Guidefitter Spotlight Episode 09: Peter Andrews, Founder/CEO at HEYDAY

Transcript

Bryan Koontz (00:04) Hey everyone. Following is a conversation with Peter Andrews. He's the founder of Heyday, a waterfowl decoy company. They used to be called Lifetime Decoys. Peter's a Texas boy, went to school in Texas, business school in Texas as well, and grew up on a ranch south of Houston where they grew rice, which is a great place to attract waterfowl.

And had some great ideas for improving rigging initially. And then that led to him making some of his first set of decoys. So very cool entrepreneurial story from someone passionate about the sport and building a really cool business around waterfowling. So join me in this conversation with Peter and welcome to the Guidefitter Spotlight.

Bryan Koontz (00:00) What's your hunting story? How did you get into hunting?

Peter Andrews (00:03) Yeah, so my great grandfather purchased some property about 60 miles south of Houston near El Campo, which is a lot of rice fields and farming. So our ranch was, you know, and still is farmed for rice, which is a perfect wetland and environment for ducks. So I always grew up, you know, as a kid, just walking out there and having

ducks all over the place, you know, just being spoiled. And, and yeah, one day I was just, I was, I think the Texas rigs had just come out and they were made out of weed wacker line. And I had probably two or three dozen rigs, brand new rigged up on all my decoys. I was, you know, super excited to get out there and put them out there. And I dropped them in the water and they all just,

Bryan Koontz (00:37) Wow.

Peter Andrews (01:03) They all just tangled up together immediately from the memory in the line to where I couldn't even, I actually couldn't even use my decoys. It took me 30 minutes to get out like five decoys. So I was just like, you know, I was getting close to shooting time at that point. So I was so frustrated. I was so frustrated. There's gotta be a better material out there than this weed whacker line. So that's kind of how it all started. I just went to Home Depot, got some of that.

Bryan Koontz (01:18) That's not fun.

Peter Andrews (01:32) coated steel cable and made some rigs out of that and tried it out for about a year and they don't tangle, which was the biggest part. So I naively thought, you know, this is it. I'm going to make millions of millions of dollars by coming out with these decoy rigs. And, you know, it took it took a lot longer than I thought it might do to get the word out. But that's how we got our start. We did. You know, it was a

Bryan Koontz (01:50) Right.

Peter Andrews (02:01) a great improvement to a product that was out there. So I think, you know, people started to use it and agreed and that's kind of how we started out and that kind of

Bryan Koontz (02:14) And then you call, and the name of the company back, so you started a little company to start with the solving the tangle problem. Okay, and what in that, with the decoy rigs, right, right.

Peter Andrews (02:22) Yep, with the decoy rigs. And I, for some reason, called it Lifetime Decoys. I don't know why at the time. I was like, you know, if you put these rigs on your decoys, then they will last a lifetime. You know, it sounded good. So we called it Lifetime Decoys and did that for about four years before we came out with the actual duck decoys.

Bryan Koontz (02:36) Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, sure. OK.

Okay.

Peter Andrews (02:53) And we did that probably in 2016, 2017 is when we, is about five years later is when we came out with the duck decoy. So.

Bryan Koontz (03:05) Okay. And how did you did? I mean, I assume you just had to learn everything that goes into making an artificial duck, a duck decoy, like, you know, the molding or I don't even know how to do that. So like self -taught. How did you how did you even begin that process? Like, so you realized, hey, we have this first product, which is to, you know, to solve the tangling problem of all that of the rigs. Now we should expand upon that, get some more products decoys seem like a natural way to go. Like, what was the

Peter Andrews (03:17) Yeah.

Bryan Koontz (03:33) thought process then, like to launch into that and then how did you even know where to begin, you know?

Peter Andrews (03:36) Well.

I think we always wanted to get into decoys, but the problem was that we didn't have an idea of how to improve on what the best companies were doing for their duck decoys because they're super nice and painted super nice. We didn't want to just come out with another plastic decoy that was going to be just the same or similar to the competition because it would be hard to beat.

Bryan Koontz (04:05) Sure.

Peter Andrews (04:10) what they're doing with the plastic decoys. And one day me and Dane, who is my co -partner in the business, we were sitting in the lake and wearing Crocs, you know, in some shallow water, the shoes, and just popped off my foot and we both kind of looked at each other and we were like, maybe we can make a decoy out of this, because they're obviously really durable and they're super light. So I got a...

Bryan Koontz (04:38) Yeah.

Peter Andrews (04:40) I got a teal decoy, regular plastic teal decoy and sent it to a factory that was making foam shoes. And I just said, can you make this decoy out of foam like you're currently making? And so they said, yeah, you know, we can do that. So they made us our first sample and we were like, yeah, this is really cool. I think you can actually see it. It's right there. That was the first.

Bryan Koontz (05:08) That guy right there, that's the first one. Nice. That's cool.

Peter Andrews (05:11) Yeah, yeah, that's the first one. And yeah, I'll actually show you one thing on it real quick.

Bryan Koontz (05:20) Yeah, sure.

Peter Andrews (05:25) This is kind of cool. But you see it has... I was trying to figure out how to make it float with the weights because we have to put the keel weights in there so it uprights itself every time. And we figured out we just needed to add more foam onto the bottom. We could put the keels inside that foam and that way it would kind of like sit flat. So it kind of evolved from there. So we just...

Bryan Koontz (05:37) Right. Eh... -huh.

Peter Andrews (05:53) We had to find a carver so we could make our own decoy. And then once you get the carver, we just had a couple copies of that made, sent it back to the factory and had them, you know.

Bryan Koontz (06:07) Wait, what do you mean about a carver? Do you mean like a literal wood carver to carve the actual, like the first, the example bird to send to the factory?

Peter Andrews (06:12) Yep. Yeah, so.

Yeah, you can see a lot of them up there with some wood carvings. So we have this guy, this professional carver, his name is Jason Lucio out of Canada. And he's just one of the standout names for decoy carving competitions and stuff. So we wanted to find one of the best guys to make our decoys for us. So we hired him to do that for us.

Bryan Koontz (06:23) Okay. Huh. Cool.

Peter Andrews (06:48) And we're still, you know, still making decoys. Got a few species left to come out with still, but yeah.

Bryan Koontz (06:55) Okay, so when you come up, when you're thinking about a new species or even like if you take an existing species with a different pose, do you start always with the wooden decoy of whatever, you know, whether it's a floating or diving or, you know, I assume you have all those kinds of, it starts with a wooden decoy, a carved decoy. That's wild. That's pretty cool.

Peter Andrews (07:15) Yep. Yep. Yeah. You know, I'm assuming the other companies do the same thing. I don't know.

Bryan Koontz (07:24) Sure, I'm betraying my ignorance about how duck decoys are made. I'm assuming that most people listening to this don't know how duck decoys are made either. And then I guess the factory would just take that and like take all of their precise measurements these days, probably some sort of laser goes over it and measures everything precisely and then you can do all the colors and then, right.

Peter Andrews (07:32) Yeah. Yeah, they do like a laser scan and then try and make it exactly match the carving and then they can make the mold from there.

Bryan Koontz (07:52) That's super cool. And then being made out of foam. And I know exactly what you mean, by the way, because as of last year, I started wearing Crocs. My two daughters now make fun of me. Apparently I've entered like formal dad. I think the official dad mode would be if I wore my Crocs with like white socks pulled up over my my calves, then that would I'm not I'm not quite to official dad mode on my. But I do like I do love the Crocs. But anyway. And so given that they're made out of that, I guess the idea is they're light.

Peter Andrews (07:54) Yeah.

Bryan Koontz (08:21) I mean, obviously they have to float they're light. They're quiet. Cause I've been, I just, I've never been a waterfowl hunter. Some guys here at the, ⁓ the office in Bozeman here at Guidefitter, they're big into waterfowling. I mean, they've got all the stuff. And so we went a couple of times this past season, the first time we went, we were out there in the dark early morning with an ax chopping through ice to try to create a, you know, an area to sell.

Peter Andrews (08:24) Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Bryan Koontz (08:49) But I really enjoyed it. I mean, I love the camaraderie sitting in the blind, the dogs. I had a yellow lab. She made it almost to 15, so I really miss her. And so I love the dogs and all that. So I can see the appeal. It's so, so exciting. But, you know, lugging all those decoys out there and all the gear was, I mean, it's just like clacking around and like they're heavy. And so I can imagine if it's a decoy made out of croc foam, it's quiet. I mean, I

Peter Andrews (09:10) Yeah.

Bryan Koontz (09:16) I assume there's a lot more benefits than just they float because every decoy floats.

Peter Andrews (09:16) Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the first, the two primary benefits that we knew they would be benefits right off the bat were the fact that they're so light and that you can shoot them. So a lot of people shoot decoys on accident and you can shoot them. The bullet goes right through and it doesn't really do anything. So those are the two biggest factors, you know, because it floats itself and it doesn't have to be enclosed, you know, like

Bryan Koontz (09:35) Yeah. That's a good point.

Peter Andrews (09:49) a bubble or whatever, we can have an open bottom, which lets the keel kind of looks like a circle rather than flat. So it makes it, it makes it move better in the water because of the keel design. It's kind of like spinning a, an inner tube in the water versus spinning a, a piece of wood or something. It just spins a lot better. So they're like, the lightness helps them move around better.

Bryan Koontz (10:13) Got it. Right.

Peter Andrews (10:19) as just the keel design. But those were definitely the two biggest benefits of making them out of foam. On top of that way, you know, it was an idea that let us get into the market versus, you know, if we just had a... Right.

Bryan Koontz (10:36) Instead of a Me Too, instead of like just a same kind of thing with a different label on it, right? Totally. Yeah. Now have there been others yet that have come out and kind of copied the, you know, that are trying to do the foam thing? You guys have, I guess, pioneered that. Yeah.

Peter Andrews (10:42) Right, exactly. No. Yeah, we did. And you know that hasn't happened yet with the decoys. We hope that we have protection that it won't happen. But you know, we've seen it has happened with the rigging's to a small degree, which we expected. But we think we'll, you know, nobody's tried yet. So we'll see how long that lasts, but hopefully forever.

Bryan Koontz (11:11) Sure. So if someone's just getting in or thinking about getting into waterfowl hunting, and I know it depends on where in the country and all that kind of stuff, but let's say, what's the easiest way to start and how many decoys do you need for your first minimalistic spread to make an impact? I'm sure there's a lot of people like me who are just like, never really done it in their lives, but maybe they went once or twice where they're interested in it and they're just like, my gosh, that's a lot of stuff. But is there an easy way to get started and what do you need to think about to get your first complete setup going?

Peter Andrews (11:50) Yeah. Yeah. Texas is a little bit more difficult than other states because there's a lot less public land access in Texas. So if you're in Texas, probably the easiest way to start is to hire a guide and go out once or twice and see where he's going. You know, there's a lot of public stuff on the coast, but you get your good, you get a good experience and you, you know, you can kind of see what you might need to do it by yourself. But really all you need to start is two dozen decoys and some waders. Yeah, some waders and you know, camo jacket. And then you can go out anywhere if you talk to some people who know some public spots or whatever. There's probably lots of spots you can walk to, but really you don't need that much. We like to bring lots of stuff like a jillion shells and dogs and

Bryan Koontz (12:37) Who doesn't? Okay. Mm -hmm. Yeah. Right.

Peter Andrews (13:01) dog stands and you know, 10 dozen decoys, but really, you know, with a couple of dozen decoys, some camo, a duck call, and a shotgun, you know, you can go out there and get ducks.

Bryan Koontz (13:17) What's the largest spread you've ever hunted over and set up?

Peter Andrews (13:21) For, well, for duck hunting, I'd probably hunt it over, you know, 12 to 20, you know, call it 20 dozen, something like that. Yeah, I mean, typically don't want to get too much bigger than that because then they might want to land in your decoys 100 yards away. So you want to keep them a little bit close, but...

Bryan Koontz (13:32) Wow. Yeah, sure. Right, right, true.

Peter Andrews (13:49) Yeah, I mean, some guys go 10, 20, 30 dozen, depending on what type of area they're hunting. And then goose is a whole new game. Goose hunting, you're bringing out a trailer of stuff. So that's a whole different deal. Get out there at 3 in the morning and set up a couple thousand.

Bryan Koontz (14:00) Got it, got it, okay. Why is that? Just because they're bigger animals and so the decoys are bigger? Or what else you got? Why a trailer?

Peter Andrews (14:19) And there's just so many that you're putting out there. You might have a thousand of the silhouette, you know, just the state, the sign. They look like signs cut out goose in like a yard sign. You might have a thousand of those and 500 full bodies or whatever. So it just takes a long time to set up.

Bryan Koontz (14:22) Mm-hmm. I see. Right. Holy cow. Yikes.

Peter Andrews (14:45) That would be, that's a good one to start with a guide for sure.

Bryan Koontz (14:49) So he's out there before you setting it all up. You just show up and it's all set up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's crazy. So you mentioned that you've got some new species on the horizon. Can you talk about what's coming or is that super top secret right now?

Peter Andrews (14:53) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we're running kind of we've come out with the most of the most popular stuff. What we're still coming out with is Wood Dock and Spoonbills. So the shovelers. You know, some people want us to come out with a Coot, which is that'd be an easy decoy. It's just one one decoy that's black, basically.

Bryan Koontz (15:32) Yeah.

Peter Andrews (15:33) but then the canvas back too. So there's really only three on our priority list that are kind of big species that we haven't come out with yet. But we're planning on coming out with those pretty soon, so.

Bryan Koontz (15:48) Got it. Got it. Tell me about the name change. So you changed, you're not too long ago, changed the name of the company to Heyday. How did, why'd you do that? What was it? What went into all that? And how'd you land on Heyday? What's the cool name? I love it. How'd you do that?

Peter Andrews (16:00) Yeah, yeah, that was that was about a year and a half ago, I'd say. And it kind of ties into nearing the end of the line on the you know, the decoy species we could come out with. We kind of realized that we were still at a point where we weren't too big to change our name if we wanted to. And even though after a few years of coming out, you know, we came out with the decoys, I was like, all right, now our name is perfect because, you know, we have actually decoys that we sell. So Lifetime Decoys. And then at about the same time, I was hearing, we gotta think about changing our name because the primary reason being that we just didn't want to forever be locked into Lifetime Decoys. Like the name kind of describing what we were selling. And we knew we were gonna come out

Bryan Koontz (16:33) Right. Makes sense, right. Hmm. Sure. Yeah, who knows what you can get into in the future related to the sport and everything else. That's right.

Peter Andrews (17:02) Yeah, so I mean, we knew we were going to start coming out with some more, I guess you'd call it lifestyle stuff or more products that were not specifically related to duck decoys or waterfowl hunting. One of them we recently came out with was the tag along, the dog food and dog water system. And you can actually see that's the dog water system. But anyways, you know, just to call, just for that to be called Lifetime Decoys, it just doesn't fit, you know, it doesn't fit to average person who's not a waterfowl hunter. So we kind of.

Bryan Koontz (17:38) Yeah. It's too constraining for what else you could do with the business. Yeah, I get that.

Peter Andrews (17:45) Yeah, it kind of locks you in. We want to make products that work for the duck hunter, but also his friends and his wife and their friends or whatever. So to have things named Heyday or something a little bit more catchy and fun. Yeah.

Bryan Koontz (17:47) Mm-hmm. Yeah, sure. Yeah. So how'd you come up with Heyday? I love the name.

Peter Andrews (18:07) to be honest with you, we talked about it as a group for months, seemingly, and...

Bryan Koontz (18:13) It's one of the hardest things to do is to name a thing. my gosh. And then you can never find the web. So the URL is never available and all the things I think. I think you are. I think heyday.com is actually some like music venue concert or something site. I think. Yeah, OK. Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah, that's how that's how it works. Yeah, yeah. Hey, hey, outdoors is great.

Peter Andrews (18:17) Yes. Yeah, we had. It is. We've tried to contact that guy, but he's not selling. Yeah, you know, it works. So but yeah, we we were thinking about it for months and we couldn't come up with a name. So one of our friends recommended we use this guy who they had used in the past to help with their branding. And this guy actually came up with a list of names and Heyday was on the top and we all liked it. So I'd like to say that we came up with it ourselves, but we didn't.

Bryan Koontz (19:10) It's one of those naming something is one of those things that's super cool at first because you're like, yeah, OK, and you start generating names. Then you get onto like thesaurus.com and you're playing around and you're on like GoDaddy or something trying to see what the web's. And then eventually it starts to turn into like work. And then eventually it starts to turn into this task that you hate. So I'm fully aware of all of that. Yeah, makes total sense.

Peter Andrews (19:31) Yeah, yeah, that's kind of what happened. Yeah, but you know, we wanted to make sure the name kind of fit with our vibe and Duck hunting is definitely a thing that people think about and talk about, you know, that was back in their heyday or, you know, now is your heyday. So, yeah.

Bryan Koontz (19:51) Totally. It's an awesome brand name. I love it. I totally love it. Yeah, super cool. So you got a couple new species coming out. You've got maybe some more lifestyle things coming out. But what else could people, anyone who's not familiar with the brand and so on, I think this is a good intro for them just to get a feel for who you guys are and how you started everything. But what should they expect maybe in the next?

Peter Andrews (19:54) Yeah, thank you.

Bryan Koontz (20:21) I don't know, one to two, three years. I know sometimes it's even hard to think about the next six months. But yeah, what do you want to do with the business?

Peter Andrews (20:28) I think probably, yeah. Well, we're trying to focus on products that our current customer wants and lots of duck hunters and waterfowl hunters and other bird hunters have dogs. So we felt like, you know, dogs is a big market with a lot of opportunities. So we've been thinking about what kind of products we could sell. that are kind of dog related that would fit with kind of us starting up kind of like a dog lineup, you know, rather than us just have one dog product, we're hoping to have, you know, five dog products or something like that. In addition to some other stuff. But I don't want to give away too much about new stuff.

Bryan Koontz (21:13) Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah, don't, that's right. Yeah, that's a hint is fine. A hint is fine. That makes a ton of sense. I mean, because dogs are so, you know, like waterfowl and upland hunting. I mean, it's for me, I just sometimes I've anytime I've gone out, like I mentioned a few times, waterfowling and upland hunting, I find myself just kind of like losing track of what's going on because I'm just watching the dogs work. You know, I love that. Gosh, I love that. So that's that's a huge piece of it.

Peter Andrews (21:26) Yeah. Yeah, I guess I could say we're going to be coming out with a couple of products pretty soon that are related to drinking, human drinking rather than dog drinking, but they're not coolers. That's all I'll say.

Bryan Koontz (21:57) OK. OK. Okay, all right, that's cool. All right, all right, that's a good teaser. I like that. No, I like that.

Peter Andrews (22:07) Yeah, but you know, they're related to drinking beverages, alcoholic or non-alcoholic. Yeah, that's good enough.

Bryan Koontz (22:16) Got it. OK. Right on. All right. Yeah, those are great hints. Well, we'll look forward to that. What do you think, you know, every, it seems like every type of outdoor activity and certainly every type of hunter, there's just like little different things that set them apart. Like if you look at the super back country archery hunter that goes out for a week and they're, you know, they're just out of cell range and all that. Like that's a different sort of a beast. And I'm sure when they meet other people that do that too, they bond over certain things, you know, fitness being one of them. Cause what happens if you shoot a big bull elk and you're seven miles deep, like that's a whole experience in and of itself, right? And other things. So what do you think, what are, what are things that, and I'm again betraying my ignorance around, I'm definitely not an experienced waterfowler. Well, what are some of those things with waterfowl hunters? Like you get them all around a campfire with a couple of beers or something. They're like, ah and they can, and then someone else who isn't, then they, they're trying to say that they're waterfowl and you can tell that they're a pretender or an imposter. Like are there set of things like that, that they just relate to or, or like empathize or sympathize with? I don't know. Like, you know, it seems like there's like a culture of waterfowlers and I wonder what that is.

Peter Andrews (23:36) Yeah, I guess there's a there's a waterfowl culture. I'm trying to think about, you know, there are definitely guys who like to sit around the campfire and drink beer. I'd say probably more inclined to drink beer than than the elk hunter who's into fitness. But

Bryan Koontz (23:55) Right, okay.

Peter Andrews (23:56) But at the same time, you're a waterfowl, you gotta wake up a lot earlier. So you gotta be better at waking up with a hangover, generally. But you know.

Bryan Koontz (24:06) Okay. Because you got to set up the spread and you got to set up the whole thing. Like it takes a while. Right?

Peter Andrews (24:15) Yeah, yeah. You could get people to use a duck call and figure out real quick if they know at a duck hunt or not. But that's why most people don't like to get on their duck call in front of their friends.

Bryan Koontz (24:28) Because it's very evident really quickly that no ducks will be coming to that.

Peter Andrews (24:32) Yeah, yeah. But what else? You know, waterfowl hunters.

Bryan Koontz (24:33) Yeah, right. You got to schlep. You got to schlep a bunch. Some of the things I've heard, too, is like the guys that I know who are really into it are like, like, my God, I have I have to have a shed out back just to hold all my gear or after I bought a trailer, which really impressed the wife of the girlfriend when I had to dump money into the trailer just to haul all my like, it's very it's extremely maybe the most equipment intensive flavor of hunting there. I can't think of any.

Peter Andrews (24:59) Yeah. Yes.

Bryan Koontz (25:08) thing else right now that involves that much gear.

Peter Andrews (25:11) Yeah, for sure. It probably is one of the most, especially for the guys who are going to hunt where they're breaking up ice and ponds and stuff. I mean, it's another huge item they have to bring with them. But yeah, you got all your decoys, you got your bags with all your gear in it, your shotguns, your slings for carrying your ducks, your dog, your duck calls. It's the most expensive meat

Bryan Koontz (25:24) chainsaws and axes and...

Peter Andrews (25:40) per ounce that you'll harvest.

Bryan Koontz (25:43) That's true. That's true. Enjoy this. Enjoy this. Yeah, this this duck it. Yeah, that's right. Seven hundred dollars a pound. Right.

Peter Andrews (25:46) Yeah.

Hey babe, I'm saving us money here. I got all this duck for us to eat. You don't have to go to the grocery store.

Bryan Koontz (25:57) Why are you complaining? Yeah, I don't understand. Yeah, that's right. What are some of your favorite ways to eat duck or goose?

Peter Andrews (25:59) Yeah.

My favorite way is to put it on a cast iron skillet and cut the duck into thin slices and put it on the hot cast iron for like a minute, you know, at most and just eat it rare, pretty much. I think most people tend to over...

Bryan Koontz (26:26) with like some fat or butter or what are you cooking in?

Peter Andrews (26:31) Yeah, throw some butter in there. Throw in some red wine or some vinegar, balsamic or something like that. Maybe some olive oil. Yeah, but you want to throw a little beef fat or something in there even better. But I think generally it's good if you don't overcook duck in particular. I think it really applies to a lot of wild game deer as well. But people tend to overcook it, which

Bryan Koontz (26:40) Mm -hmm. Right. Sure.

Peter Andrews (27:01) just breaks down the protein and it makes it taste gamey. But if you just eat them rare, just seared, then they're delicious. And you don't get nearly as much game flavor, because that's the biggest, that's generally why people don't like duck, is because it can be really gamey.

Bryan Koontz (27:12) Yeah. I've never, I've not eaten a lot of goose. I have eaten a fair amount of duck and it is tricky because I've gone out to restaurants and stuff and ordered the duck breast or whatever. When it's done right, it's amazing. It's so good with like a good like a bourbon juice or something on it. But it's tricky because I've had so many duck as well that's just, it's thick, cooked wrong, it just doesn't, it's not good. So you got to get it right. Yeah.

Peter Andrews (27:34) Yeah. Yeah, just keep it thin and keep it rare. And that's the way I like to do it.

Bryan Koontz (27:52) I know some other waterfowlers, I know they like to make jerky out of goose and duck. One of the guys at the office, Shay, who runs our customer support team, he likes to make jerky out of his ducks and geese that he gets. And that's pretty good. I've had some in the blind. It's pretty tasty. It's just super thin and got some pepper on it and stuff. It's really tasty.

Peter Andrews (27:57) Yeah. Tamales too, Teal-Males We've put a lot of teal into tamales before and that's really good.

Bryan Koontz (28:19) Teal-Males nice. Okay. All right. Teal-Males a Texan. I would assume that you'd say something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I miss, man, I miss the barbecue in Texas. I will say that. Like one would think, and I've talked about this a number of times with people from Texas. I was on this Houston Safari Club podcast one time and we kind of got into barbecue, but one would think as much as I love Montana and I do love Montana.

Peter Andrews (28:19) Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah.

Bryan Koontz (28:45) But one would think with all the cows up here, you know, we're kind of our northern brother to the, you know, border. We're holding the northern border. You guys are trying your best to hold the southern border. you know, that's, that's not going so well with the current administration, but anyway, but one would think with all the cows, like we would, Montana would just also get barbecue, but I'm here to tell you, they don't understand barbecue. I've, I've, it's just a mystery, but, you know, anyway.

Peter Andrews (29:08) Ugh.

Yeah, I mean, you think it's pretty easy, you know, knowledge to pass along. Get a smoker and smoke.

Bryan Koontz (29:20) It's now this is a this is a public call to all of the you know the pit masters out there who want to move north and try something new. Please come to Montana. Bring your Mesquite wood and your live oak and your pit and I would I will I will eat all of your barbecue. So yeah we're desperate. The other Brian who works here Brian Worthington he also was he's born and raised in Texas and he's up here now. We were constantly on the hunt for you know.

Peter Andrews (29:38) Yeah.

Bryan Koontz (29:48) good, authentic Texas barbecue. Every once in a while, something will pop up in the area and say, hey, this is real Texas barbecue. We get excited. We go. One time I waited in line, and then I get there, and I'm like, it's just a huge letdown. You know when you go to a place that calls themselves Texas barbecue, and there's like seven different kinds of barbecue sauce on the table, you already know that it's wrong. It's like sweet mustard and vinegar, and you're like, OK, never mind.

Peter Andrews (30:04) Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Bryan Koontz (30:18) But. I would love that. Throw it on my smoker grill. Well, it's been awesome talking to you, Peter. It's so cool to meet people who have an idea and just go for it all the way back from the beginnings with your weed -whackered line. I think that's such a... There are people every day that see something and have an idea.

Peter Andrews (30:28) Yeah.

Bryan Koontz (30:48) and then don't act on it. And then later they, you know, they're sitting around saying, wow, that was my idea. Well, yeah, but you never acted on it. Like you didn't, there's lots of ideas, but there's even fewer people who go through the pain and suffering of actually taking action and, you know, making something out of it. And I think it's really awesome what you've done so far. And now I'm super intrigued about the beverage thing and everything else you got coming out with it, with the dog line and all that. So anything else that, that, that we

Peter Andrews (31:07) Yeah. Thank you.

Bryan Koontz (31:18) didn't cover that we should before we sign off.

Peter Andrews (31:22) no, I don't think so. I mean, unless you guys got anything else, I appreciate you having me on here. So it's fun to tell my story again.

Bryan Koontz (31:33) Yeah, well, totally. And we look forward to, you know, we'll edit this up and get it up on Guidefitter and, you know, Heyday's available on Guidefitter. You can check them out with certainly guides and outfitters and others with their program and so on. But I'm hoping also that people listen to this, just learn a little bit more. I mean, I just learned I didn't know how duck decoys are made. Now I know you need to find a master carver and then you start from there, which is probably not so easy.

Peter Andrews (32:03) Yeah. I have a pretty funny little story about the master carver. Well, OK, so my partner, Dane, was taking forever. We couldn't figure out how to get this carver or what we needed to do, who we needed to hire to be the carver. And I was like, Dane, it's not hard. I was like, I will carve it. We can do this first one.

Bryan Koontz (32:12) Yeah.

Peter Andrews (32:32) I will make this out of clay and the factory can just, you know, improve it and it'll be great. We don't have to spend all that money for a carver. And so I'll show you it real quick.

Bryan Koontz (32:40) Right. Right. Can't wait.

Peter Andrews (32:52) This is it.

Bryan Koontz (32:59) That's not bad. I mean, I was a...

Peter Andrews (33:24) but Yeah. Yeah, see I got like some feather carvings in there and stuff.

Bryan Koontz (33:43) Totally. Yeah, the body dimensions look roughly right. I mean, yeah. I mean, you know.

Peter Andrews (33:48) Yeah, I think I put a decoy there. I was carving out, you know, putting clay on top of a decoy. I don't know what I was thinking. You know.

Bryan Koontz (33:57) That's a great story. Well, and someday, you know, I can imagine someday as as Heyday continues to dominate, you know, or maybe these are priceless, but those original wooden decoys, you know, I mean, you know, that's kind of like the the the crown jewels of the of Heyday. Those those suckers, you know, it's kind of like when you're in the footwear business, the molds that you make for like boots and stuff like that.

Peter Andrews (34:11) Yeah.

Bryan Koontz (34:25) They're called lasts. It's like the wooden shape of a human foot and stuff. And so if you go to like, if you go to like Northern Italy, where a lot of boots are made, like Kenetrek Boots are made up there and stuff. So you'll go into a factory and there'll be like a whole, you know, a whole wall full of these old wooden lasts that whoever owns the factory will probably say something like, my great, great grandfather made those and there's a price. And we're still using them to this day. makes me think of that too with like the the wooden duck decoys. And so I you know, it's kind of neat just an aside like can I learn total aside but Kenetrek is based here in Bozeman, Jim Winjum who runs that also entrepreneur started started the company. He's so maniacal about fit that he claims that there is a difference between European genetics and the United and American genetics.

Peter Andrews (34:56) Yeah.

Bryan Koontz (35:24) that he made his own last because there's a couple millimeters difference in like the shape of the foot of a man. I don't know. But anyway, he made his own last. Yeah. But anyway, it's just kind of neat to think about the similarities. You know, you have the basis of which you create all of your other products and all that. So it's kind of neat. I like that. Yeah. Awesome, Peter. Well, again, man, thanks for taking some time chatting. This is really cool. I love these conversations. I always learn.

something, at least one thing. I've learned multiple things from you and I'm looking forward to the ongoing partnership with you guys and to seeing what new stuff you have on the horizon. And next time I get out on the water, I'm hoping to throw a couple of your croc foam decoys out there and see what we can do. And hopefully I won't shoot one, but if I do, I won't have to worry about, you know, it's sinking.

Peter Andrews (36:13) That's right. That's right. Well, thanks again for having me, Bryan I appreciate it.

Bryan Koontz (36:15) Yeah. Awesome. You bet. All right. Talk to you later.

Peter Andrews (36:20) All right, talk to you later.