Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, and welcome the episode number thirty nine The
Speaker 1: Hunting Collective. I've been O'Brien and today I am joined
Speaker 1: by the one and only du Sean Smantana. He was
Speaker 1: born in Czechoslovakia, but he lives in Montana. He's a
Speaker 1: renowned outdoor photographer, hunting photographer, and just all around wonderful
Speaker 1: human being. He's got insight on where he grew up,
Speaker 1: how he came up, and escaping communist Czechoslovakia in the
Speaker 1: late eighties. Hed come to America and live out his
Speaker 1: dream and he's and he certainly is living that with
Speaker 1: his wife, Florca and their kids in bos He's traveled
Speaker 1: the world to work for companies like Capella, and he
Speaker 1: has a lot to tell us about that. He's an
Speaker 1: interesting man, but interesting insights, So please enjoy du Schon Smantona. Sean,
Speaker 1: how are you, sir? I am belle, Yes, how are you?
Speaker 1: I'm very well. Um drinking a little bit of mint
Speaker 1: tea with a spike of plum brandy on a It's
Speaker 1: not actually it's it's not that chilly but Montana day,
Speaker 1: is it? No, it's beautiful, blue sky, sunshine, uh, sleep
Speaker 1: of its time. It's beautiful. And and for folks that
Speaker 1: like I always try to start these podcasts. Obviously, people
Speaker 1: can't see where we are. Can you give your best
Speaker 1: description of where where we're sitting right now? And and
Speaker 1: really just I guess you're homestead here. Well, we are
Speaker 1: in bows men Um in my house have a small
Speaker 1: farm by Dullaton River. Raised different kind of animals for us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sheep and pigs and chickens and ducks and turkeys and
Speaker 1: homing pigeons. Homing pigeons. Yeah, we're gonna talk about that
Speaker 1: a lot. And just just to heaven. You know, I
Speaker 1: love Montana, I love the name, I love everything about it.
Speaker 1: So I'm glad you get to move here, you get
Speaker 1: experience that. Yeah, I'll be right, Uh, not too far,
Speaker 1: I said. It's like a two minute commute up up
Speaker 1: the road and around the corner and five minutes across
Speaker 1: the river. Five minutes across the river, and we're sipping
Speaker 1: tea and brandy by the fire at your place. They
Speaker 1: do your wife, Laurca and yourself, did you guys? You
Speaker 1: guys put a lot of this house together. We did,
Speaker 1: you know, we tried to research um. When you travel,
Speaker 1: you see different things around the world, and you see
Speaker 1: how people build differently. Have they designed different homes or
Speaker 1: structures to live. And once I cam and sit down
Speaker 1: with the architect, you kind of told him would be
Speaker 1: one we really like to read in the heat and
Speaker 1: the concrete floor, but like insuaded house so you don't
Speaker 1: waste your energy heating it. That's right, um, and be
Speaker 1: like the simplicity modern You know, the concrete floor are
Speaker 1: awesome for cleaning. And we knew we're going to have
Speaker 1: a kids, so um, somehow you know, figure out how
Speaker 1: not to let him just destroy the house, so you
Speaker 1: have that kin in mind. If I would do that,
Speaker 1: I would definitely not put any kitchen cabinets, a bunch
Speaker 1: of hay bales and drain in the middle. And I
Speaker 1: think that will do. You just got new house and kids,
Speaker 1: so you'll see how much damage he'll do. That's right.
Speaker 1: And I and my wife and I discussed that. She's like, well,
Speaker 1: we could get the nice carpet. I said, we could
Speaker 1: get the nice carpet, but every nice thing we get
Speaker 1: has the ability to be made less so by our
Speaker 1: little dude. Although he's pretty, he's pretty low low maintenance,
Speaker 1: but still but it's nice to have a house, you know,
Speaker 1: nice to own some land. Um. And another think or
Speaker 1: concept of our house? Who was to make not to
Speaker 1: pick our houses? Square feet perfect for two kids and
Speaker 1: couple and no maintenance. So if you put meler rouf,
Speaker 1: and if you put stackle and plaster and inside you
Speaker 1: know there's not much maintenance, so you don't want to
Speaker 1: And if you choose good windows so you don't have
Speaker 1: to repay them, um, then you just you know, house
Speaker 1: is never done, but you try to minimize all the
Speaker 1: extra expenses down the road. Yeah, and you have quite
Speaker 1: the homestead here. I mean it feels like I don't
Speaker 1: know how most of describe it. It's like a farmat
Speaker 1: where you have. I mean, you're right here on the
Speaker 1: Gallton River's freaking beautiful and farm animals around and and
Speaker 1: you guys are square with plum brandy and a nice
Speaker 1: fire here and it's it's a beautiful view. Life is
Speaker 1: good on a farm, right. I you know, I would
Speaker 1: love to get even more land, but there is not
Speaker 1: much here available. But I think they have a little farm.
Speaker 1: It's a security for me. You know, I grew up
Speaker 1: in a farm, and I grew up in a small
Speaker 1: village where the animals gonna take care of you so um,
Speaker 1: and you can get the woods, so you kind of
Speaker 1: eliminate the thinking that food comes from grocery store and
Speaker 1: the heat comes from furnace. Yeah, you have to chop
Speaker 1: the heat. Chopped, the chopped the heat, and you raise
Speaker 1: your animals and you butcher them and you eat them.
Speaker 1: And that's more security to meat than have several thousand
Speaker 1: dollars in the bank. You know, my house is surrounded
Speaker 1: with firewood, and freezers are full of meat. Bring it,
Speaker 1: bring it. Yeah you have so you have chickens and goats.
Speaker 1: Here else we have sheep clinic sheep. And I got
Speaker 1: the idea from traveling to Argentina in the last twenty
Speaker 1: years or so, and illow how they cooked it what
Speaker 1: they call asada lamasade over the fire. And after I
Speaker 1: think a couple of dinners in the US, you know
Speaker 1: that I noticed that the lamb was the most expensive meat.
Speaker 1: And then suddenly, just click six years he goes like, well,
Speaker 1: why can I have my own lamb sheep? And and
Speaker 1: and here you are. And I talked to my wife,
Speaker 1: did research me find the Icelandic sheep and they're low
Speaker 1: one maintenance. They're very hearty, they don't need any structures,
Speaker 1: and they're very yummy. So it's a nice combinations with
Speaker 1: the hunting. You know, when when you get the elk,
Speaker 1: cantal upward deer, there's not much grease there, but with
Speaker 1: the antelope, I mean with the lamb, you just have
Speaker 1: extra fats of grease and fat there. So, yes, we
Speaker 1: came over here a month or so, maybe even longer ago.
Speaker 1: And had you did the assada for us over the
Speaker 1: fire and it was unbelievable, tell folks well, and you
Speaker 1: gave me a lot of brandy then too, so it
Speaker 1: could have been that could have helped out. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know. More you drink better, more tists tell
Speaker 1: people about your your strategy for making this out and
Speaker 1: like you know where you learned in your influences from
Speaker 1: Argentina and you know, and I know that as you
Speaker 1: get older you try to I think you get more
Speaker 1: into what I call homie you. We just get into cooking,
Speaker 1: You get into gardening. You get into little skills and
Speaker 1: hobbies did you always want to do but never had time?
Speaker 1: Um those as it could be challenges. You know, you
Speaker 1: you get into raising sheep and you try to figure
Speaker 1: out how to hey. So then you get in a
Speaker 1: tractor and you try to cut and bail. So it's
Speaker 1: U still very entertained, you know, with all these with
Speaker 1: all these activities, and they love it because it's completely
Speaker 1: distract me from from the photography. I don't have to
Speaker 1: think of oh, framings, and you know all the other
Speaker 1: thoughts you have when you're taking photos. I completely forget
Speaker 1: about them, you know. I I always say I'm a
Speaker 1: full time farmer and part of time photographer. You've crafted
Speaker 1: quite quite the job title in living here. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: you're not listening with a lot of we A lot
Speaker 1: of people glorify living off the land or you're just
Speaker 1: a lifestyle of living off what's around you and you
Speaker 1: have have that here and well specifically around the sheep.
Speaker 1: How do you treat them? And you raise them? You know,
Speaker 1: when do you harvest one? Like? How do you how
Speaker 1: do you treat that with your family? So the lambs
Speaker 1: are usually born middle of May, beginning of May, and
Speaker 1: we have lambs running around and it's kind of cute
Speaker 1: to see kids going in there and lifting those animals
Speaker 1: and looking at them and put them bag and try
Speaker 1: to catch them again, and we graze them in our
Speaker 1: land and our neighbor's land to be make small padducts
Speaker 1: of two three acres, and once a week we'll move them,
Speaker 1: so we rotated. Then nice thing being in the river bottom.
Speaker 1: You have so much submoisture that the grass grow nicely.
Speaker 1: And by the time you finish one and you can
Speaker 1: start another one when it comes September and October. You
Speaker 1: know this sheep they are wild, they're from Iceland and
Speaker 1: they they haven't been improved by British scientists to gain
Speaker 1: weight and loose them out of trades. So they eat bark,
Speaker 1: they eat um leaves, so we don't have to de
Speaker 1: warm them since we have it just at of them.
Speaker 1: And when October comes. In of October, then be slaughter
Speaker 1: the lambs. We keep the replacement cheap, then be slaughter
Speaker 1: maybe some old cheap that we don't they're not they're
Speaker 1: getting old. And you know, we use some of that meat.
Speaker 1: And I would use lots of other parts of those
Speaker 1: animals for my hunting dogs, for the bird dogs. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, I feed them the lungs, liver, heart, even
Speaker 1: stomach the tribe and I opened the stomach and empty
Speaker 1: the green and cut that up and that's two three meals.
Speaker 1: Eat stomach for the dogs with all the enzymes and
Speaker 1: minerals and nutritions. Now your kids take you have two children, Um,
Speaker 1: do they take part in the entire process with you.
Speaker 1: They help, you know, they watch, they help eat. They
Speaker 1: still don't know that they're eating liver. You know, they
Speaker 1: like liver with onions. That's actually traditional or big tradition
Speaker 1: in Europe where soon is your harvest any animal and
Speaker 1: you have access to fire, you chop onions and you
Speaker 1: eat that, you know, the red deer liver or road
Speaker 1: deer liver. Um. So it's you know, they help and
Speaker 1: they see that. Now, I don't know if they're gonna
Speaker 1: pursue that kind of lifestyle vib here, but options are
Speaker 1: there for them. You know often they will remember. But um,
Speaker 1: I am going exactly back as I grow up. I
Speaker 1: mean I see that that you know, I want to
Speaker 1: take care of myself. I want to take care of
Speaker 1: the fire. Would I want to grow our own potatoes
Speaker 1: and carrots? I want to have my own honey, it's um,
Speaker 1: you know up thirty years ago, I would I would
Speaker 1: not think that I would have that because it was
Speaker 1: so distant. But yeah, well it seems it seems to
Speaker 1: calm you a bit. Yeah. I think the influence and
Speaker 1: your childhood, how you grow up and where you grew up,
Speaker 1: it just influenced you. And then later on you you
Speaker 1: seek that and it's you know, it's up to you
Speaker 1: how deep you're gonna go over that. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're you know, and you're professional life. You're a photographer
Speaker 1: for many brands, of course Cabela's being a big one. Um,
Speaker 1: how do you balance those two thinks? I mean, you're
Speaker 1: travel and we were just talking before we hit record
Speaker 1: about your traveling and not being around Montana as much
Speaker 1: as you'd like to be. And but but but you
Speaker 1: need to travel the world and knowing a lot of
Speaker 1: places and allowing that to inform how you live here
Speaker 1: in Montana. Yeah. So I've been fortunate and last twenty
Speaker 1: five years I did get to travel quite a bad
Speaker 1: around around the world. But it's nice too, always nice
Speaker 1: to come home. Um, you know, you've got to do
Speaker 1: something for a living. So I you know, I didn't
Speaker 1: think I have a bad gig. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: it's wonderful to just take photos and meet new people
Speaker 1: in interact learning about different languages, cultures, meet people who
Speaker 1: are in all kind of professions and hear their stories.
Speaker 1: Um talking to hunting GUIDs in South Africa or else
Speaker 1: rally or Germany, and just see what's their lives about,
Speaker 1: how their backgrounds look like, how did they shelter their animals?
Speaker 1: You know, what kind of fire, what kind of would
Speaker 1: they use? You know, all those things are so interesting
Speaker 1: for me. And and so the traveling is great. But
Speaker 1: the one bad thing that I said, or not bad,
Speaker 1: but it's just weird that I don't know very much
Speaker 1: about Montana. I get this request from local magazines and
Speaker 1: I never been to those places. You know, Montana is
Speaker 1: so big, so I would like to change it a
Speaker 1: little bit and explore mort Montana and kind of balance
Speaker 1: with the traveling. Traveling is around four months a year,
Speaker 1: but the rest of them the rest of the time
Speaker 1: I'm here. So yeah, I mean this is as I said,
Speaker 1: moving here for me. I mean, you just I feel
Speaker 1: like the opportunity, immense opportunity to explore the West is
Speaker 1: you could take me thirty years and I still wouldn't
Speaker 1: have much knowledge of what I'd want to what I
Speaker 1: want to go explore. But that's a fun that's a
Speaker 1: fun idea to have. I mean, I don't know, you know,
Speaker 1: I think what informs a lot of your life is
Speaker 1: how you grew up. I mean that's you know, and
Speaker 1: where you grew up. Um. Yeah, this is a big playground, yes,
Speaker 1: I mean if you are a hunter and fishermen and
Speaker 1: skier and you know, river guide or kayaker or mountain climber,
Speaker 1: ice climber. I mean, we have it. And it's just
Speaker 1: amazing the variety of the outdoor sports we have here
Speaker 1: and the people here. Last time we came here for
Speaker 1: the Assada, I was struck that in your house was
Speaker 1: like this wonderful bunch of wonderful people and they were
Speaker 1: from all over this country, in this world that had
Speaker 1: collected here around your place and around this river and
Speaker 1: this state. I mean it was amazing. Yeah. I mean
Speaker 1: people in Bosman there are really nice. I mean people
Speaker 1: in Montana and generally nice and and they're inquisitive. You know,
Speaker 1: you meet these locals, they are they're asking you questions.
Speaker 1: You know, there are these ranchers that they see where
Speaker 1: you come from. What do you doing here? You know,
Speaker 1: why do you want to hunt? In his place where
Speaker 1: you know, when you get to me and then they go, oh,
Speaker 1: we remember that our grandfather was from Czechoslovakia, or it
Speaker 1: was from Germany, or I never felt once living in
Speaker 1: the US that somebody would be prejudice because they come
Speaker 1: from different countries. I think it works to our advantages.
Speaker 1: I always say. And and you know, there's so much
Speaker 1: public land to hunt in the top of it. There's
Speaker 1: so much private land that you could hunt. You just
Speaker 1: have to go and knock in the door, you know,
Speaker 1: not one month before the season opened or the opening day,
Speaker 1: but go there in May and June and and put
Speaker 1: a little work in it. Yeah, helping with the cattle,
Speaker 1: is helping with the fans, and not too many doors
Speaker 1: will be closed. That's right. Yeah, I've found it. I
Speaker 1: found a lot of places in the country, but especially here.
Speaker 1: I mean, Texas has its own way of treating people
Speaker 1: in its own culture and and there's some bravado and
Speaker 1: brashness there, but here in my Tanna, there's it's it's welcoming.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I don't speak like they speak
Speaker 1: here in order, you you bet, but that but that
Speaker 1: I mean, you've got quite a community along this river
Speaker 1: where people are your neighbors, and you're you know you're
Speaker 1: And my wife is in well, she loves the local community.
Speaker 1: She's part of this group of um, a woman of
Speaker 1: the dirt. There's a group of eighty or ninety ladies
Speaker 1: dirty woman and they surround themselves with this old experience,
Speaker 1: people who who've been garnering for sixty seventy years, who've
Speaker 1: been dealing with animals and issue in Montana for many years,
Speaker 1: and just share the informations. You know, the exchange eggs
Speaker 1: for breeding stocks were I don't know, different types of
Speaker 1: chickens and what tools to use, how to check the
Speaker 1: soil for pH and in a million out of ten,
Speaker 1: don't listen, everybody out there, listen, don't google Dirty Women Montana.
Speaker 1: You're not going to get that club of the woman
Speaker 1: of the dirt club. Now, your wife is a very
Speaker 1: impressive person as well. And you guys have um the
Speaker 1: life you have carved out here is is is amazing.
Speaker 1: And your kids are are amazing. I mean they look
Speaker 1: you in the eye, they shake your hand. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're you know, wonderful people in their own right. I mean,
Speaker 1: and what are your philosophies on raising children? And and
Speaker 1: I mean you brought him here to Montana for a reason.
Speaker 1: I'm sure, Yeah, I think you know. I love kids.
Speaker 1: I love being with them. Yeah, and I didn't have
Speaker 1: the greatest example when I was a kid. You know,
Speaker 1: my parents would the wars when I was year old.
Speaker 1: My fire was drinking a lot, so there was lots
Speaker 1: of struggles there. There are lots of abuses, but I
Speaker 1: always say the both of the parents showed me a
Speaker 1: beautiful example how now to do things, so I always
Speaker 1: think about it and just try to do different. Now
Speaker 1: we're seeing some people in my village where they were
Speaker 1: interacting with the kids, where they were they were loving them,
Speaker 1: they were putting hands on them, they were kissing them,
Speaker 1: they were just you know they and I always just
Speaker 1: envy that um and that's what I want to have.
Speaker 1: So when somebody asked me, we're only gonna have kids,
Speaker 1: it's like, what do you mean to win? I mean,
Speaker 1: I just like, I will have kids as soon as
Speaker 1: I can. That's part of the life that I want
Speaker 1: to live. It's nice to raise another set of kids
Speaker 1: that will appreciate this world. There may be contribute with
Speaker 1: something and just keep going. Yeah, your kids are are
Speaker 1: great examples of thank you, adjusted human beings. UM. So
Speaker 1: I think people a lot learn a lot from the
Speaker 1: way you guys treat that with their lives a little
Speaker 1: where they live. Yeah, thank you. Yeah they are they
Speaker 1: are good kids. And I read somewhere that they are
Speaker 1: my kids, but they're not mine. They're the kids of
Speaker 1: the world. You basically we cannot You can show them,
Speaker 1: you can take them to places, but you really cannot
Speaker 1: make them to do. They can do their own thing.
Speaker 1: So it will be I'm very excited to see what
Speaker 1: would become of them. You know, how they're gonna, how
Speaker 1: they're gonna deal with their life. You know what can
Speaker 1: the jobs still have? Maybe those jobs are not created
Speaker 1: yet for them. You know this, everything goes so fast nowadays,
Speaker 1: and see how they're going to balance it now. I
Speaker 1: think I had the advantage to grow up in them.
Speaker 1: What would you say, a poor community, but wealthy and
Speaker 1: relations between people. Um. And you know, moving to us
Speaker 1: and living here, I have everything that can possible ask for.
Speaker 1: You know, you just we are getting We are well
Speaker 1: paid here, We have the opportunity to do whatever we want.
Speaker 1: The things are relatively inexpensive. You can save lots of money,
Speaker 1: um and we'll see what happened to them, you know,
Speaker 1: see how they're gonna see if they're gonna see the
Speaker 1: opportunity or or not. Well, it's such a perspective that
Speaker 1: you have on that right, because you know, how you
Speaker 1: grew up is so different. How that how they're going up.
Speaker 1: And you can tell them listen, this is you are lucky. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't tell them, but you can over boil that pot,
Speaker 1: you know, because he just they were tired of it.
Speaker 1: So I will. You know, I took my son already
Speaker 1: to Europe a couple of years ago, and he gets
Speaker 1: to see where I grew up, where I live. You
Speaker 1: get to see the soccer field that I play soccer,
Speaker 1: and he did play. He went to the mountains where
Speaker 1: behind he saw the cemetery in the church, and just
Speaker 1: exposing to those things. I think they should on their
Speaker 1: own somehow realized when they get back to us that
Speaker 1: what they have. Yeah, so I'm hoping that that would work,
Speaker 1: but they they need more visits. So we are doing
Speaker 1: another visit next year to Spain, and and I think
Speaker 1: that is it's kind of important for kids to see
Speaker 1: the world so they can put things in perspective, provide
Speaker 1: perspective and let it go from there. And we know
Speaker 1: that too. I mean you try travel, travel and you go,
Speaker 1: like you said, you go to Nepal and you see
Speaker 1: somebody's boy holding basketvid apples but has bigger smile than
Speaker 1: somebody who has a brand new Cadillac. Yeah. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: could go on that subject for days. But yes, I
Speaker 1: think we talked about that last time we were here,
Speaker 1: and roughly remember through the break the all the stomach
Speaker 1: full of lamb and a belly full of brandy that
Speaker 1: we talked about that. But it is the perspective of
Speaker 1: the world. You know. It can inform you, for sure,
Speaker 1: but it ala can drive you to you know, to
Speaker 1: be a better version of yourself. Um that it certainly
Speaker 1: has for me because it's one of those things where
Speaker 1: I'm always stopping to, you know, adjust, you know, if
Speaker 1: I'm frustrated from traffic or if I'm frustrated from something
Speaker 1: at work, and I stopped adjusting, like, wow, how is
Speaker 1: this bringing me happiness? And why am I not allowing
Speaker 1: it to? You know, someone with nothing in Nepal or
Speaker 1: wherever you find that person is can smile and play
Speaker 1: a song well and abject poverty. Why can't I find
Speaker 1: that same smile when I'm you know, sitting on the
Speaker 1: heated seat driving to work. Well, it's a community and
Speaker 1: it's a people, you know. Um the realtors have the
Speaker 1: famous saying location, location, locations, Well, I think the people,
Speaker 1: people people, It's kind of more important to me. It's
Speaker 1: your personality, It's your uniqueness. Did you get to use
Speaker 1: in work or with your friends and that kind of
Speaker 1: influence and craft your journey through this world. So if
Speaker 1: you surround yourself with the right people that will help you,
Speaker 1: they don't drain you. Um, and and outdoors has the
Speaker 1: tendency to make better people. You know. I haven't seen
Speaker 1: these trips, gosh, I've been. I mean, well, let's say
Speaker 1: over a hundred hundred trips around the world. Then you
Speaker 1: have all these people. You get ten guests, they go
Speaker 1: with me or more sell them. You find someone who
Speaker 1: is not happy holding fishing ground or gun in their hands,
Speaker 1: you know. So it's just like, well, what happened to
Speaker 1: all these nasty people that you read about? You know
Speaker 1: all this? It's just the outdoors have tendency to just
Speaker 1: just make you better, to relax you. And I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's the exercise. Did you get with that hunting?
Speaker 1: Or or it's just being up there for fresh air.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's there's it's a complex tale of what
Speaker 1: it actually gives you, but it works something. Yes, it
Speaker 1: is a medicine and written part of my struggle. I'm
Speaker 1: sure you have it too. Is it when you get
Speaker 1: that medicine and you go wow? Without it, you're you
Speaker 1: suffer yourself suffers you you got you think? Wow? Man,
Speaker 1: I could use a day just so. The Bozeman is
Speaker 1: a perfect example when you have the builderness experience and
Speaker 1: the beauty of outdoors, yet do you have all the
Speaker 1: amenity of modern life. We have electricities, we have propanes,
Speaker 1: we have roads. It's not too far to time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think that's My wife said that. I
Speaker 1: mean she's not an outdoors these type of person um
Speaker 1: really at all, but she just said seeing the mountains
Speaker 1: provide some comfort that I can't explain. It's like just
Speaker 1: looking out there and seeing that provides something that I
Speaker 1: can't There's something I can't articulate like I can articulate
Speaker 1: because I've been on those mountains. It's it's that medicine
Speaker 1: that I can see it every morning I wake up
Speaker 1: like if if life is to get me down, if
Speaker 1: if I'm spun up in a way that I can't overcome,
Speaker 1: I'll just go over there and I'll climb that mountain
Speaker 1: and just keep going. And there are millions of acres
Speaker 1: around here. And one of my favorite things earlier was
Speaker 1: to go chase elk with the bow and by myself
Speaker 1: for eight ten days, just fill up the back back
Speaker 1: with spam and sardines and bread and begels and gar
Speaker 1: leak and onions, and just go ahead and pretend that
Speaker 1: was the that was the Indian and just try to
Speaker 1: mess up with the elk and slip under the open skies.
Speaker 1: I love that. Yeah, the access to that, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's it settles you somehow, even just know when
Speaker 1: it's there, even if you're too busy to get to
Speaker 1: it all the time. Like I can see it at
Speaker 1: least I know if the dire straits are here, I
Speaker 1: can retreat, get back to get back to that mountain.
Speaker 1: But you know you grew up in Czechoslvakia. Um, I
Speaker 1: mean I'd love to hear the whole story, really, I
Speaker 1: mean tell me about you know, the place, the people,
Speaker 1: your parents, your upbringing. So it's a small village in
Speaker 1: the Carpathian mountains named Krivani. You know that bad five
Speaker 1: people lived there, but each house have three generations, you know,
Speaker 1: living together. And that was I think that was kind
Speaker 1: of unique because you really were better prepared for the
Speaker 1: world because you have the comfort of your parents and
Speaker 1: also the wisdom of your grandparents, and you can reach
Speaker 1: into that well and just drink it when you need it. Um.
Speaker 1: So everybody had their animals. Everybody had the garden. You know,
Speaker 1: they have communal way of taking turns in grazing the animals.
Speaker 1: Every morning they would open the gate and all the
Speaker 1: cows with bells would come out and one guy would
Speaker 1: take him in the mountain's graze and bring them back.
Speaker 1: It was somebody's elster. Next day with cheap they've done
Speaker 1: same thing. It was the small community where hunting was respected.
Speaker 1: You know, in Czech Republic the name for hunters miss Levetts,
Speaker 1: which means double meaning could be hunter or the one
Speaker 1: who would think. Because the hunter actually have to make
Speaker 1: the decision to to see which animal to eliminate from
Speaker 1: the pool. From the pool, you know, he looked at
Speaker 1: the stag and said, all the stag is to all
Speaker 1: things to get out, you know, he was danger goring
Speaker 1: other stags, or he was it was no good. Or
Speaker 1: there were younger animals where um they didn't grow well,
Speaker 1: so they need to be eliminated from the pool. And
Speaker 1: we talked about earlier um and it just you know,
Speaker 1: it reminded me of the responsibility of a hunter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you got to go to school. I think we
Speaker 1: went for a couple of years or one year to school.
Speaker 1: And you have to learn the fauna and florac is
Speaker 1: kind of fun fuel Latin. The names. You have to
Speaker 1: learn how many egx pheasant lays, what's the incubations? And
Speaker 1: you learned about stream about fish, about trees, different kind
Speaker 1: of tree, hardwood, softwood, and then it was kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: Then you had to put as many as hours as
Speaker 1: you put on working around forests. For example, you were
Speaker 1: building tree stands, you were clear picking trash, you were
Speaker 1: building bridges over the streams. How many hours you put
Speaker 1: that counts towards um you know, better selections of the game.
Speaker 1: You could hunt. For example, if you put ten hours,
Speaker 1: you only get two hunt rabbits, but you put hundred hours,
Speaker 1: you get two hundred stack. So it was something more
Speaker 1: than just go buy a license and go hunting, which
Speaker 1: you know, it's just a different system, but people were
Speaker 1: more connected with it. But so as a kids, you know,
Speaker 1: we love to hang with hunters. I mean, those whiskery
Speaker 1: gray faces. They were, you know, drinking plumber and they
Speaker 1: they have a little flask, and they were sitting by
Speaker 1: the fire and telling stories about how they out fox fox,
Speaker 1: sitting in the haystacks, and and just waiting for them
Speaker 1: to come where wolf stories. And of course every kid
Speaker 1: wanted to be cowboy. In Indian you know, we we
Speaker 1: had these books from Germany by writer's name Karl May.
Speaker 1: Then we have some books Fennimore Cooper, the Last of
Speaker 1: the Mohicans. And I love reading. I mean I was
Speaker 1: a book red. I was reading in a school, in
Speaker 1: a church, in a train, under blankets, just reading and reading.
Speaker 1: And I was fascinated by the wild West. You know
Speaker 1: how people can ride horses and sleep in the tps
Speaker 1: and shoot their bows and trove spears and live. So
Speaker 1: I was always dreaming as a man, I would like
Speaker 1: to do that. And I was eight ten twelve and
Speaker 1: one of those books. One year there was a name Montana,
Speaker 1: and I just really loved that name Montana. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go there. Okay, well eleven twelve, you just
Speaker 1: really you know, you cannot predict your future. But um,
Speaker 1: you know, the Communists of course would not let you
Speaker 1: leave because everybody would leave and there would be nobody
Speaker 1: to work for them. But as things start changing in
Speaker 1: you know, the Soviets were losing grains and losing the
Speaker 1: Cold War, I keep applying for six years to get out,
Speaker 1: and I said, I'm gonna go to Montana and I
Speaker 1: want to see my mother. My mother at that time
Speaker 1: was living in West Germany that I know, did not
Speaker 1: know very much about her, but I used her as
Speaker 1: an example that I want to see her as a humans,
Speaker 1: right just to writing letter to United Nations and everywhere.
Speaker 1: And you know, they said, well, if you put one
Speaker 1: more year at to work, I said okay, and oh,
Speaker 1: if you go to military for two years, I said, okay.
Speaker 1: Well I get back from military after a couple of years,
Speaker 1: and they said, oh no, we were joking, you're not
Speaker 1: going anywhere now you're in. Well, now I'm twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: I'm exploding, you know, I'm just troublemaker, as like I
Speaker 1: want to get out. I don't. That's what the Communism
Speaker 1: finally grab ahold of me. Because when you're a kid,
Speaker 1: you really don't understand. You don't understand what's going on.
Speaker 1: Why all these people are so depressed, Why all the
Speaker 1: people drink while all the people have no freedom. You know,
Speaker 1: they cannot own guns, they cannot always, they cannot, they
Speaker 1: cannot do very much. You know, they can just celebrate
Speaker 1: their march for the communists. They finally grabbed me. That's
Speaker 1: what this is a strange place. I feel like a
Speaker 1: sheep in a shelter where I am just surrounded and
Speaker 1: tell what to do all the time. Some more letters,
Speaker 1: more more annoyances for them and me, until one day
Speaker 1: I just got this letter that, oh you can go
Speaker 1: to us permission. Granted, It's like, what the heck happened?
Speaker 1: So um, there was a chain of command where I
Speaker 1: have to apply. You have to apply to my direct
Speaker 1: boss and bosses boss and bosses boss and twenty other
Speaker 1: people past that have to approve before you can get
Speaker 1: to the main guy at the end, who was living
Speaker 1: in Prague. But all of a sudden, I just keep
Speaker 1: all these guys and I wrote in direct letter, that's
Speaker 1: my human rights with my matter, and I want to go,
Speaker 1: and he just replaced it. What goes on? So I
Speaker 1: got the permission. I get the US Embassy in Prague,
Speaker 1: and I see all these German jumping fences, you know,
Speaker 1: German from East Germany were kind of jumping fences to
Speaker 1: West German embassy. And things were changing slowly in the
Speaker 1: big cities. But we didn't know that. You know, we
Speaker 1: were in the mountains. We didn't have any local news
Speaker 1: or anything other than you know what my grandfather was
Speaker 1: listening to BBC or Voice of America. Well, it seems
Speaker 1: like there was a stark change, like as a child,
Speaker 1: there's some romance and and you know where you were.
Speaker 1: And then as you grew up, you started to realize,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a bigger world. There's a bigger world,
Speaker 1: and I'm in a communist cage here that yeah, And
Speaker 1: if we didn't know anything, you know, the communists will
Speaker 1: tell us, if you keep working hard, you're gonna have
Speaker 1: really good lifestyle, just like the Russians have. All the
Speaker 1: Russian had world lifestyle. Then we did, you know, And
Speaker 1: I also we didn't know anything about the US other
Speaker 1: than um. You know, during the depression, many checks in
Speaker 1: Slovak left for America, so we would have every third
Speaker 1: fourth house would have a family member that immigrated to US.
Speaker 1: So we really like America. Did you get a lot
Speaker 1: of stories back from there? We did, but it was
Speaker 1: all deceiving because my grandfather always said Americans always wear
Speaker 1: white clothes all day long. Oh well maybe butcher or somebody,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I mean we don't know, you know, they
Speaker 1: were white eyes and white clothes. My friends, yeah, my
Speaker 1: friends thought that Americans are sitting in the ditches because
Speaker 1: that's what we were doing as a kids, you know,
Speaker 1: running them out and sitting in the ditches, put your
Speaker 1: feet up, sticking in one hand, and was just beating
Speaker 1: bushes and said, all they do just sit in those
Speaker 1: ditches and fried chicken come by. They just grab it
Speaker 1: and need it. I mean totals, I mean sign what
Speaker 1: do you call it? Sign? Sci fi? I saw. We
Speaker 1: had no idea how people live in US, absolutely, you know.
Speaker 1: So when I come to the US, finally, when I
Speaker 1: get the permissions and I can go, my mother took
Speaker 1: me to Walmart or Kmart, and I couldn't believe it,
Speaker 1: you know, from this little store when they were selling beer, butter, wine,
Speaker 1: and bread. They were everything. Forty different breads, twenty different butters,
Speaker 1: you know, hundreds of different wines, and shoes and clothes
Speaker 1: and tools. You know, I knew pitchfork and shovel and
Speaker 1: maybe rake. What there are tools that had no idea
Speaker 1: what do you do with? So I spent all day,
Speaker 1: all day in that store, and next day asked me
Speaker 1: where you want to go back to Walmart? I still
Speaker 1: have some things to see there. So we were living
Speaker 1: completely in the darkness. And you know that was thirty
Speaker 1: years ago, not that far and what a different world
Speaker 1: in the eighties. Yeah, yeah, I think. And your mother
Speaker 1: came with you. You know, my mom took a vacation
Speaker 1: from West Germany, that's what she lived, and she went
Speaker 1: to her there and she decided to stay there for
Speaker 1: a while. But it wasn't for her. She had a
Speaker 1: hard time to learn language, and and she was kind
Speaker 1: of disappointed why so many people are so poor with
Speaker 1: all the possibilities they have. She couldn't understand why everybody
Speaker 1: were leaving paycheck to paycheck, So I don't think it
Speaker 1: was for her. So she left went back to Germany
Speaker 1: and I. You know, I stayed in Florida for a year,
Speaker 1: and um, I couldn't speak in English. You know, there
Speaker 1: was just shaking hands and moving eyes and smile. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's it's just kind of interesting feeling. To this day,
Speaker 1: I still like not to understand. I mean it really
Speaker 1: enjoyed it. Yeah, it really just brings something out of
Speaker 1: you that you really tried to get across, but not orally.
Speaker 1: But it's moving hard, yeah, and it's it was kind
Speaker 1: of fun. So I stayed and I went to school.
Speaker 1: After after work, I was working at the boatyard scraping
Speaker 1: barnacles and painting boats and working the body shops. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, grinding cars and taping windows because those jobs
Speaker 1: you really don't have to speak English. Do you remember
Speaker 1: the first folks? I kind of that you would say,
Speaker 1: it took you in and yeah. So there was a
Speaker 1: people at the Wrinkling Breader circus, and lots of those
Speaker 1: circus people were from all over the Europe. They immigrated
Speaker 1: or they got kind of sponsorship or something. And my
Speaker 1: mother told me about the lady who is from Czech Republic,
Speaker 1: and she was good and trampoline and trapees and ropes.
Speaker 1: Her name was Maria. She was a wonderful lady, and
Speaker 1: so I just went to her. And I didn't want
Speaker 1: to knock in the door because I showed it in midnight.
Speaker 1: So I just spent my first name under the palm tree.
Speaker 1: And I was so thirsty and so hungry, and I
Speaker 1: saw this beautiful um oranges hanging, said, I grabbed one
Speaker 1: and I bide it and it was just not ready,
Speaker 1: but you know, it was it was this feeling that
Speaker 1: what the heck am I doing here? In the morning,
Speaker 1: I started hearing some dishes and noises and knocking the
Speaker 1: door and says, hi, and lets do John. And my
Speaker 1: mom said that she knows a friend of your friend.
Speaker 1: And I was just wondering if you can help me.
Speaker 1: Like he's looking at me, I was like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: come in and let's have a coffee. So we started
Speaker 1: talking and then um, she asked him, what am I
Speaker 1: gonna do? You know? She was living at that time
Speaker 1: with her grandson who was eight years old, and I
Speaker 1: kind of play with the kid a little bit. And
Speaker 1: after I stayed there a couple of days, she said,
Speaker 1: I stay another week. So I helped her with the house.
Speaker 1: I was breaking lan, cutting grass, cleaning, different things. You said,
Speaker 1: I stay another month. I said, you know what, you
Speaker 1: can just stay as long as you want. So she
Speaker 1: really helps me, you know, to to just to just
Speaker 1: understand that I need help. And I was able to
Speaker 1: find a job and take care of myself. And but
Speaker 1: the Florida wasn't for me. You know. I grew up
Speaker 1: in the mountains. I like to hike. I like to
Speaker 1: you always. And I know you said Montana was interesting
Speaker 1: to you from the beginning, but I mean getting out
Speaker 1: of communists, Republic, getting every here. Was it always Montana
Speaker 1: for you or did you just lose it and find
Speaker 1: it again when you got to know? I always started Montana.
Speaker 1: And when teacher, you know school at they call s classes,
Speaker 1: English is the second language, that was asking what would
Speaker 1: you want to do? Where do you want to go?
Speaker 1: So when I could say Montana, I said, well I
Speaker 1: want to go to Montana said well, what are you
Speaker 1: gonna do there? It's like, well, I was in the
Speaker 1: forest trees, so I can be lumberjack loger. I mean
Speaker 1: Montana must have lots of trees. Um. And my teacher, um,
Speaker 1: you know, she was very cool. She she actually was
Speaker 1: teaching English on the on the guard Brooks tape. You know,
Speaker 1: so the old tapes when you put in the recorder
Speaker 1: come with a little paper folder. And then the singer
Speaker 1: was singing, you could follow with the words. The problem
Speaker 1: was there was lots of slang, you know, so we
Speaker 1: just do you remember any Garth brook song? Oh yeah, gosh,
Speaker 1: I remember all of them from that song I got
Speaker 1: friends in the low Place. Yeah, that was awesome. So
Speaker 1: that was upgrading because before that teacher just came to
Speaker 1: the board and drop pictures of cat and go meo meo,
Speaker 1: meo cat dog. So that's how we have to start.
Speaker 1: You know, you have this twenty seven year adults and
Speaker 1: we are learning language. I'm coming ever, we're gonna come over,
Speaker 1: bring Garth, drink brandy. And that's about the fire. That's
Speaker 1: because products. That's where the good days. And then that
Speaker 1: the school teacher introduced me to another wonderful lady. Her
Speaker 1: name is Cissy, and she was moving back to Bosman.
Speaker 1: So I said, well, um, come with you, and he goes, oh,
Speaker 1: I would love to take her. She was just very nice,
Speaker 1: you know, my dear friend. Now she was driving along
Speaker 1: you old truckby trailer and she did have no experience.
Speaker 1: I said her cutting corners, and I was in military.
Speaker 1: When I was in military, was driving, Semi said say
Speaker 1: I can help me the driving. So I drove her
Speaker 1: to Montana and we got here I think in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety one, ninety two in March, and I partied you
Speaker 1: truck in the Bozeman. I was full of snow and
Speaker 1: there was this little girl barefooted, standing in the snow
Speaker 1: looking at Mabe their arms up and goes, let me
Speaker 1: get this straight. Are you moving in or moving out?
Speaker 1: So I thought, well, this is gonna be a good place.
Speaker 1: And you know, with all this opportunity that I have
Speaker 1: to live anywhere else, this was gold mine. How many
Speaker 1: people lived in both I guess there were not too many.
Speaker 1: And we didn't have all the amenities. You know, we
Speaker 1: had all kerosene burners in the bar where every ten
Speaker 1: minutes they go everybody moved out and big jet of
Speaker 1: heat come in, turn it off and come back, come
Speaker 1: back just drinking again. So it's a different time nowadays,
Speaker 1: but changes there's nothing you can do. It's it's a progression,
Speaker 1: but it's still good. I mean, despite you see more
Speaker 1: traffic and more people. I mean, it's still wonderful place.
Speaker 1: To live. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean it's it's
Speaker 1: it's strikes me that I was. I certainly did not
Speaker 1: grow up in in the same environment you did, but
Speaker 1: I had a similar you know, like Montana was always
Speaker 1: this place, this place that I used to watch A
Speaker 1: Lonesome Dove is here. So that show, okay, yeah, with
Speaker 1: Michael London. It was, um it was written by H.
Speaker 1: James McMurtry. Okay, so that that was a little house
Speaker 1: in the prairie that I'm doing now, and this was
Speaker 1: it was. It was in the eight say the eighties
Speaker 1: or early nineties. Robert Duval and Tommy Lee Jones played
Speaker 1: two cowboys that were the first to drive cattle from
Speaker 1: Texas to Montana to Texas rangers. And you know, I
Speaker 1: lived on the East coast. We didn't have buffalo, we
Speaker 1: didn't have elk. We had deer and turkeys and geese.
Speaker 1: And I lived in the suburbs. But I remember watching that.
Speaker 1: We watched that every Christmas. And I watched that, and
Speaker 1: I think, uh, Montana, Montana the romantic name. Yes, it's
Speaker 1: you can go anywhetable dimension Monday, And I think people
Speaker 1: visualize this cowboys and cowboy hats and horses and Indians
Speaker 1: and the mountains. Yeah, and we got that. You know,
Speaker 1: we have the community of people. The one thing we
Speaker 1: don't have here our factories and jobs. So I don't
Speaker 1: get it. How everybody can you know, move here and
Speaker 1: there's lost by big house and buy new cars and
Speaker 1: buy properties and just keep you know, keep living here.
Speaker 1: The dream you had and the kind of is the
Speaker 1: similar dream that I had can't be unique to us.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think people when they have wealth and
Speaker 1: a little bit of means and can choose where they
Speaker 1: might want to go, A lot of people choose here,
Speaker 1: I think for a good reason. Yeah, it'll be interesting
Speaker 1: how much longer we can sustain this growth. Yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: if we get a couple of bad winners and everybody
Speaker 1: it is the winters are long, so you do have
Speaker 1: to stay entertained. Yeah. And I would say coming here,
Speaker 1: having lived some different places and living in the Midwest,
Speaker 1: that the cold here is it's like it's a refreshing cold.
Speaker 1: It's not steen degrees right now, blue sky, but it's sunny.
Speaker 1: The sun just makes you happy. And the cold is
Speaker 1: dry cold, and it's not a humidity there. It's not
Speaker 1: a thick cold. You have your jockets on and you're fine,
Speaker 1: keep on going. Plus you have to do some kind
Speaker 1: of outer activities. So when the dark comes at four
Speaker 1: o'clock very early, yes you are tired. You know, you're
Speaker 1: been skiing or you were hunting or something. So you
Speaker 1: can you can build a fire and grab a book
Speaker 1: and relax. I mean, I love December, January, February. Those
Speaker 1: are the months where I take time off. You sit
Speaker 1: there and you drink here tea and your brandy and cook,
Speaker 1: you know, cook all the things and then in the
Speaker 1: pit or in the comados or the woodstoes or pointies
Speaker 1: or whatever. Heck, it's fantastic. I come with. When you
Speaker 1: think about the way a hunter is treated in your
Speaker 1: and your culture and the czechlos Foking culture and how
Speaker 1: you grew up, how would you compare that to how
Speaker 1: hunter is treated in you know, our modern Oh. One
Speaker 1: thing I would say right away would be used more meat. Yes,
Speaker 1: you know, don't just go for the backstraps and tangeloins.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not the meat that has the minerals
Speaker 1: and nutritions. It's the liver, it's the lungs, it's the heart,
Speaker 1: you know, it's the tribe if you can handle it.
Speaker 1: You know, if you look at the predator when he
Speaker 1: kills animals, he doesn't go for the stakes, works his
Speaker 1: way into the liver, into the heart. So maybe be
Speaker 1: more resourceful and learned and and Steve might be a
Speaker 1: good example. How he you know, I keep you here.
Speaker 1: I don't have a TV, so I don't haven't seen
Speaker 1: any of his show, but I keep hearing good things.
Speaker 1: How he educating my house? Bring the brain? Um, so
Speaker 1: the meat would be wanting that. The second would be
Speaker 1: taking advantage of those of this of those tags that
Speaker 1: you get locally, know, for twenty dollars or eighteen dollars,
Speaker 1: you get envelope tech, el tech and deer. But there
Speaker 1: is your protein for the winner. Why should you go
Speaker 1: to store and buy something else, you know, other than
Speaker 1: maybe bacon. I mean, if you think you get three
Speaker 1: hundred pounds of meat for twenty dollars ticket for ELK,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's totally worth it. But you know, I'm
Speaker 1: a meat hunter. I I look at those animals and
Speaker 1: I scouting. I'm looking for year links right away. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm practicing them when I'm driving in a road, when
Speaker 1: I see herds of caribou while we are fishing, I'm
Speaker 1: trying to pick if I can find those zeer links um.
Speaker 1: So as a meat hunter, definitely, just you know, get
Speaker 1: more meat and eat more of that animal. You know,
Speaker 1: everything is there. And if you have a farm or
Speaker 1: or dogs, you know, the road diet for the dogs
Speaker 1: is one of the things that I find to be
Speaker 1: the best thing for the dog is. I mean, what
Speaker 1: can be better than you know, deliver or heart or
Speaker 1: some of the meats from deer or elk um and
Speaker 1: you know they're even the rip kidge if you don't
Speaker 1: eat the ribs and there's still meat and you don't
Speaker 1: want it. Chicken loves that, you know, they picked completely. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they pick the high. If you have any meat left
Speaker 1: in the high, they try it. The chickens they strip it,
Speaker 1: you know, and they need that protein too. So I
Speaker 1: mean we are not like a Native Americans, would they
Speaker 1: you know, reuse everything out of the buffalo, you know,
Speaker 1: absolutely everything. But I think we can do better jobs.
Speaker 1: When you think, think about the reverence and the respect
Speaker 1: that the community that your community had for hunters, and
Speaker 1: if you had a term to describe that respect, like
Speaker 1: I love when you say thinker I think, how do
Speaker 1: you think that we've gotten to a place where we
Speaker 1: kind of had the opposite? I mean, hunters in our society,
Speaker 1: aren't I was, you know, I was thinking about it.
Speaker 1: Why we have such a bad reputation. And that was
Speaker 1: ten or twelve years ago when I was traveling in
Speaker 1: the plane and said I photographed hunters and some people
Speaker 1: get turned off there, so well, why don't you photograph
Speaker 1: just landscape as well? What's from photographing hunters of fishermen's um.
Speaker 1: So somebody's done a bad pr for hunters, but also
Speaker 1: somebody's done bad PR for the loggers, and that was
Speaker 1: my professions. You know, if somebody displayed clear cuts that
Speaker 1: they were used to take advantage of clear cut instead
Speaker 1: of selective cutting, and you have to photos of one
Speaker 1: of clear cut and all growth, then you show it
Speaker 1: to anybody, But what they're gonna say, you know, the
Speaker 1: old growth is much better than clear cut. So somebody's
Speaker 1: done not so good PR. But maybe thinking after these
Speaker 1: California fires, they may be thinking different, that's right. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you have October's I mean not October's but August
Speaker 1: in the ashes, everyday ash and you are breeding head
Speaker 1: and we are not taking advantage over natural resources. We're
Speaker 1: not tanning those forests. We're not going there to get
Speaker 1: our firewood. We just you know, want to protect it.
Speaker 1: But that's not going to have it. That's not gonna
Speaker 1: be good outcome. It's just gonna burn and more burn,
Speaker 1: and we've seen it and not good. And with the hunting.
Speaker 1: I really don't I really don't know. Perhaps it's the image,
Speaker 1: you know, as a photographer, when I photographed guy with
Speaker 1: let's say, dear, I want to get it as tastefully
Speaker 1: as possible. Simple things, you know, not too much blood,
Speaker 1: no tongues hanging out, not sitting on it, grabbing their
Speaker 1: horns like you know. It's it's it's it's the stereotype.
Speaker 1: That's how those people were doing it, and that that
Speaker 1: might have been good for or fifty years ago. But
Speaker 1: now we have different channels of those photos. They can
Speaker 1: spread much quicker than used to. You know, before you
Speaker 1: had a photo in your pocket, you show it to
Speaker 1: ups man, to your post office man, your body, your
Speaker 1: your waitress in the restaurant, and that was it. But
Speaker 1: now you post one ugly photo of what I call
Speaker 1: we're not tastefully done with it. With the deer hunting
Speaker 1: and it just takes off. And you know they can
Speaker 1: use those photos against us as the mean, you've been
Speaker 1: an inch if requite a while, you've seen it change.
Speaker 1: I mean have you seen you know, the the hunting
Speaker 1: industry change over your time? Yeah? Well I think we
Speaker 1: You know, I get ask what's my favorite clothing or
Speaker 1: what's the favorite gear or what is it's a pair
Speaker 1: of lungs, and you help what you got in the
Speaker 1: muscles and desire? How many months you want to climb
Speaker 1: that you cannot buy? You know, so you can wear
Speaker 1: wool pans they are thirty years old. You still can
Speaker 1: get things done, you know, celess talking, you know, more hunting,
Speaker 1: researching on your own, being a good shape. And now
Speaker 1: but that's when I struggle. Now do we need fully
Speaker 1: automatic or semi auto guns for hunting? I don't, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm fine with single shots, I'm fine with the with
Speaker 1: the double shots shotguns over under. But if some people
Speaker 1: need it, um, that is interesting. You know, if you
Speaker 1: if you put hunter with oh with you know, with
Speaker 1: several different guns that he needs for shooting, it's it's
Speaker 1: just a different feeling, you know. I really don't associate
Speaker 1: with that. I really don't see how. You know, some
Speaker 1: guys love to shoot elkan nine hundred yards. Well I'm
Speaker 1: the opposite. I want to be there in twenty yards,
Speaker 1: you know, I want to see what happened, was able
Speaker 1: to I mean that just kind of increase your pleasure
Speaker 1: of stocking spider the stock if you just way back
Speaker 1: up there and you shoot. Although you know, to some
Speaker 1: people it's satisfying, you know, they love doing it, but
Speaker 1: it's not my cup of tea. You as you said earlier,
Speaker 1: you grew up in a place where you had to
Speaker 1: learn the flora and fauna. You had to learn how
Speaker 1: animals interacted with humans, how they interact with the world
Speaker 1: around him. And you're immersed in that world and how
Speaker 1: why would you want to remove yourself from it by
Speaker 1: using technology to make it easier? Because all that, all
Speaker 1: the technologies, is stripping away the relationship that you had
Speaker 1: and takes away your skills that you can build or
Speaker 1: improve in and get even better. So yeah, no one
Speaker 1: saying don't use technology, but but but some I'll limit
Speaker 1: yourself and some states are better than either. You know,
Speaker 1: Montana has you know for bow hunting, you cannot use
Speaker 1: too many electronics things eliminations. But to me, spot and stock,
Speaker 1: it's still the best type of hunting, no matter what
Speaker 1: do you do. And that's been forever, and that really
Speaker 1: challenge you. Now, if I don't get done with my bow,
Speaker 1: if I don't get if I don't get the harvest
Speaker 1: elk in my bow, I will get a rifle. You know.
Speaker 1: It's not like I'm gonna be hungry. But I tried
Speaker 1: to get every two bow and then go to the rifle.
Speaker 1: So but I still kind of walking around and I
Speaker 1: cannot say why we have a bet pr as the hunters.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that would be something. What are your thoughts?
Speaker 1: I mean, I've got a few questions I'd like to
Speaker 1: ask myself a lot. And we were talking about this
Speaker 1: the other day and like the point of you know,
Speaker 1: what what I'm doing for a living, and really what
Speaker 1: you're doing for a living. But one of them is
Speaker 1: one of them is why, And I think it this
Speaker 1: is is this way for everyone. But one of the
Speaker 1: questions is why is killing gratifying? Right? Why? Because regardless
Speaker 1: of why you're killing it, the killing is gratifying for you.
Speaker 1: I'm sure as someone who hunts, particularly for meat is
Speaker 1: gratifying because you're feeding yourself and your family. Um, let's see,
Speaker 1: I do that every week. I'll go kill chickens or
Speaker 1: I kill a lamb. So it's it's I don't think twice.
Speaker 1: You know, I just tried to find either the weakest
Speaker 1: animal that I don't need anymore, or the one that
Speaker 1: I call yum yum, you know, the yearling ones, and
Speaker 1: you know, but I don't never, I never is there
Speaker 1: a gratification in that? Still, I am not sure the
Speaker 1: gratifications where I get. I'm just seeing these homy pigeons
Speaker 1: flying around when I get to kill them, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I select them. I breed them to be good athletes,
Speaker 1: and if somebody don't have it, I have to call
Speaker 1: them and I get gratifications there. And I don't know
Speaker 1: why because my luck is shrinking and should be better
Speaker 1: because I'm selecting. I'm hoping that that's what it is,
Speaker 1: because it's not really I just want to kill for
Speaker 1: to see blood. I mean, I really don't care about it.
Speaker 1: But I never actually even question myself, why do you
Speaker 1: like killing? You're just kind of natural. I want to eat.
Speaker 1: I have, I have stomach that I have to constantly.
Speaker 1: But it's like that's a deeper So you know, this
Speaker 1: is not a question anybody can really answer, but it's
Speaker 1: a question. I think it's the question that the world
Speaker 1: at large would like us to be able to answer,
Speaker 1: Like why why is killing gratifying? Like what is the
Speaker 1: thing because it is? Some people say, well, it's gratifying
Speaker 1: because it is the end of an inexperience that you know,
Speaker 1: it's a it's attack, it's a challenge. I have to
Speaker 1: acquire these skills. But there's still lots of work after that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: actually most of the work. I mean when once you
Speaker 1: harvest your animal, take care of the start safely back
Speaker 1: to your dinner play. Yeah. So but I think for
Speaker 1: every hunter, that's beautiful that these homing pies just fly
Speaker 1: like the extras sizing they're beautiful. Yeah, thank you. I
Speaker 1: want to talk about that. We're going to talk about that.
Speaker 1: And definitely, so it's so cool what you do. Um.
Speaker 1: But I think I think that's one question at all
Speaker 1: all of us could could you could grapple with Yeah,
Speaker 1: I could see if somebody would ask me, okay, why
Speaker 1: do you like to han elk? Yeah? Okay, well, if
Speaker 1: you have five days and you want to come with me,
Speaker 1: you have to get it on your own. I am
Speaker 1: not the talented to express myself why I'm doing it.
Speaker 1: Come with me and you'll see. I mean the sheer, exercise,
Speaker 1: the fresh air, the things that you get to mumbo
Speaker 1: jumbo in your head, visiting your friends, your nemesis, your experiences,
Speaker 1: your sex life, whatever. Everything is there, and it is
Speaker 1: brewing and coming out in the surface, and you're sorting
Speaker 1: it out and you become better in persons than you
Speaker 1: and then bang, there's elk you shot at. You drag it,
Speaker 1: more exercise, you bring it home. You learn more skills
Speaker 1: because you have to butcher yourself. Then you have to
Speaker 1: praccess it. Then you get to cook it, then you
Speaker 1: get to eat it. And if you stay with me
Speaker 1: during this period, perhaps you will understand why. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: why it's It's the funny everybody experiences. I think that
Speaker 1: hunts is like you're enriched by it to a point
Speaker 1: that you can't explain. But then the world wants you
Speaker 1: to explain it. They're like, explain that to me. I
Speaker 1: don't get it. Yeah, that would take some people than
Speaker 1: I got nothing, but I gotta let me. Like Wise,
Speaker 1: breathing air good. I don't know, I'm not sure how
Speaker 1: to tell you, but there is some points of it.
Speaker 1: I mean. The other question always like to ask is
Speaker 1: why do we care about animals? You know, why do
Speaker 1: we truly care about the animal? I mean, why do
Speaker 1: we enjoy? Why? Why is killing gratifying it? But by
Speaker 1: the same time, why do we care about the animal? Well,
Speaker 1: there are animals that we like to go and kill
Speaker 1: and harvest, but the animals that we like to keep
Speaker 1: around the house, like my homing pigeons or my bird dogs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I believe the animals makes better people. You know, if
Speaker 1: you have a bird, dog, or pet, or cat or
Speaker 1: bunny or horse, it's some kind of mental relief because
Speaker 1: you take care of them. Yeah. I love feeding our
Speaker 1: pigs this time of year when when you the water
Speaker 1: is cold, they cannot drink it, so you have to
Speaker 1: pour feed over the bartley that I suak in overnight
Speaker 1: and to they just all running there and stick their
Speaker 1: noses and go that that slubbering and that that thing.
Speaker 1: I just love watching animals to eat. Yeah. I love
Speaker 1: watching sheep grazing and see what they pick, you know,
Speaker 1: what kind of leave or so so I don't know why,
Speaker 1: but you know, so there are these animals that really
Speaker 1: feed our soul and some are feeding or stomachs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's that relationship that's way more meaningful than
Speaker 1: carrying an animal you've never seen, or carrying about an
Speaker 1: animal that you feel some connection to because you saw
Speaker 1: them on TV or some connection that you saw. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're you're seeing every piece of that animal's life and
Speaker 1: you're interacting and it's it's birth and it's death at
Speaker 1: some level. Um, and when you're a hunter, you're at
Speaker 1: least along for a good bit of that ride. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think the way you guys do with Steve,
Speaker 1: where you promote eating and different recipe and cooking of
Speaker 1: the animals, I think that's the best ticket because I
Speaker 1: think we went away from from the hunting that you
Speaker 1: do it yourself and use all those skills to harvested
Speaker 1: process that cook it, eat it into We went into
Speaker 1: some kind of comfort. But something is raped nicely and
Speaker 1: has a barcode, it's a lot more excess acceptable. Yes,
Speaker 1: you know, like, oh that's better. Well, how could that
Speaker 1: be better? If that's something that you do it to yourself,
Speaker 1: either raise it to yourself or you or you you know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of more organically grown that you somehow have
Speaker 1: idea how this animal was raised. And I even think
Speaker 1: that the label of organic is a silly thing because
Speaker 1: now they're just telling you something different about you. You
Speaker 1: don't you still don't know, You still don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. The trust factor has to be there in
Speaker 1: other way. So I mean they they I think they've
Speaker 1: done wonderful marketing to lure us into into packaging. Yes,
Speaker 1: that is something package and nice. It's got to be
Speaker 1: better than we can do it our own. Yes, And
Speaker 1: I'm glad someone is still there who like. Um, I
Speaker 1: like the messiness of it, you know, I enjoy and
Speaker 1: not being so clean, and I enjoy un Well, I'm
Speaker 1: still unwrapping a piece of meat that I cut up,
Speaker 1: but I still know the messiness that got there. And
Speaker 1: I'm not so foolish as to think that it just
Speaker 1: showed up like that. Yeah, I know now, um, And
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people can get that idea right.
Speaker 1: A lot of people can say, you know, how the
Speaker 1: meat gets your plates important? But you know, you have
Speaker 1: your kids and you and Lorca, you have the relationship
Speaker 1: to animals every day you're bad with the knowledge that
Speaker 1: you're going to kill him, and and that is not
Speaker 1: the science. You know, billions of people live like me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know who have animals around their houses and when
Speaker 1: it's their time to go, it's their time to go,
Speaker 1: and they kill it. They saved the blood, they put
Speaker 1: in the blood sausage, just the whole thing gets used
Speaker 1: because that's what we need, that we need, we need. No,
Speaker 1: that's what sustain us. It takes one, I think to
Speaker 1: sustain a matter. There is no other way. Life eats life,
Speaker 1: as they say, that's for sure. Do you feel Another
Speaker 1: thing we talked about all the time is um certain animals.
Speaker 1: I always say, like we take the gloves off like
Speaker 1: certain animals like to say the feral hawk, for example.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've been to Texas and been a part
Speaker 1: of some of us. Yeah, it has a bad name
Speaker 1: for some reason. I don't know why. I would love
Speaker 1: to have ferreal hawks in Montana. I mean, I make
Speaker 1: sausages out of deer or elk, and I like to
Speaker 1: add a pork, so I have my own pork. But
Speaker 1: nothing wrong. If I could shoot a pig here and
Speaker 1: just add fifty I would love to much fat could
Speaker 1: have if it had to live in Montana. You know,
Speaker 1: fifteen years ago John Hoffner, friend of mine, took me.
Speaker 1: He used to work for Real Tree. He took me
Speaker 1: to Texas and deer hunt and and I was sitting
Speaker 1: in the blind. To put me in the blind by
Speaker 1: the feeder, and as soon as they sent me there,
Speaker 1: I've never seen anything like it. So I'm going to
Speaker 1: sit here. Um, I think after after five minutes I left.
Speaker 1: It was it was strange to me. I like to walk.
Speaker 1: I'm at a sitting guy. I I just so, and
Speaker 1: I didn't want to hurt their feelings. Paid by two
Speaker 1: money for the hunt. But prior to arriving to uh
Speaker 1: to our camp, we stopped at the barbecue place it
Speaker 1: calls Billy's Barbecue. And there was a black guy who
Speaker 1: was smiling. His white teeth were just shining. And I
Speaker 1: just instantly drew me to him and says his men,
Speaker 1: you said, godbuster. And and he asked me what I'm doing,
Speaker 1: and I said, I'm from Czechoslovakia. I like to eat pork.
Speaker 1: And he goes, oh, so you're gonna be hunting hogs?
Speaker 1: I said, um, were hunting deers, what we have hogs too,
Speaker 1: So I asked to out here every hunting hogs, to
Speaker 1: as many as you want. So Billy the barbecue guy goes, well,
Speaker 1: if you kill the hawk tomorrow, since you're living in
Speaker 1: four days, and you bring it here, I'll smoke it
Speaker 1: for you, it would be the best thing you ever eat.
Speaker 1: So when I get to that square box and I'm
Speaker 1: looking at the feater and waiting for them, I'm thinking now,
Speaker 1: Billy said that those hawks takes good. So I started
Speaker 1: walking and pretty soon picks everywhere. So I shot I
Speaker 1: think two or three, and we drop it off to Billy's.
Speaker 1: And while I was hiking and hunting those hawks, I
Speaker 1: actually shot a deer's too, because he was running there.
Speaker 1: And so I get the deer and the hawks, and
Speaker 1: the meat was incredible, and I know the John said,
Speaker 1: I think that's what we're gonna do from now on.
Speaker 1: We're gonna go they want were killing hawks dropping the
Speaker 1: billies so we have a food for the clients to
Speaker 1: the box. Yeah, So I don't see what is I
Speaker 1: would you know? Every animal should be usable. I mean
Speaker 1: I didn't see the feral hawks. Now once they get
Speaker 1: maybe over three pounds, but they're still we can do
Speaker 1: something with it. It's still very usable. I don't agree
Speaker 1: that there are people say that they're inedible at some maturity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can do something with it. What the backs should be?
Speaker 1: Tenderlen is always there and you can do I mean sausage,
Speaker 1: there's grinded meat and they stack out. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: think any kind of animals, you know that we that
Speaker 1: we hunting. We're sure if he asked Billy, he'd be like,
Speaker 1: just throw me a ham over here. I'll spoke that
Speaker 1: sucker for twelve hours. Don't even worry about how big
Speaker 1: the animal was. In fact, the bigger the better. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: we had a great time. I mean I always think
Speaker 1: about that. And yeah, what are your what are your
Speaker 1: favorite places around the world because you've traveled, I mean,
Speaker 1: my gosh, everywhere you can take a uh you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I have any favorite. I used
Speaker 1: to really like Argentina, but you know, now that I
Speaker 1: brought the Argentina cuisine and culture kind of hear my
Speaker 1: house and I'm having here more so it's not that
Speaker 1: unique anymore. But I I just love sitting by the
Speaker 1: fire and talking to people and and I a part
Speaker 1: of it might be that you know, my family wasn't
Speaker 1: I cannot ask my dad certain things for advices, or
Speaker 1: we never put this aunt of my shoulder. I'm proud
Speaker 1: of your son. So I'm thinking I'm seeking that kind
Speaker 1: of relations with other people. And if you are plumber,
Speaker 1: I'm asking you about plumbing, hey, so you don't use
Speaker 1: copper pipes anymore? You use BBCs now, or the PEX
Speaker 1: lines or the doctors. I'm asking, what the hell? Then?
Speaker 1: What did you do? Or the financial advisors? You know,
Speaker 1: what should I do? I stay behind it? Grand? How
Speaker 1: should they invest them? You know? So every person has
Speaker 1: a unique niche, and if they're older than you are,
Speaker 1: you should shut up and just listen, you know, ask
Speaker 1: the questions and hush because all these people live lives
Speaker 1: and they have something that you could benefit. So and
Speaker 1: those people are wherever we go, you know, so you
Speaker 1: just ask someone. And and so I like to say
Speaker 1: that I'm very rich man because I can just close
Speaker 1: my eyes and go and all the visits and all
Speaker 1: the conversations we out with all these people, it's you
Speaker 1: cannot buy it, No you can. And then I always
Speaker 1: have said and tried to try to emulate those times.
Speaker 1: You know, you try to sit in the backyard. I mean,
Speaker 1: here's different. In the backyards beautiful, but you know, just
Speaker 1: in the wilderness of somebody on a seven day elk
Speaker 1: hunt and four days in you killed an elk. You're
Speaker 1: sitting by the fire telling the story to the rest
Speaker 1: of camp and like, yeah, and people open us up.
Speaker 1: You know, they do open up and tell you. And
Speaker 1: maybe they benefit too because they they spoke, they let
Speaker 1: it out and and maybe they're helping someone passing it
Speaker 1: on to you. Yeah, that's the one thing that I
Speaker 1: really like about social media, not that I'm heavy user,
Speaker 1: but I like so I like tractors, you know, I
Speaker 1: grew up blogging with them, and I had to have
Speaker 1: a tractor here and I finally was able to a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago save money and buy one. But
Speaker 1: if I have a problem, where do I go to
Speaker 1: the dealership? Well, I'm gonna drop thousands of dollars. Well
Speaker 1: why don't just go to the Facebook page? Cool? What
Speaker 1: a friends? I post the questions and ten minutes a
Speaker 1: hundred fighters and hundreds grandfathers telling you what to do. Now,
Speaker 1: that's the power of social media. Then you get to
Speaker 1: benefit from someone who already went through that. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: just talking about different levels of human connection, you know,
Speaker 1: just different ways, different ways connect with people and and
Speaker 1: better yourself. I mean, And if you open yourself up
Speaker 1: to that, then you'll never lose I mean, my gosh,
Speaker 1: be open to that. And a lot of people, a
Speaker 1: lot of people go through their lives and don't talk
Speaker 1: to their neighbors and get online and hate on you
Speaker 1: people they don't even know. And boy, that's that's the
Speaker 1: wrong types of connection. Or you wouldn't see very much
Speaker 1: here in Montanna find that people are friendly. And I
Speaker 1: found a lot of friendly folks thus far, but too
Speaker 1: like you know, you go to a trade show or
Speaker 1: you go somewhere in the hunting industry, you and you
Speaker 1: know many many people as as I do. And it's
Speaker 1: if when you've been on a hunting adventure with someone
Speaker 1: like the hug is a little deeper, the handshakes a
Speaker 1: little harder, the look in the eyes, those inside jokes,
Speaker 1: and it was a target of the jokes, and you
Speaker 1: know you didn't get mad at them, You just get
Speaker 1: even with them and you carried it for I always
Speaker 1: find sadness in that because you know, I've been doing
Speaker 1: it for about ten years. But then you have this.
Speaker 1: You go on a trip with people and you have
Speaker 1: this connection. A lot of times they'll be like a
Speaker 1: text chain or phone calls. When you see him, you
Speaker 1: have these inside jokes. And then over years that stuff
Speaker 1: fades if you don't continue to go hunting with those people.
Speaker 1: Over years, that stuff fades away and you lose that
Speaker 1: like but you will think about him. Yes, I have
Speaker 1: to do it. I decided that I wanted to do
Speaker 1: one day to count how many people I think of
Speaker 1: And maybe mine is wired differently than yours or somebody's else,
Speaker 1: but I go, it's just crazy. Every single thing would
Speaker 1: remind me of someone. You know, these headphones we're wearing
Speaker 1: it for the microphone, thinking of the pilots and the bush,
Speaker 1: the last compilot. Yes, you know how we were flying
Speaker 1: and how he finds out that vat carry a spray
Speaker 1: inside and are built when we took off, how he yelled,
Speaker 1: you know how he and then you go from everything
Speaker 1: is so connected, you know, and I think there might
Speaker 1: be the richness of the life where you have so
Speaker 1: many stories and so many experiences. So counted yourself this week,
Speaker 1: see how many people you think of? That you that
Speaker 1: you met over the years, and you just some certain
Speaker 1: things remind you of them and you'll carry them forever.
Speaker 1: Influences in your life you don't even realize. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: with the photography, you know, I get to look at
Speaker 1: it because if I have to make a submission somewhere,
Speaker 1: let's say pilots again, the fishermen, you know, you go
Speaker 1: and you see these faces. And now with the digital
Speaker 1: you know, when we don't do slides anymore, it's just
Speaker 1: so easy. And I find myself just side truck and
Speaker 1: I was looking for photo of squirrel and I am
Speaker 1: there at these people's faces and thinking of their stories
Speaker 1: and their food and their fire. And yeah, there's something
Speaker 1: about photographers like yourself. I've I've had a gentleman named
Speaker 1: Wyman Men'ser, Texas. He was before me and my generation,
Speaker 1: but he was a stream. Yeah, I've known him, been
Speaker 1: friends with him for some years now, and and he
Speaker 1: has a lot of the same sensibilities you do. Like
Speaker 1: it just people matter, and like relationships matter. Leos is
Speaker 1: another person that I had a revere and think he
Speaker 1: thinks the same way. It's just like a The way
Speaker 1: that you see the world allows you to capture those images.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not so dissimilar the way that you
Speaker 1: three guys think about things. That's good to hear. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's good. That's I'm not that weird. That's good to
Speaker 1: thank you for that. I feel better now, Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: if if you can be like those two guys. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you guys all come from vastly different backgrounds and vastly
Speaker 1: different ways of seeing the world, but carry some like
Speaker 1: creative vision for for how to capture folks. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean if you think of the career, did somebody go
Speaker 1: pay you money? You can actually make good living. We're
Speaker 1: taking photos, yeah, I mean my kids and to take
Speaker 1: them in a trip between because they still to get it.
Speaker 1: You know, they still don't get it to dad. It
Speaker 1: comes with a couple of suitcases and leaves and come
Speaker 1: home and get money. You know, it's just that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: their little brain doesn't see it. And you know the
Speaker 1: kids got um. That was the one nice thing the
Speaker 1: communists did when you were twelve, thirteen, fourteen, that would
Speaker 1: take us to different factories. They would take us to
Speaker 1: a clothing factory so the goals or asked get to
Speaker 1: see how things were made and by age fourteen, you
Speaker 1: have to pick your profession. I think of our college kids,
Speaker 1: how many of them would know what they want to
Speaker 1: do even after they get their degree. I think of
Speaker 1: our fourteen year olds, like, hey, you pay a career
Speaker 1: probably what would I have been circus plans as well?
Speaker 1: You have more opportunity here. So that's the thing, you know,
Speaker 1: we were kind of limited to our skills. If we
Speaker 1: are no good students, there's no way you're going to
Speaker 1: go to university, you know, but you become good carpenter
Speaker 1: or you were a lumberjack or I don't know drivers.
Speaker 1: So but to this day, I still love to see
Speaker 1: how things are made. And with this Cabella's best per
Speaker 1: trips that we do. Uh you know some of our
Speaker 1: experiences where we go to Italy for example, and we
Speaker 1: get to see how shotguns are made. Now you see
Speaker 1: these routers that we see the steel and comes to
Speaker 1: barrel and you see engravers who sits there for months
Speaker 1: in the engraving gun, the guy with the wood, how
Speaker 1: he polished the would have he measured it, how he
Speaker 1: send paper and finish or or trip to the bow factory,
Speaker 1: how you have you know, routs of aluminium in the
Speaker 1: one end in another end. It's a whole compound bo
Speaker 1: being assembled. So to see those things, um, I love that,
Speaker 1: you know, I really enjoyed to see how things are made.
Speaker 1: And there must be from you know, maybe even we
Speaker 1: were kids. And now it's another good you know, man,
Speaker 1: the appreciation you have for something that you know where
Speaker 1: it came from. My god, it seems like such a
Speaker 1: simple concept. Some of these things you seem like such
Speaker 1: a simple concept, but you get lost in them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I get lost. I mean, we gotta you's got a
Speaker 1: brand new house, we gotta fill with furniture and paying things,
Speaker 1: and you're nesting in there, and you get that, got
Speaker 1: a new job, and I'm trying to do build things
Speaker 1: and like that. Sometimes things just get lost, just get lost,
Speaker 1: and you're like, wait, if I just I just spent
Speaker 1: the weekend building something, well that's the right. Any improvements
Speaker 1: in the house, or if you know, you get to
Speaker 1: build your house from scratch, you kind of appreciate. You know,
Speaker 1: you're building house, You're not building real estate where you're
Speaker 1: gonna just stay for three years, make ten dollars and
Speaker 1: get another one. How the folks have tendency in the
Speaker 1: US to move all the time. Yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: admired that I would never gosh, where would I go?
Speaker 1: I mean we just like I do you know, you
Speaker 1: guys are really nomads. Just the U Wold trucks would
Speaker 1: never made any money in Czechoslovakia because we were to me,
Speaker 1: I left. But I find now that's a big in
Speaker 1: my life. I mean it's a rabbit hole for sure,
Speaker 1: but I find like I'm super close to my family.
Speaker 1: And and you know when you said that three generations
Speaker 1: lived in one house and jeckels Facket, it made me
Speaker 1: think because over the last couple of months, while my
Speaker 1: house would be in bill here, my family was living
Speaker 1: with my parents, and so we were in a house
Speaker 1: with three generations of people and we don't I mean
Speaker 1: there you go. And the feeling of that, like just
Speaker 1: to have my son sit down at the table and
Speaker 1: play harmonica with my dad every night, that's pretty unique.
Speaker 1: And then and then we just we're like, all right,
Speaker 1: we'll see you. And then moved to my Well. We
Speaker 1: have means to connect here. You know, we have FaceTime,
Speaker 1: you have aeroplanes, you can drive, so it's much easier
Speaker 1: than you know, what we had if we didn't have
Speaker 1: all that, um, but I think it's good to be
Speaker 1: surrounded by family at the end of no matter what
Speaker 1: do you do, I think your family is the most
Speaker 1: important thing because why did you get your career? What
Speaker 1: did you save all the money? Why did you do
Speaker 1: this if you have no nobody to pass to, nobody
Speaker 1: to teach nobody to hunting or take fishing and see
Speaker 1: how they you know the seeds? Did you plan to
Speaker 1: how to grows and bloom? And I told my dad
Speaker 1: that I have some some people. You know, you need
Speaker 1: to meet some people and they just have tough time
Speaker 1: of life, like they just can't quite figure out what
Speaker 1: they want to do or what they're gonna be successful
Speaker 1: at or how they're gonna be happy. I've never had
Speaker 1: that because I had a family that was kind of
Speaker 1: like the north Star always just like you know, But
Speaker 1: I'm sure you have some people they influence your life,
Speaker 1: either with your career decisions, because we all have that,
Speaker 1: and we need to appreciate those contacts, uh, and those
Speaker 1: influences like with the photography. For me, you know, I
Speaker 1: was a logger. I was a lumberjack. I was carrying
Speaker 1: chains around hand oil and gas in a nutter and
Speaker 1: going through the snow in the winter cutting trees, and
Speaker 1: I love that. But how do you go from there
Speaker 1: to the art? How all of a sudden you're gonna
Speaker 1: start learning about shapes and circles and shadows and art.
Speaker 1: I don't have a degree, you know, I didn't go
Speaker 1: to college. But I meet Mike Barlow. I met Mike
Speaker 1: Barlow here, who was a photographer Inbozeman, and one little
Speaker 1: visit again smiles, you know, I smile, he smiles, and
Speaker 1: he smiles. It's such a connection, you know that somehow
Speaker 1: I figured out the English and asking what he does.
Speaker 1: I was house sitting house in Ambozement and he was
Speaker 1: looking for a house with his wife. And he told him,
Speaker 1: don't bait this house. It's hundred forty thousand down Tombozement.
Speaker 1: It's an old house, has bad foundation. That gosh, I
Speaker 1: think I cost him half a million dollar probably, but
Speaker 1: you know, he told me we'll come. Mike travel his
Speaker 1: father sent him when he was eighteen or twenty around
Speaker 1: the world. And I think that's a good idea, you know,
Speaker 1: like purpose of higher education, my opinion is to teach tolerance. Well,
Speaker 1: if you take that money and send your kids oversea,
Speaker 1: and let him about life, tolerant and everything. So he
Speaker 1: sent him around and he liked to talk with people
Speaker 1: from different countries and ask him what he does. He said,
Speaker 1: I'm a photographer and I just got back from Alaska.
Speaker 1: I'll show me some photos and I remember today, just
Speaker 1: like today's light table with for the slides, beautiful red
Speaker 1: color of tundra from the Nali Park. You see carriboo moves,
Speaker 1: doll sheep scenery, and I'm looking at it and just
Speaker 1: start clicking, like I took some pictures when I was
Speaker 1: in military. I took pictures when I was in the
Speaker 1: forestry school. Oh that's what I want to do. Mind
Speaker 1: looking at me, he goes, do you have cameras? Like? No,
Speaker 1: but is that important? But I want to so if
Speaker 1: you know, But I was twenty two and who cares.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just go with the flow. I just
Speaker 1: you know, used to live here, you eat there, You
Speaker 1: just explore the world. And as long as you have
Speaker 1: good intentions and you have a strong willpower and you
Speaker 1: believe in yourself, things will come. And you know, we
Speaker 1: start traveling together and take photos and Mark move one
Speaker 1: step above me. Now he's a sculptor and this beautiful earth. Um,
Speaker 1: and you're I'm just taking photo clicking. I would love
Speaker 1: to paint maybe eventually you sit here. Yeah, but it's
Speaker 1: and I think art and appreciations for art, and that's
Speaker 1: what nature has. You know, you walk in the trees
Speaker 1: and started looking at the branches and leaves and beer
Speaker 1: there or grass and things that everything is aligned with
Speaker 1: the light. I mean just and in Montana, whatever you look, um,
Speaker 1: there's a photos here there working. Yeah. I think that
Speaker 1: places that don't have the dynamics that this does. Of
Speaker 1: the mountain ranges, you don't see light the way you Yeah,
Speaker 1: another places the way you see it. Here you still
Speaker 1: see I think it's more cleaner air. I'm thinking. Plus
Speaker 1: the visibility. I mean you can just see several myers.
Speaker 1: You see those mountains bridges, or you can see the
Speaker 1: bridges from sitting right here. You can see how far
Speaker 1: away are we from those mountains right now? I mean
Speaker 1: you get the perspective of depth and perception and when
Speaker 1: the light, I don't just think like at four thirty here,
Speaker 1: when the light starts bouncing off the bridges and just
Speaker 1: like that is not that perception, that depth of feeling
Speaker 1: having a mountain right there is just pretty unique. You
Speaker 1: could beautiful, beautiful not cities have you know different Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there's attractions, you have cultures. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people need to be in the bee hive
Speaker 1: right there where things are happening and be where the noises.
Speaker 1: Nice thing for us is that we know what do
Speaker 1: we want. That's the accomplishments already, and you're like the
Speaker 1: country and then we just go visit cities the nice
Speaker 1: Brandy book friends and that's what we need. More friends,
Speaker 1: and so be my friend. Bad. Yeah, I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: your friend. I mean i we're neighbors, um River neighbors.
Speaker 1: And my two year old would have a freaking paul
Speaker 1: like just playing, you know, feeding the pigs, and my
Speaker 1: dad would love to babysit him. That loves seeing her
Speaker 1: carrying kids around and just showing this future matterie in
Speaker 1: strint in her you know, just beautiful. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm my kid. I mean he's he's too, so he
Speaker 1: has his troubles. He is a good he's a good
Speaker 1: little human man. He's a good soul. He were at
Speaker 1: a restaurant the other day and there's a little baby,
Speaker 1: she's maybe six months and she kept dropping Her mom
Speaker 1: kept handing her a toy, and she kept dropping it.
Speaker 1: Her mom would be on her phone and and wasn't looking.
Speaker 1: And my son is two years old. He would just
Speaker 1: walk over on his own, pick the toy up and
Speaker 1: give it to the little girl. She would go go
Speaker 1: to plane with it, and he'd walk back over to
Speaker 1: me and we'd be eating and he'd look over and
Speaker 1: she had dropped it again. He'd walk over, get it,
Speaker 1: give it back to her, and the mom blest the moms.
Speaker 1: She did never even notice that he was doing that.
Speaker 1: She didn't even notice what her kid was doing. So
Speaker 1: she was probably so busy that she didn't notice, and
Speaker 1: he didn't notice. You know, lots of parents think that, Well,
Speaker 1: I guess not what you give them, by the way
Speaker 1: you take him and how much time you spend a
Speaker 1: vid him. Yeah. Yeah, so it's it's a huge thing.
Speaker 1: And here, like we were talking about, you're talking about
Speaker 1: wanting to be around Montana. That's one of the reasons
Speaker 1: I moved here just so I could. You know, I
Speaker 1: love to hunt. I love to hunt fish, and there's
Speaker 1: just away kids are raised here that is, you know, there,
Speaker 1: if my kid ends up being a video gamer. I'll
Speaker 1: be surprised because he's gonna have a lot of opportunities
Speaker 1: not to do that, you know, and I certainly won't
Speaker 1: put it in front of him. But but if he
Speaker 1: ends up being an ice climber, I will not be shocked,
Speaker 1: you know, just because it's right here. You know, play
Speaker 1: is going to shape him and influence him. So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we need also though, before I forget talk about homing pigeons,
Speaker 1: we need to. That's what I'm saying. I don't want to,
Speaker 1: I don't want to stop this conversation, but homing pigeons
Speaker 1: are the coolest thing going, Like how many pigeons. It's
Speaker 1: my church, you know, I walk in there and I'm
Speaker 1: just there, but I'm back in my childhood. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I'm back in my book. So that was our attraction
Speaker 1: in our village. Better when hunting, fishing, or run around
Speaker 1: the mountains with their stick in the hands, playing soccer,
Speaker 1: or raise pigeons. And I think some of the parents
Speaker 1: recognize how important it is for kids to have some
Speaker 1: animals of their choice, you know, not the one you
Speaker 1: want to have them, but they and there was somehow
Speaker 1: as the kids we want to possess animals and be
Speaker 1: in charge. I mean, you may be seen little kids
Speaker 1: having dog in the leash and they are so proud
Speaker 1: because they are in charge. So the homing pigeons for
Speaker 1: us was, you know, we have to take care of them.
Speaker 1: You get to breed them, we get to put bands
Speaker 1: on them. But then you get to send them hundred
Speaker 1: miles away from your home and see if they come home.
Speaker 1: And if they come home, then you get to compete
Speaker 1: with other members. So I grew up with that, and
Speaker 1: when I moved to Montana, that was the last thing
Speaker 1: that I would think I would be doing, the last
Speaker 1: thing I thought i'd run into. It was like homing
Speaker 1: piges in Montana and we were building house here and
Speaker 1: my wife told me, well, three months from now, I
Speaker 1: would like to take you for lunch. And I said,
Speaker 1: oh sure, fine, honey him and that so we start
Speaker 1: building house. In three months came and she goes, remember
Speaker 1: when I told you that we're gonna have the lunch
Speaker 1: to get I said, honey, again, I have this construction loan.
Speaker 1: We are plumbers coming and we have to but you
Speaker 1: promised me. I said, okay. Angry, my wife took me
Speaker 1: to the rest of our in Belgrade and I walking in,
Speaker 1: I opened the door and I see this sixty seven
Speaker 1: years old guys sitting there, and I saw bands pigeons.
Speaker 1: Bands in the corners like, no, you guys don't raise pigeons,
Speaker 1: and because of course we do. We've been racing here
Speaker 1: for fifty years. There's a guy who was in World
Speaker 1: War Two and he was um in a charge of
Speaker 1: He was a pigeoneer. He was basically delivering messages with
Speaker 1: the pigeons, and he brought the hobby to Montana Established
Speaker 1: Club and I said, I couldn't believe it. So the
Speaker 1: guy goes, well, here's one band for you. Remember it's
Speaker 1: all about winning the long distance race from five miles.
Speaker 1: Rest of the races don't count. I was like, wow,
Speaker 1: this is awesome. Uh seven to bank right away and
Speaker 1: get more lumber because I need to add something that
Speaker 1: I did in frame. So while I was building house,
Speaker 1: I was building pigeons. And I wake up, I think
Speaker 1: of pigeons. I go to bed, I think of pigeons.
Speaker 1: I try to breathe a perfect specimen, and I'm having
Speaker 1: so much fun. You know that the genes are self
Speaker 1: finicky and we really don't know anything. About it. Bye.
Speaker 1: By interacting with the pigeons, I think it makes me
Speaker 1: a better photographer because observation is the key. You know,
Speaker 1: you look at those animals are there in the roof,
Speaker 1: are they're feeling like Elvis's and their hunch down and
Speaker 1: then they're not doing well. So you know, you use
Speaker 1: that approachment to the wildlife photography and you get to
Speaker 1: read deer or elk better and where they're gonna go
Speaker 1: or you know, where you can intercept them for the
Speaker 1: better photos. So those those pigeons are awesome. And our
Speaker 1: little club here Montana, you know, were raised our longest
Speaker 1: races from Reno in Carson City, Nevada. So you're so,
Speaker 1: how many people in the club. So we have about
Speaker 1: eight people in the club and we meet here Friday
Speaker 1: afternoon during the May June month, and we have this
Speaker 1: craze if we put our pigeons together. The pigeons have
Speaker 1: a little electronic chipperings, so we scan them before they
Speaker 1: go to race. And how many pigeons always just fly
Speaker 1: back home. So whatever. In the first three days they
Speaker 1: were born, they were hatched. You know, they come outside,
Speaker 1: they kind of gps the coordinates in their heads and
Speaker 1: it's like, this is it okay right here? And if
Speaker 1: you don't know anything about it? Why did that? Did
Speaker 1: they they tried to study? Know, it's a combinations of smell,
Speaker 1: magnet hearing. I don't know what else they use because
Speaker 1: they try to Yeah, the Cordinal University try to remove
Speaker 1: They put like a contact lenses and the pigeons so
Speaker 1: they cannot see anything. They still find their way home,
Speaker 1: you know. So there is just so much mystery. But
Speaker 1: the coolest thing is that it's a it's for me
Speaker 1: to be outside and send pigeons away five hundred miles
Speaker 1: and he's been released six in the morning, let's say,
Speaker 1: in a Saturday, and I'm thinking about it. Man, he
Speaker 1: flew four hours, he flew eight hours, he flew twelve hours.
Speaker 1: So you're just tracking them as you know, you don't track,
Speaker 1: you just take them. There's no way to track them yet.
Speaker 1: There is a tracking now where you can download the
Speaker 1: data once they come home and see where they went,
Speaker 1: which was kind of new this year that I've done.
Speaker 1: It's gonna interesting, but no life tracking yet. So you
Speaker 1: breathe these birds who can cover six d fifty miles
Speaker 1: in the one day, you know, twelve hours. It's just amazing,
Speaker 1: you know, one pound and how do they know how
Speaker 1: do you know where they're going to fly? But they
Speaker 1: always fly back home. So whatever you release, when we
Speaker 1: take them to sal Lake City or right helpfalls or buildings,
Speaker 1: they just fly back home. And that's what they were used. Um,
Speaker 1: you know true jinks con he did the messages. Roygious
Speaker 1: Services started with the pigeons, you know, that's how they
Speaker 1: deliver World War two, World War One, they were using
Speaker 1: pigeons for the ring messages. Nowadays they still use them.
Speaker 1: The Palestinees use them and you know to communicate and
Speaker 1: god drug deal or use them for delivering drugs. You know,
Speaker 1: they're sitting in the park, they put them in the paperback.
Speaker 1: If the good guy come, they just grab the drugs,
Speaker 1: sell it. If the cups coming, they just released the
Speaker 1: pigeons with all the drugs and pig just go back home,
Speaker 1: you know, so they didn't lose anything. So there are
Speaker 1: so many uses of the animals. But the entire club
Speaker 1: drives to a place just the one person. One person
Speaker 1: takes all the crates and he would just release them
Speaker 1: next day in the morning. So you release him and
Speaker 1: then he comes back home, and he comes back home,
Speaker 1: and pigeons hopefully go to my place, two people in buildings,
Speaker 1: people in Belgrade, people in three forks, and whenever they
Speaker 1: got back. And they have electronic clocking now so you
Speaker 1: can actually see when the pigeons come. It goes to
Speaker 1: the smartphone and you can actually see who get pigeons
Speaker 1: and what were the speeds. So since everybody has a
Speaker 1: different distance, we can they measure that the instances and
Speaker 1: then we calculate the r per minute of the speed
Speaker 1: since they over release at the same time. Wow, but
Speaker 1: they call it porman race horses, so exactly like horses
Speaker 1: with the breeding supplements, like a pretty rich and awesome
Speaker 1: thing to be doing. Yeah, well with the pigeons, you know,
Speaker 1: you don't need that much money. You know, horses very expensive.
Speaker 1: The birds you can and you can get grain locally
Speaker 1: here and you can build a little little loft and
Speaker 1: I when they're flying around your house like that you
Speaker 1: said they're exercising, they're just exercising. They just love to fly.
Speaker 1: And it's fun to see when the hawk comes or
Speaker 1: or falcon. It's awesome to watch falcon. How we scoops
Speaker 1: and try to pick one and usually he doesn't get
Speaker 1: these birds are in the shape, you know, so they
Speaker 1: have to be either something wrong. We don't when he
Speaker 1: really surprised him, it's a something. You probably have a
Speaker 1: hobby that I got, not I'd like to have this hobby.
Speaker 1: They look here they come and they're beautiful too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it is just amazing that little bird can cover
Speaker 1: six miles in the day. And then you said, there's
Speaker 1: eight or nine folks in the club, and where they
Speaker 1: all from different places around different places, and we would
Speaker 1: have preachers, we would have police chief, police chief of
Speaker 1: Manhattan was flying birds, our dealer, carpenters. You know. It's
Speaker 1: just like it's a cool history and it's a great history.
Speaker 1: And I get to stay I with my I get
Speaker 1: to stay in touch you with my friends in Europe
Speaker 1: where I grew up. I get to call them and say, hey,
Speaker 1: what's the latest or what's going on? The latest in
Speaker 1: the pigeon era? Yeah, you know who do you? And
Speaker 1: actually these birds are from where I grew up because
Speaker 1: the Montana birds they were pretty good, but the birds
Speaker 1: where I grew up were better. And the reason I
Speaker 1: think was because the poor the country, the better the animals.
Speaker 1: The selection is toffer. You know, those people they don't
Speaker 1: have extra money too to give to their kids, not
Speaker 1: to take care of their pigeons, you know, so they
Speaker 1: give them good out in good food, but any kind
Speaker 1: of sickness is out. So there's selection. We get the
Speaker 1: pampered pigeons everywhere. So and and you know in the
Speaker 1: US we love to spoil our animals. I mean, dogs
Speaker 1: are slipping in their beds, you know, horses getting more
Speaker 1: supplements and blankets than their kids. Do you know it is?
Speaker 1: I mean, we cannot even need horses. I mean there's
Speaker 1: a guy, there's a guy at work that I put
Speaker 1: a jacket on his dog the other day. What are
Speaker 1: you doing there? He said, Well, he gets cold. I'm like,
Speaker 1: he's a dog. He can adapt his dog. You understand,
Speaker 1: that used to be a wolf and we just made
Speaker 1: it look this way. Yeah, it's interesting. But yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: just to see just to be sitting here and seeing
Speaker 1: this pigeons flying around your house is awesome. So I'm
Speaker 1: coming up. I'm gonna bring my kid and we're gonna
Speaker 1: we're gonna see the birds, see the birds. We might
Speaker 1: be in the club for long, you never know. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know what kind of hazing there
Speaker 1: is at the Pigeon Club, but I'm trying to get
Speaker 1: there isn't you know. They just get the birds and
Speaker 1: get aloft and there's lots to learn. It's a steep
Speaker 1: learning curve, but it's not the difficult plus, but you
Speaker 1: need to stay away once again. The marketing there, you know,
Speaker 1: they tell you pigeon needs this, and they need return
Speaker 1: combo for relaxing muscles, and he needs better carps before
Speaker 1: the race, and et cetera, et cetera, and more snake
Speaker 1: oil stuff than anything. You know. It's just like I mean, performs.
Speaker 1: Like I said, I don't have a TV, but when
Speaker 1: I'm in the trips, like the latest trip in the Kansas,
Speaker 1: we look at the TV. There's just the fear and
Speaker 1: wongering and pill selling, you know, just lots of pills.
Speaker 1: And the funny thing is that those pills you cannot
Speaker 1: go and buiom you can tell your doctor to get
Speaker 1: prescribe you those pills. So I'm supposed to watch the
Speaker 1: commercial educate my doctors. I can get those pills. They look,
Speaker 1: I saw this on TV. It's better be good? Yeah?
Speaker 1: What what what will all those pill commercials say tell
Speaker 1: your doctor if this is right for you, well let
Speaker 1: him know. But like, wait a minute, I thought it
Speaker 1: was the other way around. But and at one time
Speaker 1: there was six or eight different commercials in the evening.
Speaker 1: So when you see when you have the kids there
Speaker 1: are indoors and they're just watching TV. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna take very long to just make them think
Speaker 1: that you cannot exist without pills. Yes, you know, they're
Speaker 1: gonna not think that the food is your medicine. You know,
Speaker 1: this wild deer, wild elk has all the mineral nutritions
Speaker 1: that you will need as long as you exercise and
Speaker 1: you live happy life. You really don't eat all these supplements. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean coming in this house, sitting here in this
Speaker 1: house with you and being here for the assada, you
Speaker 1: just think like there's some health of mind and spirit
Speaker 1: here like there just it is, and some places you
Speaker 1: go there just isn't. Um And I would positive the
Speaker 1: connection you guys have to but it's so simple, you know,
Speaker 1: it is nothing that we created or invented. It's just
Speaker 1: like how common folks live. But that is I mean
Speaker 1: really though it's not it isn't, but it's not what
Speaker 1: society is telling folks to do nowadays. It's not if
Speaker 1: you follow the herd, you don't end up here. You know,
Speaker 1: if you follow the trends, you don't end up here.
Speaker 1: You have to diverge at some point to end up here.
Speaker 1: I think that's just keep spreading message over that, you know,
Speaker 1: harvesting animal and and eating them and different recipes, and
Speaker 1: and the enjoyment and benefit you get from being outside
Speaker 1: being a hunter, being a fisherman, and you're never you
Speaker 1: never mastered. It is my favorite part about it. You're
Speaker 1: always there's always something new. I mean, you're building this
Speaker 1: new business with all these people that were hiring and
Speaker 1: coming in, and then every day I feel like a bum.
Speaker 1: I get around these people. I'm like, I thought I
Speaker 1: read a lot. I thought I knew a lot about hunting.
Speaker 1: I thought I knew a lot about cooking up wild game,
Speaker 1: and then we bring these people in. I'm like, WHOA,
Speaker 1: all right? Yeah, I mean I'm I thought I had
Speaker 1: this licked. But there's always there's many many people, especially
Speaker 1: in this community of people. You walk downtown Boseman, You're
Speaker 1: like looking at a guy like, I know that guy hunts,
Speaker 1: I know he does he probably has more than I do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I need to go talk to him. And so we
Speaker 1: we kind of, uh, you know, we talked about it.
Speaker 1: But if you have a work that's satisfying you, there's
Speaker 1: fulfilling and you know, we spreading good message and I
Speaker 1: see what you guys. I mean, it had to be satisfying. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's no no better than that. I mean I keep
Speaker 1: thinking of me and somebody asking what do you do?
Speaker 1: I was like, I think I collect smiles. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I I truly believe like once you get to that point,
Speaker 1: you're if you can, like you have clearly done it.
Speaker 1: If you can just minimize the distraction from your passion,
Speaker 1: Like if you get into place where somebody lets you
Speaker 1: do that for a living, if you can just minimize
Speaker 1: a distraction and focus on the thing that you've captured,
Speaker 1: then then you're happy, you know, and it just gets distractions.
Speaker 1: If somebody's causing distraction and taking you away from the thing,
Speaker 1: you gotta get him out of there. And you got
Speaker 1: to pursue it because we're, you know, pretty lucky folks
Speaker 1: to do what we do, you know, So if somebody's
Speaker 1: in there messing that up, they gotta go at any level.
Speaker 1: So well, thanks for let me have some brandy. The
Speaker 1: fire is now out, but there's always um you know,
Speaker 1: can the link where you're starting new fire. I've been
Speaker 1: here twice and we've had a fire and brandy both times.
Speaker 1: Hopefully that's it will be just repeating all the time.
Speaker 1: Trend take that every time we eat by the fire
Speaker 1: and drink I think, uh, look at the in the afternoons,
Speaker 1: and you know, we go out and ski. I love
Speaker 1: skiing around here, cross countries. Give it to the dogs. Um,
Speaker 1: just I guess little sercize outdoors and then go back
Speaker 1: inside in the winter. But then we have you know,
Speaker 1: obviously we would have three September and three October, but
Speaker 1: that could be draining because September comes, gosh with all
Speaker 1: the hunting that we do and go on the trips.
Speaker 1: Uh last what promised? People are got a lot of
Speaker 1: family members will come visit you and don't worry, we'll
Speaker 1: come and then the summertimell come on. Like listen, don't
Speaker 1: come then, because I don't want to have to parade
Speaker 1: you around and share the tourist spots. I want to
Speaker 1: be doing what I'm wanna do. Come in the winter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll sit around and watch it snow. Yeah, you'll have fun.
Speaker 1: I think they'll be um rewording for you and for
Speaker 1: your kids growing up here and be in Montana. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Montana and you're Montana. Well I have Instagram Doon Montana, Smittana.
Speaker 1: My kids have middle name Montana, both of them all
Speaker 1: they do both them. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know my
Speaker 1: kids are. But um yeah, where can people see all
Speaker 1: your photography if they want to check it out? Well,
Speaker 1: just to do sewn smittana dot com. Know on a website. Um,
Speaker 1: you guys sell prints or anything there, I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: to you know, not really, there are maybe just few,
Speaker 1: probably five tan prints a year. I really don't target
Speaker 1: that because the princes are so personal, you know, I
Speaker 1: really don't know what people people like. Um, and I like,
Speaker 1: look at my princes here. They all have horses or cattles,
Speaker 1: you know, so I can tell you. I am agricultural guy.
Speaker 1: Um beautiful, but I like big scenery with little people.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know one of the editor wants told
Speaker 1: me that I can just see your photos when it's
Speaker 1: a huge scenery and little fisherman or a little hunter,
Speaker 1: that's gotta be your photo. And I kind of like
Speaker 1: that and said, well, I asked him, well, why do
Speaker 1: you like that? Because so besides seeing beautiful scenery, I
Speaker 1: think what it does people to imagine themselves that they
Speaker 1: are damn you know. They want to go and experience
Speaker 1: that little stinky guy right there in the middle and
Speaker 1: and be. But it's also he shows you how small
Speaker 1: you are. Yeah, that puts you in perspective how big
Speaker 1: those plays as are. So there's some awesome stuff here
Speaker 1: is that? Yeah? I mean I would love to do
Speaker 1: a book one day on hunting guides. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: just just the best stories you ever like, who has
Speaker 1: the best stories hunting guides? Oh? My goodness, they are
Speaker 1: you know, they are making lots of hunters successful. Yeah, now,
Speaker 1: if you think of it, we are lucky here. We
Speaker 1: have national force, so I can just go and use
Speaker 1: my skills to get an elk coret deer. But most
Speaker 1: people hunt with guides, and they're only as good as
Speaker 1: their guides. And those guides, you know, it's their skill
Speaker 1: too help you harvest the animal. And sadly, I mean
Speaker 1: I don't see too many guides um in the magazines.
Speaker 1: I don't see any guides book ever. I mean I
Speaker 1: don't maybe you've seen it. And some of the guides
Speaker 1: in some countries they're not even invited to sit with
Speaker 1: you at the table, you know, so we still have
Speaker 1: some pr to do. That's I mean, you see that
Speaker 1: a lot. There's a guy's table and a client. It's like,
Speaker 1: i'd like to you know, the reason I'm here is
Speaker 1: for you to guide me. Man. I want to learn
Speaker 1: from you. Yeah, I wanted to. Like, the reason I
Speaker 1: need you is because I don't know this country in
Speaker 1: this in this way, and i'd like to the comarad
Speaker 1: or you have and just just hiss and you look
Speaker 1: at it. What the guides usually wear, I mean some
Speaker 1: of them don't even have to brand new boots are
Speaker 1: the best clothes. But they can get it done. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they are Yeah, and you can't and you can't
Speaker 1: get it done without a lot of time. Thanks you
Speaker 1: to Sean. I really appreciate appreciate it. So we'll see
Speaker 1: you around. Well, keep the brandy flowing. That's it. That's
Speaker 1: all episode number forty in the books. Thank you to
Speaker 1: du Sean S. Meantana. Really appreciate you for having me
Speaker 1: in your home, for sharing your brandy, for sharing your
Speaker 1: mentee and allowing us to talk about your life. It
Speaker 1: was enlightening and I very much appreciate it. It was
Speaker 1: awesome story. Episode number forty is gonna be a good
Speaker 1: one if you liked episode thirty nine. We got Randy
Speaker 1: Newberg coming in the house. He's gonna talk about hunting
Speaker 1: ethics with us answer some of your questions. So if
Speaker 1: you have questions and you're listening to this now, send
Speaker 1: them in really quick because you've got a couple of
Speaker 1: days before Randy comes in to sit with us and
Speaker 1: talk hunting as what else, what else? What else? What else? Hey, man,
Speaker 1: there's always a lot of stuff happening at the meeting
Speaker 1: and incorporated. Um we got you go to the meat
Speaker 1: eater store. Man, You've got all kinds of stuff there
Speaker 1: right now. It's almost Christmas. And if you go there,
Speaker 1: you might find a shirt with a gnome. It's an
Speaker 1: illustration of a gnome packing out the unicorn from the
Speaker 1: mind of one Stephen Ranella. You're gonna want to give
Speaker 1: this to every boy and girl and man and woman
Speaker 1: in your life because it's badass. There's also stuff for
Speaker 1: the Hunting Collective there. Click over there you might find
Speaker 1: the yetti tumbler with our logo on it that you
Speaker 1: can purchase. It would be awesome if you did. And
Speaker 1: when you're done with that, and I know you've got
Speaker 1: a lot more time and money, UM, go up to
Speaker 1: the newsletter subscribe button. You click that and you'll be good.
Speaker 1: You put your little put your little email in there,
Speaker 1: and then updates from our website come every Wednesday into
Speaker 1: your inbox. It's unbelievable, I know. And then if when
Speaker 1: you're done with that, if you still got extra time,
Speaker 1: then you go and you go on Amazon or wherever
Speaker 1: you buy a book, and you and you buy or
Speaker 1: order the Mediator Fishing Game Cookbook. You do that, you
Speaker 1: need to do that. It's out of stock right now,
Speaker 1: but it will come eventually. It'll come like in January,
Speaker 1: and it'll be a great surprise whenever it does show up.
Speaker 1: So that's really it. If you do all those things,
Speaker 1: will love you. I love you forever, and we'll keep
Speaker 1: pumping out these podcasts free o charge for you. So
Speaker 1: until next time, thanks for joining us. Thank you, Dudu,
Speaker 1: Sean Spantana, thank you to you all for listening. Bye.
Speaker 1: M H.