In his early years, Smith was introduced to the sporting life by his grandfather who exposed him to the gentlemen's sport of quail hunting in the Longleaf Pine country of east Texas. Later he discovered a calling for sitting in cold wet marshes and swamps hunting ducks. This became his true passion and a great source of inspiration for his later works.

His early introduction to sporting art came from his father who worked professionally as an illustrator and moonlighted as a fine artist contributing paintings for covers of the early outdoor and western magazines. In college