Digital Social Hour - Made in USA: How One Startup is Reshaping Manufacturing | Josh Smith DSH #1177
Episode Date: February 12, 2025Step inside the American manufacturing renaissance as we explore how Montana Knife Company is reshaping the industry through quality, craftsmanship, and dedication to Made in USA production. Join Josh... Smith, founder and Master Smith, as he shares his remarkable journey from making knives in his garage to building an 80-employee company that's become a symbol of American manufacturing excellence. 🇺🇸 Discover how this innovative startup is bringing manufacturing jobs back to America while creating premium knives that last a lifetime. From custom Damascus steel blades to their popular production line, learn how Montana Knife Company maintains exceptional quality while scaling their business. Josh reveals fascinating insights about their manufacturing process, commitment to American-made materials, and how they've built a passionate community around their brand. Get an inside look at how this company grew from a two-car garage operation to a thriving business that's revitalizing American manufacturing. Whether you're interested in entrepreneurship, American-made products, or quality craftsmanship, this conversation offers valuable insights into building a successful manufacturing business while staying true to your values. 🔪 #knifeaddict #forgedinfire #customhandmadeknives #montanaknifecompany #survivalknife CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Intro 00:30 - How Josh Became a Master Smith 04:58 - Today's Sponsor: Specialized Recruiting Group 08:19 - The Impact of American Manufacturing 11:17 - Growing Up in a Small Town 12:38 - Importance of Community 14:56 - Archery Rifle Challenge 17:51 - Trump's Cabinet Picks 20:58 - Hunting for Conservation 22:41 - Hunting as a Failure Sport 25:50 - Grizzly Bear Guarding Moose Carcass 31:00 - Most Challenging Animal to Hunt 32:30 - Masking Scent While Hunting 35:35 - What Goes into Hunting 37:27 - Best Meat to Eat 41:06 - Favorite Weapon to Use 42:55 - Suppressors in Hunting 47:39 - Where to Find Josh’s Knives 49:35 - The American Dream 49:58 - Thanks for Watching APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: jenna@digitalsocialhour.com GUEST: Josh Smith https://www.instagram.com/joshsmithknives/ https://www.instagram.com/montanaknifecompany/ https://www.montanaknifecompany.com/ SPONSORS: Specialized Recruiting Group: https://www.srgpros.com/ LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/
Transcript
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Completely worn down.
The bear that my son shot had almost no teeth left.
She had zero fat on her and it was right before winter.
She was absolutely going to starve to death that day.
Yeah. 100%. She was, yeah, it was right before winter she was absolutely going to starve to death that day. 100% she was uh yeah it was game over for her um and so when you think about it
generally in nature an animal only dies from you know starvation.
All right guys Josh Smith from Montana Knife Co. Thanks for coming on today, man.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Yeah, first Master Smith I've had on the show.
Yeah, yeah, I appreciate it.
No joke getting that title.
Yeah, no, it's a, that was a pretty, pretty cool thing to attain for sure.
You got it at a young age.
Yeah, especially at that age. Yeah, I came the youngest in the world when I was 19.
I'm definitely not 19 anymore with all this gray hair, but yeah, it was quite the accomplishment for sure.
What's the process for that for people that have no idea what that even is?
Yeah, I started making knives when I was 11 and you have to become an apprentice, which basically you just join the American Bladesmith Society.
And so for a couple of years, you're just apprenticing and then you can test for, first you have to test for your journeyman.
And that involves actually making a performance blade
that you have to be able to chop a one inch rope in half
and then chop two two by fours in half
as many chops as you wanna take,
but then it still has to shave hair when you're done.
And then you have to bend that blade 90 degrees
in a vice without breaking it.
Whoa.
Yeah, it's legit.
So that proves that you have a knowledge
of heat treating steel and edge geometry and
a lot of those things.
And then you take five knives and you present them to a panel of judges, mastersmith judges
in Atlanta at the blade show.
And they judge fit and finish and how good of a maker you are kind of across your five
knives.
And so I did that when I was 15 and was the youngest to do that.
And then you have to be a journeyman two years and then you're allowed to test
for your master.
And it's the same test, but it's with Damascus steel blades.
So that's steel that's layers of steel forged together.
Most people kind of know that as like the, the way that like the
Samurais used to do it.
Yeah.
It's quite a process, but it's the same test, but with that Damascus steel
blade and I did that when
I was 19 and there's about 120 or 130 in the world now so it's it's pretty prestigious thing to do.
Yeah that's intense. It's like being in Somalia for drinking. Yeah yeah. There's not many of those guys.
Right. Oh exactly. And you were doing it super young so what compelled you at that age to get
into knife? Yeah my Little League Baseball coach Rick Dunkerley he started he would bring his knives to practice and show the parents he was kind of learning honestly at that age to get in a knife? Yeah, my Little League baseball coach, Rick Dunkerley, he started, he would bring his
knives to practice and show the parents.
He was kind of learning honestly at that point.
And I think being an 11 year old little boy, I was just thought knives were cool.
And he invited me to a shop to make one.
And I think I was a pretty responsible kid and he could tell.
And so I made a couple and then he was like, well, if you want to be a knife maker, you
have to have your own shop, which I think was his way of, you know,
getting me out of his shop.
Yeah.
And, but I had a lawn mowing business
and I was earning money doing that.
And so I bought a belt grinder and I, I like,
honestly, I was just a pretty driven kid.
And so I started buying more equipment.
And then finally my dad kind of booted me out of his shop.
I was making a mess and he enclosed the lean-to kind of shed that we had and I
made knives before school, after school, weekends and and then I started going to
knife shows all over the country when I was about 14 and everywhere I was when
I was around other masters I was just asking them lots of questions. How do
you do this and that? And they were a very sharing community and
I
What I didn't know when I started making that Rick would actually end up becoming one of the best knife makers in the world someday
Whoa, so I kind of got lucky that I wasn't learning from some just scrub like he you know
I was trying to catch him, but then he was also learning and getting better. So it's just constantly chasing
These guys I was learning from it was it was you know became I became pretty damn good maker but then he was also learning and getting better. So it's just constantly chasing these guys
I was learning from.
And it was, you know, became,
I became pretty damn good maker
by the time I was in my twenties.
That's super cool.
So you knew from a young age what you were gonna do
with this, with your life.
Yeah.
You know, I made those first couple knives
and I sold them to my math and science teacher
for $20 a piece.
And it just blew me away that you could do something so fun.
I could make a knife and then you can make money from it.
It's like a win-win.
Yeah, and as a kid, you know, when you're 12 years old,
it's like, I'm making 20 bucks to make a knife.
Yeah. I'm gonna keep doing this.
That's fascinating.
And it became a career.
Yeah, when people buy like fancy kitchen sets,
are those handmade, those knives and those kitchen sets? Yeah, like with our knives, you know, there's two different kinds of knives that I
basically make. I have my custom stuff, which is what I did for years. And then I started Montana
Knife Company in 2020. And that's a production knife. So I started, and I started very small,
I mean in my two-car garage.
And what we've built that into now, if you buy a Montana Knife Company knife,
it's semi-production, like the machines and all that,
and then like they're hand sharpened on a belt.
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F*** it.
Cleaned by hand, packaged all by hand,
but we have CNC machines and some stuff,
so I don't want to compare those
to a truly handmade knife but but there's a lot more hand work in
those than maybe this like knife stamped out in China right you know and is there
a massive like quality difference between just a regular kitchen set and
Montana knives yeah I mean there really is I mean the knives that we build even
though they're kind of we we produce them, we're trying
to produce them on scale, we're producing them at a level of quality that I would expect
like in a custom knife.
So steel selection, not using like cheap junky steel.
I mean, we're using the best steel that we can possibly use for a blade heat treatment.
So that those skills that I learned young with those heat treating tests and stuff I've applied that stuff to our our production knife company
And so when you buy a blade the edge geometry
Which is like how thick the blade is how it's sharpened how it's heat treated all those things that I did in my custom knife
You're getting that in a production knife. And so our knives aren't the cheapest, you know, Montana knife company chef said's set isn't the cheapest. It's, you know, that that whole set of knives is 1300
bucks. So, you know, it's not cheap. Yeah. But we also sharpen those for life for
free. Oh, really? Yeah. So if once a year, twice a year, you want to send them in,
we'll sharpen them up. We'll send them back to you for free. If you never have
to buy another knife set the rest of your life, you know, you've gotten pretty good value
You literally use your chef's knives every day, right? Right. So
They're
They're they're definitely better than what most people are used to I could see that and that makes a lot of sense because we're
Probably on our fourth set of knives right now. Yeah, you know, yeah, so you pay a few hundred bucks every few years
You know, are you really ahead at the end?
And the other part of that is, is they're made in America.
And that's the thing. All of our knives are made here in America.
Everything's done in the U.S.
We're trying to bring American manufacturing back.
And that's really what my Montana Knife Company is.
You know, we sell a ton of apparel and a lot of people wear our hats and shirts and don't even own a knife nest yet,
you know, but it's because of our story and what they've seen me grow this from a two
car garage.
I started it in COVID and my kids were literally helping me assemble the knives at no employees.
I was doing it before and after my day job.
And today we have 80 employees and you know it's becoming this national brand.
But people are seeing that like the American dream is still achievable.
It's alive and real. It just takes a lot of work.
Yeah and now with Trump he's trying to bring a lot more jobs to America right?
Absolutely and you know the people ask me about the tariff stuff and whatnot and it's like well
that's why you know it doesn't bother me what he does with tariffs because we do everything right
here in the U.S. Yeah other companies are going to be affected though though. Yeah, 25 Trump's got a chef set from us Don jr.
I'm a good friend of mine and um, yeah, they're very supportive of American manufacturing and you know
We I think people you know, they say like buy American what not and some people are like, yeah
I support that but I don't even myself, I didn't have any idea
how impactful American manufacturing was
until I built this company.
It's not just my 80 employees that I've hired
in the last three years.
It's also all the other businesses that we pay to do things
in that process, right?
We're not doing everything in-house yet
because we're trying to build this, all the manufacturing process, right? We're not doing everything in house yet because we're trying to build this
all the manufacturing process, but it takes years because some of these processes cost
millions of dollars to bring in house. But so, you know, the steel is made in New York,
it's rolled in New York, you know, heat treated in Pennsylvania, you know, and so we're paying
people all across the country. Our leather sheaths are made by a gal Teton leather company in Idaho.
And just because of our business, she's hired like eight or 10 people.
Um, our, our, our, our wood blocks, like our cutting boards and our display
boards and everything are made by a guy that was making, uh, some, some cutting
boards and a few things as a hobby in his garage and he has now has nine employees
and just trying to keep up with our production. So when people support American manufacturing, it really, it means more than people
know. And it really does spread the dollar around. Yeah. I didn't even think about it that way, but
that's so true. Cause you're working with other companies and people. And, and for a small place
like Montana, you know, for Western Montana, a lot of times in those really small rural towns,
it could be in North Dakota or Idaho
or anywhere that's small,
generally dollars just get kind of spun around
in the community and there's not a lot of inflection
of new dollars.
So, you know, it's like you have a local business,
I hire you, but then you hire me to do something
that's just back and forth.
So a national brand like ours is bringing millions
of dollars of revenue into our state from out of state.
90% of our sales are out of state.
And so all that money comes into our state.
We hire our employees, we spend all that money in our state.
And it's a huge thing for rural areas.
You know?
And I hope more small businesses will grow and become bigger businesses in small rural areas besides You know, absolutely. You know, and I hope more small businesses will will grow
and become bigger businesses in
small rural areas besides just
the big cities.
That way the city could grow.
Right. Right.
Yeah. And that way there's,
you know, the money that we make
now. Now they tax us.
Right. Those taxes go to the fire
department, local schools and
EMS. And so
it's a benefit to small towns
to have some form of manufacturing.
Yeah, makes sense.
Are you born and raised in Montana?
Basically, I was born in Colorado Springs,
but my parents moved there when I was six months old.
My mom was born in Montana.
So I always feel like fraud if I say yes.
Yeah, yeah.
But yeah, I grew up in a tiny town.
I actually grew up in Lincoln, Montana.
It's where they caught the Unabomber.
Oh wow.
He was hiding in the woods up there.
Yeah.
It's kind of, was that guy from there or he was just randomly there?
He, that's where he, that's where he lived and for, he wasn't from there.
I think he actually was a professor at Berkeley.
Wow.
And then when he started doing his, all his, all his bullshit, he moved to hide from the feds and lived in a cabin in Lincoln.
I mean, it's a small little logging town of like 1500 people and he lived with no power up off the grid.
I mean, nobody really knew who he was, obviously.
Yeah, it's probably a good spot to hide out.
Kind of what? Yeah.
1500 people.
Yeah. Wow. I had more people in my high school than you did in your whole town.
Exactly. Yeah. I graduated with 20 kids in my class and it was the biggest class
that ever graduated.
Yeah. That's nuts. So everyone's super tight with each other.
Yeah. Yep. Exactly. There's value in community though. You know,
there is, there's a lot of value in it. Um, you know,
and helping out your neighbor and when people are down or need help, it's, um,
you take care of each other.
That's something that's lost in these major cities
Yeah that network that network, you know people you can rely on I entered a view to guy I now live in French Town, Montana, which is a little bit bigger than Lincoln, but still small and
I think my kids have about 80 kids in their class or so. No, God
But I interviewed a guy that were hiring from Baltimore Baltimore and I took him to my son's football game.
We interviewed him during the day and I was like, he's not flying out to the next day.
He's like, dude, have dinner with us and we're going to my kid's football game if you want to go watch.
And he just couldn't believe that sense of community, you know, where everyone kind of knows everyone and it was safe.
And it was just like a beautiful Friday evening in Montana and you're saying hi to all the neighbors and
He's like man. This is I have to move here like wow is what I'm missing like he's like
There's no community like this in big cities
And he's like it's just so nice to know that even if you're not around your kid
You know that maybe someone that knows your kids looking out for him. You know, that's cool
Yeah, I hope to one day live in that atmosphere right now with the podcast.
It's a little tougher.
Yeah.
I kind of got to be in a major city, but I go to like a whole foods now.
I don't recognize anyone.
Yeah.
Like in Vegas.
Yeah.
Yeah.
If you came and visited me, you'd be, uh, you know, we'd go down to the grocery
store and, you know, I'd say hi to four or five people just walking through there.
And that's great, man.
When you, when you look at these blue zones
and people live long there,
community is a big part of it.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, but it has its drawbacks,
like you say, when you're running a podcast.
I have a podcast, it's not something I push or whatever.
I just do it because I really like people.
And with my business,
I've really come to get to meet really neat people.
But I was telling some of your folks out there, uh, you know, it's hard because I
only do them in person, but, and you know, when you're in Vegas, there's always
somebody cool coming to town that you could interview, but when you're in
Montana in the winter, uh, it's like, well, who's going to be around?
That's interesting to talk to.
You know, it's not quite like, yeah, you probably get a ton of snow out there, huh?
Yeah. Yeah, we get quite a bit.
We don't get any out here.
Yeah, no, it's it's been unseasonably kind of dry and warm right now.
It's been in the 30s during the day, maybe 40, maybe.
But we don't have much snow yet, but we do get quite a bit.
And ski skiing is a big thing there.
I can see that.
Snowboarding.
I did see on your YouTube you did an archery rifle challenge.
Yeah.
With Tulsi and Bo' Nickel.
Yep.
That's awesome.
Yeah, Sig Sauer, big gun manufacturer, phenomenal people.
They put on an event and they said, we're going to do this competition and it's for
fun, but the winning team, we're going to give $50,000 to to give to whatever charity they choose. And they asked some, you know, kind of well-known people in the
space to put together a team. And so they basically chose team captains and then it was on us to choose
our own teammates. And so they chose me as a captain and I sent a message to Tulsi, invited her
and Bo and they both jumped on it.
You guys did well.
Yeah, we did.
It was actually amazing because Tulsi is a good gun shooter.
She had never really shot a Bo.
Bo Nicol shoots some rifle, but he hadn't really ever shot much pistol.
And I kind of worked with both of them a little bit on some of that stuff. And man, we were, you know, there's a bunch of,
it was, Tulsi was the only woman in the competition.
So she was on my team.
Everyone else had all these kind of high speed dudes,
you know, military guys or hunters and whatnot.
And sure enough, after day one, we were in the lead.
And then a really good team passed us up the next day.
But I think we took second or third in that.
I think it was second.
Yeah, and it was an absolute blast.
And Tulsi, I mean, she was in the middle
of the whole craziness of that campaign season.
And for her to take a couple days out
and come compete for a veteran charity like that,
and she'd never met me in her life.
Wow.
Now we had mutual friends so I think she knew I wasn't some weirdo.
And we camped in wall tents and stripped down in our underwear and swam in the river afterwards
during the day because it was like really hot and dusty and you're sweaty because it
was very physical.
Yeah.
And she's just a real person, like just such a good person.
That's awesome. Yeah, she's been one of my favorite guests I've had on 1400 people.
Wow, 1400.
She's been one of my favorite, though.
Yeah, she's one of my favorite humans and her husband actually came along
and just hung out and he took photos and Abe is just a really nice guy, too.
That's awesome.
They're and I see everything kind of being said about her
with this whole Senate confirmation stuff coming and
It actually really disappoints me because it's like if you can make up bad things about her
Then I just can't believe anything that you ever say like it's a media. Yeah, I saw AOC said
She's like pro-war or something. Yeah pro-war. Yeah, she's absolutely not in fact what made what made
Democrats so originally upset with her is when
Obama tried to authorize bombings in Syria and she went against him and voted against it. And they
kind of that was when the beginning of her end in the Democrat party. Yeah, that was like,
so how can you say she's pro-war? I mean, yeah. Yeah, that was silly. AOC, I think she might be
running for president next term. Really? So we'll see how that goes.
There's no chance.
Hahaha.
Yeah, I like a lot of Trump's picks lately. I see a new one every day and I'm like, oh, I like that.
Yeah, he's done a pretty good job. I mean, I can't imagine you're gonna probably pick some ones that aren't,
that, you know, you pick that many people. It's kind of like hiring, right? If you hire a hundred people,
the odds say you're gonna to miss on a few.
Yeah.
You're going to interview them the best you can.
You're going to miss.
And, and you also have to lean on advisors in that position.
I can't imagine, but, uh, I really am happy with what he's, what he's doing.
Yeah.
A hundred percent.
It's a numbers game.
He has to fill what?
10,000 positions, something crazy.
So not every single person is going to be the best person.
Exactly.
I don't think Trump's exactly sitting there reading a 10,000 resume night
You know and then you'll see the media canceling for one hire right exactly happen last term and it's yeah
Pete Hagseth another guy I know that's really good guy
And you know I really give Trump credit cuz like an RFK a Tulsi people that haven't been lifelong Republicans
You know I don't
really see the other side doing that.
Bringing in people from the other side.
And you know, clearly Trump and RFK don't agree on everything, right?
You know, he's like, I'm going to keep him out of the environmental stuff, you know,
but he does respect RFK for what he is an expert in with the health stuff.
Which is cool.
Yeah.
I don't see the other side doing that at all.
How many seven year olds you see doing
that many pushups and pull ups.
Not on that side.
That's what the guy in charge of our health should look like.
Yeah. You know.
100%.
Did you try to separate the politics from the business or?
We do. Yeah. I mean, you know, I think it's,
it's kind of known how we feel, but you know what?
Democrats buy knives too, right?
And, and I have absolute respect for the other side.
Like we can have a healthy debate.
I have friends that are Democrats or liberal
and we disagree on certain topics and stuff,
but you know, I, you know, if you're respectful
and we wanna have a good debate and agree to disagree,
like I'm fine with that.
But I kinda want our Instagram page and our website
and some of that to be a little bit of a, maybe a break from the storm.
It's like, you see that stuff everywhere.
It's on everything.
And, you know, a few times I made my voice known during the election because I felt
like, I mean, if Trump's willing to take a bullet in the year, uh, I should be
willing to stand up, maybe lose a few followers, but say what I believe, you believe Yeah, you know and we can either agree to disagree or you can stop following us
You know, but I try to not hit the politics stuff too hard. Yeah, it's a company page on my page
I say a little bit more but I figure if you're following the CEO of the company and the founder you might want to know a
Little more how I am and how I feel right?
You know, well you're in Montana. So I think people can assume where you're at, you know.
Yeah, we're a hunting knife company, right?
And you know, we make chef's knives and we, you know, and that stuff.
But like, I'm, you know, proud to be conservative and have my feelings about the way our country
should be.
And, you know, if you have a lock on your door or your house, then why wouldn't you
have a lock on the door of your country?
Right. That's kind of how I feel. Absolutely. You know. Any crazy hunting stories? know, um, if you have a lock on your door or your house, then why wouldn't you have a lock on the door of your country?
That's kind of how I feel. Absolutely. You know,
any crazy hunting stories. I've actually never been hunting by the way.
Really? Yeah. Yeah. Never gone. Do you want to go? I wouldn't be opposed.
Really? Yeah. Yeah. It's um, it's really cool. Like we took another gal that had never been hunting a couple of years ago,
WWE wrestler, um, Natalie Eva Marie. Oh, she's been on the show. Yeah. Natalie,
Natalie's great. And we took her on her first elk hunt and got her an elk and yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, they're, yeah, they're big.
Wow.
Um, she got a nice bowl and, uh, she even totally embraced it.
She w but she wanted to know where her food comes from and she
wanted to be a part of that, you know?
Um, I, I, I understand some people that maybe don't want to go hunting, but to maybe denigrate
it or talk poorly about it because you don't understand it.
You know, that's really where I think a lot of people kind of are misled or misguided
a little bit.
And also the role that hunting plays in conservation of the animals.
You know, what people don't know is, you know, the conservation of all the animals in Alaska
or in Montana all come from taxes and stuff from hunting dollars.
If you buy a box of bullets in Montana for hunting, they tax that box of bullets and
it goes to conserving animals.
Really?
Yeah.
All the trail maintenance.
They do animal counts every year and if there's a drought or the winter all of the, they do animal counts every year,
and if there's a drought or the winter was really hard,
they'll back down the numbers that hunters can harvest.
They might even make it a draw-only area
or completely shut hunting off in that area for a few years.
So, hunters want animals to be on this landscape
more than anyone, because I want my kids and my grandkids
to be able to enjoy the same things I do.
So the last thing hunters wanna do is wipe animals out.
I mean, obviously in the settling of the West,
this white people came out and kinda overdid it
on taking that buffalo.
But those times have definitely changed.
But yeah, I took my son to Northern British Columbia this summer.
We took a float plane into the middle of absolute nowhere and we went moose hunting and he shot
a giant moose.
That sounds fun.
10 days on horseback, no cell phone coverage, sleeping in tents, out in the rain and cold.
But you sit around at night, around a fire and you hear nothing.
It's just birds and some squirrels.
And nothing, you know, it's that it's it's something that I think very few people will ever get to, you know, to experience.
And I think there's something cleansing about being out in nature.
And just hearing nothing
when you're laying there and you're looking at the stars.
You also tend to think about a lot of things and it's a cool way to connect with your kid
or your spouse or your buddy without the distraction of the world.
I agree.
I do believe nature is very healing.
It is.
Just grounding barefoot on the grass.
It is.
And you have to do something hard.
And a lot of times you fail.
You know, you try stocking on an animal
or you're not good enough shape
and you don't get up there in time and the animals are gone.
And then there's something really rewarding
once you work that hard for that many days
and you take down an animal.
If you have some leftovers on your plate, you don't throw it away. You know,
you appreciate your food and, uh, you know, even here at home,
you know, people who go by beef or chicken or whatever, I mean,
all you're doing really is outsourcing your murder to somebody else, right?
That animal is still being put down and feeding you.
And so when you're a part of the process, you really, you're really thankful for
one, living in a free country to be able to do it.
You're thankful for the environment that provided that animal a place to live.
You're thankful to the landowner that maybe let you go hunt there, um, and, and
their conservation and whatnot.
And then you're thankful just for the animal, for the meat and the
food that it provides.
So it's really not to mention all of the connection
with the people that you're with.
Yeah, that's awesome.
So it took you guys days to get a moose out there?
Yeah, we were out there 10 days.
And it took 10 full 10 days to get one?
Well, he got one in four days.
And then we hunted for the next six days, hard,
hiked miles and we never got it.
Never saw another bull moose.
Wow.
So that's the other thing like hunters generally go out and fail.
I mean, it's a, it's a failure sport.
You hunt a lot of times you got in the woods and you're on a more even
playing field with those animals and they have all their senses and the
terrain's hard and, uh, generally you fail, but that's what makes
the success feel so good and then also again I can go out and see some elk or deer or
whatever and maybe it doesn't work out and I go home and I haven't shot
something and I had the best day you know you you got to see animals in their
environment you know we watched we saw two different grizzly bears up there
damn are you allowed to shoot those? Not in British Columbia. You can in
Alaska. You can in the Yukon. Okay. Where we are, we weren't. So we just watched him. Actually,
Hank's bear, my son Hank, or his moose, after we, you know, dressed all that moose out and got all
the meat out. Yeah. You know, the bones and the carcass are left there. And the next day the grizzly
bear got on it. I have videos afterwards. I'll show you in pictures, but
that grizzly bear buried that entire carcass and then sat on it for the next five days
while we were in there. Holy crap. Guarding it from the wolves and the other bears. Oh,
so he wanted to save hibernation. Yeah. Well, he's saving it and he'll, he'll eat on it
up until hibernation. But yeah, he, that's a prize, right? Like that's, that's a big
deal to that bear. And that's the other thing too, is like even that gut pile and some of
that stuff that's left over from us taking the meat out, that bear is going to clean
that completely up. And that's going to provide him, you know, that sustenance to get through
the winter. Wow. You know, and so he's going to guard that with his life. Uh, you know, cause that's a big deal for that bear, you know,
for a bear to go take down a moose or something, he could get injured,
expend a lot of energy, maybe not get it. Yeah.
So he basically hop happened along a free meal. That's cool.
You ever have any sketchy incidents where like the animal got a little too close
for your comfort?
Um, not too bad. I've, I've been, um, you know,
I've hiked in and hunted and then as I was hiking out, found out that a mountain lion had been following me've been, you know, I've hiked in and hunted and then as I was hiking out,
found out that a mountain lion had been following me for miles, you know, in your tracks.
And I had some close encounters with bears, but nothing too terrifying.
My son had a fairly close encounter with a bear when he was 14. He was hunting by himself with his bow.
And my son, the bear didn't attack him or anything
I don't want to overstate that but it was snapping its jaws at him and kind of whooping at him
And my son shot that bear with his bow at six yards. Holy crap. Yeah at 14
That's scary killed that bear with one shot. Mm-hmm. Wow. So bows are that powerful?
Yeah, yeah a bear a bow and arrow will will go completely through an animal
What like yeah, I mean go look through an animal. What?
Like, yeah, I mean you have to go look for your arrow.
That's a lot of force.
Yeah, and a lot of times,
an animal won't even know it was shot.
Like, you'll shoot it, it's that fast,
that broadhead is that sharp,
and it goes through, and the animal will like,
pick its head up or flinch and be like, what was that?
And they'll go back to eating at times,
and then just tip over.
Whoa. I mean, it's, it's crazy.
They don't even feel the pain.
No, a lot of times they don't feel anything.
Well, I have seen other people say that, um,
hunting is actually like the quickest way for these animals to go.
Yeah. When you think about like that moose my son got was a big old moose and,
and people kind of denigrate or they want to talk trash about trophy hunting.
But if you think about it, you're taking an animal that it's at his, at his most
mature and oldest point and quite honestly, you know, he's the 70 year old guy
that's kind of on the way down, right?
He's maybe not even breeding anymore, but he might be keeping the young
bulls away from breeding the cows.
You know, he's still, he's still pretty dangerous
and he can still be a problem.
But at a certain point, even like my son's moose,
when you look at the teeth and stuff in that moose's skull,
he may not have even lived another year.
Teeth are completely worn down.
The bear that my son shot had almost no teeth left.
She had zero fat on her and it was right before winter. She was absolutely going to
starve to death that way. Yeah. 100%. She was yeah it was game over for her.
And so when you think about it generally in nature an animal only dies from you
know starvation or injury you know because old age generally, you know, starvation or injury, you know, cause old age generally means,
you know, they're, they get, they get injured, they get sore, something happens,
or they just can't, uh, feed enough and they can't, you know, their body isn't
robust enough to, to build fat up and make it through winter.
And so old age generally means starvation.
And so to take an animal out in an instant with no pain,
and then utilize that animal, you know, utilize that meat
and the stuff that is left that the rest of the animals get.
And there again, now you provide that opportunity
for that young bull to come in
and take over the herd and breed.
And you know, so it's, there's a lot of,
there's a lot of benefits to hunting for sure.
Yeah, my stance on it has changed over the years
because I grew up pretty liberal in New Jersey.
And I was like, oh, you're hunting?
Like you're a bad person, you know?
Yeah, no, and I understand.
I've had this conversation with a lot of people
that really don't get it.
And I start to explain,
it's not just a bunch of people going out
and just shooting a bunch of animals.
I mean, there's a lot of work that goes into
the studies of animals and how many are on the landscape and
how many can ethically be taken out of this area.
And the other thing is, is if things get overpopulated,
they can also get disease, you know?
So, you know, we, humans do a pretty good job of managing
that, especially in areas where there is, you know,
good like fish, wildlife in parks in Montana
does a really nice job of of making sure animals are taken care of yeah that's cool what's the most
challenging animal to hunt in your opinion um you know that's an interesting one there's different
challenges like uh like a like a bighorn sheep or a goat can live up at 10, 12,000 feet and be in just the gnarliest
country where you're literally crawling around on rocks.
I mean, you're rock climbing and at any point can fall to your death.
And so there's not a lot of oxygen up there.
It can be very difficult physically.
And then there's animals that are really, really twitchy.
An antelope out in eastern Montana that lives out on the prairie and they have
vision that's unbelievable.
I mean, they will spot you from two miles away and be gone.
Whoa, two miles?
Yeah, easily.
Holy crap.
You gotta wear camo.
Yeah, camo.
And even with camo, you have to, you know, keep terrain features between you and them.
And then they can smell, right?
So in addition to their vision,
their noses are unbelievable.
And so if you don't have the wind right,
they will smell you from,
a bear will smell you from a mile away easily.
Holy crap.
So you gotta be thinking about the wind
while you're hunting?
Yes, absolutely.
Wind is your number one thing, even over sight.
Like bears don't have good vision,
but I've been watching bears on the other mountain,
like across the draw from me, and all of a sudden he'll pick his nose up and kind of smell you and and then like look
around and bolt gone yeah and elk and deer absolutely scent is the number one thing to watch
for so how do you master your scent then you have to understand that like the thermals in the mountain, so at night, the air is heavy
and it's cold and so it's settling, right?
So in the evening, if you have elk below you, you have to know that as soon as the sun starts
going down and gets cool, your air is going to start to settle.
Wow.
And it's going to go into the valleys and your scent is going to settle down on them.
So you have to get around and position yourself in a place where you know your scent isn't going to go down there. But in the
morning, if you're hiking in and those elk are above you and the Sun comes up,
it starts to heat. You get daytime heating and the thermals start rising up
the mountain and your scent will carry right up that mountain into them.
So you have to have an idea of where you're hunting, where you think the elk
are. When my son took another bear, we spot him from a mile and a half
away and we made an amazing stock, but we had to loop way around and get downwind
because the wind was coming out of the West.
So we had to get east of the animals and then sneak in and keep, you know, our,
our, uh, sound down, you know, if they hear sticks break or any of that kind
of stuff, right, your brush on your pants, you can't wear, you know, if they hear sticks break or any of that kind of stuff, right? Your brush on your pants.
You can't wear, you know, slick like rain gear that's real swishy.
And then you have to watch your scent and your eyesight.
And there again, that's why archery hunting is so hard because with a gun, you know, my
son shot that moose at 650 yards in one shot and dropped that moose.
And the moose was dead yards in one shot and drop that moose and then moose was
dead before he hit the ground but with a bow you know 20 30 40 yards
yeah close yes you know a long long shot and one could argue that for most people
it's not even ethical to shoot an animal at like a hundred yards with a bow
generally it's like 60 yards and in. Why is it not ethical?
You start to get a little, you get less accurate.
And also you start to lose energy and speed on your arrow.
And so your arrow travels in an arc, just like if you throw a rock, right?
If I tell you throw a rock as far as you can.
Well, if you, if you're going to throw a rock 50 yards, you're going to throw it real high
and it's going to, and it's going to throw a rock 50 yards, you're going to throw it real high and it's going to be dropping.
If I tell you to throw a rock from here to that TV right there, you're going to throw
it in basically a straight line and it's going to get there fast.
And even with a deer or an antelope or an elk, an animal that's real twitchy, the sound
of your arrow flying through the air, they'll hear it and they will flinch and they can
actually move.
If you make a perfect shot by the time the arrow gets there at too far of a
range, that animal will move and you can hit it in a poor, you know, a bad shot.
Wow.
So their hearing is very good.
Very good.
And they're very quick, right?
I mean, they're used to, they're on edge all the time, right?
Bears are hunting them, mountain lions are hunting them.
So they're always on edge.
You know, something humans aren't, aren't, we've lost those senses.
We are not on edge.
Imagine just sitting, if we were all just sitting in,
somewhere out on a park bench at a park,
and all of a sudden you smelled something
and you just took off running.
And I just ran with you and I didn't even know why.
It's like, they have that kind of sense.
That's crazy.
I did not know this much when in the hunting.
I just thought you guys wandered aimlessly and just, you know.
No.
And you do a lot of research into where are you going to find water?
Where do those animals have to go to water?
Where do they go to feed and where do they go to bed?
And you try to position yourself and put yourself in areas.
Like if the weather's really hot, you know, they're going to probably be going to water.
You're going to be trying to hunt in an area where there is water and,
and maybe they're going from really thick timber and in the middle of the day,
they got to go to get a drink. You know,
you're looking for bedding areas where it's safe and thick and,
and the animals are really smart. They know, you know,
a lot of times they'll go nocturnal where you won't see them at all during the
day.
They're that smart where they can see if there's people around. Absolutely.
Wow.
It's amazing.
I thought they were just, you know, wandering around.
No, and in fact, the animals have gotten so used
to hunting and whatnot that like certain,
maybe certain pieces of property, maybe I have,
let's say I had a ranch and I don't allow hunting.
But everyone around me does.
I swear those animals have a calendar in their and because the opening day of hunting season those animals will be on my ranch
Because everyone else is hunting Wow. It's those animals will move to areas where they feel safer
I can see a man. I went fishing in Greece once and I swear these fish were so smart. They could see your fishing line
Yeah, yes, especially animals that get more pressure and fish.
That's why in areas where, let's say like Yellowstone Park, they're never hunted, right?
And so they're a lot more used to people.
So they're not going to run from cars and people and whatnot.
But then those animals, I think, tend to be a little bit more susceptible to the other
predators in the park. Wolves and bears and you know, and they also be a little bit more susceptible to disease
because they get to have so many because there's no hunting allowed in those kind of parks,
you know.
That makes sense. What's been your favorite meat to eat on your hunts?
That moose was really good over the fire. So once my son shot that we hunted for the
next six days and we carried, we kept the back straps in my son's pack
and every night we cut meat off of that
and started a fire in just the rocks
and just got like branches and stuff
and cooked those on like a hot rock over the fire.
And I think part of that was just, it tasted so good
because we were working so hard and cold.
But Axis deer, I shot an axis deer in Hawaii.
Axis deer.
Axis deer in Hawaii are an invasive species.
They are actually not native to the island of Hawaii
and they're everywhere.
And there's no predators in Hawaii.
There's no wolves, foxes, coyotes, mountain lions.
And so they have a real problem with them there.
So when you hunt them there, there's a lot of them but they taste they're they're probably the
best tasting wild game I got to try that out it's amazing you can actually buy it
Hawaii is a state tries to manage the populations and they go through and they
will euthanize a bunch of them and, but they take all those to, um, a, uh, I think it's
called Maui Nui and it's a place that, uh, butchers all that meat and then they donate
a ton of it to homeless people.
And then they also sell it and the selling it funds the meat that goes to the homeless
people.
I've heard of that company, Maui Nui, venison.
Yup.
Yup.
Rogan talks about it.
Yeah.
I've seen them sponsor podcasts. I need to try that out. How did they get there though? Like you're in Hawaii. That's weird
you know people as they were settling those islands brought him in on ships, uh, basically and
People brought him in from I think they came over from Asia. Okay, and
You know people were like, oh well, we'll let these deer loose and then we'll have something to hunt and harvest and eat.
But without predators, they just overpopulated and they're overrunning the islands.
I grew up in Jersey. There's a lot of deer in Jersey, but you're not allowed to hump them there, I think.
Yeah, in certain areas you can, but there are so many people in places like Jersey and whatnot that those deer, we call them town deer.
like Jersey and whatnot, that those deer, we call them town deer, they know they're safe
and you can't hunt them and they get overpopulated
and you really get problems with diseased deer in towns.
You get a lot of inbreeding.
Because there's no real predators in town,
the bears and mountain lions and stuff aren't in town.
Hunters can't hunt them.
And so you do have a lot of problems with that
where there's high populations of people.
There were so many there. Yeah, you could get right up close to them they would
not react. Yep. I almost had one one time. Yeah yeah. No those town deer a lot of times people do
feed them right out of their hand they just get so used to humans. Yeah they
probably have ticks and stuff right? Oh yeah well even the wild ones I mean. Yeah.
You ever get ticks on your hunts? Oh yeah. Yeah, just brush them off. Yeah, try to hate those creepy little things God
But yeah, like in the spring when you're out in the woods
You come back with 10 or 12 of them on yeah. Yeah, you have to really check yourself
Yeah, some of them are so small. You can't even see them, right? I had one buried in my damn belly button
Hahaha, that's kind of gross, but they was he was like locked in there. I had to
belly button. It's kind of gross but they was he was like locked in there I had to like I heated up a hot piece of steel. Holy crap. Burned it on him and if you if
you burn if you pull on them their head will come off. Yeah. Stay in you and you can get
Lyme disease. Jim Miller the UFC fighter. Yeah. Good friend of mine he's he got
Lyme disease from a titch. Shit. And he's hunted he or he's fought his whole career
with Lyme disease. What? Yeah I mean it jacked him up bad for a while. Yeah, Lyme disease is no joke.
Yeah, um, so if you do, you know, that's why you really want to get them damn
things off of you. Yeah. What's your favorite, like, weapon of choice when
you're going on these hunts? I mean archery, you know, a bow. Do you like the
shore range stuff? Yeah, because it's so hard like you're gonna fail
More often than not you're gonna fail
But that's the that's the joy of it is like the animal has it's such an even playing ground and it's almost like
Caveman days, right? You're it's you and the animal and he has way more senses than you do. He knows he knows the area
He's his nose works better than you, his eyes,
his hearing. And it's a game of chess trying to figure it out and make it happen. But there's
just something really special about archery hunting. But with rifles, like a Seekins Precision,
a 28 Nosler, a Nosler ammo. and Seekins is a gun company in Idaho.
They build guns up there.
They're really good guys, make amazing guns.
That's what my son shot his bull with.
Nice, you have to get a silencer on all the guns?
You can, I actually have just ordered some
to put them on there.
It's weird silencers or you know,
suppressors are a pain in the ass to get.
They have weird regulations around
just getting approved to get them.
Which is dumb because all it is is a round steel pipe.
I mean, it's, they got a weird rap, I think,
from the movies because everybody envisions
like James Baldwin walking in and yeah.
Well, the guy in New York, he saw he had one.
Exactly. But it doesn't make your gun silent. It just makes it quieter. But still, like you can hear the crack of the gun go off like that. That gun in New York, that would have still been loud. Oh, really? You know, but just not as loud. Okay. Yeah, the person standing like, yeah, it makes it. Yeah, it's that's total. But what the suppressors do, you know, the sound, it's one thing, it's kind, yeah, that's total BS.
But what the suppressors do, the sound, it's one thing, it's kind of nice because then
you're not having to use hearing protection.
But what the suppressors do a really good job of is recoil management.
So my young kids or my wife, hell, even myself, with a high powered rifle, when you shoot
it, it just slams you in the
shoulder so hard. I mean, after a good day of shooting, like my shoulder would be black and blue.
Damn.
Yeah. I mean, it's-
It's that hard?
Oh yeah.
Holy crap.
Yeah. With like a 300 win mag, you know, 45-70, but you put a suppressor on them and it off gases
in the way that it works. It takes a lot of that force off of your shoulder
and you can shoot.
And it actually makes you a more ethical hunter.
This is the argument for suppressors.
If let's say I take my wife out and I've shot with her
and it whacks her like that.
It's like being kicked by a donkey every time, right?
Well, guess what she's gonna do when she goes to shoot?
She's gonna flinch.
She's gonna kinda like squint
and she's gonna like jerk the trigger.
And it's gonna make her less accurate,
which is gonna result in a poor shot
and likely wounding an animal.
Well, if she shoots with a suppressor
and that gun doesn't hurt her,
now she can practice more,
because it doesn't hurt.
She's gonna shoot more shots in practice.
And then when she's going to shoot, she's going to be thinking about making a good shot,
not thinking about, oh, this is going to hurt.
Right.
And so you actually end up wounding less animals being more, more ethical.
There's literally not a single reason why a suppressor should be even something that
you have to get a license for at all.
Yeah, I didn't know that was required. So it's a separate license?
It's a separate background check.
Oh, one.
Yeah. And I ordered two about two months ago and I'm still waiting on the background check.
Holy crap.
Yeah, it's a long...
That's crazy.
Yeah, I can get a gun and have a gun tomorrow.
Yeah. But the little round pipe that screws That's crazy. Yeah, I can get a gun and have a gun tomorrow. Yeah.
But the little round pipe that screws on the gun, like if I just took that round pipe,
I could take that round pipe on an airplane.
I mean it literally does nothing.
Right?
It's just a round pipe with a bunch of little holes in it.
You know, you could drop a bullet in it, you could do whatever, it's just literally a pipe.
That's nuts.
It only does something when you actually put it on a gun,
but it's weird, our government is,
they do some strange things.
They think everyone's gonna turn into an assassin
if they start selling those stuff.
It's politicians that actually don't know at all
what they're talking about.
That's literally what it is.
Yeah, hopefully times will change with that, right?
Yeah, and to be honest honest people should actually in in England
Or in Europe, you can't hunt without a suppressor. Oh wow, so by law
Because it does make the guns quieter. So when you are shooting at a range or you're out in the woods shooting
It makes it quieter. So it's less
Like obnoxious for the other people that may be in the vicinity.
And it scares people less and whatnot. They hear a big boom go off and they're scared.
And even at shooting ranges, generally a lot of shooting ranges are surrounded by
neighborhoods and stuff. And so you can't shoot guns there without them.
So it shows you the two countries.
One country is looking at it as a benefit to the public because it's quieter and whatnot.
And our country is like, it's going to make everyone James Bond.
Is there any one working on this legislation or?
Yeah, I mean, there's constantly there's the gun lobby and there's constantly people working
on it.
Okay.
Yeah.
If that gets through this, it's gotten better.
The background check length. I mean, it used to be like 10 months, 12 months. It's gotten better
because when I moved here, first thing I did was go to the gun store. I got in like a week. Yeah.
The Glock. Yep. Yeah. So it used to be months though. You got a gun. Well, to get the suppressor. Oh,
the suppressor. Okay. Yeah. The guns have always been pretty, pretty good as far as, as getting
those. Yeah. Couple, couple days, same day in Texas.
I feel it. Yeah, it depends a little on your name.
Like my name is Josh Smith.
So when the FBI is doing the background check,
they're looking through a lot of Smith's.
Yeah, you know, if you have a little bit more of a strange name,
it goes a lot quicker because there's less people to sift through.
Yeah, I saw the FBI guy just resigned.
Who?
The forgot his name. It was like two days ago. Oh really? Well, Trump already announced the new guy just resigned. Who? Uh, the, I forgot his name.
It was like two days ago.
Oh really?
Well, Trump already announced the new guy.
So I guess the old guy resigned earlier.
Okay.
Interesting.
No, I didn't see that.
I've, uh, I've been on planes each of the last two days.
So I've been all over missing some things.
Yeah.
You were in Nashville yesterday.
Yeah.
Last night.
I saw that I'm like, damn, he's going to get all the way here in a night.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I ran there the, the, the night before and then came back this morning. So a night. Yeah. Yeah, I ran there the the the night before and then came
Back this morning. So yeah. Yeah. Well, dude, it's been cool. Where people check out the knife stuff and your personal stuff. Yeah
Montana knife company comm is our website and then just like Instagram at Montana knife company
You just spell it out. There's no periods or no double. There's so many fake Instagram pages of our company
It's crazy. It's on a scammer drives me crazy. Um
Yeah, follow our social media, you know, we do drops our knives are really actually kind of hard to get it's crazy
How fast they sell like within minutes every damn? Yeah, like um
It's it's it's pretty wild every Thursday night. We do a drop at 7 o'clock Mountain Time and a lot of times they sell it within 2 or 3 minutes.
Holy crap, those are the ones you're hand making?
No, those are our production knives. We'll move a thousand knives in a couple minutes.
Damn.
It's wild.
That's crazy.
But people are, they really love the story of the company. The fact that I started this in my garage with just my kids,
a lot of people have watched this grow and you know,
five years ago or during COVID 2020, four years ago, you know,
I was a lineman working for the power company,
making knives at night and whatnot and started this. And today I'm sitting here
talking to you and you know, Joe Rogan as well. Yeah,
Rogan and all these fun, cool people that I've gotten to meet and it's all because I
started a knife company in my garage. And we actually still, you know, of our 80 employees,
about 70 report to work still at my, at my house. Well, we're building a new manufacturing
facility right now. We just bought some land, but I moved from my two-car garage
and I built a bigger shop out back in my horse pasture,
about a 10,000-square-foot building.
We moved into that January 1st of 23,
and we're absolutely busting at the seams right now.
I mean, it's completely jammed up.
But all those people like park in my driveway every day.
That's awesome. And so it's truly the American dream.
And we're building a new 50,000 square foot
manufacturing facility.
It's gonna have a Black Rifle coffee in it.
It's gonna have a retail store.
It's gonna take another year to get finished.
Can't wait.
I'll visit one of these days.
Please do, yeah.
Maybe we'll have to try and figure out a way
to take you hunting.
Yeah, I've never been to Montana.
I've never been hunting so we could kill two birds for one stone. Yeah
Well, thanks for coming on man. That was cool. Yeah. Thanks for having yeah, check out his stuff below guys. Thanks for watching
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