00:00:00 Speaker 1: Oh hey, everybody, Episode ninety three. I'm the Hunting Collective. I'm super excited about this one. Phil. Uh, this is the first of our best us and I feel like these best us are as cool as anything we do. It's it's like a it's like visiting an old friend, an old friend come over for Christmas that you haven't seen in a while. You get to enjoy and think about what they mean to you, and so that's what this is for me. So somehow, in a weird way, that lines up for our holiday. But before we get to all of that, phil what do you think about this best of situation? Are you digging it? Yeah? I think it's a great idea. It's a great idea. Should we do more of them? That's like maybe every every few years? Oh every few years? Yeah, really sprinkle them in like sparsely. Well, I mean you can only what are we gonna do another one in six months? Or you like, the best Little has had like a few more episodes. You're like, now we're gonna do the best of those episodes, the best of the last week. Yeah, exactly that. Yeah, that's that's a little it self agrandizing. I think, all right, Philip, well, let's get into it episode three. Enjoy. I guess I grew up on an older road, a pedal to the medals. I always did what I told until I found out that my brand new closed a game second hand from the rich kid's next door. And I grew up fast. I guess I grew up. I mean, there are a thousand things inside of my head I wish I ain't seen, and now I just wanted to a real bad dream or being and like I'm coming a part of the seams. But thank you, Jack Daniel. Hey, everybody, Merry Christmas. Philip ho ho ho. I didn't feel it. Try that again if you want a better version of Santa Claus. Travel over the meat Eator podcast that launched yesterday. What were we called the Christmas Spectacular? I don't. I don't think as this recording, I don't think it has an official name yet. We'll call it that, but Steve calls it the some Bitch and Christmas Special Metator some Bitch and Christmas Special, including uh, let me call something out. I am very sad that every episode of THHC has uh an email notification from my laptop. I'm sorry. If you've been listening every every episode has like a I think it's the trademark of the show. It's really part of the show. I like it. Yeah, so I actually muted that just now. Um, the Christmas Some Bitch and Christmas Spectacular from Meat Eater is over there at the Meat Eater Podcast. So go download that. You'll get a little taste of one. Ben O'Brien as Santa Claus. So I read, I read a poem, talk some talk, some stuff to the crew. It's happy to take part. So go listen to the Meat Eater Christmas Bitching Spectacular light show. It was great, Phil, It's really well if you if you really want to know who the mind behind it is, it's Phil. I'd say it's it's mostly Karan and then me and then you. Yeah, but thanks producer Korean, shout out to you. All right, Well, this is a different kind of show than we've done in the past. We talked about this last couple of weeks, but episode ninete is volume one, the best of THC. I gotta tell you, I spent a whole day working on this stuff, going back pension time codes World. Phil here listening to old podcast man and it. It brought a tear to my eye, a couple of times, memories of of conversations, past, ghosts of conversations, topical, topical. Because it's Christmas, and so I think that we'll get right to it. But before we do that, we have to we're winding down. As we said last week, we're winding down on our not so sharp moments, winding down. It's coming to the end. We only have a couple more left. Time for reflection. It's a time to think about all the dumb ship that you've done over the last year, really your entire life. So Phil and I will pause for a moment and let you reflect on the year's past. Feel will put in some sort of sound effect here. All right, we're back. I hope you felt your shame. Yeah, And so you have been a terrible human. Ten we're at the THHC. We're like to you should acknowledge that and move forward as a better, better human. Um. There's a lot of self help podcasts out there. This isn't one of them. This is a self shaming podcast. And I know I know what you're thinking. I'm terrible and then you're probably right. And so in the new year, get it together all right. It was inspirational. Yeah, it was. That was I should have been a motivational speaker, shouldn't I. Yeah, it's not too late, it's not too late. I want to do it, all right. Play the jingle, Phil, not the sharp moment, so you don't have to. I'm gonna miss that jingle. When it goes away, it might come back. It'll live on in all of our hearts, in our hearts and minds and the deepest, darkest depths of our synapses. Alright, this is from this is I have a child's mind. And this made me laugh just reading the subject line. In the subject line, this is from Justin Snaveley. The subject line was not so sharp moment. I'm sorry. What was that? Not so sharp moment? Shart? Moment? Shark got it? Okay? Do we needed to find what a shart? I don't believe. So I think we're gonna figure it out here, all right, Justin said, as I write this to you with a humble heart. That is tough to relive this not so sharp moment. This past both season in Colorado, I decided to take on my very first El cont I trudged around the wilderness the day before opener, and during opening day looking for elk sign in the area I had never been. On the night of the opener, I sat by my fire and listened to a few bulls crack off right before I hit the hay. I woke up in the morning bright eyed and bushy tailed, And during my morning coffee I heard a couple of cows off in the meadow below me. I cracked off a bugle, and low and behold, I had a bull return the call about a quarter mile from camp. I figured, why heck, let's go get him. I made my way up the ridge and called until I was roughly a hundred yards away from the bull, but he held fast that would not come an inch closer. I figured I'd let him calm down and mosey on about while I regrouped at my camp. I thought it would chase him after I got my pack all put back together. Well, as you may know, coffee is quite the laxative. It's quite the turn. It was a hunting story and then just went right as you know, as you will. I don't know that I don't drink coffee, but I can assume, yeah, um, would you agree with coffee is quite the laxative. Yes, it can be, especially after a quick little john upper ridge and back. I clasped my chest buckle and thought, today is going to be the day I shoot my first elk. As I began to let loose what I thought to be a frog stopper, it quickly turned into molten hot sludge traveling down by life. Okay, a whole pause there for a second. I've heard the term shirt. I'm sure most people have. Frog stomper is new to me? Is that new to you? Yes? I believe it means that when, like you, you stepped on a frog, and that's the noise it would make. Okay, I could be wrong, but that's that's that makes sense? Does it make sense? All right? We'll go with it. I was quick and deliberate to take my pants and underwear as they had seen their version of a pass through. The dirty pants were saved, However, my last wet wipes used up, used up, and my pride quickly humbled as I said a final goodbye to my underwear and the elk woods for that day. As I said, my undergarments ablaze along with my hopes and dreams. You can see this man just like sadly burning his his underwear. We could do that Hulk music that we do for me in commons. As I hiked through the woods my backup pair of white leggings, I took my walk of shame back to the truck for clean pants. I hope you enjoyed my not so sharp moment. Justin play the jingle field not so sharp moment. Oh boy, well, Justin, this is the most somber, not so sharp moment yet Justin. This is a sad ning. Yeah, this is really I mean, you're by yourself in the woods, burning your shitty underwear. It is Uh, that's a low point for you. Yeah, but hey, listen, we're about bringing people back from the depths terrible shame, but then come back like a phoenix rising from the earlier. You're all terrible, but now I'm gonna tell you can come back, just like Justin's underwear from the depths of the ash rises a free work sharp field sharpener from the folks here at t C. And so thank you work Sharp, and thank you Justin for putting it out there for everyone. All your shame and your just just all your the poop running. Then you're like early In the morning. And I will say that as a non coffee drinker, let's not blame this on coffee, or should we. It was probably a factor, but there's no way to know. It's it's all justin then. Yeah, there's no way to know, so listen. I don't know if I want not so short moment to be a thing or not. I think one might be good. Yeah, I'm a little scared of what this could turn into. And I don't want to spend my days reading your short stories. So don't you dare send me a short story? No more, don't you dare send that to me? Please? All right, this is, like I said, a different type of show, Phil, This show is the best of I went through all ninety some episodes of this podcast. I listened to every single one of them. Phil, ninety hours. Wow, yeah, there's more each show. So it was more like a dight hours I stay on average. Yeah. I spent at my house alone in my underwear that we're clean and not not on fire, that were that we're not a flame, listening to every conversation I've had. I also feel shame. Yeah that's pretty egoistical. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. It was a pretty sad little weekend, but I also felt m heartened by some of the better people we've had on this podcast, and a lot of them you know how early and if if you've listened every episodes podcast, first let me say thank you, because that's quite defeat. When it started, I only really had to draw from I wasn't part of METI eat, and only really had a draw from the people that I knew a right, the people that I knew in my life that I thought had a good story to tell. And so that's really how this this podcast started. It's kind of changed over the years and what I'll call the pre filled days. Oh wow, yeah, pre Phil, there was a bunch of people that I would call friends, people that have impacted my life, whose stories impacted me, and I wanted to share their stories with you. And so that was really the impetus for this podcast in the beginning, and it still is to a large extent. But at some point you're trying to do a weekly show. You've got you can't just interview people you know every week, and so in the pre filled days, pre fill so much like we do, we designate the years A D B. C. You're equating me joining the podcast to Jesus two thousand eighteen, coming to two thousan p P, P b P and p P pre fill. But why baby, wait we'll go okay, yeah, but I was getting post phil and before. That's a better way to do it. B Yeah, okay, this is two thousand eighteen, b P, PPP two thousand all right, I think we can post fill. He's cut that all out. Uh. Most people would say that that BP were the with the golden d b P. You as goal nears PP, it's going it's gone way downhill. Uh in the PP years. So I'm cutting. I'm cutting cutting this. Come on, I don't cut this. Uh. Phil has all his power over the show. He can just I don't remember anything I say, so he can cut parts he doesn't like and I totally forget they were even there. So if you're hearing this, it's because of Phil's kindness and wanting to have wanting you to hear this. So this, this this episode, I think is about what I just said, not the p P, P P stuff, but the the stuff about people in my life that have impacted it. And a lot of this is very personal for me. These are you know, exceptional humans that whose story UH invigorated me the first time I heard it. Being around them is inspiring, and so trying to bring that to to all of you in a way that made sense for for the person telling the story and for the person listening. And I think the Hunting Collective very much is about gathering perspectives from all over this country, all over this world, and trying to mash them all together in a better understanding of hunting and why we do it. And so this first best of is very much exactly that. It's very much the ethos of this show and why I wanted to do it in the first place. And so you're gonna hear probably the audio quality won't be as good because is pp b P BP it was bad. You will hear a difference. You'll hear a difference because it is b P, it is pp UM and and these were all done and random places around the country, And so that's what this show is about. This best of is about the people in my life that I feel like they're most have been most impactful, and have the best stories to tell. And so hopefully you enjoy these conversations. And we've chosen or I've chosen three people that I think fit that bill. The first of those three people his name is Wyman Menzer. You know who that is, Phil I do not know. Let me tell you. I'll tell you all about woman. I first met Wyman and Uh on a coyote hunt in a little town called Benjamin, Texas. Benjamin, Texas is in the middle of the big empty is Wyman calls it in northern Texas, just north of Dallas, not too far. It's a big, wide open country. And in this in this interview you will hear uh Whyoman describe it? Wyman. I met Wyman on on a coyote hunt, and I was first struck by a few things about him. Number One, anytime he blows on a call, okyote comes running, and it's pretty much a hundred percent of the time. He is an artist when it comes to hunting and photographing coyotes. He also is a renaissance man in the way that he looks at the world. He has done things like taken old jail house in the town of Benjamin, an old eighteen hundred jail house and turn it into like a cottage. That was featured on the Some Fancy Pants channel about what's that called h G TV. That's it. How did you know of Terrible should work on a lot of shows for h So he was on like HDTV just because he took an old jail house and turned it into his family's home for a while, and it's a beautiful place. He is also a biologist by trade and has been trapping and killing KaiOS for most of his life. He has a book. The first time I met him, he showed me this book that goes back to the seventies of every single kayode he ever killed, where he killed it, who he was with, how much it weighed. He has blood. Uh, he would take his fingerprint, put it in their blood, put it on his book. So he has this treasure trove, this totem of his history with one animal, and his life is really defined by predator hunting and kyot hunting and trapping. As you'll hear in this podcast. I immediately when I first met Wyman, I immediately knew this is a special person, not only because his hunting prowess is out there for everyone to see, but he's got this the depth of soul that you just don't find many places, and you definitely don't find it in the big wide empty of northern Texas and so I was able to do a lot with woman. I've spent a lot of time with him over the years and enjoyed every single moment of it. We did a film UM called Chasing Light with the Eddie about Woman about his life, so you could go watch that. UM. We did uh this podcast and a bunch of other stuff with a man who was a writer, a photographer, UM, a friend of many. So I think very highly of this man. So we've cut out a little bit about his life and the early part of his life, which he lived in a dugout on an old ranch I believe called the Pitchfork Ranch near his home. He lived in this dugout, lived alone, trap got all his money from trapping, and it was a pretty transformative time in his life. So as you're listening to this, understand that that what I pulled here is the genesis of this great man's life, and he reflects on it in some beautiful ways. So enjoy wyman men, warm and serbian. How are you, sir? I'm well, thank you. Oh we're in Benjamin, Texas, are we not? Yes, sir, you lived here your entire the entire life Yes, I was raised on a ranch about eleven miles out of Benjamin. Yeah, you don't have to tell your age, but yeah, sixty seven years old. I'll go ahead and be honest. I didn't want to pressure you in anything at all. Uh. Well, that's an impressive that's an impressive feat given a lot of times today. You know, guys my age don't stick around their home place very very often. Yeah, you know, I really didn't think that I would once I got out of college. I wasn't went to Texas Tech University. But it came back and circumstances were such that I felt like this would be a good place to headquarter. And it worked out in spades, in spades. Well, I mean, might as well start at the very beginning. You grew up here, uh with a brother and a sister, right right, Um, you grew up on a ranch not far from here, and tell you just tell me about growing up and and you call it the big empty Well we uh the ranch that uh that we were reared on as a twenty seven thousand acre, which is not a big outfit in this part of the country, but it's it's a decent size, definitely good for a couple of boys to be raised on. My dad was a foreman there and he was there for thirty years and uh raised up as a as a cowboy and learned to to work cattle and break horses in the whole deal. And uh, but my main love wash wash was hunting and studying the natural history of various species, and as always going and collecting bird eggs and inspecting birds that I had to shot with a bb gun and and uh a key and them out. And it it led to to what I'm I'm doing today for for for sure. Yeah. And we were talking about this at breakfast this morning, you know, and even and over whiskey last night, about growing up in that environment and what that how that shapes you and what that makes you, the grit that it gives you, the drive and work hard. I mean you were raising a hard work and hard scramble and life this country, you know, it it's pressure, I mean it is it's it's not an easy place to live. Um. Uh. You know, we find a lot of old house places we found there on the ranch. Um in the early nineteen hundreds, people really came in here in droves and you know, um farms, you know, cut out a little piece of parcel of end and tried to farm it, and through time the land pretty well, um weeded out to where it's now probably at its carrying capacity. Early on it was it was just you know, overgrazed more or less, I guess you could say. And so even today though, it's hard because you know, it's just mostly big ranch country and uh ranching practices of change. You don't need as many people working on ranches. And so the town of Benjamin itself used to be a population of like six hundred. Now it's like two. But that's basically what it what it should be. And so my dad and mom were both raised in the Depression years, raised hard. My dad was in a large family and that where they parceled out the kids to other families where they could have enough to eat. My mom lived in dugouts and tents during the Depression. She has bad memories about it, but they were resilient people. And they've taught my brother and I, especially my brother and I my sister not so much, but taught us, you know, how to how to be independent and to appreciate doing things for yourself. And I appreciate that very much. And it's and it's uh, it's been good good to me because so much of my life revolves around, you know, uh, doing things your own way and trying to figure things out and uh and to make it work and make do Yeah. Yeah, I mean the early part of your story is very much just you know, the life most kids would dream about, right, I mean, a roaming around this country on horseback, roaming at willed your parents to uh did not um uh you know, stay on you constantly, you know where are you going. It was just like watch for rattlesnakes. That that was the warning when we were kids. When you go outside, y'all, watch for rattlesnakes. And if you got a half a mile from the house with your baby gut or you're twenty two and mothers missed you, will she'd host jard holler and you could hear a mile away. She had a shrill voice, and you knew it was time to come back home. But they just didn't keep a rain tight rain on you. You were allowed to go out and be yourself and explore and be creative and in doing uh fighting things to do. And it was it was it was a good thing. It's a good life. Well, I mean you got a good power of description. I mean describe for people listening that I've never been to this country. Of course, this is north you call north central Texas, and I would say, um, what this country looks like. I mean the think, the land, the animals, just the feeling of being here. Well, Uh, first off, weatherwise, it's we have some fairly cool cold winters, very hot summers, so it's it's kind of one extreme to the other. Um. It we have a thousands of acres what they call all the bad lands and local bad lands, Knox County bad lands, and uh, it's it's just the old red beds, ancient red beds, uh apparently old river beds because you'll find uh, gravel, layers of gravel, and the edges of the cliffs with a lot of of mammoth bones. I've actually had paleontologies come out and I chow them these skeletons and they say, yes, that's mammal, that's a's camel as the ancient horse bones. And then you have your your deep soil sites where there's a lot of mesquite. The bad lands pretty well um is uh um dominated by by juniper. And then you're you're deep soil size from a squite and to boast the grass buffalo grass. We have whitetailed deer, a lot of wild of wild farrell hogs, a lot of coats and um and quite a few bobcats. We don't have any foxes to speak of. They live more or less in the in town where they're where they're protected from codes. Because coyotes even like hot dogs, they hang out at the bars, so they they hang out in people's garages up in the attics because if they get out of town, the coats eat them. And because we have in the wintertime this is a central flyway, so we have a good, uh, a good population of snow geese and the and the Canadians come through. Not a lot of ducks. Back in the sixties, you know, I've seen a transition in the in the waterfowl, the makeup of the water waterfowl population. In the sixties it was just the opposite. We had a lot of crane sandhill cranes that stayed here through the winter, tremendous almost unimaginable numbers of green heads, canvasbacks, and a few uh Canadian geese. And now it's just reversed. We have a few cranes come in early along with your your teal and and and those little species, and then the cranes move on up to the Panhandle, right, and then the ducks they just we just don't have the duck numbers we did in the sixties. And I don't understand why, because we've got as much or more water. But it may have they switched. They've switched their flyaway there. Well, I mean that's a good description of this place, and I mean it's it's shaped you in a lot of ways. It has um you know, like I say, growing up on the ranch and and being raised as as an independent person. And of course when I went to Texas Tech, I studied wildlife biology and then whenever I laughed, instead of getting a job, I became a coon hunter, professional kyban hunter and living out on a pitchfork ranch and a half dugout. And there's where you really became independent, because you know, you go into town once week to get groceries and um, and basically you were your own man. I mean, there was there was nobody to ask questions to, nobody to talk to to exchange ideas with. It was just you in the land. Yeah, I want to go through that specifically specific But I don't know if you've ever talked about other than the time you told me the first time you saw a hippie on the Texas the first time you encountered a hippie who was having a deep conversation with some fire and it was some red ants, some harvest dance, so he was probably having a good talk with him, apparently. So they're circumstances exactly. Um, but you went to Texas Tech and wildlife biology was the choice of trade. Was that just because the intense connection you had to this place and the animals, all those things, that's what drove you to that. And then and the study of that kind of reaffirmed right. And I knew that. I knew there were no job opportunities. I was aware of that at the time, and but I was determined to get a degree in wildlife apology while back then they called it wildlife management. And um but uh uh, you know, I mean I could have been a cowboy heaven forbid. I mean, I respect, I love cowboys. I love that life way. I still um across paths with work with them. In some of my photo shoots. I can speak their language. It's just that I've smelled enough horse flat horse sweat my life. It's just that I really loved working with with wild creatures. That and I actually aspired at one time to be a paleontologist and found out that it took too much math. And so I'm not a mathematician. That I I still have a great interest in paleontology. Yeah, well that so you graduate from college, you go through the process there, and you decide pretty much immediately right to to come back come a professional hunter. You lived in a in a It was a there's a no half dugout. It was built in nineteen forty eight when the Pitchfork bought that portion of the ranch from the Matador. And I actually I actually knew uh the man who helped build it in nineteen forty eight, and and so um uh it was um just a little one room shack with a fireplace in the end, and uh partially you know, the windows up was out of the ground and the windows down was below ground. And it was in the middle of a hundred and sixty eight thousand ranch, a Pacer ranch, And of course I had surrounding ranches that I hunted on also, uh you had the bags fifty thousand acres, and you had uh an old fellow name of Hubert Young, and he had ten thousand acres, and then you had the Springer. It was forty thousand and another ten thousand acre ranch. And that was before commercial hunting. I was the only guy out there. I never heard a rifle shot. I never saw another person hunting. The years that I spent three winners that I spent, actually five winners. I spent three winners living in the dugout, and then two other winners hunting out there still working out of Benjamin. I never saw anybody else having And it was it was like you stepped back into the eighteen hundreds in nineteenth century. Yeah, you're living in You're living in a one room dugout. Very much that was very much akin to when it was built in the forties, right, I'm seeing pictures. I mean it is. It was literally a one room hole in the in the side of the hill and you're you get up every morning, you're running traplines, weren't you and just talked about the daily life. Because I think we've talked a lot about this in this visit when we've visited a bunch of times, but in this particularly visit a lot about what how soft our life is right now? Yeah? You know, my like how how I'm trying to escape the softest of life by going out and hunting. You came out of college and plunged into the headlong into the hardest, hardest life imaginable it was, you know. Of course I didn't. I didn't going to a dog pool, slid or anything like that. I had my forward drive pick up. But every morning was it was a ritual, every every day I took out when I when I moved in, I took five thousand rounds twenty ammunition and a couple of hundred rounds a high powered rifle to shoot my cos with my twenty two I used to dispatch animals and trapped in practice, and of course my my food stuff. And then in the mornings, I would get get up before daylight, eat breakfast, fixed my lunch, same lunch every day, a summer saucege sandwich, canteena water, and a peanut peanut patty candy bar that I would not eat a piece of it until I caught an animal. When I called a code, I would break a piece off to reward myself, and all day I went along the trap line like fifty sixty miles and then when I got back to cabin in the evening, I skinned stretched and if I had enough time, I would practice shooting with my Winchester and mountain and uh then I'd cut for firewood, draw my water for that night for either a bath only took one bath a week, or washing dishes, and then I would finish dinner, wash the dishes right in my journal, sit in front of the fire, and then go to bed. Every night, seven days a week, thirty days a month. All went along. That's what that was alive, and it was great. I loved it. I loved it. First winter was fabulous. Second winter got at tougher. Third winner was real tough because I've become a little bit more uh social, and living down there, you were pretty restricted. I mean you're a young man at this point, right, you know. I needed to see somebody. Yeah, And so every once in a while cowboy would come by and I'd say hi to him, be able to talk to him. But other than that, I'd go to a day or two days without saying anything. And that that kind of got to you after a while. Yeah, I imagine it would. So you're killing coyotes, bobcats. You're you're earning money right from from the pelts, right, so you were how many coyotes, uh, among how many kids the season? And how many bobcats? Well, how much money would you make? Well, you know we did our coach here in Texas. Weren't worth that much. You're fifteen bucks piece. But I needed to make four. I need to catch four animal units today. And I considered an animal unit a coyote bobcat was worth two animal units of fox three order of the unit. And uh, with four animal units today, I could make my pickup payment, my college loan payment, and buy groceries and have some spending money. And so my goal was to get four animal units today. And I did a lot of people nowadays say I'm a professional hunter. That is what you were. It was professionally that was hunting and trapping, right, Yeah, I mean what did? I ask many questions about that time in your life, But one of I always thought was like, what are your main takeaways? Because well, I'll tell you. You know, uh, you know, with age, you you know, you you become mellowed out, you don't hunt as much. But I can look back on those years and realize that hunting at that level it is people can't fathom being that involved in hunting today, uh, back in the eighteen hundred year. But you become so you become so involved solved in the natural history of the species that you were after every I mean every track. You know, you studied the tracks, You studied the what you thought was the time of day or night the tracts were made. You watched weather patterns. Uh, you anticipated animal movements in accordance to weather patterns. Uh. You learned that cos travel in certain areas in the daytime versus night time. And your average person today who goes out and quote hunts, has no idea of that level of understanding of the natural history of animals that you have to that you have to have in order to be a professional hunter. And and it's I wouldn't trade for those years. Well not only did or your professional hunter, but you were as a biologist, logging your kills the blood exactly I took all. I was very much a note taker, and and I would document each animal, uh, you know, at the distance that I shot it. Or the trap I caught it in, what foot I caught it on? And um and I still have all those that information today from all all the way back in the journals. Now I've I've with a rifle. I've shot one thousand, seven hundred and sixty with a rifle alone, and I was not counting traps. It was another hundred or sold with traps, eight hundred and seventy seven bomb cats and so you know, and and it's something and it's not something that I'm necessarily proud of. It is just that was a way of life. Yeah, you know. And and as like I said, as an older person, I don't hunt like I used to. I have a softer heart than I used to have. That's always the most interesting storyline about you know, when I think about your life, which is this tremendous tapestry of you know, something that's to be admired really and in all its stages. But when you're when you're back there and you're killing these kayaks for a living, you know a lot of people nowadays might say, well, what a terrible thing. You're going out there and just taking life and wholesale and make money and you're selling furs, and you know, in the modern day that might be looked at as as a negative to the landscape. But describe in that place in time, you know how you thought about the animal, you respect for it. I mean, I know just from knowing you that that's the case I did have and I still do. I mean, I'll always have great respect for the cord And I think they're very intelligent u uh an animal that uh they can make those make the changes with man, whereas the wolf could not, and they were pretty well exterminated from Texas. But the couches uh very adaptive and very sharp, and so early on the one of the reasons that I started taking no it was that I just wanted to learn more about them. And so the earliest notes came whenever I was in uh like a sophomore at TAG and I wanted to become a better code hunter, and so I thought, well, I'm going to have to understand the feeding habits of code. So I conducted a full year of research on my own by collecting stomach samples, fecal samples, and uh documenting the areas um separating them by vegetation, topographical geogy, geological features, and then I received a grant to study another year and so, um, you know, all of this, this note taking has been a very positive thing because to this day, I'll sit down, I'll get bored some danger sitting with all those notes and go through them just to remember and and uh and I'll see things that I've forgotten, you know, in in thirty years since I've seen and it's uh, he just continues to be a learning process even after all these years. I mean, didn't when you were a professional hunter back in those days. You're living in a dugout, do you remember having Do you have any of that? Do you sit here now and your grandfather and time has passed, you look back and have any remorse for for the animals you killed? Yes, yes I do. I do. I I can recall some instances, especially one one day that that touched my heart into this day, and that has been forty four years ago to this day still tugged at my heart. And um, and it was the kids I've caught in a trap and uh and I don't know that that kyd he just he just sat there and just and just looked at me. I didn't try to fight. And then whenever I I dispatched it. There there was there was a look of helplessness that it knew it was going down. And and I sat down in my pickup and cried. After all those all those animals had taken, that particular animal made me sit down in my pickup and cry. And to this day I still think about it. It tugs at my heart. And another one in particular, is one of the first really neat shot photographs i'd take him because at that time I was working on my photography. I remember I called him in the J two pasture on the pitch for a real rough country, just savagely rough country. And it was at the dead end of an old bulldozed road and I caught this big mail code and I mean he stood up and fought me like a lion. I mean I got out of the pick up and he was snarling. He was caught up in a number four new house trap, no way of getting out. And I had the greatest respect for that animal. And I pulled a camera out and took a photograph of him, and I mean, he's got his teeth bared and he's just saying, you know, I know, this is it bringing home? And and I still think of that that animal and that that that bravery that he showed in the face of death. That picture was selected by Texas Monthly as one of their greatest pictures of twenty five years that they had published that magazine. Wow. Yeah, I mean that that's a great I find myself. I'm not I got a lot of years to live, hopefully a lot of years to hunt. But I find myself examining those those that relationship with the animals that you kill me because you said, you kill thousands upon thousands of these animals, but it doesn't mean that you don't have an emotional connection to him. Uh. Today, And and then, like I said, it was just a way of life. Is a way of Life's what you did. It was a way of life and and uh and I also I was enjoying just being a part of the land. You know, every day, the sunsets, the sun rises, the weather changes, all of those things still have an impact on me today. I still refer back to those years and and what I learned in in the animal movements, animal patterns, Like I can say, like, for instance, a couple of days ago, I saw a rattlesnake crawling. Anytime that I start seeing an immediate, uh, an increase in animal movement. When I'm walking in the mornings, You'll start seeing various creatures. Tracks suddenly appear, and I'll tell slender my wife, we got weather coming. And I learned that from those years as a professional hunter, because I studied, I lived and breathed those habits, those weather changes and how they affected animals behavior and uh, and it's just and it still serves me today. Yeah, that's amazing. You don't have to become an animal yourself. You're out there, yeah, not not speaking for some days, and I'm sure I can feel like that. You're getting your own head. Yeah, you're getting your own head big time. You better like yourself, so all I can say you better like, Yeah, you better enjoy just you know, appreciate you being you because you're gonna learn yourself. Did you I mean, when you were doing that, did you think, Hey, look, four years from now, I'm gonna look back and there's gonna be the golden years. Do you think, Man, this is I'm a crazy son picture for doing this. I mean, was there a self realization at any point during this? Now I realized that the days would end? And uh, and I remember drawing on the wall and it's been covered up since then. It was the last few days of that first winter, that first winner was the golden winter. That was the best because I've been seemingly all my life in school. As most guys that go to college realized, you go from the well in my day's first grade to college and there's no break. And he's like, I've been going to school forever, and I was sick of it. And man, going out and being on your own and of course immersing yourself in the land with a rifle. I always love to hunt. Wasn't that bigger fisherman, but I love to hunt and uh and I love just big, wide open country with with lots of elbow room. And I realized something told me that first winter, at the end that my days were limited. This freedom would some day in this this level of freedom. I mean, I'm free and happy today, I'm doing what I wanna do. But back then, man, it was it was really indescribable. And I drew on the door, on the closet door, and that had a little tiny closet in the corner, and that that dugout a dug out, and I drew a cowd in a trap, and in the distance were these two prominent hills called Double Mountains. They've been They've been mentioned in in uh Ronald Mackenzie's books on his fight with the Indians commands in eighteen seventies. They've been landmarked for probably ten thousand years. But I could see him in the distance from my trap line, and I drew those heels, and I drew this code in a trap and drag marks leading up to where it caught, being caught up and couldn't go any further. And I wrote beneath it, uh, something to the effect of to this end, Let's see what was it? Uh? I too, I too shall to realize this end, meaning that this grand life of freedom will someday be over. And uh it got painted over a few years ago, and it just makes me sick. I'm thinking about going back out there and trying to redraw. Yeah. Did you ever get a photo of it? Or just I did not know? I did not? Oh? Yeah, I mean that too. It was to this end, I too shall pass, To this end, I too shall pass. And it was a code in a trap, and knowing that the end was near, and seeing that great land or those heels in the distance, and knowing the freedom and it would be over. And that's the way I felt at the end of that first winter, and it was true. I've never have never been able to feel that kind of magic again. I've had great life, wonderful life of of traveling and seeing the land and going on ranches where nobody else hardly ever goes, but with a camera in hand. But there's always that restriction now that I didn't have it back then. I was young, totally completely healthy, lots of ammunition and and more land than I knew what to do with. And I've never known that sense. And of course now with commercial hunting taking over, that land doesn't exist anymore. It's gone. I can still go to that cabin and I'm welcome to the rancher says, hey, go out there and do whatever you wanna do. You know you're part of this ranch as well. You think you're part of the history. But all that country's lease. And so I go down there and I work on the cabin. I'll pop open a beer, eat some deer sausage, sat down on the porch and remember, and then I'll leave. Yeah, I mean that isn't every person in some way chasing that sense of freedom? Like not everybody knows exactly how they're gonna get to it. Believe me, I whenever I give presentations and I talk about I have one presentation that I give quite often, and it's called the Evolution of a Texas Photographer, And and I give that part of my life and almost without failed, people come up to me, older people especially, and say, how I wish I would have taken the opportunity to do that, because there's only a small window of time. If I give presentations to say to a college class, I will, I will every time on the time, I will say, when you finish college, you have this small wind o opportunity to do exactly what you want to do. And I said, when you let that window pass, it's over your stab. You become that's in that established line of life, you know, and that so called rut, and it's hard to turn back. I said, So, if you have any kind of a a dream, you know, some heartfelt message that you want to go try out for a year, do it. Because it is sad to talk to those people who will will visit with me and say I had that opportunity, and I didn't take it. Yeah, but I can go if I pass tomorrow. I have no regrets. I guess I grew up on an older row. All right. That was Wyman Menzer. Thanks to him, thanks to his wife Selenda, thanks to their kids for letting me come and bother them, and Benjamin and it's home. Uh. I love that guy. So you go back and listen to that podcast with Wyman and here the rest of it. There's a whole lot of good stories you didn't get out of that bit. So go find that podcast, download it and listen to it. Even if you already have. It's worth the time. We're gonna move on to someone else in my life that Phil, you might not be aware of. Did you ever hear the Doucheon Smantana podcast, mother Lord? So well, let me tell you a little bit Phil about Ducheon when you when you break into this this clip that we've cut for this podcast with Dushantana, we're gonna be in his house here in on the outskirts of Bozeman, right on the Gallatin River, and we we it was actually like maybe a year or so ago that we recorded this, and du Sean likes to sit by the fire. It doesn't really, I don't eve think it has a TV in his house. He likes to sit by the fire, drinking plum brandy, telling stories. Outside of his house is a is a big building that holds all his homing pigeons. He raced, is them, these homing pigeons, And so to paint the picture, we're sitting there drinking plum brandy by the fire in the home that he helped build himself when he moved here. You'll hear all that story. And then homing pigeons are just flying around and he just like watches them as they go and there, and he's watching every little part of how they fly and which ones and first, and which one is the fastest. And that's that's the scene of this podcast. But du Sean, as you'll hear, ah, immigrated here from communist Czechoslovakia. And his story of how the most impactful thing about this, I think to me was how du Sean grew up hunting in a in a very foreign place to me or or probably all of you listening, how they looked at hunting in Czechoslovakia in his in his youth, and how he brought those principles over to America. Here's the guy who dreamed of Montana, not even knowing what it was like, heard stories, heard crazy stories of what a Mary might be like as a child, and for some reason dream to Montana. And as far away as Montana was from his tangible and intangible life, he found his way here just through pure want and grit and it made his way to Montana and has built quite the life here and it's quite the photographer. So I happenstance. These first two folks in this podcast are photographers, um, but but du Sean has a lot to say not only about raising kids but about living life and his story. So let that inform you. And as we moved through this podcast, you'll know that you're you're getting to hear the genesis of Wyoman Menser and now the genesis of this man, Dushan's matana Um And both of those they both became renowned outdoor photographers and they can't they couldn't have come from more different backgrounds, and so I think it's really cool to hear that from Dushan. And so you're excited Phil for this one. Yeah, this guy sounds like a most interesting man in the world, and I gotta just take you over to see him here. After we're done, you would will have some plum brandy. It sounds great to rip it out, uh, du Sean is is an amazing human being. Not only are you hearing his voice, you just hear it in his voice, the way he speaks his sensibilities. It's all a bear. And this clip from our podcast with two Shan Santana enjoy. I guess I grew up on an alder road. Sean, how are you, sir? Yes, how are you? I'm very well. I'm drinking a little bit of mint tea with a spike of plum brandy on. 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 over, it's 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 and well we are in bows man Um in my house have a small farm by Gullaton River. Uh. Raise different kind of animals for us have sheep and pigs and chickens and ducks and turkeys and uh, 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're gonna 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, Lurka, 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 came and sit down with the architect, you kind of tell him we'll be one. We really like to read in the heat and the concrete floor, but like insuaded house, so you don't wish your energy heating it. Um, And we 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 them 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. But 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, that 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 tink or concept of our house. Who has to make not to pick our houses square feet perfect for two kids and couple and no maintenance. So if you put meler roof, and if you put stacko 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, houses 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 Galton River, stricting beautiful and farm animals around and and you guys are square with plumb randy and a nice fire here and it's it's a beautiful view. Yeah, life is good on a farm. R 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 kind of 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. Chop the chop 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 surround a bit firewood, and freezers are full of meat. Bring it, bring it? Yeah, you have so you have chickens and goats. Here what else we have? Sheep clinic sheep. And I got that idea from traveling to Argentine in the last twenty years or so, and then low how they cooked it what they call asada lamb asade over the fire and after I think a couple of dinners in the US, you know, 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 raise and he and I talked to my wife, did research me find the Icelandic sheep, and they are low and maintenance, they're very hearty, they don't need any structures, and they're very yummy. So it's a nice combination with the hunting. You know, when when you get the elk and lopoor deer, there's not much grease there, but with the antelope, I mean with the lamb, you just have extra fats and grease and fat. 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 I could have been I could help out. I don't know, I don't know. More you drink better, more tests, 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 U I know that as you get older you try to I think you get more into what I call homie. You 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 the tractor and you try to cut and bail. So it's U still very entertained, you know, with 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 outtors you have when you're taking photos, I completely forget about them, you know, I always I'm a full time farmer and part 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 know, just a lifestyle of 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 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 back and try to catch them again. And we graze them in out of 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 and nice thing being in the river bottom you have so much submoisture at the grass grow nicely and by the time you finish one and you can start another one and 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 lose some matter trade. So they eat bark. They eat um leaves, so we don't have to deep warm them since we have it just a t thirty of them. And when October comes, and of October, then we slaughter the lambs. We keep the replacement cheap. Then we slaughter maybe some old sheep 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 opened the stomach and empty the green and cut it 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 as soon as you harvest any animal and you have access to fire, you chop onions and you eat the you know, the red deer liver or road deer liver. Um. So it's you know, they help and they see that night. I don't know if they're gonna pursue that kind of lifestyle be here, but options are there for them. You know 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 firewood. I want to grow our own potatoes and carrots. I want to have my own honey. It's um, you know, 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 call them you a bit those things. Yeah, I think the influence and the childhood, how do you grow up and where you grew up, it just influenced you. And then later on do 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 things? I mean to 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 don't think I have a bad gig. I mean, I think it's wonderful to just take photos and meet new people and interact, learn about different languages, cultures, meet people who are in all kind of professions and hear their stories. Um, talk to hunting GUIDs in South Africa or Australia 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 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 more Montana and kind of balance with the traveling. And traveling is a four months a year, but the rest of them the rest of the time I'm here. Yeah, 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 it 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 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're 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 Bozemen are 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 are you doing here? You know, why do you want to hunt in his place? Or you know when you get to meet 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 U S that somebody would be prejudice because they come from different countries. I think it works to our advantages. 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, in June and and put a little work in. Yeah, helping me the cattle, is helping me the fans, and not too many doors will be closed. That's right. Yeah, I've I 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 Montana there's it's it's welcoming. I mean, you know, I don't speak like they speak here in Rder you you bet, but that but that, I mean, you've got quite a community along this river of people out of your neighbors. And you're you know, your and my wife, he said, well, she loves the local community. She's part of this group of um 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 gardering 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 type of chickens, and and what tools to use, how to check the soil for pH and in a million out of things. Don't listen, everybody out there, listen. Don't google dirty women Montana. You're not going to get that club 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 them here to Montana for a reason. I'm sure. Yeah, I think you know. I love kids, love being with them. And I didn't have the greatest example when I was a kid. You know, my parents were divorced when I was year old. My fire was drinking a lot, so there was lots of struggles there. There were lots of abuses, but I always say the boat 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've 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 and may be contribute with with something and just keep going. Yeah, your kids 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 and 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 are not mine. They're the kids of the world. You basically 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 are they 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 there, I have everything that can passible 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 growing 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 we hunt, He saw the cemetery in the church, and just exposing to those thinks 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 in Spain. And and I think that is it's kind of important for kids to see the world so they can put things in perspectives, provide perspective and let it go from there. And we know that too. I mean, you travel, travel and you go, like you said, you go to Nepal and you see somebody's holding basket with apples, but has bigg a smile than somebody who has a brand new Cadillac. 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 also can drive you to you know, to be a better version of yourself. Um. That certainly has or 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 and 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. Um, in abject poverty. Why can't I find that same smile when I'm you know, sitting on the heated seat driving to work. Oh, 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. And 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 it these trips, gosh, I've been. I mean, well, let's say over a hundred hundred trips around the world, and you have all these people. You get ten guests, they go with me or 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. It's something. Yes, it is a medicine, and part of my struggle. I'm sure you have it too. Is it when you get that medicine and you go all without it. You're you suffer yourself suffers. You you got you think, well, man, I could use a day just so. The Bozeman is a perfect example. And you have to builderness experience and the beauty of our doors. Yet do you have all the amenity of modern life. We have electricities, we have propanes, we have roads. It's not far. 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 getting 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 look, just keep going and there are millions of acres around here. And one of my favorite thinks 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 bagels and garlic 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, Um, 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 if dire straits are here, I can retreat, get back, to get back to that mountain. But you you know, you grew up in Czecho, Swakia. 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 and the Carpathian mountains named Krivani. You know, about 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 them in the mountain's graze and bring them back was somebody's elster. Next day with cheap they've done same thing. It was a small community where hunting was respected. You know, in Czech Republic the name for hunters miss yvetts, 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 too all things to get out, you know, he was danger goring outer stacks, or he was he 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 flora, but because is kind of fun fuel Latin, the names. You have to learn how many eggs 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, of a building tree stands, you were cleip 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 to it. But so as the kids, you know, we love to hang with hunters. I mean those whiskery gray faces. There were you know, drinking plumber and they'd have a little flask and they were sitting by the fire and telling stories about how they out fox fox, you know, 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 Carl May. Then we have some books Fennimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans. And I love reading. I mean I was a book. 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 tpis and shoot their bows and troves spears and live. So I was always dreamed 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, what 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 n you know, the Soviets were losing rains 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 did not know very much about her, but I use 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 the 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. 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 didn'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 Communist and 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 passed 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 to visit 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, with 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 communist would 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. 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. Not after Labor Day. My friend, 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? We had no idea how people live in US, absolutely zero. 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. There were everything forty different breads, twenty different butters, you know, hundreds of different wine, and shoes and clothes and tools. You know, I knew pitchfork and shovel and maybe rake. Where are tools? They had no idea what do you do with? So I spent all day, all day at 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 Florida and she decided to stay here 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 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 just moving, yeah, and it's it was kind of fun. So I stayed and went to school. After after work, I was working at the boatyard scraping barnacles and painting boats and working the body shops, 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, took you in and yeah. So there was a people at a wrinkling breader circus and lots of the 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 trapezes and ropes. Her name was Maria. She was a wonderful lady, and so I just went to her. And I didn't want a 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 names do Sean? And my mom said that she knows a friend of your friend. And I was just wondering if you can help me. Ladies looking at me, I was like, oh yeah, come and let's have a coffee. So we started talking and then um, she asked, 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 raking alan, cutting grass, cleaning different things. You said, last 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 collect to were you always and I know you said Montana was interesting to you from the beginning, but I mean getting out of Communist, check Republican, 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. They always 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 Brooks song? Oh? Yeah, gosh, I remember all of them from that song I Got Friends in the Low Place, Yeah, that's know. That was awesome. So that was upgrading because before that teacher just came to the board and draw pictures of cat and go meo, meo, meo cat dog. So that's how we have to start. You know, you have this twenty some year adults and we are learning language. I'm coming ever, we're gonna come over, bring garth Brokes, drink brandy. And that's about the fire that 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 Bozeman. 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 your hold truck betrailer, and she did have no experience. I saw her cutting corners and I was in military. When I was in military, was driving sem. I said I can help with the driving. So I drove her to Montana and we got here I think in nineteen ninety one two in March, and I parked this your whole truck in the Bozeman. I was full of snow and there was this little girl, barefooted standing in the snow looking at me. Bee ther arms up and goes, let me get this straight. Are you moving in removing 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. I guess I grew up on an older Okay, thank you du Sean As always, again, if you want to listen to that, go back find Duson's Metano podcast and listen to the whole thing. There's another hour in there that you missed. It's a worthy hour, so go and find it. Give it a listen if you have some time. Last, but certainly not least here there's another person that Phil has no idea about. Well, no, you will know this person. You will know this person, I hope. Charles Rodney, the Rabbit Man. Oh yeah, you've talked you've talked about him. Yeah, you talked about him on the podcast with Carolin Finney. Yeah, there you go. So we've at Charles Rodney is another beautiful individual. And again, if you if you line these things up, you have three people, their backstory, how they came to be where they are, how I came to know them, being as interesting as anything, But they all love hunting and they can't. They couldn't come from any more disparate backgrounds. You have in Charles Rodney, the son of a sharecropper in Louisiana, and Wyman Men's Aer the son of a rancher in North Texas, and then Shan Spitana who grew up in poverty in Chechoslovakia. But all of them have these weird stories that kind of coalesce around hunting, coalesce around the values of hunting and why we do what we do. And so as I went through this, I'm thinking, man, what a what a great way to kind of illustrate how our lives are affected by this pastime. So we'll start that. We'll start that with with Charles Rodney. Charles Rodney is probably the most interesting person to listen to. I call it the Church of rabbit Hunting. He preaches on rabbit hunting as if he's at the pulpit, and he basically is. In this case. He was the son of a share cropper in segregationist if that's the right word to use, I'm sure it is Louisiana. He grew up in relative poverty, and he talks about this in this in this interview, he talks about his life and what it meant kind of what hunting was for the more prominent landowners, what hunting was for the poor share croppers that worked their place, and so that that's a big part of what I appreciate about Charles. But also I appreciate his zest for life. And if you go in his house, his wife, he and his wife like cook cooks me breakfast. It's like the best breakfast you'll ever have, is all all Louisiana home cooking. I met him over a rabbit hunt. He's got beagles and uh, I'll give you a little example phil what it's like to hunt with Charles Rodney. He has these beagles running around, they're sent sent trailing rabbits and to get him all together and get him work. And he goes like, oh yeah yeah yeah, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah, come on, get him, get him And that's pretty much the whole That's what you hear the entire time you hunt with Charles. Uh, it is fantastic. He's a fantastic human. I've I've had him on the podcast twice. Now I hope to hunt with him. This February four cotton tails on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. So please enjoy this little clip from my conversation with Charles the Rabbit Man, Rodney, the Church of Rabbit Hunt. Alright, we're recording Charles. How are you, sir? I'm doing fine. Well, thanks for having me to your home. Well, you're quite welcome, my pleasure. UM. I want to start by saying, you know how long when did we rabbit hunt? It was a year. It was about two years ago, two seasons ago, two seasons ago, um on the Eastern Shore, Maryland. And I wish we could have done it last year. We were just talking about having children, that being busy and how that that does it. But when we hunted together on the Eastern Shore, it struck me that that was a hunt I would do every year, and I think you should. It was an awesome hunt. Yeah, it was a great hunt. And it also struck me that the one the first thing we should talk about is how delicious rabbit meat cotton tails are. Rabbit meat is one of the best meat and it's it's it's all natural and there's hardly any fat. They eat, only troll things, grass and leaves and twigs out in the woods and they're running and they literally eat soybean and stuff that they can get to. Uh, but they're running, so they're healthy there. There are no fat on them, and uh, it's one of the healthiest foods you can find. A lot of people don't know that, and a lot of people see them running around their backyard. They don't even think about what's right. So after that, we hunted in February. After that hunt we did, my dad was along. We went Super Bowl Sunday. We cooked up a bunch of rabbit legs. We soaked him in milk, a little bit, fried them up, put a little old bay on them, served him at a Super Bowl party. Everybody that was there eating them like these chicken. These chicken legs are great. These are best chicken legs in her hat. So that's a rabbit. Most city people don't know. They were What where'd you get this chicken? Well? I got it on the Eastern Shore, and it's a damn rabbit, said I always struck with me. Is not only is rabbit hunting fun, we're talking about it earlier here. Not only is it fun, is it easy to do? But you end up with you know a bunch of rabbits to go home skin and eat. That's fun for a kid to do. And rabbits um. Not only are they good and good for you, but they're one of the easiest game to clean. You can clean. I can clean a bunch of rabbits by the time I cleaned two squirrels. And and it you just cut a little slit and you pull them opposite in and all of her come off. You pull, you slip behind the tail or slit. I usually slip over the back, around the stomach and put my finger in and just pull out with yes right, and it comes off the off the back, legs and over the head. Now a lot of other guys do it a little bit different. And then I just take a knife and and and got them and I'm done. And if they're if they're a little bloody, I soaked them. I got a big one of and big wash tubs. So come for eight to ten hours overnight usually and all that blood comes out and then you clean it off, wrap it in freeze of paper. A lot of guys you shrink, wrap and label them and there you go and you're you're ready and so forth. Did your wife cook up a lot of rabbits. My wife actually is a city girl. I'm a country boy from Louisiana and we've been married. Tomorrow September to twenty two, will be forty six years. Can't get her to even go out and look at the dogs when I get a new one, but she gives me support. So I do all the rabbit cooking. I do all the rabbit cleaning. I have a special freezer just for a whild game, because a lot of the people I take rabbit hunting give me other games elk, moose, dear, whatever they hunt while waterfowl, and we eat some of it. But there are loads of people that I supply rabbit every year. I have names to give rabbits in my cut of the take, in my group we'll get over two hundred, and in my take I usually get about forty forty five. So some guys come just to shoot the hunt, shoot the breeze. Some guys take one or two. Some guys said, well, I don't want many, so whatever they don't take, I take because I have a market for giving them away. I don't sell anything. I don't expect anything in return. All I expect is to thank you. And and if I don't get that or a big smile on your face, and that's thank you enough. So there are lots of older people who lived in the country of Maryland, Southern Maryland, and some city folks North Carolina, South Carolina, they did it. Uh, their family hunted and they can't get them anymore. And they say, hey at church. I got a lot of people say you take rabbits to church. I say sure, I said, all the old people. I said, well, what mans are you going to tomorrow? We're cat like And I bring him a rabbit. It's clean, it's wrapped, it's label and um, they enjoy it. And and that's my treat to them. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, now, and get people. You know, there's a lot of people like you said, you can't go out and do That's right. They don't have place to go or time to go, or not physically physically unable to go and share it with him. That's awesome. So you you're from Louisiana, you found your way here to Maryland, and we'll get into that, but I want to just kind of go back to your upbring and when you first started hunting, because I know we talked a little bit about swamp rabbits, which I thought was fun. Fun term. When did you first start hunting? And when did you first start rabbit hunt? What was the thing that got you excited about it? Well? Growing up, we grew up we were share croppers in Louisiana, so we lived on somebody else laying my dad and my uncle next door farm and when we would go hunting, um, you just walked behind the house into the fields and you would hunt there. I started about eight years old, mainly following my big older brother who was eleven years older than me. He loved to hunt and they would let me follow him. The rule was I would walk right behind him. I didn't have a shot GUNNA had a bb gun, and most time nothing. I carried whatever he killed. And I learned that way, and as time got I got older and teenager. There was a friend who had a couple of dogs, and uh we hunted. Were hunted in the cotton fields and on the ditches and in the woods, and we'd get cotton tails in the field and then if you wanted the big rabbits, you're going in the woods, in the deep woods, and which was only probably half a mile walk and we we would get one or two, but we never had being poor, we never had quality dog dogs. Okay, we had your dogs that could hunt rabbits too, and and do a lot of other things. Uh. These were multi purpose dogs, so they would get something. And then I hunted, uh throughout my teen years and after college in in Baton Rouge, I moved here in seventy two, got married and started hunting a little bit here with my wife too uncle, and we'd go down southern Maryland. We had a couple of little small spots, would get one or two rabbits. Then when the kids started coming, I quit, and then as they got older and in college in in upper high school, I started back. So I told my wife, I said, you know, I was relying on another fellow who wasn't too dependable and and didn't have good dogs. I liked this so much, I'm gonna start doing it. So I had an old truck that my family. It was our dad's, and when he passed they gave it to me and I brought it up from Louisiana and we build a little common dog box. I got some dogs, made all of the mistakes, bought the wrong dogs, the dogs by. First I bought a dog name um Rowdy, and then I had one name Slim or something like that. Well, I didn't know much about dogs, and the guy that sold them to me, he took me for a ride because I just wanted two dogs, and he told me one dog that was slower and a fast dog. Now I know what I know. Now that's a bad mixture. You want all of your dogs the same speed. You want them all medium, all slow, are all fast. You want them when they're running to be in a bunch together on the scent line. You don't want one to be here in won fifty yards away. So I made all of the mistakes, bought the wrong dog dogs, and then I got some other dogs, and I didn't know the ran deer, so I lost dogs dogs spent the night in the in the woods. So gradually I started talking to some veteran hunters that I trusted, who raised dogs and bread dogs, and they gave me a lot of tips, and I started reading, and I started using better judgment of people that are bought dogs from. Because I don't breathe my own dogs. I bomb when they're started one to two years. So they gave me loads of advice, which I I'm proud to have received this advice from them. They told me all of the dudes and don't And I learned from my errors, and I learned how to break dogs using it was try tronics at the time, the training collars. Some people call them the shock callers now garment, and I used those faithfully, and I put them on live, dear and break them. Now I don't have to because the deers have invaded the neighborhood where we live. So I can break them right here in the yard. And he's got your dogs chasing deer in the in the yard he had the deers. The deer is coming to yard to eat all the flowers and things of that sort. So recently last year, I built an eight foot fence around my vegetable garden so we can have vegetable. It looks like a prison camp. All I need is a little towel on there. But this is a multipurpose dogs that you're trading your dogs on deer, keeping them hell out of your yard. At the same time, well, the deer. Now that the dogs are in the pin. The dogs, only one out of six will look at the deer and bark. The other five go about their business, and the deer know that they can't get out, so they go about their business. They just trot along. But I learned from these people, so all of this valuable knowledge. Now I know how to select dogs and have known for many years. So in the last fifteen or twenty years. Twenty years, maybe I have not had one dog run off. Deers will get up in front of him, will cross the track, will be laying in the brush. They'll see the deer. They paid no mine because you know that deer scent is much hotter than a rabbit sense, so they don't paid any mine, and we keep hunting. So when they go in the brush and they start barking, I don't have to panic that a big bucket is gonna run out the other side. And they're gonna run, because if they chase deer, then they're no good to us as rabbit hunters. And a deer will run straight for miles. The dog will if he survived the highways that they're gonna cross, then he's no good for you because you don't trust him. But now when I go with six come back and and guys will tell me Charles the deer just got up. What do you want to do? I say, don't do anything. They're not gonna chase him. Just wait for that rabbit to come back. And and it happens over and over. But when you pick quality dogs from quality people, because um, a lot of guys dog tree, they'll tell you that this dog will do all sorts of things and so forth. And you've got a deer running, You've got a dog that's gunshine everything. So I buy quality dogs, I work them, and I buy my dogs only in the summertime so that I have time to train them and let them get used to my voice each other and so forth. Because the season starts always in Maryland the first Saturday in November. So I'll buy dogs in April, May, June and work them and train them, and when the season come they're in shape. And so I don't have that problem. I have none but rabbit runners only. And I've seen it in action. It is unbelievable. Let's go back, uh, because we'll we'll talk dogs forever here. But when you were you mentioned a few things. You came up poor. Yes, um, you came up it seemingly close to your family, and you came up hunting. You feel like, uh, how that shaped you as a person? You know, how you became. You know, you've been married for we say forty eight years, six years when I get that number correct. Your wife cooks the hell of a breakfast. You probably if we just got finished that, I'm sure you've eat many of those. Um but it seems like, yeah, kids, wife, you have a good life. Everything has turned out well, you know, very happy and productive. And I always try to look back and and how you were raised and what that might have given you. Do you have any insight as to your upbringing and what it meant? Well. We were raised in a in a Christian family in South Louisiana. Most of the people are Catholic. There are other faiths there and they're good people. They taught us the value of working together. We lived on a farm, so if we finished early, we helped the next guy and my uncle next to them. We helped people up and down the road, and they helped us. And Daddy grew a large vegetable garden. When I mean a large vegetable garden. He wasn't selling. He grew and we kept wondering, why are we growing all of this stuff? Well back then we didn't have freezes, so the old mason jars. We kenned everything and what we what we didn't use, we gave away. And I was the youngest of seven, so I got the luxury of peaking when my older brothers and sisters started leaving and so forth. So we were raised up in in two family and a mother and a father um, and we were raised up in Catholic school. We went to Catholic elementary and then on the public school. But we were raised with good Christian values that you help people and you do for people, and that's your thank you, and that you enjoyment. And that sticks with me today because I do some of the same thing, even though I hated it. When we grew all those big gardens and Daddy with somebody would come and there were certain people who came by. Then you win. The sweet corn made, then you when the figs made, then you win. This mayed and the Pecans were at the countries, and being the youngest, I got to go in that hot sun and go get these things and box these things. But I didn't know it. In reality, I was enjoying it. I do the same thing today. I grow garden. And many of my hunting friends grow big gardens. There's a guy that grow greens and he plants them for the deer so he can stick an arrow on him because he can't shoot a gun where he lives, and so he plants the greens for the last four or five years. He doesn't sell them, he doesn't give him away. Guess what he does. He tells me, Charles, going there and take him, because you give him the people. And we, my cousin and I will go and we'll pick two pickup trucks load and we'll give to every bout and their brother will take him to church, to his church, to my church and the people and we can. So we're giving back the way we were taught to give back. And his old country boar from Maryland too. So those family values stick today. And when where we live, everybody knew us. Okay, the races were separate, Okay, predominantly white and black. We will creole. My folks spoke creole. I know a little bit of it. But they have that intrinsic value that you help you, fella man, regardless. And I do the same thing today. Uh. I give people. I give service to the church. I give service to people. I have a lot of older friends, I mean older friends in the upper nineties and close to a hundred and one man is nine, and we still I take him rabbits twice a year. The last last two hunts, he wrote on a little cart, and he just come to here on a little John, dear little John. I'm their four wheel of things, and he rides along and he hunts, and we've become friends in three years, and he at ninety three. He grows a big truck garden. So he sells everything fifty cents a pound. So I go sometime and I'll buy a truckloads. You'd be surprised how much stuff you can buy for fifty dollars. And I give it away and so forth. So I even take something to the We have nun's sisters at the convent, so I take stuff to them. They tell me they like deer. So I got some friends who are gonna who gives me a couple of deers, and I give it away, and so i'm I said, And they're from all over the world. They're they're about twelve of them there, but they're about ten different ethnic groups. And they move them in and out. So they enjoyed. I give them all kinds of vegetables and so forth. You spread the gospel of wild game, oh, wild game and vegetable and service. People call me and and so say, Charles, you have this. Can you tell me why? I said, I'll get you something. And I get in and they said, well, what can I pay? You said, there's no money. There's no money. You give back. When you give back, it comes back to you. And and we'll talk about that in detail. How um, the many people who have invited mina hunt on their land. It will get to that too, because I want to kind of go in order here. Okay, go ahead, But but there is this amazing thing that you do. You said that a lot of people think you're an outfitter, right, but I remember you went well. When I mentioned we hunted the other you gave me your business card and it says it's to some effect like Charles the rabbit Hunter Rodney, and it says the only game in town for me. It's the only game in town for me because I don't I don't want to insult any of the other hunters. But this is all that I do, which is wonderful and it did. It doesn't say like call me for hunts. It doesn't say an outfitter, a guy, there's nothing of that. You literally, for no money, go hunting rabbits with anybody who desires to do so, and that well, you'll take the time to do it. And I tell people, as my wife made the card up, she said, you can call started company. She said, you need a card so these guys can call you. So it's got to sell in the house them and the email thing on there. And this was way before texting. So I passed them out to various people, and um, a lot of people say, are you an outfitter? Well, how do I get on your schedule? What do you try to say? Hold up, let me clear this up. I am not an outfitter. I'm just a guy that love. I'm passionate about rabbit hunting and having good dogs, and I enjoy people, and I meet people easy people. We we tend to take to each other. I can tell the ones that's laying a lot of bs out okay. And I don't hunt with half crazy people. If if they talk foolish, they won't get invited. And if they come and hunt one time and they do something wrong that's not uh good hunting mannerism. Then they're on their first and they last, and they only hunt. But I'm a good judge of people. And some of the people I've been hunting with for ten twelve years, and they've bring many of their friends and family members and so forth, uh, and most of them have some of the same hunting times. It's like in February when the water fouling deer season is over. Um, the four saturdays in February and Presidency, they belong to the same four people, and nobody can break that lineup. They enjoy it so much they won't give it up. That's what it's about. I mean, it's it's I think it goes back to what you're saying, having a garden, eating what you kill, having a community people that share those same values enough to the fact they want to come and get your vegetables, but they know they're they're ready to be luck. That's just a life of giving, right, a life of sharing, a life of you. You become passionate about something, the first thing you think of is to share it with people, right. And we grew up that way. We shared, Um, we shared with many people and there were people just as poor, poor as us or poor and the rich people we knew who they were. They were to big land on us who want all the land. Uh. And you know they didn't congregate around you because you are of that other class, whether you're black or white. But um, you know that's how it was, and the value was instilled in me. Two treat people the way you want to be treated. Yeah, and it works well, yeah, it seems to. So you met your I want to hear about just because your life or your wife is as lovely and and I just want to hear about it. It's your anniversary coming up, so I want to hear about how you guys met because that's about the reason you came to Maryland. Well, my brother recently, he's a Catholic priest. He recently celebrated his fiftieth anniversary as a priest in May of this year. So he was the assistant pastor after he was ordained. He was ordained in sixty eight. So, uh, I came up in December or of seventy to visit with him, and he was assistant pastor of a church here in Washington, d C. St. Luke's Catholic church and my wife uh worked there as a student, typing and answering the phone on weekend. So I caught her eye, but she didn't want to have anything to do with the first year. So I had my hair long at the time, and tell you the truth, I had been out with some of the local boys and we were drinking uh we call it pluck, she wine and gin, and my eyes was a little red and she oh, I had a big, big, wild looking after back the time, UM quite different. Yeah, we're talking. We're talking seventies and we were going through all of the cultural changes, in the cultural shocks. So she didn't want to have anything to do it. But I like what I saw, and the next year I said, I'm going back. So I went back on semester Christmas break the next year, and I cut my hair and I didn't drink anything, so my eyes, it was all intentional by me. And she claimed she didn't have a boyfriend. Then dad broke up, so she was looking and so we got to talking and visiting. Then we corresponding and visiting, and after college, I came back in the next summer and we got married in September. So so that's the short end of the of the love story. And so what did I move here? Because there were jobs here and in Baton Rouge, most of the jobs were kind of menial, working in the chemical plants, and I never wanted to work in the chemical plants. I knew many people who did that work. I said, I can do better. So I came here and I got a job in the federal government down at the Naval Arden and Station in Indian Head, Maryland. Worked there a few years and then work some other federal agencies. And she was working for the Navy Department. And we progress along the promotion chain and did well. We both ended up in human resources. So that's one of my other qualities. I know people from a human resource standard. We hired, promoted, classified, did pay changes. Um. I worked six years in Equal Employment Opportunity where I dealt with all the people's problems to emination and all of the things associated with that not being treated fairly, perception or otherwise. So I got to know people well in handling problems, hiring, firing, all of that counseling. So I got to know people quite well. People people in a part of people. And it all stems back to my upbringing, so um, and then we just we progress on. We both did about thirty plus years in the federal government. We've been retired for a few years. I've been retired for fifteen years and she twelve years. And we raised our three children in this house. Matter of fact, the last one who's thirty seven, she was three days old when we moved into this house. And they're all gone. So uh, we're comfortable, and we give thanks to God all the time for all of our blessing. We have three beautiful kids. They each have two children, and they all went to Catholic elementary, Catholic high school, and college. And two of them have advanced degrees. So and they're doing quite well with their families. So as they say, the apple don't fall far from the tree, so they have they have good quality and good skills to good so well. I mean what strikes me in that whole thing is, you know, you grew up in segregated Louisiana sixties and seventies, and then you move here and you you you're working in human resources and discrimination. What was that like kind of going from you know, where you grew up. I mean, as you said, that's how you grew up how it was at the time, you didn't think much of it, But then you get to a different part of the world and you start to deal with those problems in a more modern sense. Well, it's it's it's a survival thing, you know. The culture dictated how you behave and how you act, to where you associated. I remember going not being able to go in to many places because the signs were up, and if the signs were not there. There are certain places you knew not to go into and we were taught not to go into, and certain people we couldn't associate with because of how things were. But then here I come into a world where I have to deal with some of those same problems as a young adult, in hiring people, hiring people, of treating them fair of any color, any belief they have, and treat them and or. And then later on when I was the equal employment manager at this one agency, UH ensuring that everybody got fair treatment, and going out and defending people who I thought were wrong. And I did that. It probably cost me a few things, because I think I fought some battles that some people thought I shouldn't have fought, but I saw wrong and I try to deliver it and make it right and so forth. And I had some hard cases where some people were uh mislabel for no reason other than somebody down the line with a little bit more power or hump um, but they should be treated differently. In that treatment I thought was unfair, and I spoke out about it, and most of those people were not mind color, and I didn't. I treated everybody as fair as I can be, regardless of who walked in that door. If they came with a problem, I shut the door and I listened, and I took notes, and we took We had certain steps you have to go into into the the equal employment channel. You have to do certain things in a step by step in a timely fashion. And I was supposed to be neutral and I try to maintain that neutrality. And when some of them I thought it was wrong, I told them, you're you're not right with this, And when the managers were wrong, all right, I told them too, and I shared with him. So I didn't choose one side or another. But some way, ain't there unknowns to me, I must have helped some of the wrong people or took on some of the issues that the management didn't care about. But they never came back and told me so. But I did what my heart felt. And I think today when I look at people, I don't look at anybody's color. I don't look at anybody's religion, whether they believe or don't believe. And we surely don't talk about politics when we go in the field. In a lot of times, when I take various groups hunting, I always try and take one of my buddies because sometimes we have some new guys that don't understand all of the features of rabbit hunting. So while I'm working the dog, my buddy will help keep them in line. And the main thing with the guys is two of them will get together and start talking. And the one thing I find that's a big nuisance now they need to leave those cell phones in the truck. If you got to talk on the phone, then you need to stay at home. So I bring one of my buddies. And most of the people I take hunting, they're not of mind color, my race, but that doesn't matter. I tell everybody we're rabbit hunters. Were rabbit hunters. That's what we're doing. We're not doing We're not trying to cure the world of the social ills and all the other things and what you believe and what you know. We're rabbit hunting long as you're safe and you and you're having fun. And I tell them my job simply is with the dogs to get some rabbits up. Hopefully you make a shot or two. Now, if you kill, that's on you. If you can't shoot and you keep missing, then there's a lot of teasing. But my job, the church or avant hunting is open to all as long as you. I guess I grew up on an older All right, that's it. That's all. Episode ninety three in the Books, volume one of the best of I would think posthumously thank Charles Wyman and du Sean for being a part only in my life with this show and hopefully a good part of your life. You learn a lot from where they came from, how they got to be where they are today. So many lessons packed in this show, so many lessons packed in those podcasts for you to listen to. And that's why I wanted to lead off. We have three more volumes. You say it was right to call them volumes, Phil, I think so, yeah, Yeah, they feel this feels it feels good, it feels meaty, it feels like they got a lot going. Uh. This is the first volume. We're gonna have three more, and we'll probably do more of this because I really enjoyed putting them together. I hope you enjoyed listening to them. But as we get into the Christmas, e man, it's to me, Christmas, Thanksgiving, this holiday seasons about people. It's not about gifts or money or anything like that. It's about people and the people that I value and the people I want to spend time with. And so I don't care about gifts very much. I like to get like whiskey or maybe like a cupcake. That's pretty cool, but I'm not out there valuing that part of the season. I choose who I want to be around, who want to spend my my off time with, and and um, that's what I feel is important and I want to give all I can to those folks when I'm with them. And so hopefully listening to these three gentlemen help you appreciate the special people in your life, the people that have inspired you, the people that have helped your story along. And that's what those these guys have done for me. Uh, what do you think, Phil, what's your You have any reflections on the holiday season? Not not so much. No, I just I I know, I think we talked about this in the last podcast, But I know that you are not a huge fan of the holiday season. But I don't know that every type it rolls around something something stirs, stirs inside of me deep deep and my loins, and yeah, I don't know. I I enjoy it. I like I like the music, I like the food, I like the lights, like the tacky decorations. I can't say I hate any of those that like the idea of the modern idea of Christmas I think is a little deluded. But like I said, I any chance they get to be around the people I love is a good time for me. I would say, without being ashamed at all, that these three men on this podcast, I love them all. Man, they were They're awesome, And so I hope you loved him too. And next week we're gonna get a little shifty on you. We're gonna talk, We're gonna have Steve Ronella talk about Game of Thrones, We're gonna have Me and Berkeley, bunch of other stuff. So stick around for volume to the best of THHC. Happy Holidays too long because I can't go a week without doing run oh without absolute run ranking out and run absolutely wrong, drinking in heaven, don't sit and at the boss would start to row root. I'm feeling like, can't hold on out, bear rush shoes all down, my one

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