#1340 - John Nores

Joe Rogan (0:00)

Ready?

Boom, all right, we're live. Hello, John, what's up, man?

John Nores (0:05)

Hey, Joe, how you doing?

Joe Rogan (0:06)

Thanks for doing this, I really appreciate it.

John Nores (0:07)

Thanks a lot for having me, man, it's great.

Joe Rogan (0:09)

I heard you on Meat Eater Podcast, and it blew my mind. I mean, I could not believe, let's just let everybody know what this is about. You were a game warden, or you are a game warden, and what that normally entails is like, you find a guy and he's got three trout when he's only supposed to have two, it's normal stuff. Like catching people doing something they're not supposed to, or just making sure people follow the rules.

John Nores (0:36)

Right.

Joe Rogan (0:37)

Along the way, you guys started discovering these illegal grow ops where cartels were growing marijuana. And you turned from being a regular game warden to essentially, well, why don't you let us know how it worked out?

John Nores (0:54)

Yeah, Joe, it was a crazy journey because you don't think of game wardens doing the type of work we were doing when it come to the trespass growth and the cartel issue, you know? And what do everybody think? They think game wardens check fishing licenses, check your deer tag or elk tag, look for too many animals, poaching, spotlighting. And honestly, when I started the job, I got hired back in 1992, that's what I dreamed of doing. I grew up hunting and fishing and I got my hunter safety certificate with dad's help at nine years old. So I was all in the woods. The woods are my church. I just loved it because three generations of family, my grandfather's, career Navy, my dad, as an army guy, and we just had conservation in our family for generations. So I got the job, did it, and I did all the traditional stuff to start. Came down here to Southern California to start my career in Riverside County. So it was just over the hill from LA here, and working on all the traditional stuff, fishing regulations, night hunting, working deer openers, it was really cool to be a deer hunter for all those years and then actually go talk to guys on the other side and see all the good guys out there and some problems.

And then in 1995, I got to go back home toward the Silicon Valley. That's where I'm originally from, born and raised. So live in the suburbs, kind of the foothill areas of the Silicon Valley, south of San Jose there.

And in 2004, I've stumbled into my first cartel, what we call a trespass marijuana grow site. And to specify this stuff now, now that we're regulating the last couple of years here in California, these are not sanctioned marijuana sites. This isn't the legitimate industry that's doing it by the numbers and trying to. This is always illegal. These are always here on public lands, destroying our environmental waterways and our wildlife and on private land as well. And on that situation, I had a good friend of mine that I grew up with that was doing his master's thesis at San Jose State University, both of our alma mater, on steelhead trout, endangered species, red-legged, yellow-legged frog and all the aquatics in these two creeks. And this was right below Henry Coast State Park where I really met my first game warden that was an inspiration to get the job. So these waterways are really sensitive. Headwaters coming down through this stretch for like three miles, all these endangered species in it, black-tailed deer, you know, all these other great animals we like as conservationists, they're thriving on this creek.

And he called me one day in April and said, hey John, this is weird. One of my two creeks is bone dry. And all the fish, the steelhead fry are dead. You know, everything living on this creek is dead. There's a bunch of like debris and plastic lining and looks like camping stuff that's down at the bottom of where this creek feeds out.

So I get them in the truck and I figured, I'm thinking, okay, someone's diverting water up there, it's probably a rancher needing it for cattle operation, whatever.

We go to the top of the hill, Joe, then we start the hike down. And I'm by myself, you know, I got my rifle, got my gear, don't have any radio coverage, don't have any cell phone coverage, and I have an unarmed civilian, my partner biologist with me, and we're expecting to find something very predictable that I'd seen up to that point. And that would have been a normal water diversion. And when we found the water source in a beautiful canyon, I mean, crystal clear water, Trout Creek, the whole nine, start hiking down it following this, we see the dam, we see the water line, go about 100 yards down this beautiful little grand canyon like creek, and there's a bunch of marijuana plants. And they're short because it's early in the season, they're only about two feet tall. And we see two growers, and they're not the growers I'm typically, you know, that I would have suspected. These guys are, you know, they got rifles, they got handguns, they got knives, and they're kind of cruising, working their plants coming toward us. And that was that, oh shit moment, you know, if something crazy goes down right now, and I got no backup, I got a civilian with me, these guys are armed, they're not your typical poacher that I've ever encountered.