00:00:02 Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, and welcome the episode number thirty nine The Hunting Collective. I've been O'Brien and today I am joined by the one and only du Sean Smantana. He was born in Czechoslovakia, but he lives in Montana. He's a renowned outdoor photographer, hunting photographer, and just all around wonderful human being. He's got insight on where he grew up, how he came up, and escaping communist Czechoslovakia in the late eighties. Hed come to America and live out his dream and he's and he certainly is living that with his wife, Florca and their kids in bos He's traveled the world to work for companies like Capella, and he has a lot to tell us about that. He's an interesting man, but interesting insights, So please enjoy du Schon Smantona. Sean, how are you, sir? I am belle, Yes, how are you? I'm very well. Um drinking a little bit of mint tea with a spike of plum brandy on a It's not actually it's it's not that chilly but Montana day, is it? No, it's beautiful, blue sky, sunshine, uh, sleep of its time. It's beautiful. And and for folks that like I always try to start these podcasts. Obviously, people can't see where we are. Can you give your best description of where where we're sitting right now? And and really just I guess you're homestead here. Well, we are in bows men Um in my house have a small farm by Dullaton River. Raised different kind of animals for us. Yeah, sheep and pigs and chickens and ducks and turkeys and homing pigeons. Homing pigeons. Yeah, we're gonna talk about that a lot. And just just to heaven. You know, I love Montana, I love the name, I love everything about it. So I'm glad you get to move here, you get experience that. Yeah, I'll be right, Uh, not too far, I said. It's like a two minute commute up up the road and around the corner and five minutes across the river. Five minutes across the river, and we're sipping tea and brandy by the fire at your place. They do your wife, Laurca and yourself, did you guys? You guys put a lot of this house together. We did, you know, we tried to research um. When you travel, you see different things around the world, and you see how people build differently. Have they designed different homes or structures to live. And once I cam and sit down with the architect, you kind of told him would be one we really like to read in the heat and the concrete floor, but like insuaded house so you don't waste your energy heating it. That's right, um, and be like the simplicity modern You know, the concrete floor are awesome for cleaning. And we knew we're going to have a kids, so um, somehow you know, figure out how not to let him just destroy the house, so you have that kin in mind. If I would do that, I would definitely not put any kitchen cabinets, a bunch of hay bales and drain in the middle. And I think that will do. You just got new house and kids, so you'll see how much damage he'll do. That's right. And I and my wife and I discussed that. She's like, well, we could get the nice carpet. I said, we could get the nice carpet, but every nice thing we get has the ability to be made less so by our little dude. Although he's pretty, he's pretty low low maintenance, but still but it's nice to have a house, you know, nice to own some land. Um. And another think or concept of our house? Who was to make not to pick our houses? Square feet perfect for two kids and couple and no maintenance. So if you put meler rouf, and if you put stackle and plaster and inside you know there's not much maintenance, so you don't want to And if you choose good windows so you don't have to repay them, um, then you just you know, house is never done, but you try to minimize all the extra expenses down the road. Yeah, and you have quite the homestead here. I mean it feels like I don't know how most of describe it. It's like a farmat where you have. I mean, you're right here on the Gallton River's freaking beautiful and farm animals around and and you guys are square with plum brandy and a nice fire here and it's it's a beautiful view. Life is good on a farm, right. I you know, I would love to get even more land, but there is not much here available. But I think they have a little farm. It's a security for me. You know, I grew up in a farm, and I grew up in a small village where the animals gonna take care of you so um, and you can get the woods, so you kind of eliminate the thinking that food comes from grocery store and the heat comes from furnace. Yeah, you have to chop the heat. Chopped, the chopped the heat, and you raise your animals and you butcher them and you eat them. And that's more security to meat than have several thousand dollars in the bank. You know, my house is surrounded with firewood, and freezers are full of meat. Bring it, bring it. Yeah you have so you have chickens and goats. Here else we have sheep clinic sheep. And I got the idea from traveling to Argentina in the last twenty years or so, and illow how they cooked it what they call asada lamasade over the fire. And after I think a couple of dinners in the US, you know that I noticed that the lamb was the most expensive meat. And then suddenly, just click six years he goes like, well, why can I have my own lamb sheep? And and and here you are. And I talked to my wife, did research me find the Icelandic sheep and they're low one maintenance. They're very hearty, they don't need any structures, and they're very yummy. So it's a nice combinations with the hunting. You know, when when you get the elk, cantal upward deer, there's not much grease there, but with the antelope, I mean with the lamb, you just have extra fats of grease and fat there. So, yes, we came over here a month or so, maybe even longer ago. And had you did the assada for us over the fire and it was unbelievable, tell folks well, and you gave me a lot of brandy then too, so it could have been that could have helped out. I don't know. I don't know. More you drink better, more tists tell people about your your strategy for making this out and like you know where you learned in your influences from Argentina and you know, and I know that as you get older you try to I think you get more into what I call homie you. We just get into cooking, You get into gardening. You get into little skills and hobbies did you always want to do but never had time? Um those as it could be challenges. You know, you you get into raising sheep and you try to figure out how to hey. So then you get in a tractor and you try to cut and bail. So it's U still very entertained, you know, with all these with all these activities, and they love it because it's completely distract me from from the photography. I don't have to think of oh, framings, and you know all the other thoughts you have when you're taking photos. I completely forget about them, you know. I I always say I'm a full time farmer and part of time photographer. You've crafted quite quite the job title in living here. Um, you know, you're not listening with a lot of we A lot of people glorify living off the land or you're just a lifestyle of living off what's around you and you have have that here and well specifically around the sheep. How do you treat them? And you raise them? You know, when do you harvest one? Like? How do you how do you treat that with your family? So the lambs are usually born middle of May, beginning of May, and we have lambs running around and it's kind of cute to see kids going in there and lifting those animals and looking at them and put them bag and try to catch them again, and we graze them in our land and our neighbor's land to be make small padducts of two three acres, and once a week we'll move them, so we rotated. Then nice thing being in the river bottom. You have so much submoisture that the grass grow nicely. And by the time you finish one and you can start another one when it comes September and October. You know this sheep they are wild, they're from Iceland and they they haven't been improved by British scientists to gain weight and loose them out of trades. So they eat bark, they eat um leaves, so we don't have to de warm them since we have it just at of them. And when October comes. In of October, then be slaughter the lambs. We keep the replacement cheap, then be slaughter maybe some old cheap that we don't they're not they're getting old. And you know, we use some of that meat. And I would use lots of other parts of those animals for my hunting dogs, for the bird dogs. Um. You know, I feed them the lungs, liver, heart, even stomach the tribe and I opened the stomach and empty the green and cut that up and that's two three meals. Eat stomach for the dogs with all the enzymes and minerals and nutritions. Now your kids take you have two children, Um, do they take part in the entire process with you. They help, you know, they watch, they help eat. They still don't know that they're eating liver. You know, they like liver with onions. That's actually traditional or big tradition in Europe where soon is your harvest any animal and you have access to fire, you chop onions and you eat that, you know, the red deer liver or road deer liver. Um. So it's you know, they help and they see that. Now, I don't know if they're gonna pursue that kind of lifestyle vib here, but options are there for them. You know often they will remember. But um, I am going exactly back as I grow up. I mean I see that that you know, I want to take care of myself. I want to take care of the fire. Would I want to grow our own potatoes and carrots? I want to have my own honey, it's um, you know up thirty years ago, I would I would not think that I would have that because it was so distant. But yeah, well it seems it seems to calm you a bit. Yeah. I think the influence and your childhood, how you grow up and where you grew up, it just influenced you. And then later on you you seek that and it's you know, it's up to you how deep you're gonna go over that. Yeah. I mean, you're you know, and you're professional life. You're a photographer for many brands, of course Cabela's being a big one. Um, how do you balance those two thinks? I mean, you're travel and we were just talking before we hit record about your traveling and not being around Montana as much as you'd like to be. And but but but you need to travel the world and knowing a lot of places and allowing that to inform how you live here in Montana. Yeah. So I've been fortunate and last twenty five years I did get to travel quite a bad around around the world. But it's nice too, always nice to come home. Um, you know, you've got to do something for a living. So I you know, I didn't think I have a bad gig. I mean, I think it's wonderful to just take photos and meet new people in interact learning about different languages, cultures, meet people who are in all kind of professions and hear their stories. Um talking to hunting GUIDs in South Africa or else rally or Germany, and just see what's their lives about, how their backgrounds look like, how did they shelter their animals? You know, what kind of fire, what kind of would they use? You know, all those things are so interesting for me. And and so the traveling is great. But the one bad thing that I said, or not bad, but it's just weird that I don't know very much about Montana. I get this request from local magazines and I never been to those places. You know, Montana is so big, so I would like to change it a little bit and explore mort Montana and kind of balance with the traveling. Traveling is around four months a year, but the rest of them the rest of the time I'm here. So yeah, I mean this is as I said, moving here for me. I mean, you just I feel like the opportunity, immense opportunity to explore the West is you could take me thirty years and I still wouldn't have much knowledge of what I'd want to what I want to go explore. But that's a fun that's a fun idea to have. I mean, I don't know, you know, I think what informs a lot of your life is how you grew up. I mean that's you know, and where you grew up. Um. Yeah, this is a big playground, yes, I mean if you are a hunter and fishermen and skier and you know, river guide or kayaker or mountain climber, ice climber. I mean, we have it. And it's just amazing the variety of the outdoor sports we have here and the people here. Last time we came here for the Assada, I was struck that in your house was like this wonderful bunch of wonderful people and they were from all over this country, in this world that had collected here around your place and around this river and this state. I mean it was amazing. Yeah. I mean people in Bosman there are really nice. I mean people in Montana and generally nice and and they're inquisitive. You know, you meet these locals, they are they're asking you questions. You know, there are these ranchers that they see where you come from. What do you doing here? You know, why do you want to hunt? In his place where you know, when you get to me and then they go, oh, we remember that our grandfather was from Czechoslovakia, or it was from Germany, or I never felt once living in the US that somebody would be prejudice because they come from different countries. I think it works to our advantages. I always say. And and you know, there's so much public land to hunt in the top of it. There's so much private land that you could hunt. You just have to go and knock in the door, you know, not one month before the season opened or the opening day, but go there in May and June and and put a little work in it. Yeah, helping with the cattle, is helping with the fans, and not too many doors will be closed. That's right. Yeah, I've found it. I found a lot of places in the country, but especially here. I mean, Texas has its own way of treating people in its own culture and and there's some bravado and brashness there, but here in my Tanna, there's it's it's welcoming. I mean, you know, I don't speak like they speak here in order, you you bet, but that but that I mean, you've got quite a community along this river where people are your neighbors, and you're you know you're And my wife is in well, she loves the local community. She's part of this group of um, a woman of the dirt. There's a group of eighty or ninety ladies dirty woman and they surround themselves with this old experience, people who who've been garnering for sixty seventy years, who've been dealing with animals and issue in Montana for many years, and just share the informations. You know, the exchange eggs for breeding stocks were I don't know, different types of chickens and what tools to use, how to check the soil for pH and in a million out of ten, don't listen, everybody out there, listen, don't google Dirty Women Montana. You're not going to get that club of the woman of the dirt club. Now, your wife is a very impressive person as well. And you guys have um the life you have carved out here is is is amazing. And your kids are are amazing. I mean they look you in the eye, they shake your hand. I mean, they're you know, wonderful people in their own right. I mean, and what are your philosophies on raising children? And and I mean you brought him here to Montana for a reason. I'm sure, Yeah, I think you know. I love kids. I love being with them. Yeah, and I didn't have the greatest example when I was a kid. You know, my parents would the wars when I was year old. My fire was drinking a lot, so there was lots of struggles there. There are lots of abuses, but I always say the both of the parents showed me a beautiful example how now to do things, so I always think about it and just try to do different. Now we're seeing some people in my village where they were interacting with the kids, where they were they were loving them, they were putting hands on them, they were kissing them, they were just you know they and I always just envy that um and that's what I want to have. So when somebody asked me, we're only gonna have kids, it's like, what do you mean to win? I mean, I just like, I will have kids as soon as I can. That's part of the life that I want to live. It's nice to raise another set of kids that will appreciate this world. There may be contribute with something and just keep going. Yeah, your kids are are great examples of thank you, adjusted human beings. UM. So I think people a lot learn a lot from the way you guys treat that with their lives a little where they live. Yeah, thank you. Yeah they are they are good kids. And I read somewhere that they are my kids, but they're not mine. They're the kids of the world. You basically we cannot You can show them, you can take them to places, but you really cannot make them to do. They can do their own thing. So it will be I'm very excited to see what would become of them. You know, how they're gonna, how they're gonna deal with their life. You know what can the jobs still have? Maybe those jobs are not created yet for them. You know this, everything goes so fast nowadays, and see how they're going to balance it now. I think I had the advantage to grow up in them. What would you say, a poor community, but wealthy and relations between people. Um. And you know, moving to us and living here, I have everything that can possible ask for. You know, you just we are getting We are well paid here, We have the opportunity to do whatever we want. The things are relatively inexpensive. You can save lots of money, um and we'll see what happened to them, you know, see how they're gonna see if they're gonna see the opportunity or or not. Well, it's such a perspective that you have on that right, because you know, how you grew up is so different. How that how they're going up. And you can tell them listen, this is you are lucky. Yeah, you can't tell them, but you can over boil that pot, you know, because he just they were tired of it. So I will. You know, I took my son already to Europe a couple of years ago, and he gets to see where I grew up, where I live. You get to see the soccer field that I play soccer, and he did play. He went to the mountains where behind he saw the cemetery in the church, and just exposing to those things. I think they should on their own somehow realized when they get back to us that what they have. Yeah, so I'm hoping that that would work, but they they need more visits. So we are doing another visit next year to Spain, and and I think that is it's kind of important for kids to see the world so they can put things in perspective, provide perspective and let it go from there. And we know that too. I mean you try travel, travel and you go, like you said, you go to Nepal and you see somebody's boy holding basketvid apples but has bigger smile than somebody who has a brand new Cadillac. Yeah. Yeah, we could go on that subject for days. But yes, I think we talked about that last time we were here, and roughly remember through the break the all the stomach full of lamb and a belly full of brandy that we talked about that. But it is the perspective of the world. You know. It can inform you, for sure, but it ala can drive you to you know, to be a better version of yourself. Um that it certainly has for me because it's one of those things where I'm always stopping to, you know, adjust, you know, if I'm frustrated from traffic or if I'm frustrated from something at work, and I stopped adjusting, like, wow, how is this bringing me happiness? And why am I not allowing it to? You know, someone with nothing in Nepal or wherever you find that person is can smile and play a song well and abject poverty. Why can't I find that same smile when I'm you know, sitting on the heated seat driving to work. Well, it's a community and it's a people, you know. Um the realtors have the famous saying location, location, locations, Well, I think the people, people people, It's kind of more important to me. It's your personality, It's your uniqueness. Did you get to use in work or with your friends and that kind of influence and craft your journey through this world. So if you surround yourself with the right people that will help you, they don't drain you. Um, and and outdoors has the tendency to make better people. You know. I haven't seen these trips, gosh, I've been. I mean, well, let's say over a hundred hundred trips around the world. Then you have all these people. You get ten guests, they go with me or more sell them. You find someone who is not happy holding fishing ground or gun in their hands, you know. So it's just like, well, what happened to all these nasty people that you read about? You know all this? It's just the outdoors have tendency to just just make you better, to relax you. And I don't know if that's the exercise. Did you get with that hunting? Or or it's just being up there for fresh air. I'm sure it's there's it's a complex tale of what it actually gives you, but it works something. Yes, it is a medicine and written part of my struggle. I'm sure you have it too. Is it when you get that medicine and you go wow? Without it, you're you suffer yourself suffers you you got you think? Wow? Man, I could use a day just so. The Bozeman is a perfect example when you have the builderness experience and the beauty of outdoors, yet do you have all the amenity of modern life. We have electricities, we have propanes, we have roads. It's not too far to time. Yeah, I mean I think that's My wife said that. I mean she's not an outdoors these type of person um really at all, but she just said seeing the mountains provide some comfort that I can't explain. It's like just looking out there and seeing that provides something that I can't There's something I can't articulate like I can articulate because I've been on those mountains. It's it's that medicine that I can see it every morning I wake up like if if life is to get me down, if if I'm spun up in a way that I can't overcome, I'll just go over there and I'll climb that mountain and just keep going. And there are millions of acres around here. And one of my favorite things earlier was to go chase elk with the bow and by myself for eight ten days, just fill up the back back with spam and sardines and bread and begels and gar leak and onions, and just go ahead and pretend that was the that was the Indian and just try to mess up with the elk and slip under the open skies. I love that. Yeah, the access to that, Yeah, I mean it's it settles you somehow, even just know when it's there, even if you're too busy to get to it all the time. Like I can see it at least I know if the dire straits are here, I can retreat, get back to get back to that mountain. But you know you grew up in Czechoslvakia. Um, I mean I'd love to hear the whole story, really, I mean tell me about you know, the place, the people, your parents, your upbringing. So it's a small village in the Carpathian mountains named Krivani. You know that bad five people lived there, but each house have three generations, you know, living together. And that was I think that was kind of unique because you really were better prepared for the world because you have the comfort of your parents and also the wisdom of your grandparents, and you can reach into that well and just drink it when you need it. Um. So everybody had their animals. Everybody had the garden. You know, they have communal way of taking turns in grazing the animals. Every morning they would open the gate and all the cows with bells would come out and one guy would take him in the mountain's graze and bring them back. It was somebody's elster. Next day with cheap they've done same thing. It was the small community where hunting was respected. You know, in Czech Republic the name for hunters miss Levetts, which means double meaning could be hunter or the one who would think. Because the hunter actually have to make the decision to to see which animal to eliminate from the pool. From the pool, you know, he looked at the stag and said, all the stag is to all things to get out, you know, he was danger goring other stags, or he was it was no good. Or there were younger animals where um they didn't grow well, so they need to be eliminated from the pool. And we talked about earlier um and it just you know, it reminded me of the responsibility of a hunter. Yeah, and you got to go to school. I think we went for a couple of years or one year to school. And you have to learn the fauna and florac is kind of fun fuel Latin. The names. You have to learn how many egx pheasant lays, what's the incubations? And you learned about stream about fish, about trees, different kind of tree, hardwood, softwood, and then it was kind of interesting. Then you had to put as many as hours as you put on working around forests. For example, you were building tree stands, you were clear picking trash, you were building bridges over the streams. How many hours you put that counts towards um you know, better selections of the game. You could hunt. For example, if you put ten hours, you only get two hunt rabbits, but you put hundred hours, you get two hundred stack. So it was something more than just go buy a license and go hunting, which you know, it's just a different system, but people were more connected with it. But so as a kids, you know, we love to hang with hunters. I mean, those whiskery gray faces. They were, you know, drinking plumber and they they have a little flask, and they were sitting by the fire and telling stories about how they out fox fox, sitting in the haystacks, and and just waiting for them to come where wolf stories. And of course every kid wanted to be cowboy. In Indian you know, we we had these books from Germany by writer's name Karl May. Then we have some books Fennimore Cooper, the Last of the Mohicans. And I love reading. I mean I was a book red. I was reading in a school, in a church, in a train, under blankets, just reading and reading. And I was fascinated by the wild West. You know how people can ride horses and sleep in the tps and shoot their bows and trove spears and live. So I was always dreaming as a man, I would like to do that. And I was eight ten twelve and one of those books. One year there was a name Montana, and I just really loved that name Montana. It's like, well, I'm gonna go there. Okay, well eleven twelve, you just really you know, you cannot predict your future. But um, you know, the Communists of course would not let you leave because everybody would leave and there would be nobody to work for them. But as things start changing in you know, the Soviets were losing grains and losing the Cold War, I keep applying for six years to get out, and I said, I'm gonna go to Montana and I want to see my mother. My mother at that time was living in West Germany that I know, did not know very much about her, but I used her as an example that I want to see her as a humans, right just to writing letter to United Nations and everywhere. And you know, they said, well, if you put one more year at to work, I said okay, and oh, if you go to military for two years, I said, okay. Well I get back from military after a couple of years, and they said, oh no, we were joking, you're not going anywhere now you're in. Well, now I'm twenty twenty one, I'm exploding, you know, I'm just troublemaker, as like I want to get out. I don't. That's what the Communism finally grab ahold of me. Because when you're a kid, you really don't understand. You don't understand what's going on. Why all these people are so depressed, Why all the people drink while all the people have no freedom. You know, they cannot own guns, they cannot always, they cannot, they cannot do very much. You know, they can just celebrate their march for the communists. They finally grabbed me. That's what this is a strange place. I feel like a sheep in a shelter where I am just surrounded and tell what to do all the time. Some more letters, more more annoyances for them and me, until one day I just got this letter that, oh you can go to us permission. Granted, It's like, what the heck happened? So um, there was a chain of command where I have to apply. You have to apply to my direct boss and bosses boss and bosses boss and twenty other people past that have to approve before you can get to the main guy at the end, who was living in Prague. But all of a sudden, I just keep all these guys and I wrote in direct letter, that's my human rights with my matter, and I want to go, and he just replaced it. What goes on? So I got the permission. I get the US Embassy in Prague, and I see all these German jumping fences, you know, German from East Germany were kind of jumping fences to West German embassy. And things were changing slowly in the big cities. But we didn't know that. You know, we were in the mountains. We didn't have any local news or anything other than you know what my grandfather was listening to BBC or Voice of America. Well, it seems like there was a stark change, like as a child, there's some romance and and you know where you were. And then as you grew up, you started to realize, you know, there's a bigger world. There's a bigger world, and I'm in a communist cage here that yeah, And if we didn't know anything, you know, the communists will tell us, if you keep working hard, you're gonna have really good lifestyle, just like the Russians have. All the Russian had world lifestyle. Then we did, you know, And I also we didn't know anything about the US other than um. You know, during the depression, many checks in Slovak left for America, so we would have every third fourth house would have a family member that immigrated to US. So we really like America. Did you get a lot of stories back from there? We did, but it was all deceiving because my grandfather always said Americans always wear white clothes all day long. Oh well maybe butcher or somebody, but yeah, I mean we don't know, you know, they were white eyes and white clothes. My friends, yeah, my friends thought that Americans are sitting in the ditches because that's what we were doing as a kids, you know, running them out and sitting in the ditches, put your feet up, sticking in one hand, and was just beating bushes and said, all they do just sit in those ditches and fried chicken come by. They just grab it and need it. I mean totals, I mean sign what do you call it? Sign? Sci fi? I saw. We had no idea how people live in US, absolutely, you know. So when I come to the US, finally, when I get the permissions and I can go, my mother took me to Walmart or Kmart, and I couldn't believe it, you know, from this little store when they were selling beer, butter, wine, and bread. They were everything. Forty different breads, twenty different butters, you know, hundreds of different wines, and shoes and clothes and tools. You know, I knew pitchfork and shovel and maybe rake. What there are tools that had no idea what do you do with? So I spent all day, all day in that store, and next day asked me where you want to go back to Walmart? I still have some things to see there. So we were living completely in the darkness. And you know that was thirty years ago, not that far and what a different world in the eighties. Yeah, yeah, I think. And your mother came with you. You know, my mom took a vacation from West Germany, that's what she lived, and she went to her there and she decided to stay there for a while. But it wasn't for her. She had a hard time to learn language, and and she was kind of disappointed why so many people are so poor with all the possibilities they have. She couldn't understand why everybody were leaving paycheck to paycheck, So I don't think it was for her. So she left went back to Germany and I. You know, I stayed in Florida for a year, and um, I couldn't speak in English. You know, there was just shaking hands and moving eyes and smile. Uh. It's it's just kind of interesting feeling. To this day, I still like not to understand. I mean it really enjoyed it. Yeah, it really just brings something out of you that you really tried to get across, but not orally. But it's moving hard, yeah, and it's it was kind of fun. So I stayed and I went to school. After after work, I was working at the boatyard scraping barnacles and painting boats and working the body shops. Um, you know, grinding cars and taping windows because those jobs you really don't have to speak English. Do you remember the first folks? I kind of that you would say, it took you in and yeah. So there was a people at the Wrinkling Breader circus, and lots of those circus people were from all over the Europe. They immigrated or they got kind of sponsorship or something. And my mother told me about the lady who is from Czech Republic, and she was good and trampoline and trapees and ropes. Her name was Maria. She was a wonderful lady, and so I just went to her. And I didn't want to knock in the door because I showed it in midnight. So I just spent my first name under the palm tree. And I was so thirsty and so hungry, and I saw this beautiful um oranges hanging, said, I grabbed one and I bide it and it was just not ready, but you know, it was it was this feeling that what the heck am I doing here? In the morning, I started hearing some dishes and noises and knocking the door and says, hi, and lets do John. And my mom said that she knows a friend of your friend. And I was just wondering if you can help me. Like he's looking at me, I was like, oh yeah, come in and let's have a coffee. So we started talking and then um, she asked him, what am I gonna do? You know? She was living at that time with her grandson who was eight years old, and I kind of play with the kid a little bit. And after I stayed there a couple of days, she said, I stay another week. So I helped her with the house. I was breaking lan, cutting grass, cleaning, different things. You said, I stay another month. I said, you know what, you can just stay as long as you want. So she really helps me, you know, to to just to just understand that I need help. And I was able to find a job and take care of myself. And but the Florida wasn't for me. You know. I grew up in the mountains. I like to hike. I like to you always. And I know you said Montana was interesting to you from the beginning, but I mean getting out of communists, Republic, getting every here. Was it always Montana for you or did you just lose it and find it again when you got to know? I always started Montana. And when teacher, you know school at they call s classes, English is the second language, that was asking what would you want to do? Where do you want to go? So when I could say Montana, I said, well I want to go to Montana said well, what are you gonna do there? It's like, well, I was in the forest trees, so I can be lumberjack loger. I mean Montana must have lots of trees. Um. And my teacher, um, you know, she was very cool. She she actually was teaching English on the on the guard Brooks tape. You know, so the old tapes when you put in the recorder come with a little paper folder. And then the singer was singing, you could follow with the words. The problem was there was lots of slang, you know, so we just do you remember any Garth brook song? Oh yeah, gosh, I remember all of them from that song I got friends in the low Place. Yeah, that was awesome. So that was upgrading because before that teacher just came to the board and drop pictures of cat and go meo meo, meo cat dog. So that's how we have to start. You know, you have this twenty seven year adults and we are learning language. I'm coming ever, we're gonna come over, bring Garth, drink brandy. And that's about the fire. That's because products. That's where the good days. And then that the school teacher introduced me to another wonderful lady. Her name is Cissy, and she was moving back to Bosman. So I said, well, um, come with you, and he goes, oh, I would love to take her. She was just very nice, you know, my dear friend. Now she was driving along you old truckby trailer and she did have no experience. I said her cutting corners, and I was in military. When I was in military, was driving, Semi said say I can help me the driving. So I drove her to Montana and we got here I think in nineteen ninety one, ninety two in March, and I partied you truck in the Bozeman. I was full of snow and there was this little girl barefooted, standing in the snow looking at Mabe their arms up and goes, let me get this straight. Are you moving in or moving out? So I thought, well, this is gonna be a good place. And you know, with all this opportunity that I have to live anywhere else, this was gold mine. How many people lived in both I guess there were not too many. And we didn't have all the amenities. You know, we had all kerosene burners in the bar where every ten minutes they go everybody moved out and big jet of heat come in, turn it off and come back, come back just drinking again. So it's a different time nowadays, but changes there's nothing you can do. It's it's a progression, but it's still good. I mean, despite you see more traffic and more people. I mean, it's still wonderful place. To live. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean it's it's it's strikes me that I was. I certainly did not grow up in in the same environment you did, but I had a similar you know, like Montana was always this place, this place that I used to watch A Lonesome Dove is here. So that show, okay, yeah, with Michael London. It was, um it was written by H. James McMurtry. Okay, so that that was a little house in the prairie that I'm doing now, and this was it was. It was in the eight say the eighties or early nineties. Robert Duval and Tommy Lee Jones played two cowboys that were the first to drive cattle from Texas to Montana to Texas rangers. And you know, I lived on the East coast. We didn't have buffalo, we didn't have elk. We had deer and turkeys and geese. And I lived in the suburbs. But I remember watching that. We watched that every Christmas. And I watched that, and I think, uh, Montana, Montana the romantic name. Yes, it's you can go anywhetable dimension Monday, And I think people visualize this cowboys and cowboy hats and horses and Indians and the mountains. Yeah, and we got that. You know, we have the community of people. The one thing we don't have here our factories and jobs. So I don't get it. How everybody can you know, move here and there's lost by big house and buy new cars and buy properties and just keep you know, keep living here. The dream you had and the kind of is the similar dream that I had can't be unique to us. I mean, I think people when they have wealth and a little bit of means and can choose where they might want to go, A lot of people choose here, I think for a good reason. Yeah, it'll be interesting how much longer we can sustain this growth. Yeah, maybe if we get a couple of bad winners and everybody it is the winters are long, so you do have to stay entertained. Yeah. And I would say coming here, having lived some different places and living in the Midwest, that the cold here is it's like it's a refreshing cold. It's not steen degrees right now, blue sky, but it's sunny. The sun just makes you happy. And the cold is dry cold, and it's not a humidity there. It's not a thick cold. You have your jockets on and you're fine, keep on going. Plus you have to do some kind of outer activities. So when the dark comes at four o'clock very early, yes you are tired. You know, you're been skiing or you were hunting or something. So you can you can build a fire and grab a book and relax. I mean, I love December, January, February. Those are the months where I take time off. You sit there and you drink here tea and your brandy and cook, you know, cook all the things and then in the pit or in the comados or the woodstoes or pointies or whatever. Heck, it's fantastic. I come with. When you think about the way a hunter is treated in your and your culture and the czechlos Foking culture and how you grew up, how would you compare that to how hunter is treated in you know, our modern Oh. One thing I would say right away would be used more meat. Yes, you know, don't just go for the backstraps and tangeloins. You know, it's not the meat that has the minerals and nutritions. It's the liver, it's the lungs, it's the heart, you know, it's the tribe if you can handle it. You know, if you look at the predator when he kills animals, he doesn't go for the stakes, works his way into the liver, into the heart. So maybe be more resourceful and learned and and Steve might be a good example. How he you know, I keep you here. I don't have a TV, so I don't haven't seen any of his show, but I keep hearing good things. How he educating my house? Bring the brain? Um, so the meat would be wanting that. The second would be taking advantage of those of this of those tags that you get locally, know, for twenty dollars or eighteen dollars, you get envelope tech, el tech and deer. But there is your protein for the winner. Why should you go to store and buy something else, you know, other than maybe bacon. I mean, if you think you get three hundred pounds of meat for twenty dollars ticket for ELK, I mean, it's totally worth it. But you know, I'm a meat hunter. I I look at those animals and I scouting. I'm looking for year links right away. I mean, I'm practicing them when I'm driving in a road, when I see herds of caribou while we are fishing, I'm trying to pick if I can find those zeer links um. So as a meat hunter, definitely, just you know, get more meat and eat more of that animal. You know, everything is there. And if you have a farm or or dogs, you know, the road diet for the dogs is one of the things that I find to be the best thing for the dog is. I mean, what can be better than you know, deliver or heart or some of the meats from deer or elk um and you know they're even the rip kidge if you don't eat the ribs and there's still meat and you don't want it. Chicken loves that, you know, they picked completely. Yeah, they pick the high. If you have any meat left in the high, they try it. The chickens they strip it, you know, and they need that protein too. So I mean we are not like a Native Americans, would they you know, reuse everything out of the buffalo, you know, absolutely everything. But I think we can do better jobs. When you think, think about the reverence and the respect that the community that your community had for hunters, and if you had a term to describe that respect, like I love when you say thinker I think, how do you think that we've gotten to a place where we kind of had the opposite? I mean, hunters in our society, aren't I was, you know, I was thinking about it. Why we have such a bad reputation. And that was ten or twelve years ago when I was traveling in the plane and said I photographed hunters and some people get turned off there, so well, why don't you photograph just landscape as well? What's from photographing hunters of fishermen's um. So somebody's done a bad pr for hunters, but also somebody's done bad PR for the loggers, and that was my professions. You know, if somebody displayed clear cuts that they were used to take advantage of clear cut instead of selective cutting, and you have to photos of one of clear cut and all growth, then you show it to anybody, But what they're gonna say, you know, the old growth is much better than clear cut. So somebody's done not so good PR. But maybe thinking after these California fires, they may be thinking different, that's right. I mean, if you have October's I mean not October's but August in the ashes, everyday ash and you are breeding head and we are not taking advantage over natural resources. We're not tanning those forests. We're not going there to get our firewood. We just you know, want to protect it. But that's not going to have it. That's not gonna be good outcome. It's just gonna burn and more burn, and we've seen it and not good. And with the hunting. I really don't I really don't know. Perhaps it's the image, you know, as a photographer, when I photographed guy with let's say, dear, I want to get it as tastefully as possible. Simple things, you know, not too much blood, no tongues hanging out, not sitting on it, grabbing their horns like you know. It's it's it's it's the stereotype. That's how those people were doing it, and that that might have been good for or fifty years ago. But now we have different channels of those photos. They can spread much quicker than used to. You know, before you had a photo in your pocket, you show it to ups man, to your post office man, your body, your your waitress in the restaurant, and that was it. But now you post one ugly photo of what I call we're not tastefully done with it. With the deer hunting and it just takes off. And you know they can use those photos against us as the mean, you've been an inch if requite a while, you've seen it change. I mean have you seen you know, the the hunting industry change over your time? Yeah? Well I think we You know, I get ask what's my favorite clothing or what's the favorite gear or what is it's a pair of lungs, and you help what you got in the muscles and desire? How many months you want to climb that you cannot buy? You know, so you can wear wool pans they are thirty years old. You still can get things done, you know, celess talking, you know, more hunting, researching on your own, being a good shape. And now but that's when I struggle. Now do we need fully automatic or semi auto guns for hunting? I don't, you know, I'm fine with single shots, I'm fine with the with the double shots shotguns over under. But if some people need it, um, that is interesting. You know, if you if you put hunter with oh with you know, with several different guns that he needs for shooting, it's it's just a different feeling, you know. I really don't associate with that. I really don't see how. You know, some guys love to shoot elkan nine hundred yards. Well I'm the opposite. I want to be there in twenty yards, you know, I want to see what happened, was able to I mean that just kind of increase your pleasure of stocking spider the stock if you just way back up there and you shoot. Although you know, to some people it's satisfying, you know, they love doing it, but it's not my cup of tea. You as you said earlier, you grew up in a place where you had to learn the flora and fauna. You had to learn how animals interacted with humans, how they interact with the world around him. And you're immersed in that world and how why would you want to remove yourself from it by using technology to make it easier? Because all that, all the technologies, is stripping away the relationship that you had and takes away your skills that you can build or improve in and get even better. So yeah, no one saying don't use technology, but but but some I'll limit yourself and some states are better than either. You know, Montana has you know for bow hunting, you cannot use too many electronics things eliminations. But to me, spot and stock, it's still the best type of hunting, no matter what do you do. And that's been forever, and that really challenge you. Now, if I don't get done with my bow, if I don't get if I don't get the harvest elk in my bow, I will get a rifle. You know. It's not like I'm gonna be hungry. But I tried to get every two bow and then go to the rifle. So but I still kind of walking around and I cannot say why we have a bet pr as the hunters. I mean, that's that would be something. What are your thoughts? I mean, I've got a few questions I'd like to ask myself a lot. And we were talking about this the other day and like the point of you know, what what I'm doing for a living, and really what you're doing for a living. But one of them is one of them is why, And I think it this is is this way for everyone. But one of the questions is why is killing gratifying? Right? Why? Because regardless of why you're killing it, the killing is gratifying for you. I'm sure as someone who hunts, particularly for meat is gratifying because you're feeding yourself and your family. Um, let's see, I do that every week. I'll go kill chickens or I kill a lamb. So it's it's I don't think twice. You know, I just tried to find either the weakest animal that I don't need anymore, or the one that I call yum yum, you know, the yearling ones, and you know, but I don't never, I never is there a gratification in that? Still, I am not sure the gratifications where I get. I'm just seeing these homy pigeons flying around when I get to kill them, Yeah, I mean I select them. I breed them to be good athletes, and if somebody don't have it, I have to call them and I get gratifications there. And I don't know why because my luck is shrinking and should be better because I'm selecting. I'm hoping that that's what it is, because it's not really I just want to kill for to see blood. I mean, I really don't care about it. But I never actually even question myself, why do you like killing? You're just kind of natural. I want to eat. I have, I have stomach that I have to constantly. But it's like that's a deeper So you know, this is not a question anybody can really answer, but it's a question. I think it's the question that the world at large would like us to be able to answer, Like why why is killing gratifying? Like what is the thing because it is? Some people say, well, it's gratifying because it is the end of an inexperience that you know, it's a it's attack, it's a challenge. I have to acquire these skills. But there's still lots of work after that. Yeah, actually most of the work. I mean when once you harvest your animal, take care of the start safely back to your dinner play. Yeah. So but I think for every hunter, that's beautiful that these homing pies just fly like the extras sizing they're beautiful. Yeah, thank you. I want to talk about that. We're going to talk about that. And definitely, so it's so cool what you do. Um. But I think I think that's one question at all all of us could could you could grapple with Yeah, I could see if somebody would ask me, okay, why do you like to han elk? Yeah? Okay, well, if you have five days and you want to come with me, you have to get it on your own. I am not the talented to express myself why I'm doing it. Come with me and you'll see. I mean the sheer, exercise, the fresh air, the things that you get to mumbo jumbo in your head, visiting your friends, your nemesis, your experiences, your sex life, whatever. Everything is there, and it is brewing and coming out in the surface, and you're sorting it out and you become better in persons than you and then bang, there's elk you shot at. You drag it, more exercise, you bring it home. You learn more skills because you have to butcher yourself. Then you have to praccess it. Then you get to cook it, then you get to eat it. And if you stay with me during this period, perhaps you will understand why. Yeah, that's why it's It's the funny everybody experiences. I think that hunts is like you're enriched by it to a point that you can't explain. But then the world wants you to explain it. They're like, explain that to me. I don't get it. Yeah, that would take some people than I got nothing, but I gotta let me. Like Wise, breathing air good. I don't know, I'm not sure how to tell you, but there is some points of it. I mean. The other question always like to ask is why do we care about animals? You know, why do we truly care about the animal? I mean, why do we enjoy? Why? Why is killing gratifying it? But by the same time, why do we care about the animal? Well, there are animals that we like to go and kill and harvest, but the animals that we like to keep around the house, like my homing pigeons or my bird dogs. Yeah, I believe the animals makes better people. You know, if you have a bird, dog, or pet, or cat or bunny or horse, it's some kind of mental relief because you take care of them. Yeah. I love feeding our pigs this time of year when when you the water is cold, they cannot drink it, so you have to pour feed over the bartley that I suak in overnight and to they just all running there and stick their noses and go that that slubbering and that that thing. I just love watching animals to eat. Yeah. I love watching sheep grazing and see what they pick, you know, what kind of leave or so so I don't know why, but you know, so there are these animals that really feed our soul and some are feeding or stomachs. Yeah, I mean it's that relationship that's way more meaningful than carrying an animal you've never seen, or carrying about an animal that you feel some connection to because you saw them on TV or some connection that you saw. I mean, you're you're seeing every piece of that animal's life and you're interacting and it's it's birth and it's death at some level. Um, and when you're a hunter, you're at least along for a good bit of that ride. Yeah. And I think the way you guys do with Steve, where you promote eating and different recipe and cooking of the animals, I think that's the best ticket because I think we went away from from the hunting that you do it yourself and use all those skills to harvested process that cook it, eat it into We went into some kind of comfort. But something is raped nicely and has a barcode, it's a lot more excess acceptable. Yes, you know, like, oh that's better. Well, how could that be better? If that's something that you do it to yourself, either raise it to yourself or you or you you know, it's kind of more organically grown that you somehow have idea how this animal was raised. And I even think that the label of organic is a silly thing because now they're just telling you something different about you. You don't you still don't know, You still don't know. Yeah, that's right. The trust factor has to be there in other way. So I mean they they I think they've done wonderful marketing to lure us into into packaging. Yes, that is something package and nice. It's got to be better than we can do it our own. Yes, And I'm glad someone is still there who like. Um, I like the messiness of it, you know, I enjoy and not being so clean, and I enjoy un Well, I'm still unwrapping a piece of meat that I cut up, but I still know the messiness that got there. And I'm not so foolish as to think that it just showed up like that. Yeah, I know now, um, And I think a lot of people can get that idea right. A lot of people can say, you know, how the meat gets your plates important? But you know, you have your kids and you and Lorca, you have the relationship to animals every day you're bad with the knowledge that you're going to kill him, and and that is not the science. You know, billions of people live like me. Yeah, you know who have animals around their houses and when it's their time to go, it's their time to go, and they kill it. They saved the blood, they put in the blood sausage, just the whole thing gets used because that's what we need, that we need, we need. No, that's what sustain us. It takes one, I think to sustain a matter. There is no other way. Life eats life, as they say, that's for sure. Do you feel Another thing we talked about all the time is um certain animals. I always say, like we take the gloves off like certain animals like to say the feral hawk, for example. I'm sure you've been to Texas and been a part of some of us. Yeah, it has a bad name for some reason. I don't know why. I would love to have ferreal hawks in Montana. I mean, I make sausages out of deer or elk, and I like to add a pork, so I have my own pork. But nothing wrong. If I could shoot a pig here and just add fifty I would love to much fat could have if it had to live in Montana. You know, fifteen years ago John Hoffner, friend of mine, took me. He used to work for Real Tree. He took me to Texas and deer hunt and and I was sitting in the blind. To put me in the blind by the feeder, and as soon as they sent me there, I've never seen anything like it. So I'm going to sit here. Um, I think after after five minutes I left. It was it was strange to me. I like to walk. I'm at a sitting guy. I I just so, and I didn't want to hurt their feelings. Paid by two money for the hunt. But prior to arriving to uh to our camp, we stopped at the barbecue place it calls Billy's Barbecue. And there was a black guy who was smiling. His white teeth were just shining. And I just instantly drew me to him and says his men, you said, godbuster. And and he asked me what I'm doing, and I said, I'm from Czechoslovakia. I like to eat pork. And he goes, oh, so you're gonna be hunting hogs? I said, um, were hunting deers, what we have hogs too, So I asked to out here every hunting hogs, to as many as you want. So Billy the barbecue guy goes, well, if you kill the hawk tomorrow, since you're living in four days, and you bring it here, I'll smoke it for you, it would be the best thing you ever eat. So when I get to that square box and I'm looking at the feater and waiting for them, I'm thinking now, Billy said that those hawks takes good. So I started walking and pretty soon picks everywhere. So I shot I think two or three, and we drop it off to Billy's. And while I was hiking and hunting those hawks, I actually shot a deer's too, because he was running there. And so I get the deer and the hawks, and the meat was incredible, and I know the John said, I think that's what we're gonna do from now on. We're gonna go they want were killing hawks dropping the billies so we have a food for the clients to the box. Yeah, So I don't see what is I would you know? Every animal should be usable. I mean I didn't see the feral hawks. Now once they get maybe over three pounds, but they're still we can do something with it. It's still very usable. I don't agree that there are people say that they're inedible at some maturity. Yeah, you can do something with it. What the backs should be? Tenderlen is always there and you can do I mean sausage, there's grinded meat and they stack out. Yeah, so I think any kind of animals, you know that we that we hunting. We're sure if he asked Billy, he'd be like, just throw me a ham over here. I'll spoke that sucker for twelve hours. Don't even worry about how big the animal was. In fact, the bigger the better. I mean, yeah, we had a great time. I mean I always think about that. And yeah, what are your what are your favorite places around the world because you've traveled, I mean, my gosh, everywhere you can take a uh you know, I don't know if I have any favorite. I used to really like Argentina, but you know, now that I brought the Argentina cuisine and culture kind of hear my house and I'm having here more so it's not that unique anymore. But I I just love sitting by the fire and talking to people and and I a part of it might be that you know, my family wasn't I cannot ask my dad certain things for advices, or we never put this aunt of my shoulder. I'm proud of your son. So I'm thinking I'm seeking that kind of relations with other people. And if you are plumber, I'm asking you about plumbing, hey, so you don't use copper pipes anymore? You use BBCs now, or the PEX lines or the doctors. I'm asking, what the hell? Then? What did you do? Or the financial advisors? You know, what should I do? I stay behind it? Grand? How should they invest them? You know? So every person has a unique niche, and if they're older than you are, you should shut up and just listen, you know, ask the questions and hush because all these people live lives and they have something that you could benefit. So and those people are wherever we go, you know, so you just ask someone. And and so I like to say that I'm very rich man because I can just close my eyes and go and all the visits and all the conversations we out with all these people, it's you cannot buy it, No you can. And then I always have said and tried to try to emulate those times. You know, you try to sit in the backyard. I mean, here's different. In the backyards beautiful, but you know, just in the wilderness of somebody on a seven day elk hunt and four days in you killed an elk. You're sitting by the fire telling the story to the rest of camp and like, yeah, and people open us up. You know, they do open up and tell you. And maybe they benefit too because they they spoke, they let it out and and maybe they're helping someone passing it on to you. Yeah, that's the one thing that I really like about social media, not that I'm heavy user, but I like so I like tractors, you know, I grew up blogging with them, and I had to have a tractor here and I finally was able to a couple of years ago save money and buy one. But if I have a problem, where do I go to the dealership? Well, I'm gonna drop thousands of dollars. Well why don't just go to the Facebook page? Cool? What a friends? I post the questions and ten minutes a hundred fighters and hundreds grandfathers telling you what to do. Now, that's the power of social media. Then you get to benefit from someone who already went through that. Yeah, you're just talking about different levels of human connection, you know, just different ways, different ways connect with people and and better yourself. I mean, And if you open yourself up to that, then you'll never lose I mean, my gosh, be open to that. And a lot of people, a lot of people go through their lives and don't talk to their neighbors and get online and hate on you people they don't even know. And boy, that's that's the wrong types of connection. Or you wouldn't see very much here in Montanna find that people are friendly. And I found a lot of friendly folks thus far, but too like you know, you go to a trade show or you go somewhere in the hunting industry, you and you know many many people as as I do. And it's if when you've been on a hunting adventure with someone like the hug is a little deeper, the handshakes a little harder, the look in the eyes, those inside jokes, and it was a target of the jokes, and you know you didn't get mad at them, You just get even with them and you carried it for I always find sadness in that because you know, I've been doing it for about ten years. But then you have this. You go on a trip with people and you have this connection. A lot of times they'll be like a text chain or phone calls. When you see him, you have these inside jokes. And then over years that stuff fades if you don't continue to go hunting with those people. Over years, that stuff fades away and you lose that like but you will think about him. Yes, I have to do it. I decided that I wanted to do one day to count how many people I think of And maybe mine is wired differently than yours or somebody's else, but I go, it's just crazy. Every single thing would remind me of someone. You know, these headphones we're wearing it for the microphone, thinking of the pilots and the bush, the last compilot. Yes, you know how we were flying and how he finds out that vat carry a spray inside and are built when we took off, how he yelled, you know how he and then you go from everything is so connected, you know, and I think there might be the richness of the life where you have so many stories and so many experiences. So counted yourself this week, see how many people you think of? That you that you met over the years, and you just some certain things remind you of them and you'll carry them forever. Influences in your life you don't even realize. Yeah, And with the photography, you know, I get to look at it because if I have to make a submission somewhere, let's say pilots again, the fishermen, you know, you go and you see these faces. And now with the digital you know, when we don't do slides anymore, it's just so easy. And I find myself just side truck and I was looking for photo of squirrel and I am there at these people's faces and thinking of their stories and their food and their fire. And yeah, there's something about photographers like yourself. I've I've had a gentleman named Wyman Men'ser, Texas. He was before me and my generation, but he was a stream. Yeah, I've known him, been friends with him for some years now, and and he has a lot of the same sensibilities you do. Like it just people matter, and like relationships matter. Leos is another person that I had a revere and think he thinks the same way. It's just like a The way that you see the world allows you to capture those images. You know, it's not so dissimilar the way that you three guys think about things. That's good to hear. Yeah, that's good. That's I'm not that weird. That's good to thank you for that. I feel better now, Yes, yeah, if if you can be like those two guys. But yeah, you guys all come from vastly different backgrounds and vastly different ways of seeing the world, but carry some like creative vision for for how to capture folks. Yeah, I mean if you think of the career, did somebody go pay you money? You can actually make good living. We're taking photos, yeah, I mean my kids and to take them in a trip between because they still to get it. You know, they still don't get it to dad. It comes with a couple of suitcases and leaves and come home and get money. You know, it's just that, Yeah, their little brain doesn't see it. And you know the kids got um. That was the one nice thing the communists did when you were twelve, thirteen, fourteen, that would take us to different factories. They would take us to a clothing factory so the goals or asked get to see how things were made and by age fourteen, you have to pick your profession. I think of our college kids, how many of them would know what they want to do even after they get their degree. I think of our fourteen year olds, like, hey, you pay a career probably what would I have been circus plans as well? You have more opportunity here. So that's the thing, you know, we were kind of limited to our skills. If we are no good students, there's no way you're going to go to university, you know, but you become good carpenter or you were a lumberjack or I don't know drivers. So but to this day, I still love to see how things are made. And with this Cabella's best per trips that we do. Uh you know some of our experiences where we go to Italy for example, and we get to see how shotguns are made. Now you see these routers that we see the steel and comes to barrel and you see engravers who sits there for months in the engraving gun, the guy with the wood, how he polished the would have he measured it, how he send paper and finish or or trip to the bow factory, how you have you know, routs of aluminium in the one end in another end. It's a whole compound bo being assembled. So to see those things, um, I love that, you know, I really enjoyed to see how things are made. And there must be from you know, maybe even we were kids. And now it's another good you know, man, the appreciation you have for something that you know where it came from. My god, it seems like such a simple concept. Some of these things you seem like such a simple concept, but you get lost in them. Yeah, I get lost. I mean, we gotta you's got a brand new house, we gotta fill with furniture and paying things, and you're nesting in there, and you get that, got a new job, and I'm trying to do build things and like that. Sometimes things just get lost, just get lost, and you're like, wait, if I just I just spent the weekend building something, well that's the right. Any improvements in the house, or if you know, you get to build your house from scratch, you kind of appreciate. You know, you're building house, You're not building real estate where you're gonna just stay for three years, make ten dollars and get another one. How the folks have tendency in the US to move all the time. Yeah, I mean I admired that I would never gosh, where would I go? I mean we just like I do you know, you guys are really nomads. Just the U Wold trucks would never made any money in Czechoslovakia because we were to me, I left. But I find now that's a big in my life. I mean it's a rabbit hole for sure, but I find like I'm super close to my family. And and you know when you said that three generations lived in one house and jeckels Facket, it made me think because over the last couple of months, while my house would be in bill here, my family was living with my parents, and so we were in a house with three generations of people and we don't I mean there you go. And the feeling of that, like just to have my son sit down at the table and play harmonica with my dad every night, that's pretty unique. And then and then we just we're like, all right, we'll see you. And then moved to my Well. We have means to connect here. You know, we have FaceTime, you have aeroplanes, you can drive, so it's much easier than you know, what we had if we didn't have all that, um, but I think it's good to be surrounded by family at the end of no matter what do you do, I think your family is the most important thing because why did you get your career? What did you save all the money? Why did you do this if you have no nobody to pass to, nobody to teach nobody to hunting or take fishing and see how they you know the seeds? Did you plan to how to grows and bloom? And I told my dad that I have some some people. You know, you need to meet some people and they just have tough time of life, like they just can't quite figure out what they want to do or what they're gonna be successful at or how they're gonna be happy. I've never had that because I had a family that was kind of like the north Star always just like you know, But I'm sure you have some people they influence your life, either with your career decisions, because we all have that, and we need to appreciate those contacts, uh, and those influences like with the photography. For me, you know, I was a logger. I was a lumberjack. I was carrying chains around hand oil and gas in a nutter and going through the snow in the winter cutting trees, and I love that. But how do you go from there to the art? How all of a sudden you're gonna start learning about shapes and circles and shadows and art. I don't have a degree, you know, I didn't go to college. But I meet Mike Barlow. I met Mike Barlow here, who was a photographer Inbozeman, and one little visit again smiles, you know, I smile, he smiles, and he smiles. It's such a connection, you know that somehow I figured out the English and asking what he does. I was house sitting house in Ambozement and he was looking for a house with his wife. And he told him, don't bait this house. It's hundred forty thousand down Tombozement. It's an old house, has bad foundation. That gosh, I think I cost him half a million dollar probably, but you know, he told me we'll come. Mike travel his father sent him when he was eighteen or twenty around the world. And I think that's a good idea, you know, like purpose of higher education, my opinion is to teach tolerance. Well, if you take that money and send your kids oversea, and let him about life, tolerant and everything. So he sent him around and he liked to talk with people from different countries and ask him what he does. He said, I'm a photographer and I just got back from Alaska. I'll show me some photos and I remember today, just like today's light table with for the slides, beautiful red color of tundra from the Nali Park. You see carriboo moves, doll sheep scenery, and I'm looking at it and just start clicking, like I took some pictures when I was in military. I took pictures when I was in the forestry school. Oh that's what I want to do. Mind looking at me, he goes, do you have cameras? Like? No, but is that important? But I want to so if you know, But I was twenty two and who cares. I mean, I just go with the flow. I just you know, used to live here, you eat there, You just explore the world. And as long as you have good intentions and you have a strong willpower and you believe in yourself, things will come. And you know, we start traveling together and take photos and Mark move one step above me. Now he's a sculptor and this beautiful earth. Um, and you're I'm just taking photo clicking. I would love to paint maybe eventually you sit here. Yeah, but it's and I think art and appreciations for art, and that's what nature has. You know, you walk in the trees and started looking at the branches and leaves and beer there or grass and things that everything is aligned with the light. I mean just and in Montana, whatever you look, um, there's a photos here there working. Yeah. I think that places that don't have the dynamics that this does. Of the mountain ranges, you don't see light the way you Yeah, another places the way you see it. Here you still see I think it's more cleaner air. I'm thinking. Plus the visibility. I mean you can just see several myers. You see those mountains bridges, or you can see the bridges from sitting right here. You can see how far away are we from those mountains right now? I mean you get the perspective of depth and perception and when the light, I don't just think like at four thirty here, when the light starts bouncing off the bridges and just like that is not that perception, that depth of feeling having a mountain right there is just pretty unique. You could beautiful, beautiful not cities have you know different Yeah, I mean there's attractions, you have cultures. Yeah, there's a lot of people need to be in the bee hive right there where things are happening and be where the noises. Nice thing for us is that we know what do we want. That's the accomplishments already, and you're like the country and then we just go visit cities the nice Brandy book friends and that's what we need. More friends, and so be my friend. Bad. Yeah, I'm gonna be your friend. I mean i we're neighbors, um River neighbors. And my two year old would have a freaking paul like just playing, you know, feeding the pigs, and my dad would love to babysit him. That loves seeing her carrying kids around and just showing this future matterie in strint in her you know, just beautiful. Yeah, I mean, I'm my kid. I mean he's he's too, so he has his troubles. He is a good he's a good little human man. He's a good soul. He were at a restaurant the other day and there's a little baby, she's maybe six months and she kept dropping Her mom kept handing her a toy, and she kept dropping it. Her mom would be on her phone and and wasn't looking. And my son is two years old. He would just walk over on his own, pick the toy up and give it to the little girl. She would go go to plane with it, and he'd walk back over to me and we'd be eating and he'd look over and she had dropped it again. He'd walk over, get it, give it back to her, and the mom blest the moms. She did never even notice that he was doing that. She didn't even notice what her kid was doing. So she was probably so busy that she didn't notice, and he didn't notice. You know, lots of parents think that, Well, I guess not what you give them, by the way you take him and how much time you spend a vid him. Yeah. Yeah, so it's it's a huge thing. And here, like we were talking about, you're talking about wanting to be around Montana. That's one of the reasons I moved here just so I could. You know, I love to hunt. I love to hunt fish, and there's just away kids are raised here that is, you know, there, if my kid ends up being a video gamer. I'll be surprised because he's gonna have a lot of opportunities not to do that, you know, and I certainly won't put it in front of him. But but if he ends up being an ice climber, I will not be shocked, you know, just because it's right here. You know, play is going to shape him and influence him. So yeah, yeah, we need also though, before I forget talk about homing pigeons, we need to. That's what I'm saying. I don't want to, I don't want to stop this conversation, but homing pigeons are the coolest thing going, Like how many pigeons. It's my church, you know, I walk in there and I'm just there, but I'm back in my childhood. Yeah, and I'm back in my book. So that was our attraction in our village. Better when hunting, fishing, or run around the mountains with their stick in the hands, playing soccer, or raise pigeons. And I think some of the parents recognize how important it is for kids to have some animals of their choice, you know, not the one you want to have them, but they and there was somehow as the kids we want to possess animals and be in charge. I mean, you may be seen little kids having dog in the leash and they are so proud because they are in charge. So the homing pigeons for us was, you know, we have to take care of them. You get to breed them, we get to put bands on them. But then you get to send them hundred miles away from your home and see if they come home. And if they come home, then you get to compete with other members. So I grew up with that, and when I moved to Montana, that was the last thing that I would think I would be doing, the last thing I thought i'd run into. It was like homing piges in Montana and we were building house here and my wife told me, well, three months from now, I would like to take you for lunch. And I said, oh sure, fine, honey him and that so we start building house. In three months came and she goes, remember when I told you that we're gonna have the lunch to get I said, honey, again, I have this construction loan. We are plumbers coming and we have to but you promised me. I said, okay. Angry, my wife took me to the rest of our in Belgrade and I walking in, I opened the door and I see this sixty seven years old guys sitting there, and I saw bands pigeons. Bands in the corners like, no, you guys don't raise pigeons, and because of course we do. We've been racing here for fifty years. There's a guy who was in World War Two and he was um in a charge of He was a pigeoneer. He was basically delivering messages with the pigeons, and he brought the hobby to Montana Established Club and I said, I couldn't believe it. So the guy goes, well, here's one band for you. Remember it's all about winning the long distance race from five miles. Rest of the races don't count. I was like, wow, this is awesome. Uh seven to bank right away and get more lumber because I need to add something that I did in frame. So while I was building house, I was building pigeons. And I wake up, I think of pigeons. I go to bed, I think of pigeons. I try to breathe a perfect specimen, and I'm having so much fun. You know that the genes are self finicky and we really don't know anything. About it. Bye. By interacting with the pigeons, I think it makes me a better photographer because observation is the key. You know, you look at those animals are there in the roof, are they're feeling like Elvis's and their hunch down and then they're not doing well. So you know, you use that approachment to the wildlife photography and you get to read deer or elk better and where they're gonna go or you know, where you can intercept them for the better photos. So those those pigeons are awesome. And our little club here Montana, you know, were raised our longest races from Reno in Carson City, Nevada. So you're so, how many people in the club. So we have about eight people in the club and we meet here Friday afternoon during the May June month, and we have this craze if we put our pigeons together. The pigeons have a little electronic chipperings, so we scan them before they go to race. And how many pigeons always just fly back home. So whatever. In the first three days they were born, they were hatched. You know, they come outside, they kind of gps the coordinates in their heads and it's like, this is it okay right here? And if you don't know anything about it? Why did that? Did they they tried to study? Know, it's a combinations of smell, magnet hearing. I don't know what else they use because they try to Yeah, the Cordinal University try to remove They put like a contact lenses and the pigeons so they cannot see anything. They still find their way home, you know. So there is just so much mystery. But the coolest thing is that it's a it's for me to be outside and send pigeons away five hundred miles and he's been released six in the morning, let's say, in a Saturday, and I'm thinking about it. Man, he flew four hours, he flew eight hours, he flew twelve hours. So you're just tracking them as you know, you don't track, you just take them. There's no way to track them yet. There is a tracking now where you can download the data once they come home and see where they went, which was kind of new this year that I've done. It's gonna interesting, but no life tracking yet. So you breathe these birds who can cover six d fifty miles in the one day, you know, twelve hours. It's just amazing, you know, one pound and how do they know how do you know where they're going to fly? But they always fly back home. So whatever you release, when we take them to sal Lake City or right helpfalls or buildings, they just fly back home. And that's what they were used. Um, you know true jinks con he did the messages. Roygious Services started with the pigeons, you know, that's how they deliver World War two, World War One, they were using pigeons for the ring messages. Nowadays they still use them. The Palestinees use them and you know to communicate and god drug deal or use them for delivering drugs. You know, they're sitting in the park, they put them in the paperback. If the good guy come, they just grab the drugs, sell it. If the cups coming, they just released the pigeons with all the drugs and pig just go back home, you know, so they didn't lose anything. So there are so many uses of the animals. But the entire club drives to a place just the one person. One person takes all the crates and he would just release them next day in the morning. So you release him and then he comes back home, and he comes back home, and pigeons hopefully go to my place, two people in buildings, people in Belgrade, people in three forks, and whenever they got back. And they have electronic clocking now so you can actually see when the pigeons come. It goes to the smartphone and you can actually see who get pigeons and what were the speeds. So since everybody has a different distance, we can they measure that the instances and then we calculate the r per minute of the speed since they over release at the same time. Wow, but they call it porman race horses, so exactly like horses with the breeding supplements, like a pretty rich and awesome thing to be doing. Yeah, well with the pigeons, you know, you don't need that much money. You know, horses very expensive. The birds you can and you can get grain locally here and you can build a little little loft and I when they're flying around your house like that you said they're exercising, they're just exercising. They just love to fly. And it's fun to see when the hawk comes or or falcon. It's awesome to watch falcon. How we scoops and try to pick one and usually he doesn't get these birds are in the shape, you know, so they have to be either something wrong. We don't when he really surprised him, it's a something. You probably have a hobby that I got, not I'd like to have this hobby. They look here they come and they're beautiful too. Yeah, but it is just amazing that little bird can cover six miles in the day. And then you said, there's eight or nine folks in the club, and where they all from different places around different places, and we would have preachers, we would have police chief, police chief of Manhattan was flying birds, our dealer, carpenters. You know. It's just like it's a cool history and it's a great history. And I get to stay I with my I get to stay in touch you with my friends in Europe where I grew up. I get to call them and say, hey, what's the latest or what's going on? The latest in the pigeon era? Yeah, you know who do you? And actually these birds are from where I grew up because the Montana birds they were pretty good, but the birds where I grew up were better. And the reason I think was because the poor the country, the better the animals. The selection is toffer. You know, those people they don't have extra money too to give to their kids, not to take care of their pigeons, you know, so they give them good out in good food, but any kind of sickness is out. So there's selection. We get the pampered pigeons everywhere. So and and you know in the US we love to spoil our animals. I mean, dogs are slipping in their beds, you know, horses getting more supplements and blankets than their kids. Do you know it is? I mean, we cannot even need horses. I mean there's a guy, there's a guy at work that I put a jacket on his dog the other day. What are you doing there? He said, Well, he gets cold. I'm like, he's a dog. He can adapt his dog. You understand, that used to be a wolf and we just made it look this way. Yeah, it's interesting. But yeah, I know, just to see just to be sitting here and seeing this pigeons flying around your house is awesome. So I'm coming up. I'm gonna bring my kid and we're gonna we're gonna see the birds, see the birds. We might be in the club for long, you never know. I don't know. I don't know what kind of hazing there is at the Pigeon Club, but I'm trying to get there isn't you know. They just get the birds and get aloft and there's lots to learn. It's a steep learning curve, but it's not the difficult plus, but you need to stay away once again. The marketing there, you know, they tell you pigeon needs this, and they need return combo for relaxing muscles, and he needs better carps before the race, and et cetera, et cetera, and more snake oil stuff than anything. You know. It's just like I mean, performs. Like I said, I don't have a TV, but when I'm in the trips, like the latest trip in the Kansas, we look at the TV. There's just the fear and wongering and pill selling, you know, just lots of pills. And the funny thing is that those pills you cannot go and buiom you can tell your doctor to get prescribe you those pills. So I'm supposed to watch the commercial educate my doctors. I can get those pills. They look, I saw this on TV. It's better be good? Yeah? What what what will all those pill commercials say tell your doctor if this is right for you, well let him know. But like, wait a minute, I thought it was the other way around. But and at one time there was six or eight different commercials in the evening. So when you see when you have the kids there are indoors and they're just watching TV. You know, I'm not gonna take very long to just make them think that you cannot exist without pills. Yes, you know, they're gonna not think that the food is your medicine. You know, this wild deer, wild elk has all the mineral nutritions that you will need as long as you exercise and you live happy life. You really don't eat all these supplements. Yeah, I mean coming in this house, sitting here in this house with you and being here for the assada, you just think like there's some health of mind and spirit here like there just it is, and some places you go there just isn't. Um And I would positive the connection you guys have to but it's so simple, you know, it is nothing that we created or invented. It's just like how common folks live. But that is I mean really though it's not it isn't, but it's not what society is telling folks to do nowadays. It's not if you follow the herd, you don't end up here. You know, if you follow the trends, you don't end up here. You have to diverge at some point to end up here. I think that's just keep spreading message over that, you know, harvesting animal and and eating them and different recipes, and and the enjoyment and benefit you get from being outside being a hunter, being a fisherman, and you're never you never mastered. It is my favorite part about it. You're always there's always something new. I mean, you're building this new business with all these people that were hiring and coming in, and then every day I feel like a bum. I get around these people. I'm like, I thought I read a lot. I thought I knew a lot about hunting. I thought I knew a lot about cooking up wild game, and then we bring these people in. I'm like, WHOA, all right? Yeah, I mean I'm I thought I had this licked. But there's always there's many many people, especially in this community of people. You walk downtown Boseman, You're like looking at a guy like, I know that guy hunts, I know he does he probably has more than I do. Yeah, I need to go talk to him. And so we we kind of, uh, you know, we talked about it. But if you have a work that's satisfying you, there's fulfilling and you know, we spreading good message and I see what you guys. I mean, it had to be satisfying. Um. Yeah, there's no no better than that. I mean I keep thinking of me and somebody asking what do you do? I was like, I think I collect smiles. Yeah, yeah, I I truly believe like once you get to that point, you're if you can, like you have clearly done it. If you can just minimize the distraction from your passion, Like if you get into place where somebody lets you do that for a living, if you can just minimize a distraction and focus on the thing that you've captured, then then you're happy, you know, and it just gets distractions. If somebody's causing distraction and taking you away from the thing, you gotta get him out of there. And you got to pursue it because we're, you know, pretty lucky folks to do what we do, you know, So if somebody's in there messing that up, they gotta go at any level. So well, thanks for let me have some brandy. The fire is now out, but there's always um you know, can the link where you're starting new fire. I've been here twice and we've had a fire and brandy both times. Hopefully that's it will be just repeating all the time. Trend take that every time we eat by the fire and drink I think, uh, look at the in the afternoons, and you know, we go out and ski. I love skiing around here, cross countries. Give it to the dogs. Um, just I guess little sercize outdoors and then go back inside in the winter. But then we have you know, obviously we would have three September and three October, but that could be draining because September comes, gosh with all the hunting that we do and go on the trips. Uh last what promised? People are got a lot of family members will come visit you and don't worry, we'll come and then the summertimell come on. Like listen, don't come then, because I don't want to have to parade you around and share the tourist spots. I want to be doing what I'm wanna do. Come in the winter. Yeah, we'll sit around and watch it snow. Yeah, you'll have fun. I think they'll be um rewording for you and for your kids growing up here and be in Montana. Yeah, Montana and you're Montana. Well I have Instagram Doon Montana, Smittana. My kids have middle name Montana, both of them all they do both them. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know my kids are. But um yeah, where can people see all your photography if they want to check it out? Well, just to do sewn smittana dot com. Know on a website. Um, you guys sell prints or anything there, I'm gonna have to you know, not really, there are maybe just few, probably five tan prints a year. I really don't target that because the princes are so personal, you know, I really don't know what people people like. Um, and I like, look at my princes here. They all have horses or cattles, you know, so I can tell you. I am agricultural guy. Um beautiful, but I like big scenery with little people. I mean, I know one of the editor wants told me that I can just see your photos when it's a huge scenery and little fisherman or a little hunter, that's gotta be your photo. And I kind of like that and said, well, I asked him, well, why do you like that? Because so besides seeing beautiful scenery, I think what it does people to imagine themselves that they are damn you know. They want to go and experience that little stinky guy right there in the middle and and be. But it's also he shows you how small you are. Yeah, that puts you in perspective how big those plays as are. So there's some awesome stuff here is that? Yeah? I mean I would love to do a book one day on hunting guides. Yeah, you know, just just the best stories you ever like, who has the best stories hunting guides? Oh? My goodness, they are you know, they are making lots of hunters successful. Yeah, now, if you think of it, we are lucky here. We have national force, so I can just go and use my skills to get an elk coret deer. But most people hunt with guides, and they're only as good as their guides. And those guides, you know, it's their skill too help you harvest the animal. And sadly, I mean I don't see too many guides um in the magazines. I don't see any guides book ever. I mean I don't maybe you've seen it. And some of the guides in some countries they're not even invited to sit with you at the table, you know, so we still have some pr to do. That's I mean, you see that a lot. There's a guy's table and a client. It's like, i'd like to you know, the reason I'm here is for you to guide me. Man. I want to learn from you. Yeah, I wanted to. Like, the reason I need you is because I don't know this country in this in this way, and i'd like to the comarad or you have and just just hiss and you look at it. What the guides usually wear, I mean some of them don't even have to brand new boots are the best clothes. But they can get it done. Yeah, and they are Yeah, and you can't and you can't get it done without a lot of time. Thanks you to Sean. I really appreciate appreciate it. So we'll see you around. Well, keep the brandy flowing. That's it. That's all episode number forty in the books. Thank you to du Sean S. Meantana. Really appreciate you for having me in your home, for sharing your brandy, for sharing your mentee and allowing us to talk about your life. It was enlightening and I very much appreciate it. It was awesome story. Episode number forty is gonna be a good one if you liked episode thirty nine. We got Randy Newberg coming in the house. He's gonna talk about hunting ethics with us answer some of your questions. So if you have questions and you're listening to this now, send them in really quick because you've got a couple of days before Randy comes in to sit with us and talk hunting as what else, what else? What else? What else? Hey, man, there's always a lot of stuff happening at the meeting and incorporated. Um we got you go to the meat eater store. Man, You've got all kinds of stuff there right now. It's almost Christmas. And if you go there, you might find a shirt with a gnome. It's an illustration of a gnome packing out the unicorn from the mind of one Stephen Ranella. You're gonna want to give this to every boy and girl and man and woman in your life because it's badass. There's also stuff for the Hunting Collective there. Click over there you might find the yetti tumbler with our logo on it that you can purchase. It would be awesome if you did. And when you're done with that, and I know you've got a lot more time and money, UM, go up to the newsletter subscribe button. You click that and you'll be good. You put your little put your little email in there, and then updates from our website come every Wednesday into your inbox. It's unbelievable, I know. And then if when you're done with that, if you still got extra time, then you go and you go on Amazon or wherever you buy a book, and you and you buy or order the Mediator Fishing Game Cookbook. You do that, you need to do that. It's out of stock right now, but it will come eventually. It'll come like in January, and it'll be a great surprise whenever it does show up. So that's really it. If you do all those things, will love you. I love you forever, and we'll keep pumping out these podcasts free o charge for you. So until next time, thanks for joining us. Thank you, Dudu, Sean Spantana, thank you to you all for listening. Bye. M H.