We’ve joked for years that my brother Kurt is a 72 year old man in a 32 year old body. Now there’s a film that proves it.

Kurt works on the Spartan Forge app during the day. Before and after work, he’s out in his shop. A couple hours in the morning before he leaves, three or four at night, and eight to ten hours a day on the weekends. Nobody’s making him do it, he just loves it.

The shop is where the old guns come back to life. He shapes stocks out of slabs of wood, and right now there’s a shotgun in there that was probably made in the early 1900s, getting ready for another hundred years. He’s also built up a library of gunsmithing books, some from the 1930s, that answers almost every question he has without going online. Which is a funny thing to hear from a guy who works on a hunting app all day.

A lot of it goes back to Grandpa Cherry. He had a patent on turkey calls in the 80s and 90s, and he had Kurt building right next to him from the time he was six. Turkey calls, clocks, wooden guns with “Kurt” carved on the bottom (or a K and an upside-down U, depending on the year). There’s a scene in the film with Grandpa and a mouse in the shop that I won’t spoil, but it’s the two of them in a nutshell.

And then there’s the woods. Kurt hunts with the guns he restores, and he goes out there to be quiet and think. In the shop he’s got music or a podcast going. In the woods there’s nothing, and that’s where he figures most things out. I’ve felt that for years but never heard anyone put it better.

Spartan Forge put this film together, and Thomas Clements with Rockin C Media filmed it. I think it’s one of the best-looking things we’ve been a part of. Give it a watch, and let me know what you think.

Old Soul in the Modern Woods, a Spartan Forge film. Filmed and produced by Thomas Clements, Rockin C Media.