(birds chirping) - Wyoming is very patriotic.

(gentle music) A lot of veterans live here.

- My father, my brothers, cousins have all been in the military.

It runs in the blood.

- I served a tour in Germany for our Africa mission, tour in Iraq, a tour in Qatar.

- We went into Afghanistan in '01, and then into Iraq in '03.

We went to Desert Storm.

- There are a surprising number of veterans in Wyoming.

In fact, almost 10% of our population in Wyoming is veterans.

- [Nathan] Wyoming is a veteran-friendly state, I believe, because our values closely align with those of the military.

- The theater commander here is General MacArthur.

- When we talk about the service and sacrifice of Americans who've served the country in a military capacity, a big part of that sacrifice is they're living with PTSD the rest of their life.

- Nobody comes home the same they left.

Everybody comes home different.

- [Amanda] So you've survived on the battlefields.

How do you survive when you're back at home?

(gun banging) And so there's a huge risk of suicide with this population.

- We have lost several veterans, and it's like a loss to the family when we lose them.

- There are too many veterans that still believe the stigma, afraid to come out and ask for help.

- War has been with us as long as we've had fire.

I would never wish that upon someone.

But if they experience it, they need to know that they're not broken by it.

- We owe it to them as a society and as a nation to ensure that they are physically and mentally taken care of.

- We need to make it okay to talk about mental health.

We talk about post-traumatic stress injury.

So having this conversation literally saves lives.

- First step can be anything from picking up a phone to telling a loved one and just saying, "I need help."

(solemn music) - [Announcer] Funding for this program is provided by the Hughes Charitable Foundation.

Energized by love and faith, and inspired by the vibrant community around us, Hughes Charitable Foundation supports organizations that are directly helping those across the state of Wyoming who need it most; a private donation from Jack and Carol Nunn; the John P. Ellbogen Foundation, empowering the people of Wyoming to lead healthy lives in thriving communities; Blue Cross Blue Shield of Wyoming, a proud partner with Wyoming PBS and other community organizations to provide funding for education to raise awareness of the mental health crisis in Wyoming, reduce stigma around mental health, and connect people to available care that promotes positive mental health and hopefully saves lives.

(birds chirping) (hunters chattering) (chattering continues) - [Veteran] Goin' hot.

(gun banging) 10-4.

Little wee bit on the right.

- [Coach] Little bit.

- I work with Hunting with Heroes, Wyoming.

Because I do a lot of different things I call myself the Chief Helper.

Hunting with Heroes started in early 2013.

We take disabled veterans hunting in Wyoming.

We've hosted approximately 2,500 hunts.

- If you push this button, it'll give you like yardage.

- When we decided to do this, Colton Sasser, the other the other founder and I, we both grew up in Wyoming.

And one of the things that we did growing up was hunting.

So Colton and I decided let's bring some disabled veterans big game hunting.

- See the white targets, too?

- Yeah.

- That's at a hundred.

- The one at the bottom?

- Yeah, bottom second.

- So the first thing we do is we come out to the firing range.

(gun banging) They get familiar with with the guns they're using.

And then we, we make sure that they they can pattern the gun properly.

(veterans chattering) - [Coach] All right, so that's your target.

- In a state like Wyoming, hunting, and going out, and being outdoors is a part of life.

You know, these are what individuals do for hobbies, or for fun, or for survival, honestly, 'cause a lot of families in Wyoming depend on things like hunting for their food.

- We have guys here from Vietnam, we've got guys here from the Afghanistan and Iraq.

We might have a couple guys here from Desert Storm.

(gun banging) So we'll have 12 hunters going out for antelope bucks.

- When we started, we thought it was all about the hunt and it didn't take us very long to realize that we were onto something that was helping them emotionally to heal.

(veterans chattering) (ethereal music) (people chattering) - I was in the United States Marine Corps.

I was an E-3 Lance Corporal.

It was right after Croatia and Crimea when Russia was taking them over.

I was one of the 10,000 Marines doing cold-weather training.

- I'll grab lunches.

You got your bullets?

- I do.

- Okay.

- (chuckling) Remembered that.

(both laughing) (car door thudding) - Now we're gonna go a couple miles over here to our right.

Couple groups of antelope glassed up a couple days ago and been hanging out over there, so we'll take a look, see what we can find.

- After I got out of the Marine Corps, I felt like my life got taken out from underneath of me.

In our neck of the woods it's in the cowboy code of just cowboy up.

So I tried a hundred percent cowboying up and then that's what led to my suicide attempt.

(bird calling) - [Brook] So we'll just kind of hold up here, kinda let them feed a little bit, and come up with a game plan.

They won't go anywhere 'cause they're content with themselves just kind of feeding across the field.

So since we let the sun come up, no clouds- - Most every veteran that registers with us mentions that they have a struggle with PTSD.

And with a lot of veterans, the answer to that struggle with PTSD is taking your life.

- I tried ultimately taking my life in 2019 with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

I was struggling.

I'm having thoughts that aren't right that I've never had before.

That day a thunderstorm started happening.

Sounded like there was a gunshot.

(thunder crashing) I grabbed my pistol, went outside looking, no one was out there.

I hear voices telling me reasons to commit suicide, that it was everything negative, nothing positive.

Even though I knew it wasn't true, it was just playing it and then just pulled the trigger out of impulse.

The bullet ended up going through my nose and I missed my brain by about two and a half to three inches.

My jaw was separated in six different places.

I was told I had about a 25% chance to talk again.

If this was the 1800s, early 1900s I wouldn't be here.

- A lot of soldiers come home, but the war follows 'em.

We have a lot of veterans who face problems that aren't necessarily left on the battlefield.

My experience here in the Wyoming Guard as we've had soldiers come back from deployments and rotations, the spectrum of trauma is a very individual, very personal thing.

Everything from separation from family, to realizations that you may not be coming home, to friends being left on the battlefield.

The stress can be very heavy and very traumatic.

- So post-traumatic stress disorder, is a relatively newer concept in the realm of mental health treatment.

It was only added to our diagnostic manual in 1980.

Particularly in the post-Vietnam war era, soldiers and ex-soldiers who were struggling with adjusting back to civilian life were often seen as having some sort of defect, that there's something wrong with them internally because they're unable to adjust to life.

- You know, a lot of veterans coming home had post-traumatic stress and nobody wanna talk about it, nobody wanted to recognize it.

We lost the war and the public didn't wanna talk about it.

And they didn't care if you were a veteran at all.

So most veterans just put it in the closet and left it there, and some still haven't brought it out.

- A lot of folks in the military community and other communities, modern scholars are starting to use post-traumatic stress injury were we're just treating an issue just like we would if you had a problem with your leg or a problem with your heart.

But it's really important for veterans to be able to seek out someone with trauma training and uses trauma-informed care which can be the really hard thing about PTSD treatment and triggers because my trigger may not seem to have anything to do with a combat situation but my brain is connecting the sensory experiences to each other.

(fireworks popping) Things like fireworks on the 4th of July, or thunderstorms, or loud trains rumbling down a track, which happens a lot in Wyoming.

We have a lot of trains here.

- I have triggers in life.

You know, it took time for them to manifest.

My wife didn't let me drive when I first got home.

I wanted to drive down the middle of the street.

I wanted all vehicles at least 50 meters away from me, side, front, back.

I learned again that not every car on the street is intentionally trying to kill me.

And one day I'm sitting at my desk, it's about 10:30, 11 o'clock in the morning, and I hadn't logged in yet.

I'd been staring at my screen and a good friend of mine, a previous commander, she come wandering past me and she looked at me and said, "Hey Nate, how you doing today?"

And I said, you know, what we all say: "I'm fine."

And she went like this.

She said, "Chief, get your hat."

And she walked me across the street to our mental health professionals, and she introduced me to Trish Bannon.

And that was my introduction to mental health.

You know, if trauma is not addressed and caught, it's like a boiling pot of water, and it'll eventually boil over.

- Buck's running off.

- [Brook] 300-yard shot.

He's gone.

- One of the issues that veterans have is getting the treatment they need.

And most of these folks need some guidance and mental help.

- There must be a pretty good ditch back there 'cause he disappeared down into it.

- To treat PTSD, the most common current treatment modalities are cognitive behavioral therapy and exposure therapy.

Use of firearms or being in environments that are really triggering in a safe, supported, gradual way is actually a really great way to address PTSDs symptom and grow your resilience.

- We know where they are and where they're headed.

Go check out the other one now.

- Yep.

- [Amanda] We're healing that post-traumatic stress injury.

It's like physical therapy for your brain.

We're working back up to the ability to do those things safely in supportive environments which that person likely knew how to do prior to military service.

And it sort of got changed.

Their relationship to things like firearms changed as part of their military service.

- We found out in our program early on that it's been very therapeutic, and not in a clinical situation.

What we do with this program helps those folks with a lot of issues, but post-traumatic stress is a big one.

(mellow music) - As the sister of a veteran, as the granddaughter of a veteran, I want people to know that there's help available.

I think it's critical that we continue to dispel the idea that we just pick ourselves up by our bootstraps and we just get through it and manage it on our own.

- It is not uncommon to hear our veterans talking about that loneliness, feeling of the loss of camaraderie that they had when they were serving in the military, isolation.

In Wyoming, that is one of the challenges we have.

People live out on ranches, they want to be out where they're kind of keeping to themselves.

And that can be, it can be good and it can also be bad.

- The military does a really good job of creating that fellowship, and purpose, and meaning.

And then when you transition out of the military so then it's like falling off a cliff and now they have to find where is that meaning, where is that purpose?

where is that fellowship?

- One aspect of living out Catholic identity and Catholic faith and values is to support life at all stages.

I see the work of the church as providing safe environments.

- Veterans lay down their lives for us in in a way that should be very familiar as Christians, and a lot of times they come back with wounds that we can't see.

- So Veterans Talking to Veterans was born to help heal and restore a sense of community that they had in the military.

The Cheyenne chapter meets at the Holy Trinity Church.

They are a partner who have opened up the church to give them a safe space where they can meet.

- How are you doing?

- [Veteran] Doing good; how are you?

- Hi Mark.

- [Veteran] Good to meet you.

- [Veteran] Good to you as well.

- We put together a program called Veterans Talking to Veterans, which is about allowing them the opportunity to talk to one another, to share their experiences to talk about those out loud.

- Being in a sense community, and being able to sit and laugh and enjoy each other's company.

That's kind of the biggest medicine that we can serve up at one of these meetings.

- The facilitator for the group in Cheyenne is Doug Null.

And he is a veteran.

He's done multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He's very credible.

We train veterans to be coaches and we specialize in trauma-informed coaching.

One of our methods that we use is storytelling.

- We just look for mythology that has themes and archetypal imagery that relates to life.

(techno music) - [Veteran] She began by circulating evil reports about the prince, but as (indistinct) was above suspicion, the king just laughed at the weakness of the queen.

- We get a lot of disbelief, people questioning why are you telling a myth?

And the answer to that is directly addressing someone's traumatic event can re-injure them or cause moral injury.

- I think there are people in our group that have suffered from moral injury.

I think that they've been in situations where they have been asked to do something that they don't necessarily agree with.

That's something that they really wrestle with.

So we want to, in essence, take a side door.

- And that's why it's so important to let it rise and come out by their decision.

They decide.

We don't go looking for it.

And a kind of magic really happens.

- Let's just stop there and see how that resonates with you.

- Someone was a leader, pushes someone to do something that they shouldn't be doing.

That's what I'm getting out of it.

- Let's roll with it.

What I do is kind of lead them down a path that kind of takes a natural course.

You know, these emotions come out, and it's about interaction with the story or the myth, if you will.

- And so out of anger and spite, the individual can sometimes sacrifice what's needed for the common good.

It's like the whole kingdom's a sacrifice.

- So if we wanted to tie it to modern day, we just were pulled out of Afghanistan.

People are feeling like all their struggle and what we gave for that is washed away.

What was the point?

- But in the Vietnam War, I felt, when I first got out, I was kind of didn't want to mention that I went to Vietnam.

- I believe that folks need an avenue, or a venue, an opportunity or a way to talk about what they're struggling with.

I may not even know what I'm struggling with until I hear someone else say it.

- The last time I came here, a lot of stuff floated up to the surface that's been, you know I thought I was through, and so I wasn't gonna come again until Mike called.

- I like coming because what I'm listening to is a lot of things that I have personally been through.

And to hear it come out of somebody else's mouth, for a long time I thought I was the only one that's having these problems.

- Everyone has a life story or a narrative in their head of who they are.

The trauma shatters that story.

So they have to rebuild that and the program allows them to start doing that self-reflection in a group of supportive, like-minded people which is post-traumatic growth.

(gentle piano music) - [Shawn] Oh nope, they're still there.

It looks like there's more of 'em now.

Just looks like it's all does.

- There's a small buck on the group on the left.

Not worth chasing.

- Antelope, they're just like people where they have their guard up, so they get startled real easy.

We have spent probably about five, six hours.

I tried getting closer.

You try going in, getting a range, just looking, seeing if it's a keeper or not.

They're gone.

(bird calling) Is that one out in the field over there by the sprinklers?

- It's a buck.

But that'd be like a 200-yard poke 'cause the the main road that we came in on, it's right there at the end of that sprinkler.

- Yeah, I'm down.

I'm getting a closer look.

The opportunity that Hunting with a Hero provides, it's life changing because my dad died when I was eight so I didn't get the opportunity to hunt, to fish, work on cars.

It's kinda like people are taking you on as like a father figure, teaching you the stuff that my dad didn't get the chance to teach.

I like him.

- Can you hit him?

- About how far out?

- About 430; or we go walking.

Okay, you ready to go?

(tense music) - Our average shot on an animal like an antelope we're hunting here today, that's an easy kill shot and I hate to use that term, but that's what it is.

- [Shawn] Well, I don't wanna hurt something else worse than it's already hurt.

I'd rather just drop it, it's done and over with.

It's not for sport.

It's something you can feed your family on.

- This way.

- If you miss the kill shot on an animal that their adrenaline just like us will kick in, and it'll damage the meat to where it's not good.

- Just hold a little bit high as soon as he stops moving.

Don't shoot.

Hammer him.

(gun bangs) Hit.

He's good, he's good.

Nice shooting dude.

Hold your hand out.

Ah, you're too calm.

(both chuckling) I'm more excited than you.

- Oh, I don't know about that.

Just let it sink in first.

(gentle guitar music) - Keep it.

- Will do.

- When you're in the military, you pick up a gun so you ended up having that relationship with your gun.

This is exactly what Hunting with Heroes allows us to do.

Mentally it just reiterates that guns are for food on the table.

This is the right way to use a gun.

- Oh goodness.

- That's a really healing thing to be able to go back to a space where that hunting experience represents your ability to protect and provide for your family as opposed to them just representing something that should always be avoided.

When something is a trigger for you, or you have trauma history with it, it's that object or item that's in control.

You are not in control anymore.

And so it's really empowering to be back in control.

- Combat veterans really never get over PTSD; they just learn how to manage it.

It's a big burden, and it's part of why we owe so much to our veterans.

Everybody who comes through here gets an opportunity to be impacted, to think about just what is it that all of you who have served in a military capacity have done?

Before I opened the museum, one of my goals was to positively impact American veterans.

How often do we need our military?

I didn't serve in the Vietnam War; I was just a little young.

But being around so many veterans, I've developed a bit of a sense for the need to heal and to have veterans see their experience honored.

And we have sights and sounds of the Vietnam War in this gallery of the jungle in Vietnam.

(somber music) - You never knew what the hell you were gonna run into, you know?

- I was recently just at the National Museum for Military Vehicles, and I saw a quote on the wall by George Washington.

"A country is judged by how they treat their veterans."

And Wyoming treats their veterans well.

But like a lot of things, it's finding the right path that's key.

- We're not striving for the cure.

It's impossible to cure PTSD.

It's just a fact of life.

But you need to take responsibility for caring for yourself to work with this issue.

- You can make it.

You can recover.

But it still seems like people are hesitant to come forward.

- There are a ton of resources available to veterans.

We have soldier and family readiness counselors to talk to folks.

We have the VA, we have the vet center, we have chaplains.

There's churches.

I think where we struggle is the veteran or the person in need taking the first step.

- I've been managing this now for a decade or so.

I have a phenomenal wife.

She's the foundation of my support system.

I have a phenomenal congregation, and I lean on my congregation a lot.

(people chattering and laughing) - It took doctors telling me how close I was to death.

I realized that I'm here because I have another purpose.

Now I've just been trying to help veterans struggling so then that way I can possibly save a life.

I am on the governor's task force for mental health bills and I feel like that's what my purpose and second chance was.

- The veterans that came to the Riverton Hunt this year thank each and every one of you from the bottom of my heart.

- Mental health is a compassionate issue.

We all suffer by letting anybody linger in mental illness.

- What's right for one veteran is not necessarily right for the next veteran and there isn't one cure-all out there.

The most important question we can ever ask a service member is how are you?

And then stop and listen.

- It's a battle to find the right folks.

But you gotta keep trying.

We'll just continue on, and then hopefully at some point in our lives we won't have disabled veterans at all.

That's my goal.

(poignant music) (poignant music continues) (drum tapping march tempo) (drumming continues) (drumming continues) (drumming continues)