Made in USA: How One Startup is Reshaping Manufacturing | Josh Smith DSH #1177

Completely worn down.

The bear that my son shot had almost no teeth left.

She was, she had zero fat on her, and it was right before winter.

She was absolutely going to starve to death that 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

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

became the youngest in the world when I was 19.

I'm definitely not 19 anymore.

It's 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 joined 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 want to 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 vise 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, Master Smith 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 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 30 in the world now.

So it's a pretty prestigious thing to

do.

It's like being a somalier for drinking.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's not many of those guys.

Right.

Holy crap.

And you were doing it super young.

So what compelled you at that age to get in a knife?

Yeah.

My little league baseball coach, Rick Dunkerly, he started, um, 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, 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 lawnmowing 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 a lean-to kind of shed that we had.

And I made knives before school, after school, weekends.

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

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.

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.

And it was, it was, you know, became, I became a pretty damn good maker by the time I was in my 20s.

That's super cool.

So you knew from a young age what you were going to do with this, with your your life yeah uh you know i made those first couple knives and i and i i sold them to my uh math and science teacher for twenty dollars a piece and uh 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 uh when you're third 12 years old it's like I'm making 20 bucks to make a knife.

I'm going to keep doing this.

That's fascinating.

And it became a career.

Yeah.

When people buy like fancy kitchen sets, are those handmade, those those knives in 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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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.

there's a lot more handwork in those than maybe just like knives 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 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 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 isn't the cheapest.

It's, you know, that whole set of knives is $1,300.

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 can 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 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 yet.

Oh, 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 i had no employees and 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 i love that 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 asked me about the tariff stuff and whatnot And it's like, well, that's why, you know, it does, 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.

Yeah.

25%.

Trump's got a chef set from us.

Don Jr.

is a good friend of mine.

And

yeah, they're very supportive of American manufacturing.

And, you know,

we, I think people, you know, they say like buy America and whatnot.

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.

You know, it's not just my AD 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, but it takes years because some of these processes cost millions of dollars to bring in-house.

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.

Wow.

Our wood blocks, like our cutting boards and our display boards and everything are made by a guy that was making

some.

some cutting boards and a few things as a hobby in his garage.

And he now has nine employees and he's 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 because you're working with other companies and people.

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.

And it's just back and forth.

Yeah, yeah.

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, you know, we hire our employees.

We spend all that money in our state.

And it's, it's a, it's a huge thing for rural areas, you know, absolutely.

You know, and I, and I hope more small businesses will, will grow and become bigger businesses in small rural areas besides just the big cities.

Yeah.

That way the city can 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 and the local schools and EMS.

And so

it's a benefit to small towns to have some form of manufacturing.

Yeah, it 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.

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.

But yeah, it's kind of.

Was that guy from there?

He was just randomly there.

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 bullshit.

That's crazy.

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 1,500 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, yeah.

1,500 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.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

That's nuts.

So everyone's super tight with each other.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

There's value in community, though.

There is.

There's a lot of value in it.

You know, and helping out your neighbor and when people are down or need help, it's

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 interviewed a guy.

I now live in Frenchtown, 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.

Okay.

But I interviewed a guy that we're hiring from Baltimore and I took him to my son's football game.

We interviewed interviewed him during the day.

And I was like, he's not flying out till the next day.

He's like, dude, have dinner with us.

And we'll just, we're going to my kids' 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 this 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 kid's 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,

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 look at these blue zones and people live long there, community is a big part of it.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

And, but it, you know, has its drawbacks.

Like you say, when you're running a podcast, you know, I have a podcast.

It's not something I like push or whatever.

I just do it because I really like people.

Yeah.

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.

you know, it's hard because I only do them in person.

Right.

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,

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

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 the skiing is a big thing there.

I can see snowboarding.

I did see on your YouTube, you did an archery rifle challenge.

Yeah.

With Tulsi and Boneickel.

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, you know, Tulsi's a good gun shooter.

She'd never really shot a bow.

Bo Nickel 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, it was 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 um 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

uh and we camped in wall tents and uh 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 and she's just a real person like just such a good person that's awesome yeah she's she's been one of my favorite guests i've had i've had on uh 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 um 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 um it actually really disappoints me because it's like if you can make up bad things about her uh then i just can't believe anything that you ever say like with the media yeah i saw aoc said uh she's like pro-war or something yeah pro-war yeah she's absolutely not in fact what made what made uh democrats so originally upset with her is when uh

um 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 uh she i think she might be running for president next term for real so we'll see how that goes is no chance

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 going to 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 100 people, the odds say you're going to miss on a few.

Yeah.

You're going to interview him the best you can.

You're going to miss.

And you also have to lean on advisors in that position.

I can't imagine, but

I really am happy with

what he's doing.

Yeah, 100%.

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 resumes at night you know and then you'll see the media cancel him for one hire right exactly that happened last term and it's yeah pete hegseth another guy i know that's really good guy um

um and uh you know i really give trump credit because like an rfk a tolsi 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 push-ups and pull-ups?

Not on that.

That's what the guy in charge of our health should look like.

Yeah.

You know,

do you try to separate the politics from the business?

We do.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, I think it's kind of known how we feel.

but you know what Democrats buy knives too right and and I have absolute respect for uh 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 um

you know I'm I

you know if if you're respectful and we want to have a good debate and agree to disagree like I'm fine with that but I kind of want our 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 ear,

I should be willing to stand up, maybe lose a few followers, but say what I 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 with the 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 you might want to know a little more how I am and how I feel.

Right.

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 chefs' knives and we, we, you know, and that stuff, but like, um, 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 of your house, then why wouldn't you have a lock on the door of your country?

Right.

It'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

really cool.

Like we took another gal that had never been hunting a couple years ago, WWE wrestler, 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 bought her an elk.

And elks are big, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, they're, yeah, they're big.

Wow.

She got a nice bowl and

she totally embraced it.

But she wanted to know where her food comes from and she wanted to be a part of that.

You know,

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,

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, you know, 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 want to do is wipe animals out.

I mean, obviously in this, you know, the settling of the West,

you know, us white people came out and kind of overdid it on taking that buffalo.

Right.

But those times have definitely changed.

But yeah, we

took my son to northern British Columbia this summer.

We took a float plane into the middle of absolute nowhere and 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 something that I think very few people will ever get 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 and it you know you also tend to think about a lot of things and it's just a and it's a cool way to connect with your kid or your spouse or your or your buddy yeah um without the distraction of the world i agree i i do believe nature is very healing it is you know just grounding barefoot on the grass it is and and you have to do something hard and and a lot of times you fail.

You know, you try to stalk in on an animal or you're not enough, 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.

Yeah.

And,

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's 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.

and their conservation and whatnot.

And then you're thankful just for the animal, for the meat and the food that it provides.

Absolutely.

It's really,

not to mention all of this 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.

We never saw another bull moose.

Wow.

So that's the other thing.

Like, hunters generally go out and fail.

I mean, it's a failure sport.

You hunt.

A lot of times you go out 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 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 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 where we are,

we weren't.

So we just watched him.

Actually, Hank's bear, my son Hank,

or his moose, after we

dressed all that moose out and got all the meat out,

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 he 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 it for 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.

You know, because 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 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, uh, 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, uh, um, 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 uh 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 whoofing at him and whoa 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 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, 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, it's not feel shooting.

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 hunting is actually like the quickest way for these animals to go.

Yeah.

When you think about like that moose my son son got it 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 is it's 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 his, in that, 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 was, she had zero fat on her and it was right before winter.

She was absolutely going to starve to death that way.

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 means, you know,

they get injured, they get sore, something happens, or they just can't feed enough and they can't, you know, their body isn't robust enough 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.

Sure.

I was like, oh, you're hunting?

Like, you're a bad person, you know?

Yeah.

No, and it's, I understand.

You know, I've, I've had this conversation with a lot of people that really don't get it.

And I start to explain,

you know, 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, you know, 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, and parks in Montana does a really nice job of making sure animals are taken care of.

Yeah.

What's the most challenging animal to hunt in your opinion?

You know, that's an interesting one.

There's different challenges 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.

Right.

And so, and 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.

You know, 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.

Yeah.

Two miles?

Yeah, easily.

Easily.

Holy crap.

You got to wear camo.

Yeah, camo.

And even with camo, you have to, 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 got to be thinking about the wind while you're hunting.

Yes, absolutely.

Wind is your number one thing over 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 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 mountains.

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, it 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.

And 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 spotted 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, 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, slick, like rain gear that's real swishy.

Um,

and then you have to watch your scent and your, 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.

I mean, the moose was dead before he hit the ground.

But with a bow, bow you know 20 30 40 yards got it close yes uh 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 100 yards with a bow generally it's like 60 yards and in

why is it not ethical uh you you you start to get a little you get less accurate okay 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 to 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 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 will 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's 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 we've we've lost this we are not on edge no imagine just sitting uh if we were all just sitting in um

you know somewhere out on a park bench at a park and all of a sudden you smelled something it just took off running And I just ran with you and I didn't even know why.

Yeah.

You know, it's like they have that kind of sense.

That's crazy.

I did not know this much went into 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 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.

Wow.

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 they're not.

Absolutely.

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.

Uh, maybe I have, let's say I had a ranch and i don't allow hunting yeah but everyone around me does uh

i swear those animals have a calendar in their head because the opening day of hunting season those animals will be on my ranch because everyone else is hunting right it's uh those animals will move to areas where they feel safer

i can see it 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.

You know,

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.

Right.

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 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.

That makes sense.

What's been your favorite meat to eat on your hunts?

uh that moose was really good over the fire uh 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 and just the rocks yeah and just got like branches and stuff and 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.

Yeah.

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 probably the best tasting wild game.

I got to try that out.

It's amazing.

You can actually buy it.

Hawaii as 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.

Yep.

Yep.

Rogan talks about it all.

Yeah.

I've seen them sponsor podcasts.

I need to try that out.

Yeah.

How did they get there, though?

Like here in Hawaii?

That's weird.

You know, people as they were settling those islands brought them in on ships oh basically and uh

people brought them 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 to hunt and harvest and eat but without predators they just uh overpopulated and they're

overrunning the island.

I grew up in Jersey.

There's a lot of deer in Jersey, but you're not allowed to hunt 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, they know they're safe and you can't hunt them and they get overpopulated and they really, you really get problems with diseased deer in like towns.

You get a lot of inbreeding

because there's no real predators in town.

The bears and mountain lines 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 like 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 killed 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, I try to.

I 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 you.

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

that's it's kind of gross but they was like locked in there i had to uh like i heated up a hot piece of steel and holy crap burned it on him and if you if you burn if you pull on him their head will come off and it'll stay in you and you have them get lime disease jim miller the ufc fighter yeah uh good friend of mine he's he got lime disease from a tick and he's hunted he or he's uh 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, if you know, that's why you really want to get them damn things off of you.

Yeah.

But what's your favorite like weapon of choice when you're going on these haunts?

I mean, archery, you know, a bow.

Do you like the short range stuff?

Yeah, because it's so hard.

Like, you're going to fail.

More often than not, you're going to 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 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 sight, 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 Seekin's Precision, a 28 Nozler, Nozzler 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, I just ordered some to put them on there.

It's weird.

Silencers are, you know, suppressors are a pain in the ass to get.

They have weird

regulations around just getting approved to get them.

Yeah.

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.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Or the guy in New York, you 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.

There's no sound.

Yeah, it makes it.

Yeah, it's, that's total BS.

But what the suppressors do, you know, 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, you know, 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 that hard.

Oh, yeah.

Holy crap.

Yeah.

With like a 300-win mag, you know, 4570.

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.

And 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 going to do when she goes to shoot?

She's going to flinch.

She's going to kind of like squint and she's going to like jerk the trigger.

And it's going to make her less accurate, which is going to 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 going to 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

ethical.

There's literally not a single reason why a suppressor should be uh 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 it's a it's a separate background check than the gun yeah and uh i've i i ordered two um about two months ago and i'm still waiting on the background check holy crap yeah it's long 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 hand if if I just took that round pipe, I could take that round pipe on an airplane.

I mean, it literally does nothing.

Yeah.

Right.

It's just a, it's a round pipe with a bunch of little holes in it.

Um,

you know, you could drop a bullet in it.

You could do whatever.

It's just literally a pipe.

That's nuts.

That's nuts.

Um, it only does something when you actually put it on a gun.

Um, but it's weird.

Our government is, they do some strange things.

I think everyone's going to turn into an assassin if they start selling those stuff.

It's, it's politicians that actually don't know at all what they're talking about.

Right.

That's literally what it is.

Yeah.

Hopefully times will change with that.

Right.

Yeah.

And to be honest, people should actually, 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, you know, scares people less and whatnot.

They hear a big boom go off and they're scared.

Right.

And even at shooting ranges, generally a lot of shooting ranges are surrounded by, you know, neighborhoods and stuff.

And so you can't shoot guns there without them.

So it's kind of, 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 Paul.

That's interesting.

Is there anyone working on this legislation?

Yeah, I mean, there's constantly, there's the gun lobby, and there's constantly people working on it.

Okay.

Yeah.

See 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 good as far as getting those.

Yeah.

Texas.

A couple days.

Same day in Texas, I feel like.

Yeah.

It depends a little on your name.

Like, my name's Josh Smith.

So, when the FBI is doing the background check, they're looking through a lot of Smiths.

Yeah.

Um, you know, if you have a little bit more of a strange name, uh, it goes a lot quicker because there's less people to sift through.

Yeah, I saw the FBI guy just resigned.

Who?

Uh, the forget 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 been on planes each of the last two days.

Oh, yeah.

You'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 gonna get all the way here in a in a night yeah yeah i ran there the the the night before and then came back this morning so oh yeah yeah well dude it's been cool where can people check out the knife stuff and your personal stuff yeah uh montanaknife company.com is our website uh and then just like instagram at montana knife company uh you just spell it out there's no periods or no double there there's so many fake instagram pages of our company it's crazy

scammers drives me crazy um

uh 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 week yeah like

um

it's it's it's pretty wild every thursday night we do a drop at seven o'clock uh mountain time

and um a lot of times they sell it within two or three minutes holy crap those are the ones you're handmaking uh no those are our those are our production knives oh wow we'll move yeah a thousand knives in a couple minutes

it's wild wild.

It'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 and 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.

Whoa.

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 it's completely jammed up full but all those people like park in my driveway every day that's awesome um and so it's truly the american dream um 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 but can't wait i'll uh 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 with one stone yeah still well thanks for coming on man that was was cool.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Yeah, check out his stuff below, guys.

Thanks for watching.