The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 530: Turkey Week - Gobblers Made in America

Episode Date: March 11, 2024

Steven Rinella talks with Clay Newcomb, Dave Smith, Brad Cochran, Jason Phelps, Paul Lewis, and Jen Lewis.  Topics discussed: It's Turkey Week at MeatEater so head to our website and check out  all of our turkey season offerings; how Dave is deaf as shit; Clay's high school art drawing, Machine Gun Hog; being a turkey decoy purist; DSD's Mating Hen decoy as a stable plane; the Jake Strutter decoy and the ten steps to strutting; Phelps and Clay rip on calls to trick the Merlin App; owl hoot competitions; calls to illicit a shock gobble; the ins and outs, and challenges and pride of "Made in America"; the nicest duffle bag ever made by man, according to Steve, by Paul Lewis of FHF; the Apex Belt as all you'll need in the turkey woods; and more.  Outro song: "Bo$$ Tom" by Jesse Collins. Listen to "Bo$$ Tom" and other songs by Jesse HERE. Connect with Steve and MeatEater Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting for elk, First Light has performance apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at firstlight.com. F-I-R-S-T-t-l-i-t-e.com hey guys it's steve on my phone in hawaii where it happens to be turkey season and it is right now turkey week here at meat eater which means tons of great turkey hunting content, a lot of great offers on turkey gear at TheMeatEater.com, and even a calling contest where I am getting my ass thoroughly kicked. Go find it all at TheMeatEater.com and stay tuned more for all kinds of turkey action. all right everybody we're having a outdoor gear manufacturing convention did you catch that dave

yes i got that okay that's probably all i'll get today joined in part by by dave smith and we're gonna we're gonna clear something up right away dave isn't hearing everything and last time he was on the show his his wife told him he sounded arrogant which i didn't catch because he'll just he was just missing parts are you open about this yeah oh yeah explain your problem well um yeah and by the way my wife before this she she gave me some words of encouragement she said she said remember dave, you don't have to be funny, charming, and intellectual. Just be yourself. So I was like, that really helped a lot. But I can't hear shit.

I mean, it's just way too much shooting without wearing hearing protection and guiding. And I've taken as many as 24 goose hunters by myself on one hunt. And so don't be Dave. Wear hearing protection because it sucks when you get in this situation, that's for sure. Okay. Like isolated. You got your hearing aids in.

Got them cranked up. I'll do the best I can. Okay. So if you're at home thinking, man, that Dave guy's an arrogant bastard. He may be. It's just that he can't hear. I don't feel like that's going to be a problem for Dave. No.

Joined also by Jason Phelps, the team from, founder of Phelps Game Calls. Joined by the Lewises from FHF gear yep I want to say it say a little bit more now I don't know what you what you want us to say the very about your here highly verbose the highly verbose Paul Lewis and Jen Lewis from FHF gear my wife's here to tell me that same uh encouragement probably during the podcast gonna give you live feedback yeah um yeah because you guys are designers like you guys are designers so you spend a lot of time just not you spend a lot of quiet time yeah we just that'd be the goal anyway it is the goal we just got done with the shows down in uh salt lake Portland. And for me, at least, like my voice is gone by the first day because I'm used to sitting in, like Dave said, a dark dungeon and not talking to anybody.

So needs to exercise the vocal cords a little bit. Are you all visited out after doing the trade shows? Yeah, I think we both get where we need to just, this will be the most socialization we'll do probably for the next week or so. How many trade shows did you go to? This was number two. We have three, four. So we have three more. Yeah, I don't know.

I try not to keep track, but it's a lot. A lot of people, a lot of talking. Oh, yeah, man. But it's good. I mean, I enjoy seeing the customers and, like, getting that feedback. It just, my voice goes out fairly early in the trip usually. Phelps, did you like doing trade shows? I love them.

You do? They wear on you, though. Look at this guy. I like being at them, but I'm not, in the same breath, I'm glad that they were on the same weekend this year and they're just done and over with. But, you know, it's always good to catch up with your customers and listen to hunting stories and shoot the crap. You know what I like that I didn't know you guys had is at your booth, you have that chart, that like game call, that diaphragm call matrix.

Yeah. Yeah. It's just because you spend so much time explaining the same thing. So it's easy to point, you know, like, down here this calls up here i would have rigged it so it was uh works like had it go so works better works better works better then nobody buys it leads to a high price margin man i thought about that we could i was gonna say at some point we're not gonna buy the ones that work worse But I get where you're going Yeah that damages sales

On the low On the low working calls Clay's here He doesn't make anything All his stuff All his stuff Is written in words That's right

He makes little He makes cute carvings And artworks Yeah Did you see your picture Out there Yeah man Yeah

Crank you grab the picture So we can show the picture again Finally made it Made it here You know we're doing A t-shirt design Yeah I heard about that I like it I we can show the picture again Finally made it Made it here You know we're doing A t-shirt design Yeah I heard about that I like it

I'm gonna show it again I like it Hey I was gonna say I was gonna ask you a question Jason about your Trade shows Are you the guy that's Elk bugling

Like non-stop A lot Just like Attracting attention Yeah and then like The special Cause Is this where I put it

Ooh Clay can you in your own words quickly explain so a couple years ago i found this at my mom and dad's house and had completely forgotten that i had drawn this when i was a junior in high school in art class it's a pen and ink of a muscled up dude like a a future man. Yeah, with a machine gun, shooting a big hog in a cypress swamp. And I made a living in high school, man, off drawing muscled up guys. I don't know what it was,

but I was like, I just drew those guys nonstop. And I think this is the first time I've realized this. This is a spin off the Bo Jackson wearing his shoulder pads with a baseball the baseball bat yeah were you do you remember you oh this was inspired by that well the shoulder pads he's wearing football shoulder pads he's been on the show yeah bo jackson man now he had bo jackson had a famous baseball card or football card where he had his shirt off shoulder pads on with a baseball bat i think that's what

inspired the the shoulder pads but yeah so we're gonna make a t-shirt machine gun hog yeah oh that'd be a good name for the shirt it's that's what i think that's what we referred to it as that's a great picture great artwork thank you really cool uh's really cool. Thank you. And then Dave Smith, of course, you're from DSD. How do you guys handle that there's Dave Smith decoys and then DSD decoys? Have I ever asked you about this? So I've always tried to push DSD because it sounds less arrogant. Because you're arrogant. Exactly.

Because you're already so arrogant. Cats have a bag, Dave. So, I mean, at the beginning, I wanted to call them zombies, zombie decoys. And that just didn't stick. You know, people were just like, you know, you got to go get Dave Smith. You know, have you got any Dave Smith?

And that just sort of, that just sort of happened. So, but now, you know, we're a larger court, you know, larger company and part of a larger company and everything like that. Like I don't, it just. So you're larger company and everything like that. I don't... So you're comfortable with DSD? I hope I don't offend Jason because of Phelps Game Scholar or whatever like that. But I just felt like it's a...

I'm not the big decision maker on everything. I mostly do the artwork part of it and stuff like that. So there's so much contributors to dsd that i wanted to make sure that it wasn't all about me so you're comfortable to be in dsd decoys yeah yeah yeah whatever dsd i mean dsd decoys doesn't really make sense because it's dave smith decoys so it'd be like that's what i'm trying to point out yeah so i don't care i'm changing phelps game calls to pgc after him talking about arrogance in his name so i'm trying to point out. I don't care. I'm changing Phelps' game calls to PGC after him talking about arrogance and his name.

So I'm going to take Phelps. We're going back to PGC. Oh, man. See? They're already blowing it. I'm already blowing it. I'm already blowing it. Easier to say than FHF.

Joined also by Brad Cochran, who's never been on the show before. Brad Cochran from DSD. Thanks for having me. Yeah, man. I want to get to something uh i want to get to something about your decoy philosophy okay we'll talk about it later he well no i want to touch on then we'll delve into it later you you uh hey you need to just go all the way you always do this you always go you you touch on like the most interesting thing

and you're like we're gonna get back to it just go for it okay just let's go all in you uh right corinne you have a rule you don't want to shoot now you've bushwhacked turkeys in the past and done all that oh sure yeah i mean i got into turkey hunting when i was 14 years old so um you know i imagine like a lot of new turkey hunters it was all about getting a bird oh yeah in the beginning you know belly crawling bushwhacking oh yeah ditch crawling yep strangling whatever it took. Yeah. But you got now, you don't want to hunt them if you're not using a decoy. For sure. Walk me through that.

Yeah, well, I mean, there's a lot of reasons for it. I would say first and foremost, for me, it's really about the experience, um, I've found that there, there's just, there's, there's nothing quite as memorable to me as having that really close encounter. And with decoys, I can draw them in as close as I want essentially, you know, I mean, obviously I have to be concealed. Um, that's certainly an important component to it, but there's also, you know, it's, it's challenging. I like to, I like, I like to let my season, you know, I like it to last more than three days. We have a six week long season in Oregon back home, so.

How many turkeys you guys allowed? Three. Really? Yeah. One per day, three per season. Hmm. Yeah. Are your turkey numbers holding up?

Yeah, they are. Our turkeys are doing really well. When you, uh, when you're, when you say that, that there's a trick to it, do you feel that there's a trick to how you set them out? Um, yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, you want them to be visible for sure. Um, and I think it's really important that you go into your hunt knowing that, okay, my goal is to decoy a bird, right? So my mindset isn't that I want to get a bird however I possibly can.

It is, I want to draw a bird into the decoy before I shoot it you want you want to spur that decoy oh you know I mean not necessarily because sometimes I might just be using a hand decoy like if I'm archery hunting for example I've had better success with just a single hand decoy because the bird is more likely to either come in full strut and he's not moving. Um, versus, you know, when you put a gobbler decoy out, oftentimes the bird's responses is that, um, they're very aggressive when they come in. They come running in, they come, you know, kicking the shit out of the decoy and you're sitting there and you're waiting for the bird to stop.

And, you know, general rule of thumb i would say i need a good five seconds to get drawn back you know find my my aiming point and then let my arrow fly and that can be really difficult if you've got a bird that is so pissed off at your gobbler decoy that he just won't stop you know beating the hell out of it. So I've found that shooting a bird in full strut is ideal and actually the most ideal is when you can get a bird to climb up on top of your hen decoy. So we make a decoy called our mating hen decoy. She's actually laying on her belly and she's,

she's in a breeding position. It's a very natural looking breeding position. And it's really effective because it's super stable and it's, it's one very natural looking breeding position and it's really effective because it's super stable and it's it's one of my favorite when they climb right up on there yeah don't you think that i'm surprised he doesn't show up and think like man there's no way that hand's just laying out there in a breeding position well they can over that real quick usually do you think that uh i i hunt so one of the places i hunt my buddy uh doug duran's place for the youth season and and uh sometimes you'll get where uh you get where gobblers won't come out you know they'll know

that decoys out there do you think when a gobbler won't come out you know they'll know that decoys out there do you think when a gobbler won't come out and it just wants to like watch that decoy and then shy off from a got from a male decoy do you think is that he don't buy it or you think that he don't want to go out and tussle with it um i would say i mean it's just if it's is it one of our decoys i mean is it a realistic looking decoy we're talking about? Yeah, just say, like, one of your decoys. Yeah, in that situation, I would say, you know, assuming that your hide is good and he didn't see somebody move or pick you out.

Or call terribly. Yeah, yeah. Then, yeah, maybe he's just not in the mood to challenge another bird. Mm. Cause, uh, the way he's got set it up where he's got like this trail cam and we'll set up and sit and he'll,

he'll be like, Oh yeah. Every day that bird comes out and does whatever, you know? And then, so me and my kids go out there and we set up like a, you know, a pack of them.

And, uh, using that that using a half strutter and he might come down and see that not like it but if it's just a hen right out and i was wondering if that bird doesn't want to get his ass kicked sometimes i would say that's the difference because then the other ones you know and then you might get one just runs out there like totally intent on fighting that thing. Yeah. You know, like they got different moods or whatever, you know what I'm saying? Right. And that's why we make gobbler and hen decoys and multiple different poses.

You know, you see our strutter decoy over there and he's a very dominant, that's a very dominant pose right there. Um, and any gobbler that sees him knows that he's asserting himself. Whereas that one over there, which I'm going to call the half strut Jake, because that's really what it is. And that way Dave doesn't kill me. Somewhere along the lines that got called the three quarter strut Jake.

And it got printed on a UPC label and put on 500 boxes shipping to Bass Pro Shops. He was three-quarters strutting. He's actually half strutting. That's the intention of that decoy. So we're going to call it the half strut, Jake, even though it is. He was not happy. Technically, if you look on our website, it's called the three-quarters strut, Jake.

Tell me about the unhappiness. You just think it's goofy to say something's three quarter strutting you have three quarter curl rams I mean I put a lot of effort into the poses and make sure I try to make them as accurate as possible and everything like that and that is a half strut jig

I think what you have to realize here Steve is that Dave he studies birds obviously a lot and their anatomy. And there are, you know, there are other poses that would be more closely resemble a three-quarter stretch ache. In other words, there are poses between that decoy that are closer to a bird that's in full strut like that one right there, it would be more appropriate to call a three-quarter stretch egg.

You know those shirts that show like the evolution of man? Yeah. There you go. We should do one of, make it like 10 steps toward full strut. Yeah? With the fractions.

Yeah. Yeah. The first one be like. Like a turkey is hanging out and then at the end is a turkey in full strut and it just shows him that'd be great decoy guys would really cancel that about that we should cancel that that future man and just do the the the thing on the way to the thing this is help people be able to describe what they're seeing like if i'm telling the story i'm like man that turkey was seven eight strut how often do you how often you see that you know when jakes come in jakes come in and get uh

nervous about jakes come in and get nervous about strutters you know i'm talking about they can they can what do you think that what's going on in their head um i would say that most of the time jakes are probably intimidated by a strutter decoy if they're not gonna approach it but i've had i've had even individual jakes come up and attack our strutter that's more likely to happen that's what i was going to get to next is when you get a handful of them oh and then they're gonna take it on on yeah yep oh i've had situations where i was hunting one big tom and he absolutely would not come in because there was three jakes in my decoys and i couldn't get rid of the jakes and finally i'm like maybe i

should just start shooting the jakes or something that's going to be frustrating but it's like with everything too even with the deer decoy i've had bucks step out and see the deer decoy, and I'm super excited, and I'm like, I know it's a buck that has been aggressive before, and then it's just like, on this day, he just doesn't want to deal with it. And I always thought that individuals were in their certain pecking order, turkeys or deer,

and that that's how they'll always be. But even their mood can change within the hour or day-to- day and stuff like that. There's no situation where, like, at a minimum, you're going to use a hen, right? Mm-hmm. And then there's no situation. Have you ever set out, do you ever use no hen? In just a gobbler decoy?

Yeah. Maybe it's happened before. If it has happened, it was probably because I was just trying to move really quickly and I only felt like I had time maybe to grab one decoy and set one decoy is that, um, you know, if you have an aggressive bird, oftentimes that, that might be the only tool you have to draw him away from his hens. Hmm. Is to threaten him with an, another gobbler who's, who's challenging him.

That he might kind of want, he might want to come and rough it up. Yeah, because if a bird has five hens with him and he sees another hen, you know, sure he might, he might gobble at you but he's he's not gonna leave he's not gonna leave the real deal and so um just generally speaking i would say that you're gonna have better success with a gobbler decoy if a bird's end up one of the things i like watching is uh i like watching the hen come up to a hen and how they get like gradually really pissed.

At first they're like purring at it. And pretty soon they're like, Hey, what's your problem? And then they're like cracking it. I've had them come in and like lay down next to it, you know, like thinking they're hanging out and then get mad at it and pack it you watch them go through this whole little friendship yeah it's crazy you know keeps everybody entertained with your decoy oh no some tombo yeah yeah okay yeah we i was hunting my boy one time we had uh we just had all we had we had a dsd hen and the hen came out and i'm not kidding you, man, like laid down with it. Just sat there forever, laid down, not moving, and then got irritated at it and like purred at it,

got eyeball to eyeball with it, was just not getting what it wanted out of it, pecking at it, you know, bullying it. Because the hen wasn't saying anything back. I don't know. The live one was probably like asking questions it wasn't responding yeah probably like brad and dave when dave can't hear in that in that same spot where that happened we had a coyote come over and roll that thing

which happens yeah which happens pretty frequently come out and roll it um they more reliably roll the decoys than like a predator collar decoy. They'll charge it a lot of times. It's just a predator collar sitting there with a little tail waving. They'll charge it and then they'll change their mind. But the decoys, they go for it.

I think because it looks like they get there and it looks like what they're expecting. Yeah, they see it. It doesn't look like a plastic box with a chunk of tail hanging off it. it looks like they get there and it looks like what they're expecting. It doesn't look like a plastic box. With a chunk of tail hanging off it. And then do you change your setup? You know what I'm talking about? Youth

season. Youth season is always real early. When I talk about having where you see like a bird, he seems like he doesn't want to duke it out. And he's like a little bit shy about coming up to a strutter decoy but that's early right you'd still be snow on the ground so do you do you change how you set your decoys throughout the season sure i mean um that

it changes as the season progressives but it also also, you know, it can, it could depend on, you know, an individual bird that I might be going after or, um, so it's, it's not necessarily. It, what I use for decoys doesn't necessarily correlate with the time of the season. Got it. Um, a lot of times back home, our birds are still pretty flocked up during the youth hunt because that's the weekend before our season. Got it. Um, a lot of times back home, our birds are still pretty flocked up during the youth hunt because that's the weekend before our season starts. Sure. We're April 15th and the Saturday and Sunday prior to April 15th is the youth hunt.

Um, so, you know, I mean, a lot of times we'll be setting up on, you know, maybe the roost is holding 30, 40 birds and a week or two later, there's only, you know, maybe the roost is holding 30, 40 birds and a week or two later, there's only, you know, maybe 15. So, um, a lot of times during that youth hunt, you're actually not hunting too many individual gobblers, but there's lots of groups of, you know, three, four or five birds running around and

they're pretty dang aggressive. Oh, I got it. When you put a gobbler decoy out and it doesn't really matter what it is. They're going to come attack it. What's the most decoys you ever set out at one time? You ever put a whole flock out? Like you're hunting geese? Probably the most that I've ever put out is maybe five, five or so.

But when we go hunt with Matt Winters, puts out like 12 oh dude 12 turkey decoys yeah yeah and we have we have several customers that do that and they just every time they're just shocked at how well it works and i'm kind of surprised that it works that good because it's like all of a sudden the flock of turkeys is you know encountering a whole new flock and yeah they're like i thought i was the flock at your place. Yeah. Yeah. Like, let's go mingle. But yeah, it's pretty fun when you, when we have

done that. Matt Winters is the one who really turned that on. The first time we ever went, he's in Kansas. The first time we ever went to go hunt with him, he wanted to impress us of how many DSDs he had and he had them all out in his yard. He wanted to show you what a good customer he was.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Actually, yeah. easy hat and he had them all out in his yard and then he wanted to show you what a good customer he was yeah yeah exactly actually yeah and he he's just been uh he's been buying up first light gear the last couple weeks and weeks he's just like a great supporter of dsd and anything that we do he's just a great guy we love we love him all right give me like give me the um just give people like the setup if people aren't gonna try to figure a whole bunch of stuff out and they're not gonna buy a dozen and they're just starting out what do they want to put out they want to put out a strutter and a hand like just like give it like the greatest most most you know idiot proof setup for idiots well like i always i i asked him first you know um about their hunting first off um are you a shotgun hunter are you an archery hunter

shotgun okay you're a shotgun hunter then i would get a hen and a jake decoy hen and a jake yeah really yeah three-quarters strut so you just if you're just if you're telling someone like okay let me let me give you the profile of the guy there's a guy let's just say there's a guy that no he's got access on some field and it's not a big spot he's got access on 40 acres and now and then he notices on his way to work He'll see some turkeys out in the field and he thinks to himself man I'm gonna go out in that field on opening day and I'm gonna sit there And that's as much as he knows Yeah, that's a perfect Jake and a hen hen guy

The like some of the guys will start will start him off with a strutter if they have like a big boss Tom that they've Been having you know trouble with that's the time to put a strutter, but have like a big boss tom that they've been having trouble with. That's the time to put a strutter, but it's also amazing. Trouble with, what do you mean? Well, like they're just, they just haven't been able to get him to. Oh, got it. They can't get him to commit. By any other way or with other decoys or something like that.

But yeah, I mean, a half strut Jake and a upright hen is a great, I mean, people have done that for years and years, just starting out and had great success with it. And we've had quite a few people at the beginning just put out just an upright hen only and start with that. But if you can afford two decoys, a Jake and a hen just really covers it. And then after that, if you want to improve your odds and you start adding in at least like confidence poses like feeders and preeners, and that kind of, that kind of helps a lot. Do you, um,

my buddy Zuck, when he's putting them out, he likes to put them out where he's like, well, yeah, but they, I could picture him walking toward that corner and you make sure that, that they look like they're traveling in the right.

Yeah, absolutely. You're into that? Okay. Yeah, we made a striding hand just for that purpose. And we have some people that will buy three or four of them just for that reason. Yeah. So we just try to offer everything and give you lots of options so that everyone's confused is there any decoy company that makes realistic looking feet turkey feet i don't think so i mean i don't know why

that's the only part of any decoy that's not realistic yeah i mean by the time they get that close it's probably too late in the grass but i mean you know they've all got the state coming down and i mean a turkey turkey feet are kind of bright you know that bright pink i just wondered if there's like a if you could and it maybe maybe it's it's not a factor but there's some things that i can't say right now, but we agree. It could be like a detachable bipod. I don't have any inside intel here. I'll shut up. Oh, I can tell what Dave can't say.

Yeah. I mean, I've detected, not can tell. I can't tell you. I've got some ideas. But I mean, feet are a huge part of birds. Like mallard ducks, even sitting on the water. You can see they're bright. Feet are huge, a huge part of it.

And Canada geese, especially the large race white sheep geese, the feet are a huge part of it. And I've fought that battle with NDSD forever, like wanting to have full legs and feet. So we have legs, but we don't have feet. But the feet are really a big part of a goose. How about a little battery pack where they move like this? There you go. So you're saying that the feet mean something to a bird. Picture that you saw a dude standing out in a field with no legs.

But he was hovering. But he looked really normal. Yeah. I mean, because like in our goose hunting, a lot of our goose hunting is about landing birds and having them walking around the decoys. So we, sometimes we'll use small spreads, but get birds to land. And then those are our decoys while we try to get other birds to come in, in case we want to look for a leg band or a neck collar out of the air. And it's like, it's probably okay that the decoys don't have feet while the birds are coming in to land. If you wanted to shoot

at the first flock that came in it'd probably be fine. But once they land and they're walking around the decoys it does seem like the decoys hold birds really well but it does seem like it's just not right that all the decoys are hovering there on a post.

It bothers me. I don't know if it bothers the birds, but it'd be kind of cool to have the complete bird for sure. Mm-hmm. But usually they're like sitting in grass, but anyways, I got what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes.

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when did you start making turkey decoys? Because you were all geese all the time, and then you moved into... Brad is the DSC historian, and he's good with dates and stuff, and it's all a blur to me. So, Brad? It was in 08 with our upright hen. It was in 08 with our upright hen.

So can we edit that out? Who paints the... Is there a turkey painting specialist oh i mean our our whole paint crew paints them yeah but i'm saying is there like um is it divided out or do the same people that paint geese paint turkeys oh that's correct yeah that's how we do it it's divided out so if they paint geese they also paint okay turkeys. Okay, I got you. And they get sick of, they kind of get sick of painting this one thing for a long, long time. And they actually like a little bit of variety. They don't mind going from turkeys to geese and back to, you know, turkeys and then to deer or something like that. Got it.

Kind of monotonous otherwise. When they paint them, is it a small um what is the tool is it a small air brush they use um they use big touch-up guns and then small airbrush and then a lot of hand painting too so and then there's stencils stenciling i don't want to dog on any particular decoy company but i remember we used to when we were younger we'd buy like a certain brand of decoys and a lot of times you'd see where they did it was automated or something because the they'd miss yeah like the white patch yeah it didn't quite hit the spot yeah like the white patch would be around the bag yeah Yeah. Yeah. It's like, yeah.

So what, but when someone buys one, it's been like, there's been a dude painting on it. Yeah. I don't think people realize that. Yeah. No. Oh, for sure. And there's probably been like five people that contributed to that one decoy because we don't, we don't have like individual stations where somebody paints a decoy from start to finish you know put a base layer on and then you know progressively um step by step it'll move down to to the next

person and so on and so forth until it's fully painted you ever seen but uh none of those guys wear berets and stuff do they with the little palette that'd be a good ad campaign man as a dude with a beret and a palette doing some touch-ups on put some happy little waddles on a turkey um oh go ahead well i was just gonna say like that like on the like on the shredder for example um all all that red is all painted by hand brush and the entire body color. Every bit of pearls and iridescence on that, that's all painted by brush, by hand. How long does it take to paint a decoy, start to finish? I don't know. We get asked that so often.

And we have no idea. We don't want to we don't want to know you don't add it up no i mean maybe greg does um but yeah we're working on a new decoy right now that's really really difficult to paint that i can't i mean i can't really talk about it because we're not positive that we'll come out with it but it's really really difficult to paint and it's like oh man if we figured out how many i mean we'll we'll never make a profit with it what's it supposed to look like what kind of animal a bird one that goes quack like a himalayan cock of the rock yeah yeah it's a a temex tragal pan yeah what makes it hard the position it's in or the kind of bird uh it's it's a mallard duck is

what we're working on right now and it's just a lot of you know there's just there's a lot of uh airbrushing a lot of colors and all that stuff can i ask a dumb question and don't that's not gonna offend decoy people how much does it matter like i'm not i'm not like i just don't, that's not going to offend decoy people. How much does it matter? Like, I'm not, I'm not, like, I just don't know. Like if the paint's off a little bit, will the birds pick it up? Or does it matter 10% of the time? We've just, we've just, um, we just decided a long time ago to just make, make things as accurate as we possibly can. And I've made fish replicas my whole life. And my mentor was honestly the best fish replica artist on earth, Ron Pittard. And he just taught me that you just don't stop until something's deadly accurate.

And then it has made a huge, huge, huge difference. So I don't know for sure how much it really matters or whatever, but, and it's, it's not all about, oh, like I'm doing it for me or anything like that. Like it's like, shit, no, we want, we want birds super, super, super close. We want to make quick, clean kills. Everything that we do is mostly for our own hunting and it's to be as absolutely as effective as we can. We honestly don't give a shit about, you know, how pretty the decoys are or whether they were carved by a world-class carver or anything like that. We just, we just love to hunt as effectively as we can. So.

I mean, I think realism is a big deal with turkey decoys. Yeah. I mean, big deal because guys were the real serious guys years ago and some still today are using actual turkey mounts that have real turkey feathers stuffers and if you're if you're trying to get them in close yeah it's it's a big deal you're just hoping it don't rain yeah they get wet oh there's there's so many guys that uh they'll say like well we don't like turkey decoys or turkey decoys don't work that well and stuff like that and we've seen a lot of footage of birds coming in and they're just like hanging up and hanging up like crazy

and they're like yeah see you know turkey decoys don't work that good but they're using some brand of turkey decoys that just looks horrible and it's like well that's the problem and that's telling us a lot and that's kind of driving what we do and it's like most of the time if we can get those guys to switch um then good things happen but i think on anything that's real persnickety and it has a ton of components people can always say well does that matter does that matter does that matter be like i can tell you that the sum total matters and perhaps there's parts within this whole approach that if you pulled out it wouldn't affect the outcome but you it's not discernible you can't pick the pieces apart meaning if someone says like does camouflage

really matter i'm like you're never gonna um say i would have gotten that had i not been wearing camo exactly it's like i don't know in every situation if if you call a bull in or call a turkey in and you go like okay I'm going to rerun the universe and start manipulating slight different things like I wasn't wearing a glove

my turkey was a little shittier and then my decoy was a little bit shittier looking and then run the scenario to the point where you identify the exact thing that had to be right or wrong to make it work you don't get there but if everything's right and you just know it works um i don't really care about what parts might have been superfluous yeah you. You follow me? Yeah. Do you really need to wear that glove?

I don't know. I just got the turkey. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's like with goose hunting, a lot of it, like the hide is so, so, so important. And, you know, the calling is, is important if, if you're calling at all. Um, and so it's like, everything really has to be right. Yeah.

And you wouldn't want to start removing any, any um and start taking chances yeah you know yeah it's like there's no way in the world you would say that i would have gotten that gobbler if my decoy wasn't as high quality right well and then also like brad is alluding to you know, it's like, well, you could probably get a gobbler, but would he come into 10 yards and really interact like crazy with the decoy and just have this breathtaking moment? It's like, well, maybe he would have came into 30 yards and you could have, you know, dumped him with a shotgun or whatever. Yeah. Just depends on what level of really fun and excitement you want to take it to i sent you guys that video last year of a bunch of of a bunch of gobblers mounting your posturing hen yeah we try to look away when that happens but it's like it's kind of hard you're not supposed to watch that yeah get your head out of

the gutter oh i got one i got one last bird question one last turkey question if if the paint job's so realistic and all that why is there um what's up with using a real fan or not a real fan i can't tell if it matters yeah we've um we wanted to make an artificial fan we still want to just because it's so durable because those are a pain to deal with for sure but um, you know, we haven't been able to make an artificial fan that really has the right finish and translucency and all that stuff. And we haven't seen any available that are that way too. And, you know, we have a spectrometer

and we use it occasionally. We probably should use it more or whatever. So we can kind of check the finish um and and the reflection on a real bird or a real fan compared to a decoy and all that stuff um and we just haven't been able to come up with a real fan that um that's durable but we'd love to you know yeah now have you ever thought about doing like map spinners and buying and selling fans? There's already a company that does. You can call them up and buy a turkey fan?

Well, we've sent some customers to them, but most of our customers will have a hundred. I keep a stack of them, dude. Every year, I go through and sort them. Yeah. Take the bad ones, get rid of them, promote the good ones. Yeah. I was just dusting off my fan pile the other day thinking about coming up. Yeah, turkeys are, turkey fans are one of those things.

I find myself every time I clean a bird, it's so hard to throw it away. So you think that, so when you're setting up, when you guys are setting up, you're setting up with a real fan. If it's a full strut bird. Oh, yeah, for sure. Huh. You know that some, you know that fanning, some states are starting to come out with rules about creeping up on turkeys with a turkey fan?

Yeah. Yep. I think Wisconsin, you can't do that anymore? And I think maybe even in Kansas, you can't reap, but don't quote me on that. You can't move, how they spelled it out, you can't move around. There's some rule, you can't move around with it. Yeah. Well, and a lot of people have been reaping, where they'll take even our decoy and get behind it and start crawling around.

And I've never done it myself, i've even my some of my turkey partners have done it and they'll do it like with three or four guys all behind strutters and crawl you know crawling up and they've had like this huge bunch of toms just come in and just it's like you know it looks like the civil war or whatever you know and um come in and just start thrashing them and everything and then they jump out with shotguns and all that stuff whatever it sounds kind of crazy and it sounds kind of dangerous but yeah that that's i think that's why they're i think that's why states are clamping down on it it's just the the risk factor yeah yeah we don't for sure i want people to do that for sure there's no way I might, but there's no way I would let my kid crawl around

with a turkey fan on his head. Because then my wife would be home at what? Once she got to understand, you know, if he got whatever, sprayed by a load of shotgun shells, or a load of pellets, and then was asking me about what happened, and I was like, oh, I told him to

take a turkey's fan and crawl around out in a field. Yeah, with it over his face. She's just going to get mad. Yeah, that's for sure. So I don't do it. Yeah, I've got a design idea for your turkey fan. Okay.

I can't tell it. Okay. It's that good. Okay. I like it. Clay, I want you and Phel do do heat us up with a little turkey calling action little turkey calling tell me what you're putting in your mouth yeah this so this is i just got these from jason this morning this is the what is this jason that's a trip in him this

is the trip in him yep they're usually a little better after you warm them up a little bit but warm them up like to body temp? I mean, like, use them for a couple of days. Yeah, no, I'm with you. Seth's got a word for it. I can't remember what it is. I can't hear myself. I know, it's tough.

Take your headphones off. It's a good gobble. Oh, that's great. Sounds good. Your gobble's a little too high pitch. Yeah, I got a real light call. Have you ever heard a hen try to gobble you know no i i know people talk about this but no yeah it's it's extremely high pitch but like do you think she's trying to gobble or is it just a hen vocalization for sure i've seen

them actually like throw their head forward and oh really that, yeah. Two years ago, I had a hen come in in full strut, and I was filming by myself. It was pretty cool. I haven't seen that happen too much. Phelps, eat us up. What's your little bird app? You say this isn't a woodpecker. You're not going to trick this.

You want me to pull it up? No, I just want to remind you because you're going to say that it's not a woodpecker. But whatever this is, I got. Let me turn Merlin on. Oh, goodness. Are you really trying to do this to yourself? Well, I feel like.

No, I didn't. I was just bringing up that I called this a woodpecker, but you reminded me last time that it wasn't. Okay, sound ID is on. You're not going to trick it. Hold on. You don't think it's going to pick up? He's not going to trick it. on you don't think it's gonna pick up he's not gonna trick it really no do you'll trick so do some hen calling okay i got it up it says listening for birds you'll

trick it with a hen call because i can trick it with a hen call you gotta get better than that i think it's something with being in the room or something okay phelps you hit it you stop from it you hit so we're gonna hit the new woodpecker call no no hit turkey oh no who just did something he was turkey he did no i just took a minute i got wild turkey now i think it's just now. I think it's because I finally started calling. I'm a little better than Clay. You call? Okay, hit it.

Okay, he's banging it. Clay? Uh-oh. I read a tongue. try something different you're not getting it it didn't bing at that time so i think we got no it's not that we just got a problem what's the cut i don't know i was chasing the what the cut i think he's got we actually split a bat wing on that one so it's a split down the middle and then this is a combo cut with we nick the second layer a little bit on the open side on this one. This is a really, really light call, like all prof. And then that one's a little bit thicker. Yeah, explain what you mean by light call.

So we can layer in, you know, most of your tricky calls, there are a lot of doubles, but I would say the majority of your tricky calls are going to be triple, three pieces of latex. So like when this one being ultra light, the new rain series, it's got prof, you know, prophylactic know prophylactic prophylactic and a very light piece of latex on top that's cut um so this call is going to call way lighter than like a call that clay has you know like 0035 you know now you're stacking latex it's almost twice as thick as this for every piece so it's to try to you know have a louder you can cut on that call a better locate a little bit louder where this is going to be more of your real intricate, you know, low

volume bubble clucks, yelps. But lighter is easier for beginners to make noise. You don't have to learn how to force as much air. Yeah. And, you know, you can get into like different styles of tricky callers, you know, like the old school guys, they call like a huff style where you're using like a lot of diaphragm, a lot of air where like these new calls, it's like just real light air. You're not having to

just you know get rid of so much so much air okay rip on that one a little bit this the woodpecker no no not the woodpecker yeah i like that you did a woodpecker the purr's not real good this morning. Clay, you're digging around in there. What do you got now? I've never put this one in my mouth. Now he's got the Casper, which will be like our ultralight. Like ghost cuts, like Kiki's.

Meep, meep. Merlin's perking right up on that one so it likes a little higher pitch call well like i said it likes everything when you're outside well i remember that one time you were sitting under a tree and you had like 42 birds going oh no like i'll like i think something weird happens when you're outside any like any kind of turkey calling, it'll usually start binging.

Now, let me see your Woodpecker. So this is our new guy. Worked with James Harrison again. But I want Clay to tell them our Woodpecker problem, the Woodpecker debate. Which one, man? About I rebuild Woodpeckers? No. About my Blue Jay call and all that?

Oh, just like shot gobbling calls shot gobble i'll tell you what me and clay's debate is about shot gobbling i think that um i think that a good shot gobble is something that gets shot gobbles yeah clay thinks a good shot gobble is something that sounds exactly like accurate like a bird. An owl. I don't care if it sounds like an owl. Let me respond to that. If you want shot gobbles, I've said it.

If you want a shot gobble, then I'll tell you. We're talking about two different things. I thought we were talking about turkey hunting. We were talking about turkey decoys. We were talking about two different things. No, I'm going to moderate. I thought we were talking about turkey hunting. We were talking about turkey decoys. We're talking about turkey calls. Okay. Right. We're talking about turkey hunting.

Right, right. Okay. Right. So, set in the scene, talking about turkey hunting. Okay. We're like, here to talk about turkey hunting. Yes. Ben talking about turkey hunting.

Shot gobbles are elicited by, in my view, shot gobbles are best elicited by like sudden, very sharp, disruptive sounds. Correct. Yeah. Are you done? That turkey is not sitting there

thinking, God, was that a real owl? He's not. But when he gobbled, he gobbles quicker than he can think. Yeah. I agree with you. The difference between what you're doing and what I'm trying to do and what I appreciate in realism and all levels of woodsmanship

is the difference between spin casting and fly fishing tell me the difference because when i go into the woods it's it's it's like it's like now i'm not necessarily me i'm not the best owl hooter nor the best turkey caller but you go down with some of some of these guys from mississippi alabama arkansas these guys man, they owl hoot with their mouth. They sound like a turkey. I mean, you just fit into nature. So it is really a stylistic thing. Yeah.

Yeah, I could go out and – What's the difference between a spin cast and a fly cast? I mean, it's the same thing. You think a really good bass fisherman – It's about style. A really good bass fisherman that can land that, that can land a 3-8-ounce jig. I thought that was a great analogy.

Do you see what I'm saying? I mean, it's like when i go in the woods i don't want people to know wow steve renell just slammed his car door yeah or has a can of air like he has an air horn yeah you're like i was able to use it i want to sound like i was what i was resenting and i resent this more than your take on owl hooting and all that no i appreciate it good owl hoot but i'm saying i don't think it in terms of getting a gobble i don't i don't think it does neither here nor there i don't but i take offense at your thing that you were going to go down some path that like that that somehow fly casting is somehow like more poetic or some 100 when i when i'm in the woods i want us I want to be,

I don't want someone on the next ridge to go, that dude just out hooted. And you think spin fishing is louder? I thought this was going to be the best analogy ever done on the

Meteor podcast. I want both of you guys. No, just what people say, like you're going to the river to fish. A spin caster's just trying to get the job done a fly fisherman is trying to do it he's there like an art decoy men are bobbing their heads here so

i'm just saying yeah you can get a turkey to gobble all different ways i agree with that but there's some there's some art there's some nuance there's some craft inside of you know your crow call your owl call clay took my crow call and wrote, this is a blue jay call on it. Oh, disrespect. Yeah. Well, no, because it is. I told him I'm trying to replicate it.

See, that would have helped me the first time I heard him blow it if I would have known he was trying to do a blue jay. Yeah. We had this conversation multiple times just at the show. Like, well, what's the difference between the wood owl hooter and the pro? I said, well, the wood owl hooter actually sounds better. It's cheaper. But for a hunting call, I want to be able to crank that thing up, not sound quite like

an owl, but be able to reach the next ridge over and get that response and still kind of sound like, you know, the best owl call we can build. And so there's, there's a lot of that, like just being the best hunting call. But then like, you know, we had that conversation with Dave, like not willing to cut any corners and just be the absolute best decoy where on calls, especially, you know, shock gobble calls in particular, I'm willing to cut a few more corners where like, you know, the new triple locator, it's twice as loud as anything out there. Yeah, I could have made it maybe a touch more accurate, but it's just dialed in. It still sounds like the woodpecker. It still sounds like an owl scream, but I designed it for more volume.

So maybe we lost a little bit of that quality. So it's like fly fishing, but it's like euronymphing. Yeah. Yeah. Trying to cut. It's still technically fly fishing. So you're, you're going to, you're going to blow

on a pileated call. Yeah. Or what our, our hunting pileated woodpecker call is very loud. Um, you guys are, Dave's probably going to blow on a pileated call? Yeah, or what? Or hunting pileated with pecker callers. Very loud. You guys are all... Dave's probably going to really hate it, but... But I don't think...

Remember, we had this in Kansas last year, and it did not pick up, and so I'm a little nervous. But there's a lot of weirdness about what picks up and don't pick up. Because what I've found, like outside-inside's a big difference. We'll see.

Okay. God, that sounds good though, man. Pick up? No, it's not picking up. My favorite thing to do is like come down out of my office and like all the workers are just down there putting stuff together and just hit them with a woodpecker call. Hit it again? That sounds good though. Oh, yeah.

And then James Harrison, the Owl Hooter, wins all the contests. Matter of fact, you know our Owl Hooter, he just told me, out of the 29 people calling at the Grand National Championship, 24 of them, I think, had our wood Owl Hooter out of 29. Seriously? That's big, man. Like, legit. Phelps Owl Hooter. Yeah. national championship 24 of them i think had our wood owl hooter out of 29 that's seriously yeah like legit a phelps owl hooter yeah and then we got the owl scream which this is his thing 24 out of 29 guys are using your owl hooter according to james harrison on the stage at the nwtf convention

do you think it's fair that they could be using any kind of call at all for i mean for a competition what do you mean fair fair as in like uh i would think if you're having an owl hooting competition you'd have to also have a no just raw voice well that's a whole different competition and they they've they've moved more towards the calls they have man hey in arkansas bentonville, Arkansas, March 9th, we're having a natural voice Al Hooten contest at the Black Bear Bonanza. We are making it into the world's premier natural voice Al Hooten contest. So they divide out natural voice.

Yeah, that's all we do. Okay. Hit me with one, Clay. Oh! Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo! I could never do them on call i had a guy to show the other day come up to me and was like hey clay give me an al hoot it was terrible i was embarrassed i was like here hold on everybody be quiet give me another one so didn't pick up no it's not doing well no because i know you're i know you just pick up and what was killing clay or what was killing seth morris is we were calling to we were calling

to owls you were there Seth was there and he could just get the owl to come in get the owl to answer but the app wouldn't pick it up and he had to keep messing and messing and messing he had to change his call so the app would pick up and it wound up being in the in the gurgle at the end oh he had to manipulate his own girl he had to like customize it to try to get picked off by the app but outside yours picks off but i don't know yeah yeah hey folks exciting news for those who live or hunt in canada and boy my goodness do we hear from the canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes.

And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX

are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking.

That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the MeatEater podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it. Be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team.

Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. Do that one again? I want to hear that one again.

That sounds good. Do the woodpecker or do the owl scream? Let me hear the owl scream. I want to hear the woodpecker. I want to hear the pillion. Owl scream will just be like a pitch break.

You've all heard the owl scream early in the morning. Now, here's what I think. Before you do this, I think that sure sounded like a bird. That's great great that's what i'm talking about forgetting gobbles yeah it's like yeah it's like just so like it's so all of a sudden and it's so you can't ignore it yeah because the thing is how many times in most places if you're sitting there waiting for the light out first thing you're going to hear in a lot of areas you're going to hear a northern cardinal and he's going to be the first thing in the morning and then you're going to hear crows

right they're just going to be like if you're paying attention there's always a everywhere going off and i just think it loses its yeah where the that's where the woodpecker like you do the new pretty little and like when you're out hunting you can literally hit the first one and be done and get the same response. Like he's already gobbling from that one. But back to Clay's point, I want to be somewhat accurate and like finish out, sound like a woodpecker.

So you finish the call. Could it not be, I think there's an argument to be made that realism might make a difference. Because like if you're hunting a super smart, wary bird that's had four years of hunting pressure and you walk up there with an air horn and and he's heard he's not coming the truck pull up and maybe he gobbles at it but he's and i mean i don't he doesn't have the the brain power to think oh

that's steve ronell over there but he's just like maybe you know that's the thing i do wonder about is i wonder about the difference because we're talking, that's two things. That's eliciting a gobble, okay, and then is he going to come over? Like, did he just add something to his knowledge base where it's like, that wasn't the real, I gobbled, but now there's something over there. I used to get mega gobbles off of a rabbit distress call. I mean, mega, like way off gobbles but then i'm thinking okay he gobbled but

is he really gonna come moseying over here if he later like you know rabbits die yeah well you do like a rabbit i would just go right and you'd get gobbles but has he is he then put in his head like that to me is not an area i'm going gonna go to yeah i think over yonder where the rabbits die yeah yeah that's it yeah and no amount of hen calling no amount of hen calling from that area is gonna feel right to me because i've just logged that as like i gobbled to it but you're not gonna talk me to going there yeah same same reason like eastern washington coyote howls work great for locating especially later in the day but you're like if you want to try to call that bird and like in my mind at least the picture i'm painting like why is this bird going to come out all the time man yeah the only thing i would add

is like i do agree that there's something to be said for a short call to get a shot gobble because then you can hear them gobble you know which is nice if you do a long drawn out call it's like hey well i mean maybe you guys don't have a problem i do with my hearing like i gotta stop quickly so i can hear him but also then you know where he's at you could go you could go to him and then i also agree 100 with what you're saying about how they kind of can't help themselves like if you watch you know three toms gobble and it appears that they're gobbling at exactly the same time but if you watch carefully it's always one of them gobbled first you know there's two are just a split second behind and that is just sort of an involuntary response and that can be the same thing i think with the shot gobble yeah okay hit the other one

so oh i want to i want to add on that a thing that causes tension between me and my turkey hunting friends is that they think that i start walking too quickly after making my shot gobble noise yannis gets irritated i don't give it enough beats but i'm like he would already gobble yeah i i'm on team rinella on this one like it's shot you don't need to stay in there for a minute even five ten seconds like that's too much if he gobbles it's on his own i'll do it i'll go go like, ah, ah. I'll be like, one, two. Yeah, I'm walking on six.

He doesn't want to walk until 20. I'm like, dude, you might hear a gobble, but it's not. Not related deer. Yeah, you're just regular listening. You're not listening. Man, the best turkey hunters that i've ever hunted with do very little early morning shot gobbling i mean i think there's a there's a correlation depends so much on the area man yeah yeah just just the patience that i see in some of these guys that i mean they're not well known people just like really good turkey hunters.

Man, they let that turkey gobble on his own most of the time. And, I mean, they'll carry a shot gobbler, an owl or crow with their mouth and use that. But I would say the number one way to identify a beginner or novice turkey hunter is how much they're using shot gobble calls. It's too dependent. Sure. If you're in a high density area whatever if you're like out in the never-ending ponderosa pine grassland stuff right and you and it's cute you're gonna go miles between anything yeah yeah yeah and i think we're talking about two different things it's just a way to kind of hunt yeah you're like you're like somewhere out in this 10 square miles there

might be a gobbler and if i'm gonna find a bird over the next two days i'm gonna have to hunt very aggressively and try to get a gobble 100 because any amount of sitting here listening is like i'm gonna have to find a bird yeah it's just different yeah yeah more of what i'm talking about is back east hunting hunting a bird that maybe you know is there smaller ground you might be spending your whole morning in a you know a square mile or less or you know maybe 160 acres yeah man you're gonna be you're gonna play the patient game but all right go on so i'm'm going to try, James Harrison's a pro at this thing, but we developed it as an owl screamer as well. Yep. Oh.

That gets him. I mean, just once again, just big, loud bursts. Like I said, I probably just did that call no justice. That's his side. I was more, I want a woodpecker call. Now that right there is for getting gobbles. Yeah, just high pitch. Now what you do with them.

You should call that the spin caster. The spin what like that gets a gobble what you do with them afterward is up to you but that's going to get a gobble yeah and that's that's why in this call like i said we could have been way more or maybe not on the owl screamers had been on the woodpecker you know i had more accurate sounds but then we kept adding more volume made it loud because like i said i'm i'm a hunter at heart i just want these things to answer so I can start the game and then go from there. There's two contests. There's two tournaments I'm trying to figure out how to conduct.

I want to have a world. I want to have a glassing invitational. I love that. Where you have set out stuff? No, not set out. Okay. I want it to be real. So I want to have a glassing invitational where you go to a good area and there's judges.

And to score a point, you, so to find an original find, you put a scope, you put a spotting scope on it and the judge comes, looks, verifies the find. And that's like 100 points. Now, one bedded next to it or whatever, those are 50s or 25s. Once you make a find, the judge sort of like declares that that find area closed or everyone's operating out of a little structure, like a little beach tent. So they have the opportunity to find it too. So you don't know.

So all the competitors can't tell where someone's looking. So figure that out. And you get a point, and you set up at daybreak, and you have until 11. And it's like the world glassing championship. I like it. I love it. Dude, it'd be a great competition. Sounds really exciting to watch. No. Dude, I would love it. I would love it. I love it. Dude, it'd be a great competition. Sounds really exciting to watch.

No. Dude, I would love it. I would love it. I could be like a golf commentator. I thought about it where you hide little things out, but I don't think it should be like that. Yeah. Because stuff pops.

Well, if everybody was looking at the same landscape, it would be fair. No, but you want to be an area. And I know right where I would hold it. I know right the hill. I know the peak I would go to to conduct it. Dude, listen, I'll be one of the commentators. I will, on the live stream, and then we'll have like it roped off with people along the sides like a golf tournament.

And every time somebody does a find, we'll, you know, and I'll be like, oh oh that was a beautiful find by the other my other tournament is the world shot gobbling invitational and i don't know how to conduct it hmm yeah you'd have like categories like alhood woodpecker just a listening freestyle unlimited freestyle it's freestyle unlimited listening gobbles i don't know how to make it equal though another nail biter yeah yeah who can elicit the most it had to be like days long to rule out to rule out incidentals or not not to rule incidentals to rule out the freaks it had to be 10 days you know big commitment to be like oh he just got the good spot that morning but over time you're going to see a you're over time you're

going to see a champion emerge a trend someone that just can elicit gobbles and it's probably going to be unfortunately a dude with an air horn it's going to put to rest all of our theories if you can figure out how to give away a truck at both of those you'd you'd fill up i am gonna do the glassing the glassing invitational i'm serious about i think you could pull off a glassing invitational for sure oh dave you know another thing i wanted to ask about uh just change subject a little bit um you guys are you guys decoys or tell me about american made decoys all our circuit decoys are made in america always have been um and uh it's difficult and it's expensive and um but the quality is really good they're super durable and we love our crew and they're good they're good people and

it's just how we decided to do it and and but you could there would have been an easier way to do it like it's not like out of necessity yeah oh my gosh I mean like we're I mean we're almost the only USA made turkey decoy. There might be a few. Cue the national anthem, Phil. But most decoys are what overseas? They're blow molded, polyethylene made in China. And there's nothing wrong with that. It makes them lightweight and inexpensive and all that stuff.

Can you pull that mic a little bit closer, Dave? Sorry, the microphone closer. I'm sorry. No, you're good. Thank you. Oh, Dave, how much have you been hearing? Have you been hearing most of everything today? Much better without the headphones on. Did you hear that owl call?

No. No, I didn't. I thought it was a dog. Did you hear the scowl? Ow! Yeah. But yeah, we're able to make a really, really super durable decoy, which is kind of nice.

I mean, we have one video of Brad shooting a decoy, and it's on purpose. It wasn't an accident or anything. He shot a decoy with heavy shot from 10 yards away and goes and picks up the decoy, and you absolutely cannot find a mark on it anywhere. And he picks it up and shakes it, and it's just absolutely full of shot but it's and i've shot several well not several i guess twice i've shot through toms and had the arrow go into the decoy

um kind of you know the arrow yeah and then pull the arrow pull the arrow out and and you can't really see where the arrow was it's like that guy that arnold schwarzenegger had to fight in uh yeah that silver looking dude that silver guy yeah yeah yeah terminator yeah you heard him it just goes back to normal. Yeah, yeah. It's not quite like that, but almost the same, yeah. But when you started out, you know what I mean? Why does it wind up being overseas and why not? I mean, people launch them overseas. Like if you start out, when you start out, you're just making a few of them, right?

So obviously when you're making a few of them yourself, you're like, you didn't even think about whether you'd make them overseas or make them in America because you're just making a few of them right so obviously when you're making a few of them yourself you're like you didn't even think about whether you'd make them overseas or make them in america because you're just making a handful yeah and there's some point at which it would just you'd have to decide that it would now make sense to have a manufactured elsewhere or not right yeah Yeah, I mean, so far we haven't had any major, major plans to make any turkey decoys overseas, but it might be something that we'd offer. Like, especially if we could, you know, we just want to offer as many different options as possible for people. So, you know, you can make it lighter weight and less expensive. So, and the thing is, is like, like our half strut Jake, we had a guy that just loved that decoy and thought it was the greatest thing ever. And he kind of told us that he, I mean, made this like offer to us where he would promote it and, but he would need like this huge percentage of all the sales.

And we kind of told him to take a hike. And next you know he took it straight to china oh really and did a really really hard campaign like got to the point where he had most people convinced that we uh copied him what it took us three years of literally like one by one contacting people that were just, you know, promoting his decoy like crazy of telling them the truth and setting them straight. And it took us three years to recover from that. And they eventually, he eventually went out of business and all that stuff because people are basically good and our customers are are unbelievably great to us and they stood by us and you know learn the truth and everything like that so we we deal with that and there's we have other decoys where you know these companies that we've known of for a long long time and all of a

sudden they have a turkey decoy and it's just like it looks so much like our decoy it's just ridiculous um and that that happens and it's kind of flattering but it's kind of annoying too and stuff like that but and those are all made overseas so that's a little bit difficult because now all of a sudden they're able to charge a lot less for it yeah And the thing is, because we make decoys in America and have made goose decoys in America, so we do have to charge a lot because the materials are very, very expensive. Like that material that's so durable is super, super expensive. And so we do have to charge a lot unfortunately for our for our decoys so then the the competitors

they've really benefited from that because now they they'll make a decoy in china and they'll be like well you know dsd is charging you know you know 200 for a turkey decoy so we could probably charge 180 or something like that whereas our costs are dramatically different but you guys don't pat like you don't package and tell you don't like overtell that it's all designed and made in america i mean your shirt says dsd decoys usa but i could be like they're based in the usa yeah we probably should push that a little harder well i think they say made especially people are trying to bone you over yeah yeah for sure um yeah i i mean point taken yeah we probably should my idea for the tail fan was American flag. Yeah. There you go.

Yeah. Now, Paul, with FHF, you guys fight it all the time on Made in America. We do. And we're sort of in the same boat with Dave where we started out, I started out making this in a spare bedroom so certainly wasn't going to have anything made yeah overseas i was doing custom work and and really kind of started in the tactical world where that was much more of a thing like hunting versus tactical the customers typically want to see a u.s made product i think in the tactical. In the tactical space for sure. Cause you're dealing with people who are like,

uh, like by definition, like patriots. Quite patriotic. Yeah. Patriots and preppers and just tactical guys, former military, current military,

that kind of stuff, law enforcement. And then moving into the hunting market, I think it's come to a point now where there is a significant amount of the customers that do want to see a us-made product, but there's also a lot. And we, we deal with it all the time where people are like, well, I can buy, buy it for $20 on Amazon, you know, something that's close or a direct copy, like, like, uh, Dave talks about. And, you know know it just depends on the the customer really and what they put as

important to them but the part i don't get about it is when you talk about the cost thing how you're talking about shipping halfway around the world like how does that you think that if you took a person from outer space like you take a guy comes from mars and you're like hey I want to ask you a question. What do you think costs more? Me to sell a thing here in Montana that was made in America, or would it cost more if I had it made on another continent halfway around the world and then sent it over here? That person would say, oh, it'd be a lot cheaper to make it here. Why would you mail it all the way across the world?

Well, and I think that it probably used to be. The biggest thing is the labor costs overseas. You can just, you know, people, I don't know what their hourly wage is in China or Bangladesh, but it's certainly not as much as the. A dollar or two. The people that are making stuff here in the US andS. And all of our stuff is made here. And so, you know, the factories we use are paying their people well and treating their people well. And they have, you know, they're middle class jobs.

And many of those have disappeared over the years where, you know, it used to be the textile market, you know, mills, uh, sewing, everything was done here. And this was brought in, you know, as far back as right after the revolutionary war for reasons for like, uh, national security and just independence to have all of that stuff done here locally, just like weapons manufacturing, all of that stuff was brought here. Um, but you know, starting in the eighties, I just disappeared out of the country.

So it's really hard to find factories in the U S that can do a good job of it at scale at the scale we need, especially, I mean, many of these places, you know, they will take an order, but they want you to order half a million of something, um, in order to make it worth their time. Um, whereas, you know, we're just not at that scale and the costs are significantly higher and, um, it just makes it very hard, you know, both the materials as well as the, the labor to actually put something together. Um, you know, we do our best again, sort of

coming from that tactical world in the even the the berry amendment compliance stuff which is a defense uh requirement for buying military gear you know made in the us many of the materials have to be made here and so we do our best to source those materials here being that they're sourced here they don't have to go overseas to be put in place, but we do struggle sometimes to find the best materials in the U S because I don't know whether you say the best materials in the U S you mean the best materials produced in the U S correct. And there are some things that just aren't made here anymore. Um, certain things, or if they are made here, they may not be as good because that technology

has been exported over the last 30 years and there just isn't a way to get it made here. Um, a stupid example is, is, uh, our zipper pulls. You like, I almost bought a machine to, to make our little molded zipper pulls on a cord because there's maybe one of your listeners knows, but I cannot find a place anywhere in the U S to have those made. Um, the only closest thing I found was a machine that I would have had to order from China and get here to make those one at a time. And they just mold a zipper pull. What part are you talking about? Just the, the pulls on, I mean, that's why I use bump cord, the cord and the knotted cord on all the zippers because I mean, on our little pouches, we do a little plastic zipper pull.

Yeah. And you mean there's no one in America making that or that you found? Not that I've found. I mean, you can find a piece of cord with some shrink tube on it. Yeah. But, you know, like a molded, nice, you know, something you can put a logo in and, you know, make it look nice. There just isn't, that's just one example, but there are fabrics that we use and we use a few of them that are made overseas. Um, but many of those are done that way because, you know, to be honest, many of the best like bag manufacturers are in vietnam because that's where all the technology is it's where all the talent is um over there it is a considered a good job it's a professional job to have that job and these people work in the

industry for a long time and get good at it in the u.s it's very hard to find the labor to do that and so you know to be honest you know many of the factories end up hiring folks who have immigrated uh to this country um or brought that expertise with them yeah or you know have had family members that work you know have worked in that industry for years and kind of come up with it but those are fewer and fewer and fewer it seems like so um it's just a it's a weird self-perpetuating problem trying to find find both the the materials as well as the labor and the talent to get that done in the states and it's expensive so if if everything if everything at fhf gear is made in the the USA, does that mean that you can't buy?

But you can still buy a material made somewhere else, or is that not true? Yeah, I mean, technically, for us to say made in the USA, you know, virtually all of it has to be here. And we do our best to source everything, you know, domestically. Like I said, like zipper pulls, you know, that's please reach out if you know somebody who will make those. Um, but you know, for the most part we do our best. Um, and then, you know, there's the difference would be like assembled in the USA where you might

have, you know, components like say the shoulder harness and the pouch made in two different countries and brought here and put together and that would be assembled in the US. Um, or if you bought everything, all of your materials, uh, from overseas sources and brought those here, uh, and sewed them together, that might be assembled in the US.

Uh, the other option would be, and we've struggled even with production companies. We had one for a while that went out of business thankfully um unbeknownst to us they were sending stuff to mexico we were on the sly yeah we were making and paying for them to make it in the u.s and uh this was one product years and years ago when i was still in my basement but they were the last one that came out of the box. I found a little tag on it that I think they used to get through, uh, uh, customs that said made in Mexico. And I'm like, and I'm like, you dirty rats. Cause they gave me a price for USA made or NAFTA compliant or, you know, Asia, um, um, pricing.

And I paid for the U S made stuff and they figured out this little guy in his basement can probably wouldn't know the difference. And, um, he'll pay us a little more if we get it made somewhere else. And they went out of business. Yeah. They went out of business. Um, if you, when you look at the, at that, the duffel bag you're working on, it has the, I know you mess around with a bunch of different fabrics.

Yep. You'd give me bags and I'd bring them back to you. After you broke them. I'd be like, the baggage handler abrasion, whatever. This stuff happens to them. Mostly that. Yep. Anything you ever gave me wound up being that it looks like it got stuck.

Stuck in the conveyor belt. It got jammed in the conveyor belt and then you settled on that sailcloth. Where is that made? That is made overseas. That specific fabric is made overseas. Part of the reason I chose that is because of the color availability, availability of the fabric again becomes a challenge.

And that bag's actually a mix of US fabrics and the sailcloth, but it's a hundred percent recycled and it's done in a facility over there that, um, I mean, as you guys probably aware, almost all recycling is done overseas. Half the stuff you throw in your recycle bin either ends up at the landfill or on a boat to

go, go get recycled. Um. No kidding. So like the recycling chain is, is like an overseas chain? That's a whole nother, yeah. Get it on the YouTube and go down that rabbit hole. Like where it's actually happening?

Yeah. Most of it is done overseas. And so this specific factory is recycling. And this fabric, it's a polyester, you know, using recycled bottles and whatnot, is 100% recycled. The film is recycled as well as the adhesive is a non-solvent based adhesive that actually works better with UV resistance and it's actually more waterproof. So in this case, I think for this application, it was just a better fabric to use. Um, but yeah, that one ends up being overseas.

Although the, the base of it is a, a U S baseball. It's made from our pop bottles. It is. Yep. How do you buy the stuff? It's like, like rolls of. It is. So we do, we have a little different, um, procedure than most.

Uh, whereas I do all the, the design and development stuff here in house and Bozeman. So I'm able to kind of reach out to these manufacturers and get small, uh, parts and pieces. Uh, when I first started, I mean, I was buying stuff on eBay and just random stuff, who knows where it was coming from.

Trying to buy materials. Yeah. Cause most of these big companies, especially in the U S they have such high minimums that it kind of prevents the, the little guy from ordering, you know, I. Even here in Bozeman, I wouldn't want to order, you know, rolls and rolls of fabric. You know, I need five, 10 yards of it. And it'll last me a few months to just build some samples to get to, you know,

you and I and Jason to test out and see if it's gonna work but then once we kind of settle on that material from these producers then we send it to our production facility who takes the specs that we give them and and you know people that we can our sources are spelled out to them and then they do the bulk ordering and put everything together. And they hire the sowers. Hey, folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And, boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes.

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Be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit OnXMaps.com. OnXMaps.com. Welcome to the OnXx club y'all what are the main states where stuff gets sold that's made in america

um i'd say the biggest location is southern california um we don't use anybody there anymore we have uh but you know right around la san San Diego area seems super busy, um, all along the Eastern seaboard there, uh, probably South Carolina, you know, up in a new England. And then we have, uh, facilities as well that we use like in, uh, Minnesota as well as, uh, Indiana, um, kind of that Midwest state. But really, I mean, you see it like locally in Bozeman, it's very hard to find people to work those jobs, be able to pay them a wage that allows them to stay here. You know, even Mystery Ranch is here. Sims is here. You know, they, they've started to move a lot of that bulk production kind of outside the area. And I don't know about Sims specifically, but

you know, Mystery Ranch's bulk production is all over the country or, you know, they're certainly their military line is all US made, but their hunting line is, is made in Vietnam, which as I said, as I said before, the, they have probably the most talented, best, um um as an aggregate um sewers in the world and it's just because that equipment and talent pool is there and so i think it can start coming back to the u.s but you know it has to be done by companies like us using those facilities because

if we you know there aren't companies like us using the facilities in the u.s they're eventually gonna go out of business and go overseas as well if you had to put a just like a fine point on it or i guess more like a rough point on it making it in america so like sewn goods like making a backpack vinyl harness whatever in america so like sewn goods like making a backpack vinyl harness whatever in america makes it cost what percent higher i don't know the answer because i've never actually quoted anything in the u.s or i'm sorry in china or you never out of curiosity just asked them i haven't but i get emails constantly from companies over there that will send me pictures of my harness as well as competitor harnesses that say, hey, we make these, we could make yours for you. And it will be, you know, pennies on the dollar.

Really? on Amazon and you'll come up with many that look very similar. Once you get them in your hand, you'll realize there's a quality difference, but there's copies of all the major brands for, you know, our harness is one of the most expensive harnesses on the market. And I think it's cause it's the best. Um, and it takes a long time to make, you know, ours retails at 185 and you can find a pouch that you can wear on your chest for, you know, $18, um, that's made overseas. And, um, you know, even some of the, the retailers, um, even some of the big optics companies, you know, provide a free harness with their, with their optics that, you know, they're, they're getting the job done. You can hold it.

It'll hold it on your chest. It'll store it on your chest. It's the difference between spin fishing and fly fishing. It is. It is. You guys may, like Phelps Game Calls, you had his, you traditionally started out, like just founder base. You started out by, you just like by necessity made them here.

Yep. Yep. Made them. And then, I mean, we went through that evolution. We are, we are sourced both domestically and overseas, and we've tried to move as much back, you know, like the easy sucker, we moved back into the States and we're leveraging like a very big partner. We've given a lot of work. Um, but USA manufacturing, like as much, I would love to move everything here, they're, to be honest, they're a bigger pain in the ass to work with. Just like Paul alluded to, they don't, you know, I feel like we're crushing it in the

game call world. Right. But, uh, uh, 10,000 piece order of this plastic part, they don't want anything to do with that. They don't want you to order a hundred thousand, 500,000. We just don't have that buying capacity or the need for it. And so you just kind of get thrown through the ringer,

your prices come back high. And then I'm left with like a business decision like, do you want to sell a woodpecker call for 70 and 99? Or do you want to sell it for 32 99 where it should be, you know?

And, um, so a lot of times we do our best, like our, our new unleashed V2 tube. As far as I know, it's maybe one of the only blow molded like tubes inside the USA,

but due to the federal trade commission rules, because I put a neoprene sleeve on it that comes from overseas and it's an essential part in the definition of it, all of a sudden it can't be made in the USA. So you got to like balance all these like FTC rules and like make sure you're following the rules. But we try. We make an honest approach. I, I do get a quote on everything we build USA and, uh, you know, offshore. And there are times where we just have to pick and choose.

And like I said, I'm proud and I try to keep everything here, but there's just business decisions where unless you're willing to try and sell something for 10 times all of your competition, you're just going to be stuck going that way yeah but you know all of our turkey calls all of our wood turkey calls made in the usa with the majority of our woods usa source you know i don't want to be you know accused of cutting down the south american rainforest you know so we try to yeah i can back jason up on this where he's

talked about a lot of the woods he's like oh it's, it's a nice wood. But, man, it's, yeah, you don't want that. So we avoid that. We try to build as much as we can. You know, we started that acrylic deer call line. You know, we source a lot of made in the USA acrylic. We do source some acrylic from offshore. But it's just, it's depending on colors and time. So we're doing the best we can and making an honest,

a truly honest approach at keeping everything we can have made here. And when dollars and cents, I'm willing to spend a little bit more for USA Made because as you mentioned, the logistics of putting on a boat, timelines, you know, language barriers, stuff that I sometimes struggle with. I'm willing to pay, you know, up to 200, 300%

more if I can justify it for parts, but it's not always the option, but yeah, we, we fight it on every single new project where we're going and pricing. It's a good point in that, like having it made here allows smaller companies like us to be a little more nimble and, and be able to move and pivot things, you know, like for instance, if had

we put that big bag that got cut on the conveyor belt into production and realized too late that, you know, maybe we shouldn't, uh, you know, make 10,000 of those. They aren't sitting on a boat on the way over here. Um, you know, we can quickly switch material and have that one-on-one. I have the cell phone number of the guy who's going to make that happen and just get it done the same day versus you know kind of this skype call to somebody who there's a language barrier with yep that's that's that helped us a lot too just to be nimble and quick and be able to come up with a product quickly yeah because we're mold you know we're molding in ourselves you know sculpting it molding it and casting the parts and painting it

working out the paint system we can come up with a new decoy pretty quickly as, you know, the market changes, the populations change, or, you know, hundreds of inches change. And that's kind of nice to be able to do that. Well, and also we're making small daily batches of decoys, whereas, you know, if you're importing, you know, you're buying container loads. And so you could get an order of 5,000 decoys only to find out that, you know, there's some huge quality issue there.

And now you have a whole container load of decoys. Yeah. You know, whereas for us, we stay small and we literally can walk out into the shop and take a good look over our product every day. And we're really tight on quality control that way. So I could call you guys and say, I want you to go out and find me the nicest one out there. Oh, yeah. I thought he was going to say he could walk out into the shop and yell at somebody. Hey, this is junky. We could do that.

Man, that duffel bag, though, what are you going to call the duffel bag? Our pit duffel, just because it opens up into a big pit. Can people buy it yet? Not yet.

Yeah. Okay. That's the nicest duffel bag I think ever made by man. Well, it's relatively simple, but it, uh, No, it's great, but it seems like it's going to float away. A light.

As far as light. Yeah. And that, that's the other benefit to that fabric is it's ultra light and the film and the coating on that allows it to just, yeah, be ultra durable. Like I said, I'm not going to call it a waterproof bag, but you know, very water

resistant and, uh, and tough like that material itself is, you know, just reinforced and yeah, it's going to be, I think it'll be a good bag. But you got to make what you're gonna make a bunch of sizes, three sizes. Maybe, um, still got to argue with the, uh, internal, uh, corporate, uh, about how many, About how many...

About how many sizes we can make. Give me the arguments. What are the arguments? Give me the pro and con. Well, I don't know that there are. I don't have any cons. I want to make a larger one that's, you know, end up being a...

The one you have is like a 60 liter duffel. I want to do a 30, a 60, and a 90 liter duffel. Oh, yeah. And I think that'll be perfect. We've already made the 90 we've tested it uh i made one but we've traded around the shop and used it for flights here and there send me over a 30 man um yeah i need to make i've yet to make one of those but we're actually having all three of them priced currently at production to make sure that we are able to do that quickly. Can I give you a hot tip? Yeah, absolutely.

If you do three, I'd call it the 110, 220, and 330. There you go. Conor bears. Because that's the three conor bear sizes. I like it. I mean, there's all their goofy stuff. There's like 180s. 160s.

Yeah, 160s. There's 160s, 280s, but no one pays attention. The 110, the 220, and the 330. Then I'll confuse everybody no one of the numbers mean like it's long story there's nothing to it that's nothing to the volume that's always good in marketing when you're like this is a long story yeah is um can i ask do they have like backpack straps on them they do yeah the backpack straps are the handles and you can kind of figure basically decide where you want those.

But yeah, they're, they're comfortable backpack. Like the, the giant one I made, I've used in airports as well. And if you've got to walk real far, I mean, that one was 140 liters or something. It was a huge, but which is why I got caught on the conveyor belts everywhere. But, um, um, and it wasn't as comfortable as this one. This one actually feels like. It's wearable. Yeah, it's certainly wearable.

You know. Perfect. So the one I have is 60? Yes. Yeah, 30, 60, 90, dude. Yeah. 110, 220, 330. Won't confuse anybody.

So what's up with Apex belts with turkey season coming up? So that is, it's funny. We just got done with the show and had to kind of explain to people that the, uh, the foundations we came out with the, the belt, the hydration pack, both are multiple use items just happens with the, um, and I say multiple use, um, how do I best explain that there?

I use it as a range belt, a hiking belt, hunting belt. Yeah, fishing, whatever. Fishing. I scout it all summer in it. All season, all pursuit. Yep. I was using mine for buck rattling.

Yep. But being that we're launching that here in the spring, figured we would include some accessories or launch some accessories about the same time. So we have the box call pouch coming out with it. It's a, the belt itself is a three-piece belt. So it's really expandable, kind of designed to be a one size fits most belt. Got kind of an internal frame sheet, MOLLE attachment.

Those who are familiar with the battle belt will kind of be familiar with the idea of a padded, imagine like the belt of a big frame pack without a backpack attached. That's a good way of putting it. Has suspenders available, has a folding seat that kind of tucks up out of the way. Yeah, is that out now or not out? It is, yeah.

That thing's sweet. We launched that and you don't even notice you're wearing that. No. It's super minimal you know, minimal. We, we've seen a interest from that, from predator hunters, uh, turkey hunters, as well as. Well, my, my old turkey vest had a seat and I

like a seat, but all day you walk around that seat banging the back of your knees drives you insane, man. Yeah. And that's, you know, what we kind of heard from customers is like one, they're usually a pain to stow. If you're going to stow them up behind it.

And if you don't stow it, they, yeah, they hit you in the calves the entire rest of the day so this one tucks away easily using magnets you can hook it to a backpack even we did a video recently on social just hooked it to my trouser belt and to my bino harness and didn't have any belt um worked out well so you can kind of customize and tailor that whole system to fit your style. And the pot call pouch. We did the pot call pouch. We call it echelon right and left, just because they're kind of a triangle shape,

um, with the point facing forward. You would, that's how you figure out right and left. Yeah. If you, if you're inclined to leave all your shit out in the woods, this is a good little thing to have with you.

Yeah. Uh, easy to, it encourages not leaving all your junk in the woods easy to put stuff in easy to get in and out of quickly because you can you can actually operate out of it it's a pot call holder but it opens out yep exactly so when you're sitting there it's actually just as good to have it there this is lay it in the leaves next to you which is what i used to i just kind of hide my stuff in the leaves.

And then later I'd go back and try to find where I put it. I need to put some more lanyard loops on that thing. But, uh, yeah, it's, uh, just the way it sits open. Yeah. You can kind of just like our chest rig, you can just open, open it and work out of it and put everything back where it goes. It's got the spots for your, your, uh, pot and peg, uh, as well as scratch pads, all that stuff. We found out at the shows, it your, uh, pot and peg, uh, as well as scratch pads, all that stuff.

We found out at the shows, it actually, uh, conceals a handgun in there pretty well as well. I can picture that. Um, we had numerous people ask, and I actually like to wear mine. So I'll wear the, the right, or I'm sorry, the left one. So the triangle faces forward on your left.

I wear that on my right side. For cross draw? Well, it creates a, it creates like a, a wing of sorts where when you sling your shotgun, it sits right behind there and kind of creates a little weapons catch. So, um. That's good.

It actually works out really well in that respect, but I think that covers the. So what about, how about the, is the, is the, the Morel bag? It is available now. Okay. Yep. And it's just.

Does anybody buy those? People are stupid if they don't. Um, people. It's, the Morel bag? It is available now. Okay. Yep. And it's just. Does anybody buy those? People are stupid if they don't. Um, people. It's not a Morel bag. Need to be educated as to what they are. They're all over in the tactical world. You know, guys use them for mag dump pouches. Um, you know, putting down empty mags or whatever.

We've found, we've been using them for like rifle hunting. If you need to steal your gloves quick. Yeah, man. Instead of putting them inside your coat or dropping them as you're moving, you just stuff them in that bag. It's just a, you know,

gets the size of like a chew can rolled up. Um, yeah, it's like a big ass bag that hangs from your belt, but it rolls up like a chew can. Well, you don't,

you know, you wouldn't know it was there. No. And the way it's designed. And then you undo it and it opens up and you can, you can put like eight meals worth of morels in there. Yep, absolutely.

When you turn it on. And it's got a mesh bottom on it. So, you know, if you are putting stuff that's dirty or wet, you know, it still drips out the bottom. It doesn't collect. And then it's removable. So you can, it's mollied onto your belt, the attachment system we use. And it just, you can unhook it and empty it, do whatever you need to. But it's a drop bag too, so it's out of your way.

Yeah. And it sits underneath, the way it is attached, it sits underneath your existing pouches. So it doesn't take up extra room on your belt. And so if you don't need it, you really don't even notice it's there. Yeah. So all the, everything people need to hunt

turkeys is available on there. It is. Yeah. And again, that's, you know, because of the timing of launching all this stuff, we focused on turkeys to start with, but you know, the plan would be to have a whole lot of different stuff coming out that will attach and any of our old

existing pouches still attached to it now. And like you said, I use it fishing at the range, you know, all over the place. It's got shoulder straps too. It does. It has kind of the same geometry as the first light elastic suspenders. Or you could attach it to the hydration

pack and use your hydration pack as your shoulder yoke. But when you, so, but you can buy it all. You can buy right now, right? It's like they came, did they sell out, came out and not for sale? We did a soft launch in. December.

December. And then we did limited colors then. And they did sell out. Some of those sold out right away. And then we relaunched them here just a couple of weeks ago with all the colors. So people can get it right now. Just get it. Yeah, absolutely.

And what else is coming up next? Pit duffel in June. We've got a hip quiver. Yep. Kind of an interesting hip quiver that I think is different than any of them I've ever seen on the market. Ambidextrous kind of use and uh you know there's a lot of companies out there doing them but none's ever been done like this so um that'll be the the summer launches you probably know more than me yeah we have a bit of a quiet year after apex belt system just given the nature of last

year we had i don't even know how many new products with the fob so we'll have one more launch this year and then we're kind of grinding on 2025 stuff so and how are you coming on our on our secret uh our work entitled rio loco yeah i was there remember when dirt dirt named that thing you know he needs he needs to do a bunch of research on this yes i have the only one in existence right now oh and also felts what's up with the moose call we got her you and you and clay asked a lot but we have to make a little divergence it's just it's unsustainable to build it the way you guys wanted um and be like this ultra i won't say ultra print that's not not ultra premium but it just can't be produced one at a time in a big giant i want you in there just making one at a time

when you get one done let someone know like the original call days like i just just this one. It's up for sale. Like just all day web maintenance. But no, it's coming. We finally found somebody that would injection mold it with the right plastic makeup and a huge like fiberglass fill. So it'll be very, very similar to what you guys used. We made it a little bit thinner.

Some of the other reviewers wanted a little more resonation out of it. And so we. What are they talking about? Thinned it up just a little bit. Who else the other reviewers wanted a little more resonation out of it and so we what are they talking about then the other reviewers who else is better moose hunters than me and do they want it they want but they want to be able to rake brush rake they want to be a little more hollow when they're raking brush and then they want but i'll talk to you we there's some reasons why we also see after big bulls and then you got that you're doing the you're taking our color suggestion right oh yeah Oh yeah. Yeah. We picked your, it was weird. The name has green in it, but it was the most accurate.

It was like some weird sage green color that they could cast, but yeah, it'll be. Meaning that your call looks like a paddle. Yeah. It'll be like paddle color. That could be really good. Does it have the read in it or is it just voice? We're going to work on it. We, we got some other changes to it, but yeah, we'll have that.

We'll have that read, read in there as an accessory, but I think 99% of people will probably just voice call, but we'll, we'll have that we'll have that read read in there as an accessory but i think 99 people probably just voice call but we'll have that as an option okay and then uh and then real quick before we wrap up review for me what what hot new turkey products are out and then i want the dsd guys do the same so turkey calls this year we got the new triple locator hawk scream i'll scream woodpecker call we uh brought back working with ste Steve Morgenstern, one of the greats in the friction call world. We've got two signature series. So we went with, I'm going to get this wrong. We went with Mulberry and a Red Slate. And then we went with like a very specific

Specked Out Hard Slate in Babinga. So we have two of those pots coming. And then we've got the new Rain series that we partnered up with Chris Parrish, probably the all-time winningest turkey caller and a great, great, you know, guy that we work with on the turkey call side on a three-pack of those really light, more intricate diaphragms this year. We've got a new reverse tapered striker. I think I can talk about it now, a reverse tapered striker.

So, like. Oh, by the way, why did you give Clay a pack of calls but you didn't give me a new pack of calls. I don't need clay. Gave me credit for that. I don't know where he dug those up when he got here. Oh yeah. You didn't give those to me.

Somebody else did. All right. So, but then we've got like, you know, strikers forever have been like, you know, they usually get bigger as they go out to the bell,

but like you can see on this one, it actually gets skinnier back towards where we make the connection on the end. A lot more vibration. You can actually feel it in your striker, and so we're getting a little bit more. Once again, Morgenstern had that idea, so we're going to bring that guy out this year. And everybody talks about, you always hear everybody talk about Diamondwood strikers wake up the cheapest calls, and we finally found a company that has.

I thought they talked about that. Yeah, like that's the best striker material you can, in my opinion, in a lot of tricky hunters opinions you can use. We finally found somebody that had like the original recipe to diamond wood. Everybody, you know, a lot of people have tried to imitate it, but haven't got it right. And so we're back to like the original diamond

wood strikers. So it's just a bunch of a laminated short, really, you know, thin veneers. And they put a bunch of phenolic resin and then put it under like crazy amounts of pressure. So even though it's wood, it's also got a lot of phenolic in it. And so it's, you know, fairly waterproof.

It will, it will saturate out, but like just that thing will wake up a, a $10 pot call that you got at Walmart. Can I have this? Yeah, that's yours. It does look like you put it in there backward. No, it was designed that way. You need to write on it.

Reverse taper. This is supposed to be this way. Yeah, yeah. It wasn't a reject off the machine. You need to write reverse taper. It feels good in your hand. Yeah. It's good.

It's good. You can build a real marginal pot calling throughout striker and with it, and you're like, bam. Is that right? Yeah. And then tell me about the triple locator again. So Hawk Scream, it's got three settings on the band. So if you set it closest to the-

That's that call right there. Yeah, we got this, and then we also have it in like a more custom fancy laminate. You got the owl screamer in the middle setting, and then all the way back we've got that pileated woodpecker. Just locator. All in the middle setting. And then all the way back, we've got that, uh, pileated woodpecker, um, just locator. All in one. Yeah. Loud, extremely loud, you know, with the intention.

Hunters, the hunters call just to get them to locate. Yep. Are you still selling clays to acorn call? We are. We're about out. I, we, we did that rerun and really didn't talk a whole lot about it.

And I think we're, we're getting down into real low two digit inventory left and that's going to be the last run ever. Um, we've made some improvements. Yeah. Um, some material improvements and, uh, uh, yeah, gonna, gonna, the one little issue. Those will be collectors.

You're going to retire it. Yeah. Well, so Clay, we did something cool. We wanted to use white Oak and we realized like the finishing of white Oak was a giant pain in the ass at times. So we had to go back and change them over inside. But the structure of the call being an inhale, exhale, doe bleat, buck grunt. I mean, that's the acorn grunter.

But the oak acorn grunter is. The oak part is going to go away. We're going to switch it over to acrylic. How many did we make of those total? In the two rooms at 1200 um total and then so you don't have if you want to get one we sold a bunch of them there at the portland show people loved them and yeah it's it's pretty unique great sounding call you blow on one and i'll take that yeah well speaking of a collector's item you know it happened to me there tonight there was a huge mistake my buddies were over because of my birthday and someone's like hey can we open

this bottle of whiskey oh don't well i was like well i was like yeah i don't care we quit drinking and you know that they opened i didn't realize it was sitting back there when we had that that barrel of meat eater bourbon oh it was the number it was the bottle that said 001 and i had like you were never gonna use it i know but dude they got it you got a little chunk change for that if it was if you would have sent it to my collection it would still be sitting up there unopened i'll still pit once what happened, yeah, it's gone now. Save the bottle. It's half gone.

Save the bottle. This is the, like whiskey's meant to be drinking, you know, by good friends. And what better than the 50th birthday party? It was my oldest friends. It was like my OG friends that drank it. So that's fine. All right, Dave, you do the same thing.

What's the hot new ticket, the dsd items for for spring turkey which is coming up new for this spring is that we finally made um a pack that's designed to carry dsd turkey decoys it's a fly down pack and it was designed by our own scott sprecker and um it is um i mean rather than putting them in a big gunny sack? Yeah, rather than putting the straps around your neck. And it's like you put two this way and two this way. I cross them, so I'm getting strangled from each side. Yeah, which we've all done. But this is a really comfortable pack that's lightweight.

It has a divider in it, so it easily carries a Jake and a hen, a half-strut Jake and a hen, and maybe a little more and a hen. Um, and maybe, maybe a little more than that. And then there's also a chest rig and they can be worn together. And the chest rig is basically to hold everything, every essential thing that you need for turkey hunting. Uh, did you bring, did you bring me one of those packs? Nope. Does it have a place?

Uh, it replaces your turkey, your turkey vest. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it has a, uh, and it has a place? It replaces your turkey vest. Yeah. Yeah. And it has a pad, a seat pad. Really? Yeah. I just want the backpack.

It's not quite the utility belt. That's what I was thinking. I want the bag to carry the decoys in instead of putting them in those big ass gunny sacks. Yeah. You can put the decoy within its bag in the backpack or just take it out of its bag and put it in the backpack because it protects the whole decoy. So that makes it super fast, super fast setup. No, that's what I want. And you can buy it, Steve, as just the backpack or just the chest pack or you can get the pair. And you guys are all in stock.

People aren't going to have any problem when they go to buy their decoys for this spring. So far, we're caught up. Good, man. I'm getting excited. Turkey's coming. It's here for the people down south.

I'm excited. This time of year, I get where I do a mental transition, and I just start putting junk away. If I had ice fishing stuff out, it's done. Trap and stuff, put it away. Just start clearing the deck. I lose interest in everything, and it's like turkey time.

Yeah, it's exciting time. And then one thing I might add to that steve is our preening hen was so popular last year and so many of our customers were actually buying multiple preening hens that we're now offering it as a twin pack you can get two preening hens and save a little money that way sweet so that was a decoy we came out with kind of late so a lot of people used it last year and and it we were really super happy with it did you bring one of those yeah we do we've got one here oh there we go it's like it's like almost um yeah so this is just a steve happy belated confidence decoy you know now do you think when a big gobbler comes up to two preening decoys he's gonna go Steve, happy belated. Confidence decoy, you know. Do you think when a big gobbler comes up to two preening decoys, he's going to go,

what are the chances both of those ladies are preening at the same time? But I will say this. In our observations, it was amazing the number of times that four or five hens are preening together, and they're preening the same group of feathers at the same time and so that's what's so amazing about this decoy is that that is a sign of turkeys that are 100 relaxed like they will only do that do feather maintenance when they're just completely feeling safe so it's the opposite of the decoy where they're all standing exactly vertical. Yeah. With their eyes bugging out the side of their head.

Yeah. Looking in the same direction. Yeah. Well, that's great, man. All right. Well, thanks for coming on, guys. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having us.

I like having the roundup, the turkey roundup of everything that's going on this year. Fired up. Do a gobble, Phelps. Oh, you put me on the spot again. Let me hear yours, Clay. No, Phelps. Here's mine. yep that's all i need to hear right there all right guys thanks for coming on so everybody check out as you uh gearing up for for spring

turkey check out dsd decoys check out fhf gear for all your totem, your, your, your binos and totem equipment and the apex belt and Phelps game calls for all your felt for all your game calls needs. Get out, get some gobblers, make some schnitzel and watch for our, our, the evolution of a Turkey going into his strut t-shirt. Seven,

eight strut, seven, eight strut. All right. Thanks guys. Thank you. 7-8 strut 7-8 strut alright thanks guys thank you I'm a backwoods gangster, real job turkey Stay sharp cause I know murderers lurking Behind every tree, busting caps in me

Most fools couldn't hit a barn like a leech Wear my beard like a gold chain Stiff on acorns like they're cocaine Got a sexy ass waddle on my neck Got six inch spurs so don't disrespect Stay high in my roost all night. Spitting at heads, getting in fights. Can't fool me with your weak ass calls.

Rio Grande's like Tupac and Eastern's like baseball. These words are dangerous for infamous long beards I'm a bus tom badass Certified mossback Lunatic long beard Thunder chicken hammerhead King cause I got a boss tom badass, certified mossback, Runetic, long beard, thunder chicken hammerhead, King cause I got a white crown, Watching homies getting murdered, dead on the ground, Ain't scared of an owl or a crow, No way I'm ever gonna shock, I'm a bro,

Walk into the party full strut, Show my snood steal the brood, not giving a glug, Got beef with a homie named Jake for sure, Stole his Jenny, took her home, then I made her purr No tomfoolery, you can't fool me Camo wearing amateurs, I might just see go damage ya These words are dangerous Forever messed long beards Yo, shout out to my Marriam's up in the 406

My gold's down in AC Osceola's over in Miami To my eastern With that long beard Of course Rio Grande For life And I'm south Of the border homies

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