah. And so now we've embraced it. And over the past year, we've gone full time into YouTube, and it's just exploded in in opportunity. And, but, again, I try to live for today.

You know? I'm only word ask me what I'm gonna do the rest of the day. I have no idea. I have no idea what I'm gonna do.

All I know is I'm gonna do this with you today. Once I get done with that, then I'll say, alright. Now what's next? But I'm only I'm very focused on one thing at one time, and and, and that's how Jeremy for dinner is.

I'll look around at the weather. Well, looks pretty good. It is pretty calm out right now. You could run out, go fishing in in the ocean, or I don't wanna be on the ranch because there's no wind.

It'd be hot as blue blazes. So everything that I do is based on the weather and how I feel at that moment.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. And you you are equipped. You're we're we're sitting right here in Jupiter, which, man, I don't know how how I missed this place for a long time. But over the past few years, you know, I came up here and fished with Ryan Nits.

He introduces me to the place. I see this amazing snook fishery that you have. Then, just recently, we shot over to The Bahamas. We come back.

That's what I'm doing on this trip. And I'm like, Jupiter's right there. Again, here's Jupiter. I come through here.

Blacktip h is here. You're here. Ryan Nitz is here. Davis Bennett is here.

All these people that I know are here, these cool people. You've got this 3,000 acre ranch in in here. You're you're hog hunting and deer hunting and doing all this cool stuff. And, I I seriously don't know how I missed Jupiter.

I went right past it to Key West and never stopped. But this place is amazing.

Robert Arrington: Takes yeah. It is amazing. Take Jupiter. Let's use the lighthouse, for example.

Go to lighthouse and take a string and go 100 miles and do a circle around it Yeah. And see what you can do.

Tom Rowland: Well, that's like that's like what I always say about Yellowstone National Park. It's like people are like, where's the best trout fishing in the world? Like, 200 mile radius around Yellowstone National Park. You just you just stay in that circle and don't leave, and you're gonna be fine.

You there will you'll never run out of things to do. And that's that's very similar to this and also very similar to, like, Key West or or Duck Key or something like that in the you know, if you do that, you got all the Everglades. You got all the offshore. And there are very few places like that.

Louisiana is a place like that where you have this amazing off shore fishing, the amazing in shore fishing, the amazing hunting, the amazing freshwater fishing, the amazing opportunities around there. I guess North Carolina kinda comes to mind, or Maryland is another place kinda like that. But they're few and far between. And even in Maryland, the the the run offshore is so huge.

But here, man, this this world that has opened for me now at the in The Bahamas of just realizing you know, when you're in Key West, The Bahamas seems like you might as well go to Christmas Island. You might as well go to Canada. I mean, it just seems like a long way away. And but but we did it, and we run across and have an amazing experience over there.

Bahamas I mean, I've been to The Bahamas bone fishing and stuff like that, but never in our own boat, never doing things like that. It's beautiful. It's amazing. It's awesome.

The people are fantastic. It's a it's a it's an another, like, a a foreign experience. The you're in a foreign country. There's different currency.

There's different food. There's different people. There's different dialects. There's different everything.

I loved it. Mhmm. And you've got all of that here. So you're equipped to do so many things from from here.

And I'm assuming you've got boats, you've got cars, you got swamp buggies, you've got, what? How how are you equipped? Tell me about your tell me about your,

Robert Arrington: Oh, you know, it's, that's it's kind of humbling to think. You know? We have a big tour RV, big, old, huge RV that's all wrapped out in Dear Me for dinner.

Tom Rowland: I saw a picture

Robert Arrington: of that.

Tom Rowland: You still have that?

Robert Arrington: Oh, yeah, man. I'm not getting rid of that thing. And, then we have a real cool buggy. I literally rebuilt the buggy and a Rambo at the exact same time.

So we and they What's

Tom Rowland: a Rambo? That. That. Okay.

Robert Arrington: The boat right behind us. That '20 seven Rambo.

Tom Rowland: Okay.

Robert Arrington: And I've taken that to The Bahamas over 60 times back more. Nice. Just running over. Right?

I mean, I you wanna talk about being spontaneous? I will jump on the boat right now and shoot over there with not even think about it. In hand. Roll.

Mhmm. So, yeah, I'm very spontaneous. I have the boat. I have the buggy.

Got the RV. I got a camp. My camp is totally off the grid, runs strictly on generator power. You know, me and my wife both drive Chevy Silverados, and, we're building a new home out in Jupiter well, I'm building a phone.

Okay. Everyone, it's in Jupiter Farms. You're wondering where it is? I kinda let that one flip.

Stalkers. Yeah. We're building a new home right now, and, it's been in, like, a new found thing pretty much everywhere we go now. We have fans.

It's it doesn't matter if it's in the hospital or Publix or everywhere you go or driving down the road. There's people our fans, and that's such an honor. You know? And and it's sort of it's a new it's a new reality of how do you how do you deal with that.

You know, I try to spend time with everyone. Sarah's like, we can't spend an hour with everything. A person says hello, but, it's, it's it's awesome. And so I just try to utilize my gear, my my my tools, and my ability to bless a lot of other people.

I'm I'm getting ready to start this thing where I just roll up wherever. The jetty. Hey. What are you doing?

Catching any fish? No? You wanna let's get on, but let's go. Because those are people you can learn so much from.

Tom Rowland: Mhmm.

Robert Arrington: You know? They're out there on that jetty or out on that bridge or just wanna go do something.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. What are they doing? Yeah. Who are they?

Yeah. Why why are I mean, this is their time. This is what they choose to do. They're out there by themselves.

It's an interesting story on every one of those people.

Robert Arrington: Absolutely. And so the more time I can spend with people like that doing things like that, you know,

Tom Rowland: the better. You know what'll be really cool? Is when you roll up somebody on that bridge, and you're like, hey, man. I got a livewell full of bait.

Mhmm. Come on. Get in. And he's like, dude, why would I wanna go over there?

And you're like, hold on a second. Hold on a second. What here. What are you doing?

And he's like, I'll tell you what. Why don't you come up here, and let me show you how I'm catching these these giant snook underneath this bridge? They're giant snook under that bridge? What?

I didn't know that. Yeah. And he's like, yeah. Why don't you leave your camera in the car because I don't want everyone else to know about it.

And then that's that white belt mentality.

Robert Arrington: You learn Ryan Nitz. What the person you just ex to you just explained is Ryan Nitz. Yeah. Like, that joker has scales.

Yeah. He is proper.

Tom Rowland: I love Ryan Nitz.

Robert Arrington: Yeah. He's a little clown.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. He's, one one of my favorite, guest shows that that we've ever done, and we don't do a lot of guest shows because, you know, I mean, you're doing this. The the whole, crew, the the the next person that comes in, especially sports stars or something like that. There are tons of people I would like to invite on the show.

Tons of them. But when I contact them, they have this window of, well, could can we go get it done in twelve hours? Maybe. You know?

But then we end up with a half finished show, and it's no good. It never sees the light of day. So, honestly, we've stayed away from guests. But, Ryan, you know, this world of Instagram, and I've talked about this a bunch of times, and it's how how I found you, how I found Ryan, how I found Davis Bennett, Blacktip h, my friend Graham Talo, my friend, Melton Hill Bill, all of these people that have turned into fishing and hunting buddies, then I'm looking through Instagram like, this guy likes to do the same kind of stuff I do.

Man, I'd like to learn how to cut off hog balls like that.

Robert Arrington: Well, we'll go cut one then.

Tom Rowland: I'm all about it. I I wanna talk about that because I was I was watching that, and I I gotta tell you, I've never cut hog balls off. But so I wanna I wanna know about that because we don't have like, I spent a lot of time in Tennessee, and the hogs haven't made it up there. So I don't have experience with hogs.

I didn't grow up with hogs. I don't know anything about it. A little further south, those guys have a lot of experience with hogs, but I don't. So one of the videos that I like of yours is making a boar a bar.

Mhmm. So explain that to me. Like, what what happens there? A wild pig has balls.

They're a they're a boar.

Robert Arrington: Mhmm. That's

Tom Rowland: right. Why do you want

Robert Arrington: to make them a bar? Well, so take our ranch, for example. We have to manage the hog population, and I don't wanna just randomly go out and kill a 100 boar hogs and throw them away because they stink terribly.

Tom Rowland: Okay. So that's that's where the that's where the confusion with me lies. The the wild boar is so lean. It's just very

Robert Arrington: it imagine what you smell like if you were fired up, like, beyond life and hadn't worn deodorant a day in your life. Right after workout. Yeah. But you've never worn deodorant a day in your life, and it's and you don't take showers Mhmm.

Ever. Mhmm.

Tom Rowland: And you're all in mud. And

Robert Arrington: And you yeah. And your whole life is about beating up other borehogs and breeding as many sowhogs as you possibly can. That's a bore hog, and they are vile. I mean, they'll stink up your whole house.

Tom Rowland: Mhmm.

Robert Arrington: Now you can kill a small boar hog.

Tom Rowland: Meat good, though? If you were to if you were to go through the process of cleaning it, is it edible? Not big one. Not that much.

Robert Arrington: Not a big one. Okay. But now on the flop side, if I take my dogs out or if I'd set a trap and I catch a boar hog, in in a minute, I can cut him. It's it's a very small incision, grab them, and they're big.

You know? A good sized boar hog, his old gonads would be as big as a grapefruit.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Grapefruit.

Robert Arrington: Yeah. Or a a big, big lemon, you know, like a big old lemon for sure. Take it, make a small incision in it, and each each one of them will be in their own little sack over here, you know, and make your first cut, pull it tight, make your second cut, pop it out, and rip it off. You don't want So

Tom Rowland: they're ripping it off. That's what I noticed there. And there I was waiting for you to cut No. That you didn't cut.

Yeah. Right. So you just you just squeeze that out and just went like this, and it's gone. Pull it right off, and it'll go Like Velcro?

Like

Robert Arrington: no. I'm thinking.

Tom Rowland: Like pulling a pulling a key lime off a tree?

Robert Arrington: Yeah. But think so the the vessels and whatnot that they have in there, if you just pull it off, if you rip it off, they'll they'll pull tight. And literally, when they pull and they get tight and they don't bleed, like, literally, when you cut him

Tom Rowland: right showed that on your on your video. It was cool.

Robert Arrington: There's no blood anywhere. And they within all the time, I catch the same borehole. So I catch him in the trap, cut him, let him go, and I'll catch that joker again. I've caught one five times.

Every time I set the trap, I catch the same bar that I've already cut out of that trap. So now once he's cut, immediately has they immediately stop looking for sowhogs. I don't know if I can say it, but I always say

Tom Rowland: say anything.

Robert Arrington: I say, they stop chasing ass and start eating grass. And, but, you know, a borehole will have a big shield. Uh-huh. It's called a dermal layer.

It's actually bone growing into their skin, and it's it's a shield. It's crazy. They'll lose that. Once they have once they lose that the the hormone, they'll lose their shield.

Tom Rowland: Really?

Robert Arrington: They'll put on a layer of fat, and they go from being the worst eating wild game in the world to the best eating wild game in the world. Take a 200 pound bar that's got an inch of fat on him. The meat is better than any store bought pork you will ever ever see.

Tom Rowland: Well, I can believe that. I'm not a big fan of store bought pork. I just I mean, bacon, who doesn't like bacon? Yeah.

But Communist. Calumet. That's exactly right. Bacon is the candy of meats.

That is, that's awesome. And you can buy store bought. You can buy either this, whatever. Bay all bacon is good.

Right. We agree there Right. Perfectly. But but, I I I think that pigs and and hogs are interesting because I've heard other people talk about, you take a domesticated pig and you let it go out into the wild, and they change into a hog.

Well Do they? What's your experience with that?

Robert Arrington: So and and I can show you some really like, on our ranch, I could show you some really good wild hogs that are they got a big long nose, big flat four hog forehead, super big shoulders, real small tiny hams, small rear ends, and they're just bad news. They're wild. Now you take a a domesticated just a domesticated hog and turn him loose. He may get mean.

He may get angry, but it's still gonna be rounded off.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. I mean, it's like the guy that hadn't worked out until he's 60, and and he might get there. You're doing pretty good work. Work.

But, you know, he's still gonna be kinda rounded off. Right. But but but the the thing that I was hearing about is that they go from being this this pink, almost hairless deal to going out. They do they start growing different hair.

They start you don't see that? That's

Robert Arrington: not true.

Tom Rowland: That's not true.

Robert Arrington: No. That that hog's gonna have that hair however that's that's how he is. His personality might change in wild, but he's not gonna change. His his characteristics aren't gonna change.

That's that's a fact.

Tom Rowland: But but a pig doesn't go to a hog. I mean, a domesticated pig that gets loose isn't going to turn into some semblance of that. No. Okay.

No. Are the other are those wild hogs gonna just beat the crap out of him when he gets out there?

Robert Arrington: Yeah. But me and my little brother, Gabe, I have one it's one story about this. Out in when we fifteen years ago, me and my brothers, we hog hunted all the time with our dogs. Gabe had a dog named Red Rock.

I had spot two proper dogs, good sight hunting dogs. There's the hog. Turn them loose. Pow.

Catch him. This guy calls us from, like, a development out here and locks a hatch. He goes, yeah. We got a hog out here messing with our horses and whatnot.

And so he gives us the address. We drive out there. I'm like, dude, you're you're, like, in the middle of a development. He goes, yeah.

The hog there's a there's a lot down there. Hog walks down this road, goes into our horse pasture there, and fights with our horses and eats all the horse. I'm like, dude, there ain't no way. He goes, yeah.

He'll be here at 05:00 today. I said I said, I'm a bring my little brother. We're gonna check this out. So we got 05:00.

Here comes this big old white bar hog walking down the road. I'm like, you you wanna see how we fix him? The game's holding Red Rock. I'm holding spot.

Easy boy. That that hog beat the beat the brakes off both our dogs and ran right back into them woods where he came from. We went and got other dogs. We never found that hog again.

Never. Wow. Me and my brother, we've caught thousands of hogs. Me and Gabe still talk about that hog to this day.

Like

Tom Rowland: That's your white whale. Baddest

Robert Arrington: catch dogs you've ever seen got their eyes beat shut by this hog, and he walked off. Like, don't mess with me, guys. And so but he looked like a domesticated hog that went wild. Yeah.

So I'm not saying it's impossible. It's just not likely that you turn an old domesticated hog loose, and he becomes a serious wild hog. Yeah. But if you take a a domesticated sow and she's gonna get bred by a wild boar hog, And then her her piglets will look more and more wild.

Mhmm. And then those piglets will get bred with wild, and it'll be more and more wild. Yeah. You know?

So

Tom Rowland: Now what if you took a what if you took a a bar and you put him in a pen and you feed him what the other hogs do? Is he going to become more and more domesticated that while he's alive? Not his offspring, but that particular hog. You get him out of the woods.

You get him out of eating the wild stuff. You put him on the the standard feed or whatever you're feeding the the pigs. Is he going to undergo a change? This is what this is what change

Robert Arrington: he would undergo. He would probably settle down a little bit because he's a bar. He's gonna settle down. He would definitely put on a lot of weight, but he would probably lull you to sleep.

All of a sudden, one day, you'd say, oh, man. Old pork chop, you're doing so good. You jump in there to give him to pat him on the head, and he'd cut your leg wide open and throw you out of the pen.

Tom Rowland: That's never never leaves. That that instinct never leaves.

Robert Arrington: They ain't leaving. Not happening. It's not. I cut I cut a little bar hog in my trap, you know, two, three months ago.

I caught him. He was so small. His his donuts weren't as big as a big pea. You know?

Cut him out. I've caught him several times since, and every time I catch him in the trap, he's like, how's it going? Corn. Just me.

More, Ed. We're good. Just me. He He don't even squeal around.

I grab him, set him out of the trap. I'm like, dad gum it. So I'm gonna put a tag in his ears so no one kills him.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Yeah. He's cool hog. That's cool.

Let's talk about gator hunting, man, because, you you have a a an amazing amount of gator experience. Right? Yes, sir. It can

Robert Arrington: be great. How do you how do you become a gator guide? Well, you just I gotta give a shout out to, Brad Gibson, Lee Lightsey, Wade Lightsey, guys that I really started hunting with, guys that were I was still in TV then, and I knew it was some cool shows. I had gator hunted just not properly before then.

And so then come along the public hunt, which is from August. We went out, did some hunts, and I saw right away. I was like, oh, man. I I have enough fishing experience.

I I thought I'm built for this. And so I started getting my own tags and started hunting a lot, and then I had people all over that would see my pictures. Hey. We wanna go.

And say, well, let's book a trip. And so as everything with TV completely died and then the economy dropped out, I had no money, then I was I had enough experience and enough clients that I could sell thirty, forty, 50 hunts. And, and where do you do these? Anywhere.

So in Florida, they have a lottery system, and there's, but there's probably a thousand different zones. Pretty much every body of water will have tags allocated for it. And, you go through the lottery process, whatever you get awarded are your tags. Now it's also I do some things here.

So, like, let's say I sell 50 hunts, but I only have my two tags, then I'll go out and find other people who have tags in that area, and I'll pay them for their time and pay them for their tags.

Tom Rowland: They have to go with you.

Robert Arrington: They have to ride along with me, and my clients get what's called an alligator trapping agent license. Totally legal, 100% by the books. And we'll go out, catch the gators, kill the gators, tag the gators. Once they're tagged, they're my client's gator.

So it's, it works real well. There's a variety of different ways. Sometimes we'll hunt them with a crossbow with a with a line attached to it and a float. Sometimes we use bow and arrows.

Sometimes we'll throw a snatch hook. Sometimes we'll drop a bait, although the bait cannot have a hook in it. And, there's just

Tom Rowland: So they just hold on to the bait like a blue crab and you just bring them up

Robert Arrington: and then shoot them? No. They'll swallow the bait, and then a lot of times, a big gator is gonna go into deep water. A small gator is gonna bury up in the willows and whatnot.

And, you'll sort of get around to him, figure out if he's, you know, the gator you want. And, if he's a big gator, ease him up. I'll put a hook into him or a harpoon dart into him and, kill the gator, which I made it sound very simple. There's a lot of Sure.

Work that goes into that. But, Sarah and I, we've done it piles and piles of times. Every hunt is different. Every night is different.

And, it is I've taken a lot of you know, it's not a cheap hunt. It's pretty expensive hunt. And I've taken people that have hunted all over Africa and all over Southeast Asia, and they're like, this was the craziest thing I've ever done in my life.

Tom Rowland: So you're just going out in, like, a John boat?

Robert Arrington: No. No. We have a 24 foot skiff that's Okay. Custom made.

It's built specifically for it because Lights? Yeah. Well, I'll I'm very into complete darkness with a very, very dim light. I'm all about very dim.

So on every body of water that you'll ever see, somewhere from that body of water, you'll see a streetlight, or if it's super dark, you'll see a star. I want my light to be so dim that it appears to be a streetlight or a light in the distance. It makes

Tom Rowland: a lot of sense.

Robert Arrington: Although it's actually me being very close to them. And, I mean, I we could talk for two days about gator hunting,

Tom Rowland: but it Well, I don't know anything about it. I wanna do it. And what made me wanna do it the most is watching you skin the gator and using every piece of meat and seeing the carcass when it's done. And the ribs, like, that's what really I was like, man, I wanna do that.

Robert Arrington: Well, you're not gonna have to wait long. We'll apply for tags, and we'll hunt this year.

Tom Rowland: Let's do it. Right. Because I got two boys that crazy

Robert Arrington: Yeah.

Tom Rowland: About hunting. But Easy. I wanna do that because I love eating stuff. Like, there's certain things.

I love duck hunting. I mean, I love duck hunting. It is really fun.

Robert Arrington: You don't

Tom Rowland: like to eat them. Yeah. And so it kinda, you know, I'll choke them down. You know?

But I I love eating. I love hunting something that is really good to eat. I love fishing for something that is really good to fish for. And that's the thing with fishing is, if you don't wanna eat it, you just throw it back.

Right? And it swims off, and everybody's good for the but but in the hunting, there's there's this finality. And then it's like, if I'm not gonna eat it, then it just took something out of out of this whole thing for me. And it's you know, I'll have a party, and everybody can come over, and we'll have the the the bacon wrapped duck.

And and, you know, you're an awesome cook, and I wanna talk about your cooking. But, maybe you can tell me how to cook a duck to where it tastes better. But duck and geese both I have just I mean, I've tried a lot of different recipes. Pretty much tastes like bacon with something in the middle that you don't really wanna eat.

I'd just rather eat the bacon.

Robert Arrington: Yep. Keys to keys to cooking duck are, a, clean a lot of people will let the you know, duck's insulated, so he's got a lot of heat wrapped up inside his body. So they'll let him sit on the front of their boat until two in the afternoon. So they're they're you've already heard them that way.

Tom Rowland: Even if it's cold? Because, like, where we're hunting, it's very cold.

Robert Arrington: Like Okay. So you're in Arkansas or something. Okay. Even still, you'd be amazed how warm they are in the inside.

Mhmm. We hunt here in Florida, so it'd be 85 degrees on a good morning. Not quite that warm, but you know what I'm saying? Clean your ducks as soon as you can.

Put them in a good saltwater ice bath. The the saltwater ice bath will cool them down real nice. That that the salt will start to extract some of the blood out of them, but the key is to make a really good brine. Your brine.

So you can take fresh herbs, honey, cinnamon sticks, salt, black pepper, boil that down, a lot of brown sugar. You're gonna make this beautiful brine, and then get the brine out. Let them let the brine cool down. Throw them throw all your like, in Arkansas, wherever you are, take all your duck breasts, man.

Make you a big, huge brine. And as you're killing all your ducks, just keep throwing them Mhmm. Them breasts in your brine, and just let them sit in there for a day, two, three days, and they'll start taking on the flavors of the brine. And so instead of it having that liver type flavor and that chalk, it'll start having a much more eloquent and bust flavor.

Tom Rowland: Couple days in that brine. Yeah. Now somebody told me a recipe about duck, and it was similar that you marinate them in kerosene, and then you flambe them. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Yeah.

So you're how did you become the cook, the chef that you are? Is this out of necessity? Is this trained? Is this what is this?

Robert Arrington: Necessity is the mother of all invention. That's right. I I I I reverse engineer everything. I'll see something, or I'll get an idea, and then I figure out how to make the idea.

I'll see I'll see a picture of something. Or if I'm in a restaurant and I taste something, I'm like, crap. Now I gotta figure out how did they get that. Someone made it.

Right. Someone made that. Yeah. So I gotta figure out now how I can make that.

And I used a lot of Everglades seasoning that that's pretty made. That'll help anyone be a better chef or cook. And it it goes back whenever I the first mate job I ever had, I was working for a captain named captain Rusty Nixdorf on the speed merchant. And we're going over to Bahamas, Blue Marlin Fishing, and he says, go over to Grand Slam, pick up a case of mullet, this, that, and the other split tail mullets.

I show up to Grand Slam. You know, I'm a young kid. And,

Tom Rowland: How old?

Robert Arrington: 20. And before then, I was, you know, I I that was my first real sport. I had been on some other little sport fish that was my first sport fishing job, and Rusty was a serious captain that would not take any lip at all. He hit you with a gap upside the head.

And, so he tells me to go down and pick up a case of of split tail mullets, mackerels, the set and the other. And they're they were like, yes. I don't even remember how much. Let's say it was $500 for that case of mullet.

I'm like, no, dude. I don't want anything rigged. I just want mullet. They're like, yeah.

That's what they are. They're seven dollars and fifty cents each. I'm like, alright. That's an idea.

Go back to Rusty. I said, Cap, if I catch all the mullet and figure out how to make them split tail mullets, you pay me. Uh-huh. He goes, if they're as good as those, I'll pay you.

I'm like, hot diggity. Came out here, started firing a net, catching silver mullets, brined them up. Took me probably 10 or 15 baits to really figure out how to split the, you know, split the tail perfect, cut the rib cage out, break the backbone, make the notch in the head, pull it pull it all out. Once I got them flat, heck, man.

Then on, I was one catching all the mullet. Right. And, It's a

Tom Rowland: lot of money for a 20 year old.

Robert Arrington: Yeah. You know, you make an extra $2.03, $400 here and there. You know? That's awesome.

Yeah. And so that's, like, how my life has been. How do you figure out, oh, well, if I can do that, make a little bit of extra money, or if I wanna go on this trip or if I wanna go do all this, my job now pays my bills and pays this, that, and the other. But if I want something extra, I gotta do side jobs, and I got that from my dad.

Like, my dad is a a subcontractor. He owns a big bobcat business, and, he and my brother have it together. And I always dad was always about his side job. Side jobs paid for all our vacations and paid for all of our extra stuff.

And side job was extra work that you did to make extra money to do extra things. And so now, it's, oh, we're building a new home? That means I've gotta start adding in extra videos. I gotta do extra work to pay for extra things.

And people that that feel entitled to everything, like, oh, I should just have this. I don't relate with them at all because we aren't entitled to much in this world other than the opportunity to breathe and work and get out there and earn it. And so and I tried to show that on my channel. I'm I don't want anything for free.

I wanna earn what I've got. And you know?

Tom Rowland: Yeah. That's a great attitude and one that's one that's rare in this in this world. Well, it's not rare in this world. It's rare today with some people.

Yes, sir. But the, the hard work and dedication, I I I like I like that story because with those side jobs and with the mullet comes the understanding of where those mullet live, comes the understanding of then if they're mullet, there's probably snook, maybe tarpon. That's then you are you are while you're doing the offshore fishing, you're learning the inshore fishing because if you know the bait, you know the fish. I mean, is that is that a a ancillary benefit to that that you've learned late that you found later?

Like, I know where

Robert Arrington: the bait is. All all along. I've I've oh, where do you find hungry people? At restaurants and grocery stores.

Tom Rowland: Yeah.

Robert Arrington: Okay. So if I was trying to catch a hungry human, I'd go sit up in front of, you know, Jetty's restaurant on the river there, or I'd go sit out in front of, I'd go drag a dredge out in front of Publix, you know, with hot dogs. But, you wanna find fish, find bait. So go hunt bait.

You know? If you're out there fishing offshore and you're not marking bait anywhere, you're probably not gonna catch anything. You know? You understand?

Tom Rowland: Unless you've got all the bait with you, and you can create a bait.

Robert Arrington: But then you're doing something special. But, I spend a lot of time in the water. Free diving has been a huge part of my life. And so the more time I'm in the water watching what fish are doing in the water and how they react in the water really helps you when you're out of the water.

Mhmm. The cooking cooking is just a I do not wanna kill anything I can't eat. You know? Deer are too beautiful.

If I didn't love I would say deer meat is, like, I don't know, my favorite food in the world. I just love deer meat. Like, I just am addicted to it.

Tom Rowland: Like More so than I mean, you have some elk experience. Right?

Robert Arrington: I've yeah. I've killed elk. I do like elk.

Tom Rowland: But Dear me. That's it.

Robert Arrington: I just love man, a good like, my mom. Whenever I was a kid, I always hunted out in the backwoods. It was about a quarter mile, half mile to the southeast of our house. I hunted with a BB gun.

I'd kill every squirrel, dove, quail, anything I could find with that BB gun. But I'd bring them back to the house, clean them up. We'd freeze them. And when I got enough to make a big pot of food, we'd make a big pot of food.

But anytime I was out there, our our predominant wind is out of the Southeast. If I could smell her pan frying deer meat, it was like, oh, heaven tonight. Go home. She had just take it.

You know?

Tom Rowland: Hunt's over.

Robert Arrington: Yeah. We're going home, boys. She had salt and pepper it, roll it in flour, and pan fry it in a little either bacon grease or oil or whatnot, and it just tasted different when she did it. And to this day, if I go over and she's cooking dinner and just I'm like, there's just nothing in the world that tastes better to me than mama's pan fried deer meat.

Mhmm. You know? And, so I love I think it's a lot about respect to the animal. When I catch a fish, a lot of people, especially that don't know any better, you know, they catch a fish.

There's a cooler full of ice there. They just throw the fish in on the ice. He flop around on a bunch of ice cubes, and it really doesn't do much. You know?

Make a nice ice brine, throw the fish in on the ice brine, locks them up really quick, cools them to the core, come home, take a really good sharp fillet knife, make perfect cuts. And now you have fish that was caught, well taken care of, cleaned perfectly, and now I have now I have a canvas. Okay? So now I take the canvas back to the kitchen and make some kind of artistic painting.

Mhmm. And and it's just it's about full circle.

Tom Rowland: Well, let me ask you that. Is that because when you're talking about this, there's this passion of the whole process. Is there one part of that process that you are enjoying more than the other? No, sir.

That's what I thought.

Robert Arrington: No, sir. That's what

Tom Rowland: I thought, and that's what comes through in your video. And I don't know if you mean for it too or or but but the way that you're talking about that is about the whole process. It's about catching the bait. It's about and and catching the bait is just as much fun as now you're moving out to wherever you're gonna fish.

And now you found the fish, and that's exciting. And now you you bait the bait. You throw it out there. You catch the fish.

That's exciting. But then there's this whole, oh, I've gonna and then I'm gonna take care of it perfectly, and it's going right in this ice bath, and it's gonna be perfect, and then we're gonna go hard. You know what I'm gonna do with this? And that is very similar to my friend Scott Walker, who's the host at End of the Blue.

And when he catches something, he's he's already, like it's already turning. He's like, I got some cracker crumbs for you, and I got this, and my green egg is I'm gonna call my wife, and she's gonna start the green egg. And it's, like, all in there, and he's he knows. He's got it all going.

He's like, Saturday is your day, buddy. And I got friends coming over to watch the game, and you are the star attraction. And, I just love that. And and somehow, like, I love eating the fish, and I love doing all these things.

But somehow, I have missed that enjoyment of actually cooking. And and maybe that's because I married a wonderful southern woman who loves to cook and takes care of all of us and does that. But that's that's what I think really comes through in your videos is this is this you call it. You you you title your videos, catch, clean, cook.

And I think that's one of the reasons I mean, do you think that that's one of the reasons why you're having such success with this channel? Because if it was just catch, maybe. There's lots to catch. Right.

And there's There's lots of catching. Maybe there's some cleaning. Maybe there's some cooking. But the way that you're doing this of this of this and I and I really think that's the secret to your your success on this is that is that you enjoy and respect and appreciate the entire process from maybe you don't like washing the dishes, but and maybe you don't like scrubbing the boat, but from from here to there.

Robert Arrington: Have people been telling you about me? No. Okay. Well, you nailed it on the head.

Tom Rowland: No. No. I you know? And and this is this is one of my favorite podcasts yet because I don't really know a lot about you.

But it's almost like when I met Graham Talo and started spending time with him. And if you don't know Graham Talo, we could be triplets. Like, I mean, it's I met him, and I'm like, dang, dude. Like, I think we're brothers from from somehow.

Like, I love you, man. And and so Graham and I go fishing, and we go turkey hunting, and and he's just got this unbelievable passion. And and it's like, man, I don't hang out with a lot of people that got that same same passion, that same deal. But but that's one of the things that I like about this conversation is that I really don't know that much about you, but it's what you see is what you get.

And you can't you can't fake passion. You can't fake interest. You can't fake enthusiasm. You can't fake knowledge.

I mean, you can't like, I'm watching you, and I'm waiting when I'm watching these videos. I'm waiting for you to, just not do it right, but you're cleaning a gator with the skill of someone who has cleaned thousands of gators. You're doing all of these things. That's what I was impressed with.

I'm like, this guy's a real deal. Like, yeah. I don't know anything about you. But just from the just from the videos and talking about you, I mean, you you seem like the real deal.

Robert Arrington: Well, I appreciate it. There's so a lot a lot of y'all that are listening to the podcast and that watch the videos, there are things I I am like a very unorganized human. I have to make I have to go to great lengths to make things easy to keep organized and to keep clean. My wife is amazing.

She cleans my office for me. She'll clean out my truck for me. She does I mean, I'm like I'm like the boat going down the river. I leave a wake of disastrous mess behind me.

Tom Rowland: And I know some other people like that too.

Robert Arrington: Yeah. So I leave this crazy. I'm and I have this thing. I leave stuff in my cooler all the time and forget about it, and she's like, honey.

I'm like, oh god. What did I do? I know I did something.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. It's Well, this will this is a this this will sum up my friend, Graham Talo, in one story. He goes and he has taught these fish how to eat this bait, and they're gonna be there. And he has created this fishery out of a fishery that didn't exist before, and he does it by catching shad, taking them, transporting them.

It's a massive project. He's covered in the first time I ever meet him, he is covered in scales like the Tin Man. He looks like the Tin Man, and I'm like, wow. I already like this guy.

He's totally covered in scale. Hey, man. How's it going? I've been up since two.

We're all set. Let's go. I'm like, damn. Perfect.

This is and there's just this reeking of you might as well have left the bait in the cooler overnight and opened the lid. Right? And so Graham goes home to his wife, and she's like, Graham, get in here. And, he's like, what, honey?

What what is going on? And she says, I can take a lot of things, but I can't take this. And she pulls his blue jeans up, and she goes, these went through the washing machine, and there's, like, a pocket full of shad. And so that's him all the time, every twenty four seven, just just he might have a he might be turkey hunting, and he's got a pocket full of shad because it's just it's it's just a constant.

He's just always if he's not turkey hunting, he's he's over here looking at these fish. And if he's not doing that, he's over here looking at these deer. And if he's not doing that, maybe he's trying to hog hunt or he's trying to do this or he's getting ready to go yellowfin tuna fish, and he's just twenty four seven going, going, going. You guys remind me a lot of each other.

Robert Arrington: Graham, wherever you are, brother, we we gotta we gotta set something up.

Tom Rowland: We're hooking up. We're we're gonna go gator hunting. I think that's what we should do. Go gator hunting, with Graham.

That would be that would be amazing.

Robert Arrington: Well, we can hog on on the ranch beforehand. We can hog hunt, have big time there, and then in the afternoons, go gator hunting. That'll be piece of cake. No worries whatsoever.

And, this has been a lot of fun.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It has been.

I, I really enjoy these conversations because, you know, you just get to know people in the industry, and and I I figure if if somebody's doing the same type of thing, chances are you're probably the same close to the same type of person. I don't know. I don't get along with everybody, but I get along. I try to be.

I mean, in this in this world, you need to try to be friends with everybody. But, just a couple more questions. So you look like you, you're fit. You're staying in shape.

Are you doing that purposefully? Life is my gym. Is that right? You're just hunting.

See, there's Graham Taylor again. He just runs 15 miles to go check on the turkeys and and check a a a a trail cam, and then he's back out. That's it.

Robert Arrington: You know? People are like, hey, Rob. You look like you lost a little bit of weight. Yeah.

You know? Lighten the camp.

Tom Rowland: Went to The Bahamas. Yeah.

Robert Arrington: Oh my goodness. It's, you know, free diving. From now through summer, I'll free dive a lot a lot a lot. Free diving.

You know?

Tom Rowland: That'll do it.

Robert Arrington: Constant up, down, up, down, hardcore in, out. Go, go, go, go. You know? Mhmm.

Most people don't realize when you're on a boat a lot, your your body is shifting Oh, yeah. And adjusting for weight change constantly. That's why someone new gets on the boat. At at the end of the day, they're literally like you just pulled the plug out of them.

They're Wiped out. Wiped out. Wiped out. And so I try to stay fit, mentally, physically.

I try very hard to separate. So YouTube is our full time job. It's a full time lifestyle making videos, doing what we do. And over the past few months, I've really started to make conscious efforts to turn it off at times.

Turn the phone off, put everything away because, you know, my daughters, Ari and Emma and and my wife, Sarah, you only have a certain amount of time together, and tomorrow is not promised to anybody. So I try to turn it off and just look at them and appreciate them for that day. Like, Emma's eight or nine months now. She she's never gonna be nine months again.

I gotta enjoy these days with her. You know? If I'm holding her and she's looking at me, she's got these two little cute teeth. You know?

I let her bite on my fingers and tickle her. And, you know, with with Aria, I always tell her the doctor has to look for the tickle bugs. You know? And I try to I actually try to really consciously look and, like, absorb those memories because they're fleeting, and they're not gonna last forever.

And I don't wanna get ten years down the road to go, man, I wish I would have done more of that. You know? And and Sarah, she's such an encouragement to, hey, honey. Let's do this, or let's do that, or, you know, look at Aria looking at you.

And and so I try very hard to do my best with YouTube, but at the same time, my biggest mission in life is to be a father and a husband. You know? And so how to turn one off and to really focus on being the other.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Well, there's no better there's no better mission in life than than that. That's in my opinion, that's your duty as a man that has a family is to take care of that family and do the very best you can for the family, and there's a fine line and a balance between doing, you know, what you need to do to take care of your family financially

Robert Arrington: Right.

Tom Rowland: But also to take care of your family emotionally and to be there for the support and to be there for always. And and that's the real balance. And it's like you start putting too much over here, and this suffers. You start putting too much over here, and this suffers.

And it's it takes a special person, and and it takes a special, time management, I think. And what it turn turns out to me is, like, you when we set this up, you were like, you a morning guy? I'm like, if he only knew. Like, that's that's where the hours come.

Right. Like, you're not getting more hours later in the night. Maybe maybe when your kids are are your age, but when they and and let me tell you something, man. I got three kids.

I'm a little bit ahead of you in age and and in and in kids, but my son's gonna turn 21. My other son's gonna turn eight. He just turned 18. He's getting ready to go to college, and all of a sudden, two both are gonna be gone.

And my daughter's 14, and I can remember you talking about those two teeth and and and the whole deal. And and I just when you said that, I had these flashes of every one of my kids with that same little deal. And then my oldest son, he he lost his two teeth really early, and, actually, that something happened. They had to pull his front two teeth, and he didn't have two teeth for years.

Like, he just had this this smile, like, yeah.

Robert Arrington: All of

Tom Rowland: them for Christmas is my two front teeth. Well, that happened for about five Christmases. So he had that, but I just had that flash of of all of that, like, wow. And, man, I'm telling you, you you are dead on that it is fleeting.

And, I mean, people ask me all the time, like, how was your kid? I'm like, 20 I mean, did I just say he's 20? Because, man, it seems like just exactly yesterday that that I was doing that. But but maintain that, man, and stay on it.

And I was gonna ask you that, how you how you are managing that. But one thing is that you you seem to be comfortable bringing your family into the YouTube, And then that allows you to design your life to where you can be doing all of these things. So making videos doesn't necessarily mean no family time. May you know, making three videos a week instead of two videos a week doesn't necessarily mean that that you're away from the family.

But have you are are you is that a conscious decision between you and your wife that that this your family is going to be part of this whole online persona?

Robert Arrington: Yeah. Whenever we started, dear when when it all started, it was about Sarah and I's life. And as Ari and Emma have come along, it's become about their life, and it's about our family. And that's what I think one of the biggest problems in this world right now is the the lack of family structure, the lack of solid parenting, being there, the support.

And I know what it's meant to me, and so I I'll do everything in my power to have a a solid family structure in my home where we sit down and say blessing and eat as a family and do things as a family. That's that's number one. And, and then we have support. You know, I've my cameraman, John McRoberts, is a great guy.

He's huge part of our family and does what we do and is fits in seamlessly, and he takes a a huge burden off of me. Sometimes he buries me in footage, and I tell him we don't need five hours of footage. You know? We need an hour of good footage.

Yeah. He's like, well, I might miss something. I'm like, well, don't miss anything. Just shoot what you gotta shoot.

And, we, we have a a very brotherly type relationship banging on one another. But it all everything goes and comes. My favorite saying with Sarah is the ocean's not always calm. Ocean's not always rough.

Okay? When the ocean is rough, we look forward to the ocean being calm. When the ocean is calm, we're gonna enjoy it and realize that it ain't gonna be calm forever. So you're gonna have ups and downs.

If it weren't for the valleys, all the mountains would just be flat. So when you're in the valley, you can look up and you can appreciate the beauty of the mountain top. When you're on the mountain top, you can look down, you can see the valley and realize how far you've come, and then try to be humble and appreciative of where you are and and how you can see. You can also see where you've come and how how many other other people might be in valleys.

And it I'm a very emotional emotional guy, and so I bear the burden of of my friends and subs you know, you hear these heart wrenching stories. You're like, man, that gum. You know? It's tough.

You know? So I try my best to do my best and and to appreciate where I am, what I have. Man. Awesome, dude.

Tom Rowland: I don't know if we could ever end a podcast better than that. You are you know? I love it when this happens because I have I have an idea of what I'm gonna encounter if I see see somebody. But one of the things that I like so much about this podcast is when are you and I ever going to have a chance to sit down for an hour and fifteen minutes, one on one, no phones, no interruptions, whatever to really connect.

And this is how people used to connect, and this is how you connect in the deer blind. This is how you connect in the in the duck blind. Like, you're sitting there talking. Nothing else is going on, and that's really missing.

But, honestly, man, you, you're a beast. I love it. I love your attitude. I love what you've created.

I wish you all the best in it. If I can help you in any way possible, there for you. And, I'm gonna take you up on the gator hunt. I'm bringing Graham Taylor.

Robert Arrington: That's big. Bring them boys too.

Tom Rowland: I will, buddy. That's nice, man. Yeah. So much for doing this, man.

It was really, really great. I know that, my audience is gonna love it. I hope you push it out to your audience. They're gonna see a different side of you, a couple stories they've never heard before.

Awesome.

Robert Arrington: You're the best.

Tom Rowland: Thanks, guys. Thank you. Wow. Robert Arrington.

Man, that dude knows a lot of stuff, and he's very enthusiastic and grateful and thankful. And that was a great interview. Great podcast. Hope you enjoyed it.

If you did, let me know. Podcast at saltwaterexperience.com. If you got other guests that you think would be as good or better than Robert Arrington as a as a podcast guest, let me know that too. I'd love to hear if you have some suggestions like that.

Robert Arrington was a suggestion from our audience. It worked out beautifully. He was an awesome guest and I look forward to doing that alligator hunt with him. Bring my friend, Graham Taylor down because, man, those guys are like brothers.

Anyway, we've got other great guests coming up. Ryan Nitz, Davis Bennett, and way, way more. So stay tuned for that. Hit subscribe, send me an email, and I'll see you on the next one.