Ryan Barnes for SPLIT REED
In the world of waterfowl hunting, there are two sure-fire ways to get yourself invited on hunts. 1- have a great dog, or, 2- know how to run a call. For Colton Thompson, he has the luxury of being able to bring both to the table. For around five years now, Colton has been the owner and operator of Grayquill Kennels. With a desire to spend more time with his retrievers, Colton decided that waterfowl hunting would be a great way to spend more time with his duck dogs. “Unfortunately, I didn’t really have anyone to teach me or show me how to do it, so I just kind of had to get in there and poke around and figure it out myself”. At that starting point, it was recommended that Colton become proficient on a duck call. That way he could get some invites out of his home state of Alabama, which isn’t really known for its prolific duck hunting, and find himself on some better hunts. “As I was starting to learn how to call, I got involved with contest calling. In my first year, I competed in 10 or 11 qualifying contests. I never won the first year to qualify for Stuttgart, but I came in second. So I came really close. But the second year after that I won the Alabama State, which ignited a fire for me. At that point I wanted to get into the shop, and make a duck call”, Colton says. After making a few custom calls, and letting a few others use them, then selling a few, to then having a book of business, Colton quickly created his own custom call company. That custom call company would be a catalyst that would help form what we know today as Maker’s Call Company.
From making custom calls and talking on forums and using Facebook, Colton came in contact with Travis Ward, the other half of Maker’s Call Company. “We got together and had the idea that, ‘Ok, you and I both know the ins and outs of calls and call-making. We know how to make calls from the ground up, we understand the mechanics of how a duck call works, why don’t we pool our resources and try to come up with something really cool?’ It took us forever to come up with a name, and I forget which one of us suggested it, but we said ‘Why don’t we call it Maker’s Call Company? Since we’re both call makers”. The name stuck, and Maker’s Call Company was off to the races. With Colton and Travis putting together their know-how to develop some amazing duck calls.
Before he spent his time working with retrievers and turning duck calls, Thompson was a radar engineer. So needless to say, Colton didn’t cut class like the rest of us to go duck hunting during his time in school. For five years he worked a desk job, and as he puts it, “tried to keep us safe from someone shooting missiles over here”.
Colton says that his story went from dogs to learning how to call, to learning how to make a call, to learning how to run a call company. All in a very short period of time. “I’m still just trying to figure out a way to piece together this story, just because it all happened so fast”.
Colton says that there are plenty of amazing call companies out there, and Maker’s isn’t out here claiming to be the new “best” on the market. What Maker’s is doing is putting out duck calls that people can buy, and enjoy blowing, and feel confident putting on their lanyard as they head into the field. “If guys want to try them out and it’s not their jam, that’s fine. Where Travis and I are hyper-focused on sound, we spend our time trying to make the best sounding call we possibly can. Where we both have experience with two different custom call lines, we can bring that together, and focus on creating a premium sounding call”.
Something that Maker’s pride themselves in is not only the unique nature of their sound, but the unique nature of their design and origin (which also happens to be the name of one of their J-frames). While some call companies model a certain call, Colton says that their calls are completely unique. They aren’t modeled or replicated after any other call on the market. There was no barrel stuffing or copying to try to get things right. Simply just working off their own designs and ideas to make sure they got the tone and sound they like and think sounds the best. “When we started making these calls we started with something that was as rudimentary and as ‘point zero’ as you could get. There was nothing that we modeled it off of, there was no copying another tone board, or modifying another tone board to get our sound. It was, ‘Ok, what do we want in a call that will sound the best?’ and we had to take that from our brain and ears, to our hand, and figure out how to make that sound with the calls we were building”. Thompson says there were no short-cuts or cutting corners, and he believes that they benefited tremendously from doing so.
When asked about the process of learning how to turn calls, Colton said that it was a lot of trial and error, and a few different YouTube videos. “I watched some YouTube videos on how to start turning calls, because I had no idea how to even start. All I knew was a round hole, round peg, that was about it. That was the extent of what I knew. So I bought a $200 used jet-lathe from a pipe-maker that I used to work with. This thing was old, but it worked, and I used that for awhile because I was broke at the time, but that’s what I used just to learn how to turn wood. Things like how to put your bit in the head stock, how to use your tail stock and all those rudimentary things I learned how to do first. I did a lot of stupid stuff too, like not wearing eye protection, or a mask with any sort of ventilation and that kind of stuff,” says Thompson about his first experiences with turning calls.
Luckily, through some connections and more videos online, Colton began to get more versed in turning wood on a lathe and actually shaping the wood into the shape and product he was after. He does mention that he didn’t care so much about the shape of the call as he did the tone board. He says, “I spent more time on the tone board than I did the shape of the call, because that’s the most important part of the call. That’s where the money is. The tone board, the tone channel the exhaust. That’s the most important”. Thompson says that he spent a lot of time on a flat jig, just trying to figure out the best way to shape his tone boards. He would then take a file from that point to get the tone board to where he wanted it and where he liked the sound. Colton says it took him about four months to get his custom jig dialed in to be able to turn a call to the point where he wanted it. He also says that knowing how to operate a call well helped him.
By knowing what adjustments needed to be made here and there, it allowed him to know what tweaks and turns needed to be made on his jig to get the right sound out of his tone board. “By being able to operate a call well, and push a call to the very edge, that helped me streamline the process and have more success than some of the other guys I’ve talked to in the past. I think the hours and hours I spent driving to different shops and getting calling lessons from other guys really helped the process of me getting everything I needed figured out for my custom tone board”.
Even with a call company and a kennel to run, that won’t deter Thompson from going and competing in duck calling contests this year. With plans to compete in multiple events throughout the remainder of the year, Colton has his sights set on qualifying for the world championship in Stuttgart. “Competing is fun, and it validates what you do as a call maker,” Colton adds.
When it comes to retrievers, Colton bought his first retriever in 2016, “Unfortunately he didn’t really pan out, because 2016 was the year I graduated, and I did what everyone else does when they graduate- take the worst job with the highest pay. So I was working 60 hours a week driving an hour and a half one way, so you can imagine how that went with him. But it worked out because he really wasn’t the caliber of dog I wanted anyway. He just wasn’t able to do what I wanted him to do. So I picked up another pup after I moved jobs and moved to Huntsville. That dog is Delta, and she was the next step that kind of launched it for me. I got extremely lucky with her, as far as performance goes. I don’t know that I would be on the path that I’m on if it weren’t for her”.
Colton says that he didn’t train professionally under anyone, most of it has been reading and learning as he went. He has met a few people along the way that have helped him and had a positive impact. One of them being Corey Wages. Thompson says that they’re friends because of the dogs, but even outside the dogs they remain friends. “He’s been a great friend to me and a fantastic motivator to me to keep pushing me to be a better trainer”. For the training side of things, it started with Delta, then another dog, and another, and another, until Thompson found himself with a list of clients that are trusting him with their dogs to have them polished off for duck season. “I bought 5 or 6 dogs of my own to train and sell before I started taking on clients. I felt like that was a fair way to get things started. I didn’t want to be the guy that trained 1 or 2 and then called it good. I wanted to have a portfolio of what I’d done and what I’d accomplished with my own dogs and my own money and my own time before I started taking on clients”. Thompson admits that while he loves turning calls, dogs are his pride and joy. The satisfaction of training and shaping a dog is something that he holds near and dear. Especially because it’s where all of this started. Luckily for Colton, the two have been able to coincide. As Maker’s has grown, it’s shown the chance to help grow his dog training business.
In just under a year, Maker’s has grown to be one of the most desirable call makers on the market. Their official launch was in November of 2020, so it goes without saying that any call company that has skyrocketed as they have is clearly making a top-shelf product. Thompson says, “For us, the intention is to be a slow burn. We want to be here in 20 years. We want to be another call company that is comparable to all these other call makers that have been in the game for multiple years. We’re not here to say we’re better than these call companies because we’re not. ‘Better’ is a relative term. We just want to keep making solid calls and solid products. We want people to believe in us and believe in what we’re doing as call makers. We want to be around for a long time, we want to be around for your kids, and your grandkids”.
Thompson wants the stories that people tell now about going and picking up calls from the RNT shop or the Echo shop to be told about them. In the future, he wants people to tell stories about going and stopping by the Maker’s Call Company shop and talking to him and Travis. Stories are to be passed down from generation to generation. And at the caliber their calls are being made, it doesn’t sound like that’s too far from being a reality.
