Episode 1: Meet the ‘Duck Slayer’

He’s obsessed with superior craftsmanship. He’s passionate about preservation and hunting heritage. And he’s got a lucky DR-115 duck call that he just can’t manage to lose. 

Meet the man, the legend, the mastermind behind Slayer Duck Calls: Bill Ayer.

For Bill “Duck Slayer” Ayer, creating the perfect duck call quickly moved from a hobby to a full-blown obsession. After spinning up more than 50 prototypes over the span of a decade, Bill handcrafted the duck call that could do it all. Folks told him it was one of the best calls they’d ever blown. With a supportive hunting community behind him, Bill turned his obsession into a business: Slayer Duck Calls.

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We want to hear about your family’s hunting traditions! Did your grandpa pass on a classic shotgun? Did your dad take you out at the crack of dawn to sit in the blind? Drop a line to podcast@SlayerDuckCalls.com with the stories, memories and traditions that make up your hunting heritage. 

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If you’d like to support Slayer Duck Calls, 10% of each purchase goes to organizations that protect the environment and wildlife, support conservation efforts and preserve America’s hunting heritage. Grab a gift card for the hunters in your life to celebrate everything from birthdays to holidays to the start of duck season. 

Transcript

Speaker 1:

We are here with Bill Ayer, founder and owner of Slayer Duck Calls. Bill, I did some research today, so I literally know nothing about duck hunting, waterfowl hunting at all. I decided to go down the rabbit hole today.

Speaker 1:

I found out some pretty cool things, but I want to ask you, I want to start. What got you into... I read your bio. It said you started running at eight. Who got you into it? Your dad, friends?

Bill Ayer:

Yeah. It's a long story. I don't know how much you want to know that, but basically, I grew up with my dad and taking me hunting. As far back as I can remember, as soon as I could barely walk, my dad had me come along on pheasant hunts. He was a big time pheasant hunter. He was not a duck hunter.

Bill Ayer:

I just remember walking through corn. The corn stubble was about as tall as I was at that time, and I remember going through tall corn and getting scared and starting to cry because I couldn't find my dad. It was this huge maze of tall corn, and he'd kill a pheasant and I'd carry that thing. I don't know, five, six, seven, seemed like 20 miles by the time we were done by the end of the day, but I would tote his pheasant along and watch the dog work.

Bill Ayer:

I was always amazed. I know as a kid, I was always amazed at watching the dog work on the pheasant, picking up scent, starting to get birdie, going on point, bird flushing, and my dad, either missing or killing the pheasant, and seeing that bird come back in the dog's mouth to me was just always just... I don't know. I look back at that. It's just like, it brings back just super cool memories of the fields that we walk, being with my dad and all that.

Bill Ayer:

I didn't get really into duck hunting until about eight years old. My dad used to let me shoot coots. When we're out pheasant hunting, we'd see some coots. He'd give me the gun when I was, I don't know, six, seven years old, and let me shoot a couple of coots, and ironically, not too many people eat coots.

Bill Ayer:

They're not known as a very good duck to eat, but my grandfather and grandmother, they came over from Sicily and my grandfather loved coot.

Speaker 1:

Oh wow.

Bill Ayer:

He'd let me shoot coots, bring them to my Grandpa [Pesero 00:02:03], and he'd cook them up and love them.

Speaker 1:

Did he cook those up a special way or was it just a...

Bill Ayer:

I can't remember, to be honest with you. I wish I had his recipe because I don't know a good coot/mud hen recipe for the life of me, so I wish I had it. I don't know if it would've been good or not, and he used to eat Babbalucci, which is snails and things like that. So he ate a bunch of weird things. I don't know if the coots would have been any good or not.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely.

Bill Ayer:

[crosstalk 00:02:33] that was my first duck, if you want to call a coot a duck. People would probably laugh at me if I call the coot a duck, but that's probably my first waterfowl that I actually shot when I was probably six or seven. But then what got me into it when I was eight years old, we grew up in a pretty predominant Italian community and a lot of the Italians would go up, and they'd fish out of the Golden Gate during the summer.

Bill Ayer:

Then in the winter, they didn't have a whole lot to do so they duck hunted all winter, and so I had a lot of friends and this guy, Brian, his family was a huge duck hunting family. Every once in a while, they'd let me go out, and they'd have these big elaborate blinds. We'd drive the boat, park underneath them, and you'd get out. They'd spend all summer camouflaging these blinds and building them and tuning them up for the season.

Bill Ayer:

We'd get in there, and it was just, for me, that was the cream of the crop, just the boat ride out there, going through waves, the weather, sitting out there and during it, watching these birds work these big ponds over tulies, and come in over the decoys and watch his brothers call and his dad call. For whatever reason, it instantly hooked me. I was like, I'm going to duck on the rest of my life.

Speaker 1:

Do you remember when you got your first call?

Bill Ayer:

That was probably when I was 10 to 12 years old. I still remember exactly where I bought it and when I bought it. I can't tell you the exact age I was at, but I was probably 10 to 12 years old. I bought an Olt DR-115 from a Kmart in Antioch, California.

Bill Ayer:

I remember my mom taking me to the store. I picked up this call, and I was like, "I got to have this call." She's like, "Are you sure? Is it any good?" I'm like, "Oh yeah, that's the best call ever." I had no clue.

Speaker 1:

You had no idea.

Bill Ayer:

Yeah, and it's this big wooden call, and I still have that call on my lanyard today.

Speaker 1:

Do you really?

Bill Ayer:

Yeah, and do you know what? I've killed thousands, I don't know about thousands, I've probably killed hundreds of ducks with that call, and just for sentimental reasons, I keep it on my lanyard.

Speaker 1:

Do you still use it?

Bill Ayer:

Well, I do. I call it the fog horn. It's weird because we'll be out there and not a whole lot's going on, and for whatever reason, it's my good luck charm. People that know me, they'll be like, "Hey, blow that fog horn." I'll do a high ball, and it'll be [wap, wap, wap, wap, wap 00:05:00]. I'll tell you what, probably 30% of the time something happens.

Speaker 1:

Really?

Bill Ayer:

I think it's just dumb luck.

Speaker 1:

Is it really?

Bill Ayer:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

So after all these years, that call still works. No problems. Have you had to repair it?

Bill Ayer:

No, it's in pretty bad condition. The reeds are worn out. Gosh, I've lost the soundboard on it, I can't tell you how many times. Somehow, I find that thing laying in the corn, laying in the field, laying in the blind.

Speaker 1:

Wow. You and that call were meant to be together.

Bill Ayer:

Yeah. I actually bought a DR-115 on eBay that's in the box new.

Speaker 1:

It's funny you say that, because I was... When I read your bio today, I actually went and looked up the Olt DR-115, and the only place I could find them was eBay.

Bill Ayer:

Yep.

Speaker 1:

And there's not a lot.

Bill Ayer:

Yeah. When I bought that call, it was 12 bucks. I still remember it was 12 bucks, and my mom was... We didn't have a whole lot of money growing up, and my mom was like, "Well, if you buy that, you can't lose it. You got to take care of it." Now, you find them on eBay, they're 65, 85 bucks [crosstalk 00:06:02] more.

Speaker 1:

They are. Let me ask you this, me doing a little bit of research this morning, I didn't realize how, first of all, how complex the duck call is itself. I had no idea. It's a pretty simple concept.

Speaker 1:

When you're talking about different tunes, single reed, double reed, different tone for different areas, that kind of interests me because apparently there's different... If you're in an open water setting or a big water setting, you would use maybe a double reed. It's louder.

Bill Ayer:

Yeah. You're probably looking at your acrylics. Single reeds tend to be a little louder. You're looking at acrylics, and also, it makes them louder is the tone channel and the exhaust. The open-water, you're definitely looking for a call that can get out there, cut through wind, cut through space. In the timber, you tend to get a lot of echoing if you're too loud. We'll start to tone that back and look for something a little less loud or that won't echo.

Speaker 1:

Is wood itself just a softer tone?

Bill Ayer:

Yep, just it absorbs vibrations, absorbs sound, also the harmonics on it, close together. What happens is, is it by the harmonics being a little further apart, it absorbs that sound and dampens it a bit.

Speaker 1:

First of all, when did you decide to start Slayer?

Bill Ayer:

Oh gosh, it was probably four or five years ago, maybe five years ago. Another, it's a long story, but...

Speaker 1:

No, I want to hear it.

Bill Ayer:

My grandfather, who came over from Sicily, he was a custom furniture maker, and he came over in the early, gosh, early '20s and started a custom furniture business coming off the boat in New York. Then the Depression hit, they moved out to Pittsburgh, California, and he continued that business.

Bill Ayer:

Then my dad, he was a Marine, but then out of the Marines, he became a steelworker. He worked steel with his hands. My grandfather worked wood with his hands, and I remember, my uncle I was super close with, he was a fourth generation cobbler. His parents were from Italy.

Speaker 1:

Wow.

Bill Ayer:

Yeah, and so my mom, she worked, my dad worked, so she'd dropped me off at my grandfather's a lot, where I'd watch him work wood. Then she'd dropped me off at my uncle's shop where I'd watch him work shoes. Then as I got older, they'd have me work in the shops.

Speaker 1:

Do you actually do some of the shoe work?

Bill Ayer:

Yep, yep. I couldn't make a shoe if my life depended on it, a complete shoe, but I can take a heel off. I could put a heel on. I could put a sole out, and take a sole off, put a sole on.

Speaker 1:

That's really cool though.

Bill Ayer:

Things like that. My uncle would be like, "Hey, pop this heel off, pop this sole off. Here, punch these in, or lace a sole on and things like that." I got to work with my hands, and then, I played sports. Got into school, got into college, playing college football and all my buddies went into the finance industry or software industry.

Bill Ayer:

I grew up in California, so everybody was going and hitting the dot-com boom, and so I got sucked into that. For 20 years, I was trying to make money and lost the art of working with my hands and some of those old school things.

Bill Ayer:

I was like, you know what? I bought just about every duck call on the market. There's some really good ones, 90% of them are garbage. I've wasted probably a thousand, probably $2,000, maybe $3,000 on duck calls that I've just blown for a little while. They're just being thrown in the trash or given to some little kid.. But the good ones, they do one thing really well, but I didn't find a call that could do everything really well.

Bill Ayer:

I was like, you know what? I want to mess around with this. I know a little bit about wood. I watched my grandfather work a lathe, and the lathe always amazed me. He'd make spindles for bed frames. He'd make legs for chairs on the lathe. He'd make legs for tables. He didn't make columns on the lathe, all kinds of stuff. He always used hand tools, a very crude type of machinery, not the stuff that they have today.

Bill Ayer:

I was always super amazed by that, that works. I'm like, uh, I went and bought a lathe and started tooling around and made a duck call. It didn't work and made about 50 others and it didn't work. Man, this isn't easy. Through those errors, I started to learn what causes the call to work, what causes it not to work, what causes it to make certain sounds and so forth.

Bill Ayer:

Over about 10 years of piddling around with this, I came up with a call that was pretty darn good, and so I still didn't think about doing a company or making duck calls, but then, I started giving them away to folks. They're like, "Dude, this is probably one of the best calls I've ever blown. You should sell these things." I'm like, "Eh, I don't know." 

Speaker 1:

It was a hobby. It was just something you liked doing.

Bill Ayer:

Yeah, it was a hobby. I was making good money selling software. Companies I was working with were going public or getting acquired, and I thought, man, I can make a lot more money in software. Anyhow, a couple more years go by and more people are like, dude, you got to sell these. My sister and I put together a shabby little website, and started selling them and people started buying them.

Speaker 1:

Do you still manufacture some yourself?

Bill Ayer:

Yeah. Everything that goes out of Slayer today goes on my lathe and I tune it. I polish it. I manipulate it so that it's perfect when it goes out. Now, I send it to a CNC shop to have [inaudible 00:11:29] work done. But when it comes in, it's never at the point where it works to the standards that I have for it to  go out.

Bill Ayer:

I make sure I put the reeds on. If the reeds look a hair too long, I'll knock a little off. I always hit sandpaper on the soundboard, make sure that they're tuned correctly and make sure their hand polished look correctly before they go out.

Speaker 1:

You touch every single one before it hits the market.

Bill Ayer:

Yep.

Speaker 1:

Wow. That's pretty impressive.

Bill Ayer:

Yeah, it's not very scalable, but I believe that... It goes back to my uncle making shoes and my grandfather making furniture. If it's not right, it doesn't go out, and the reason people went to my uncle - the Oakland A's, San Francisco Giants used to bring their gloves, their shoes, just for my uncle to work the leather.

Speaker 1:

Holy crap, man.

Bill Ayer:

My uncle had a good reputation for quality and for getting it right, and same with my grandfather. People all over the Bay area would go to him because they knew they were going to get quality... I still have furniture at the house that my grandfather made, 60, 70, 80 years ago. It's better furniture than I've ever bought anywhere else.

Bill Ayer:

That's the quality and the craftsmanship that I want to put into every call. For me, if I don't sell a hundred thousand duck calls because I have to touch them all, that's okay.

Speaker 1:

That's good though, because not many companies are willing to. Especially, you're not just the owner, you're an operator and you're touching every single product before it goes out . That's a heavy load, especially with the amount you guys are selling right now.

Bill Ayer:

Yeah, yeah. It is. I don't know. What time is it now? It's 7:15 my time in Idaho here, and I'll be up until 11 o'clock. I got a show in Texas coming up on the 25th, and I want to bring, I don't know, 400 or 500 calls there. I'll be up until midnight tonight, messing with calls and getting them ready.

Speaker 1:

Work that out, wow.

Bill Ayer:

It's a typical day for me, working the books and all the other stuff that goes along with owning a business during the day, and then usually my nights are out in the shop, and that's with the calls.

Speaker 1:

Are your calls more... Obviously, they're being handcrafted, made in the United States, and beautiful, by the way. The photos on the website, I don't think do them justice. They look great, but I've seen it in person, and it's amazing. Do you think that your duck calls are catered towards the more hardcore duck hunter?

Bill Ayer:

Yeah. Again, I'm trying to make one call that does it all, because you don't need a million calls on your lanyard. It's just clumsy and it's messy. It'd be nice to have two or three calls on your lanyard that you can trust and use for a lifetime. What I tried to do when I build a call is build something that is aesthetically cool, different and appealing and pretty awesome.

Speaker 1:

They are awesome.

Bill Ayer:

Yeah, something that's durable, something that's going to withstand three degree weather, snow, rain, freezing temperatures, warm weather, whatever, that you're hunting down in Louisiana or Texas. Then, if you're up north in Idaho or North Dakota, and you're hunting, this thing's going to withstand all that and still last you.

Bill Ayer:

I try to put all that together into one call, and then not only with the aesthetics and the durability, but also a call that can high ball. I might have the only double reed call that you can actually high ball with. There's probably some out there that can do it, but every call that goes out, our double reed's going to high ball. They can get low. They can, for the trees, if you can take the echo out. You can refuge, feed. You can Cajun Squeal with them. You could do the bouncing hand.

Bill Ayer:

You could just do your basic come back calls, your greeting calls with them, so it's definitely a call that you can do everything with. Hopefully, it's a call that everybody can appreciate the aesthetics and durability of.

Speaker 1:

When you duck hunt in Idaho, do you have a particular area you like to go to?

Bill Ayer:

In Idaho, I still like doing it the hard way. In California, I grew up on the Delta and it was different back then. I'm only 50 years old, so when I say "back then," I feel like I'm talking like I'm an 80 year old.

Speaker 1:

Way back in 1870.

Bill Ayer:

Yeah, but back in the day... It was all public land that we hunted on the Delta, but everybody staked claim to a certain area and they'd build a blind. It was just an unwritten rule that if somebody had a blind there, you didn't hunt it.

Bill Ayer:

You did it the hard way. You got up at 3:30 in the morning, you got your boat out. The Delta would get rough, you get five, six foot swells out there. You'd take on the water as you're hitting those on a 12-foot, 16-foot aluminum boat. You get out there, and you set decoys and you're getting cold. You're getting wet.

Bill Ayer:

I still like doing it the hard way. Here in Idaho, I'll hunt the Snake River a lot. I hunt the Boise River a lot, and we're getting up early. We're going out in typical, average temperatures. Probably, I think last year it was 19 degrees. You're doing 25, 35 minute boat rides in the dark. A lot of times, it's snowing, or the wind's blowing and it's cold.

Speaker 1:

I lived in Eastern Idaho. I lived in a little town called Swan Valley for a while.

Bill Ayer:

Yeah, that's beautiful up there.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it is. It's gorgeous. I lived there for a couple of years.

Bill Ayer:

I've belonged to clubs and I've hunted in flooded corn and rice and all that, and some expensive clubs. I don't know, that's fun, but it's almost like going out in your backyard and shooting your cow. Don't get me wrong. There's something for everybody, and I don't knock it.

Bill Ayer:

If that's your thing, I'm all for it. Somebody has a disability or they're getting older and they don't want to do it the hard way anymore, or they don't have a lot of time. They need something that's there and set up, or maybe they don't have a boat. Maybe they don't have the resources to do it the hard way.

Bill Ayer:

To each his own, I'm all for it. But for me, it keeps me in shape. It keeps me alert. I like competing against other hunters for the birds. It keeps me on my game, so I like doing it the hard way.

Speaker 1:

If someone wanted to, a newbie, wanted to get into duck hunting. Obviously, there's a lot involved. I found out quickly today. Well, what would you recommend, the starting packet?

Bill Ayer:

Oh gosh. First, I would go to somebody that you trust that duck hunts, because I've wasted I don't know how many thousands of dollars on poor equipment. Everybody says they're waterproof. I've yet to find one or two things that are actually waterproof year over year and that will last and continue to be waterproof, backpacks, bags, guns, ammo, waders, to gloves, to hats.

Bill Ayer:

You want to be out there and be comfortable. We'll sit out there for five, six, seven hours sometimes, and if you get cold, your feet get wet or you get a chill on you, it's just miserable. It's not fun for anybody. I don't care how tough you are, so you want to invest in good equipment, and it comes with a price. You don't want to waste money finding out that your jacket is not waterproof or finding out that your boots aren't warm enough.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. It's too late if you're out there and your shoes aren't waterproof.

Bill Ayer:

Yeah and you already bought a $400 pair of waders and they're not working out for you. You bought a $300 jacket, it's not working out for you. All your equipment and your backpack gets wet or just doesn't carry it properly, and it's just a pain in the ass.

Bill Ayer:

Find somebody that you trust that can steer you in the right direction, and hopefully, what we're going to do on the Slayer website is give a lot of that advice to hunters, young folks or anybody who wants to get into the sport and help them. It's always good to learn from somebody's mistakes, so you don't make them, and so I've made a million of them myself. I would love to get... Because all it takes is a couple of bad experiences for somebody like, you know what? Duck hunting isn't for me.

Bill Ayer:

They're out there, they're shivering, and some old grizzly dude's like, "Nah, we're not going in. I don't care how cold you are." [inaudible 00:19:10] The next time the alarm clock goes off at three o'clock, they're like, "Oh, I'm going to stay in my warm bed here."

Speaker 1:

"That guy was a jerk. I think I'll just stay in bed right now." I'm assuming that if someone was getting into duck hunting, they're probably an experienced hunter in some fashion, maybe not. But it would probably be helpful to find someone that you can, with a lot of experience, that can lead you down the right path and equipment.

Speaker 1:

The 101, I guess, of equipment and clothing, things like that, you could probably find just about anywhere, but you need someone that has enough experience, like you said, and screwed up and bought the wrong crap a lot that can actually walk someone through it and help them out. I think it's a great idea to put videos on the website because...

Speaker 1:

I saw on the website right now, you have some tutorials on some of the duck calls, which is great. I think that kind of content though, just expanding that content, that would be awesome for you guys.

Bill Ayer:

Yeah, and the equipment is just the first thing is... I got a funny story - this last fall, my nephew wanted to go duck hunting again. My mother-in-law's husband passed away, and he had a bunch of guns and she gave him a shotgun. He comes over. He's like, "Hey Bill, I got this shotgun. I want to go duck hunting."

Bill Ayer:

He comes in, and it's got a red dot sight on it. It's got about a 16-inch barrel with an extended groove that holds 12 rounds, and it's got a pistol grip. I'm like, "Nick, that is not a duck hunting gun. That is a home defense shotgun."

Speaker 1:

That's John Wick's shotgun.

Bill Ayer:

If John Wick owns that shotgun, they must've got it from him because you're not going to kill any duck... You could, but that's not what to do.

Speaker 1:

Gets you awful close.

Bill Ayer:

Then he's like, "Well, what can you..." I'm like, "I'll give you a shotgun to use." He goes, "Well, what kind of shells do I need to buy?" You'd be surprised. They want to go duck hunting, but they're completely clueless. There's a lot to it, and then I'll go, "Well, go buy some three inch threes. It doesn't matter what kind, black cloud, camps, real, whatever you want to buy, but just get..." "Buy some, what? Three inch threes? What?"

Bill Ayer:

Then they get to the store. There's no three inch threes. He's like, "Well, can I get these three inch slugs? I'm like, "Nah, you're not..." You know, well.

Speaker 1:

You want to take the bird back.

Bill Ayer:

Exactly.

Speaker 1:

That's hilarious.

Bill Ayer:

Yeah, so there's a lot to the equipment, but then the moment you're out hunting, there's a lot of unwritten rules. I think I might do a podcast on some things not to do when you go duck hunting and just try to help folks out.

Bill Ayer:

There's a lot of things that just aren't written down, that when you're in the blind, some things that you need to pay attention to so that you don't upset the other folks that you're with or screw up the hunt, flaring birds and things like that.

Speaker 1:

I think probably, and it might not be the most fun thing, but I think maybe observing a couple haunts before you actually get into it. Have the patience to go out and watch people that know what they're doing, do it, and then emulate that. Instead of, because you don't want to be that guy. You don't want to be that guy. No one wants to be that guy.

Bill Ayer:

No, and then, that's how I learned. I just thought that... My buddy, Brian Subrani, he took me out with his family that time, and then, I got to know some of my other aunts and uncles, friends, who have blinds out there on the Delta. Then they'd tote me along, and they'd give me their two cents. Then I'd meet somebody else, and I'd go out them and they'd give me their 2 cents, and not that everybody did it right, but you start to...

Bill Ayer:

It's like any training or any course that you take, you take 20% of it. You throw the other 80% in the garbage until you have your own way of doing it right. Over the past 40, 45 years, that's what I've done is tailored it to the experience I want to have and the way I want to do it.

Speaker 1:

I think that, obviously with the knowledge you have, 40-plus years of waterfowl hunting, you can impart that knowledge on some people. There'll be a lot of grateful folks out there, I'm sure.

Bill Ayer:

Yeah, and again, and I don't consider myself an expert, but I do have 40 years of doing it. We have a lot of success and we have a lot of fun, and if I can give some of that knowledge to folks, that'd be awesome.

Speaker 1:

I'm just curious about, what show are you guys going to be at in Texas, by the way? Because I know Jennifer's going as well.

Bill Ayer:

Yeah, we're going to be at the Ducks Expo, which is put on through Ducks Unlimited, that will be in Fort Worth on the 25th through the 27th.

Speaker 1:

You taking 600 calls with you?

Bill Ayer:

Yeah, I'm going to try to, anywhere from four to 600. It depends on how many I get.

Speaker 1:

Bro, I hope you saw them all.

Bill Ayer:

Yeah, I do too.

Speaker 1:

I hope you sell them all, man. I think you guys got a great product. You guys have a big push behind you right now with the website and the social media and obviously Jennifer, and there's a couple other people helping you guys out. I think sky's the limit, seriously.

Bill Ayer:

Yeah. I'm passionate about it. People have been doing this, building duck calls, and selling them over the years. They probably think I'm crazy for getting into this, but it's a passion of mine. I love the craftsmanship of it. I love the people that are involved in duck hunting. They are the salt of the earth, and I love being around it. I love being around those people.

Bill Ayer:

For me, it's not work. It's a passion that I enjoyed. I don't want to lose that. I don't want to lose that history, that tradition, and a lot of these call makers are older. Dunn over at Echo, he's getting up there in age, and I don't know how much longer he's going to be doing it or if he's going to sell the company or what.

Bill Ayer:

These guys aren't going to be around forever, and the tradition of duck hunting, going out there with your father and doing that and doing it with, I go out with my daughter. She's in Oklahoma now, but she makes special trips every duck season to come out and duck count with me. Those days I'll never forget. They'll always be remembered, and I want her to have kids and take them out duck hunting.

Bill Ayer:

If you're not getting involved in this and keeping the sport of hunting, duck hunting and going, who's going to do it? I'm at that point in my life where I want to get back to it. It's given me so much, the places it's taken me, the people I've done it with. I got some close, close friends, guys that I went to kindergarten with that I still duck hunt with today, family members.

Bill Ayer:

It's like, I want others to experience that and have that, and so it's time for me now to give back. So, I'm like, okay, I'm done with the software world, the whole corporate America and all that, putting that to the side and going 100% here to try to preserve hunting.

Speaker 1:

Do you think you could make it scalable? I'm just curious.

Bill Ayer:

Yeah. I'm just going to have to teach people. I'll have apprentices just like my grandfather and my uncle did. You just got to teach people the craft of doing it. It's complicated, and it's trial and error and you just have to do hundreds of them, and then eventually you get the feel for it. You have to be able to blow a duck call in order to know what it's doing.

Speaker 1:

It's a hell of an investment in someone, though. It has to be the right person, because you're talking about hours and hours and hundreds of hours of work.

Bill Ayer:

There's a lot. One of my pro staff members, Tanner Hardy, he's a kid that could blow the roof off of a duck call, and he's handy. He's got a mechanical mind. He's a good old boy from Idaho. He's 20 years old, but he's probably worked more equipment and tools than most people have in a lifetime.

Speaker 1:

Wow.

Bill Ayer:

So a guy like that, and he's taken a real liking to the duck calls and the building of them and things like that. I've taken him under my wing to show him the trade and show them how it's done. I can see a guy like Tanner being a guy that I can give a call to and say, "Hey, tune this," and eventually he'll be able to do it.

Speaker 1:

You're going to need at least 10 more of him pretty soon.

Bill Ayer:

Yeah, yeah. Hopefully, that'd be a good problem to have. You bring up a good point. I got to start looking for other Tanners to start helping out there.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah. I know you got probably 50 duck call things to go work on, but I do appreciate you jumping in. I really wanted to just learn a little bit more about you. I think that people, they love a good product, but they love a good story, and when someone has passion behind what they're doing, it translates. It translates far more than just a nice advertisement on Facebook or whatever. I wanted to just hear it from you, and I think that's what people want to hear. They want to hear why.

Bill Ayer:

For sure. For me, it's not about the money. I don't make a ton of money on these calls by the time you get the acrylic, by the time you take it to the CNC machinist and they do their deal. We're not making a ton of money on each call. For me, it's the passion, it's the sport of hunting. It's being able to give back to the wildlife, conserving their habitats, that people actually have ducks to hunt.

Bill Ayer:

By the time you give 10% of that to Ducks Unlimited or whatnot, Delta Waterfowl, California Waterfowl. There's not a whole lot left over, but for me, it's not about the money. It's about the sport.