Ep. 39: Dusan Smetana
The Hunting Collective
MeatEater
4.5 • 3K Ratings
🗓️ 11 December 2018
⏱️ 106 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On a fairly normal Wednesday afternoon in Bozeman, I sat in Dusan Smetana’s living room sipping brandy and enjoying a damn nice fire. It was slow and calm, the perfect setting to learn about the life of a man with a novel’s worth of stories to tell. Dusan, a renowned outdoor photographer, has a great life on his Montana homestead with his family, dogs, Icelandic sheep, chickens, pigs and a rather athletic flock of homing pigeons.
It’s not unusual on a cold winter day to find Dusan doing exactly what we did that day—enjoying life. It’s a stark contrast to his upbringing in communist Czechoslovakia and his immigration to the United States. We talked about that journey, how his community handled hunting during his childhood and where hunting is headed today. Please enjoy this conversation with a one-of-a-kind man.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | If you got kids like me, you know summer break is coming up. School's almost out. |
| 0:07.0 | It's time for that perennial question. How do you keep your kids occupied off the couch |
| 0:12.0 | when you're busy on long summer days? You sick of yelling at them, get out of the house and go, |
| 0:18.6 | oh, sorry! Well, how do you do that? Look no further. We've got a book that will provide the answer |
| 0:25.1 | to that very question and it'll provide you a lot more. My new title, Catch a crayfish count the stars. |
| 0:32.4 | Chock full of fun activities and adventures that will help build serious outdoor kids. We're talking |
| 0:38.7 | knowledgeable, tough, competent kids with a little bit of a raw edge to them. You want to build up a good |
| 0:47.3 | hunting buddy, a good fishing buddy out of your kid? Well, start him young by teaching them how to |
| 0:53.0 | build a wildlife viewing blind. How to gig a bullfrog. How to navigate through the wilderness using |
| 0:58.9 | a variety of orientating skills. They'll also learn how to climb trees, build emergency shelters, |
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| 1:11.6 | And one, I've been wanting to write my whole career. I was just waiting until I had kids long |
| 1:15.3 | enough to give me some expertise on the subject. And now that my oldest is 13, I've been at this |
| 1:20.8 | a long time. We've got projects and activities for the whole family to do together. And for kids to |
| 1:26.6 | try out on their own, go to the meateater.com to pre-order your copy of the book today. It's for kids |
| 1:34.4 | eight and up. Catch a crayfish count the stars. Raise some serious outdoor kids with some serious |
| 1:40.8 | know-how. Get the book now. |
| 1:46.6 | Hey, everybody and welcome to episode number 39 of the Hunting Collective. I've been a Brian. |
| 1:52.8 | And today I am joined by the one and only, Dushan Smentana. He was born in Czechoslovakia, |
| 2:01.2 | but he lives in Montana. He's a renowned outdoor photographer, hunting photographer. |
| 2:07.8 | And just all around wonderful human being. He's got insight on |
| 2:14.2 | where he grew up, how he came up, and escaping communist Czechoslovakia in the late 80s to come to |
... |
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