Ducks Unlimited Podcast

00:00 John Gordon Hello everybody. Welcome again to another special edition of the Ducks Unlimited podcast. Joining me today is a repeat guest. He's been on before. And in the waterfowling world, this guest really needs no introduction. If you know anything about duck calls, goose calls, competitive calling, our guest today has been one of the top people in those fields for many, many years. He's three-time world duck calling champion, the champion of champions. Welcome John Stevens to the DU Podcast. Hey, thank you. I appreciate you all having me on. Man, thanks so much for joining us, John. And thanks again so much for hosting us at Callapalooza and doing some filming with us for our DU Nation series. I know I can speak for both

00:44 John Stephens for Katie and Zach that we had a tremendous time there. Well, great. I was glad that you all came and this week we're kind of taking it easy after last week. I'll bet. That Callapalooza, yeah, we put a lot of work into that and our staff. And so that's good to hear that you guys enjoyed it because even though it's our fifth year, you know, that's always something that we almost say worried about, but we just, we try to improve it every year and we hope that, you know, everybody enjoys

01:09 John Gordon it as much as we enjoy putting it together. Yeah. You know, if you like duck calls or just, you know, the duck hunting world in general, I mean, it's really a first-class event. Y'all do a really fine job. I think of making everybody feel welcome and that they're a part of it. Yeah. Well, that's something, I mean, we focus on, so that's always good to hear. Yeah. Yeah. And folks out there, what we're talking about is John's and Rich and Tone's big calling event is Callapalooza. And that's a play on the Lollapalooza music festival name. And it's really a several day event that celebrates calls. I mean, any other way to put that, John?

01:49 John Stephens No, I mean, you're right. We call it celebrating the art of call making, but we put it together, I think five years ago when we first opened back our shop in 2019 after a fire that we had in 2016. Took us three years to get back on our feet and reopen. But we were trying to think of a way, instead of just having a grand opening to, you know, invite other callmakers in, because something we actually talked about before we had the fire, but just having a festival where we had, you know, other callmakers set up here at our place. They could exchange ideas and call collectors could come and do the same. And really it was just for this time of year to have a place for the callmakers and collectors together, share information, trade ideas, and also just help promote, you know, that craft and not just amongst us, but hopefully get new collectors in and people that are interested in collecting or callmaking can come to this event and, you know, hopefully get something out of it and get interested in it.

02:46 John Gordon When John's talking about collectors, I had really had no idea that there were people out there who were so, what's the best word to use? I mean, just obsessed maybe with collecting calls. There were guys I got to talk to there who had thousands in their collections. And, you know, as somebody who's been a duck hunter for a long, long time, you know, I've got a little collection that just kind of gathered over the years of different stuff that I tried out in the field and everything else. But

03:14 John Stephens these people are really serious. Yeah. Yeah. And it's neat. There's all different, just like any other hobby, I guess there's all different aspects that you can collect. You can collect older calls. You can collect, you know, stuff that's being made now. You can even break that down in even into other categories. I've collected calls since I was eight years old and I don't really collect anything but older calls. And I say older prior to 1960. That's kind of my own, I guess, self-set guided guidelines for collecting. But man, it's fun. It really is. Like I said, there's such a big history and tradition in call making that, especially in our area, just in Stuttgart and Arkansas in general, you know, Tennessee, Missouri, Illinois, Louisiana, there's a lot of great states that have a rich history from call makers. And just, that's really, you know, how I got into kind of, I guess, got into duck hunting first at an early age. Then it was competition calling. And man, by 10, 11 years old, I had relatives giving me old calls that they had and their families because I was interested in participating in calling contests. So definitely the collecting part's been a big part of my life as much as

04:22 John Gordon actual duck hunting, I guess. Yeah. And duck hunting is great because of, there's a whole nother part of it that's around the gear, right? That you need to go. I mean, the calls and the decoys and the dogs and the guns and everything, you can, you know, really get into collecting all of them. I guess I've collected some dogs over the years too, it seems like. You know, I'm down to one at this time, but I usually have three or four. So it's easy enough for me to go off in that direction too. And folks, if you aren't familiar with the Jay Stevens line of calls, that's John's custom line. You should go to rntcalls.com and check it out. You're talking about some, and I was looking at the site, John, and I really like some of the

05:06 John Stephens real foot style stuff you've come up with. Well, you know, all the calls that I have, actually in the Jay Stevens line, I have them online. I need to take them off the website or just have them as examples because honestly, I'm not real productive. I don't make a lot of those. I spend most of my time, probably 85% of my time on RNT stuff, working with it. But that was just something that again, through call collecting and competition calling, going over to Butch Rich and Back Shop at an early age, I was just fascinated with watching him turn calls on the lathes. So that's something that I'd always have always wanted to do and always loved to do was make calls by hand. And I've done it since I was a kid at his shop in my garage. And I just never officially had a brand, you know, or I guess a set design. I just piddled with stuff. And even when I had RNT, I did that. And so kind of like what Butch did, he learned from Chick Majors from Stuttgart, and he never made his own call until Chick Majors passed away. In 2015, Butch had passed away and it just seemed like, you know, the time to kind of start making stuff. So it's kind of come full circle. We purchased, Angie and I purchased Rich and Tom when Butch started having heart problems and needed transplant and stuff. And we kind of went in a reverse order instead of making stuff by hand and growing. We had to figure out right off the bat how to pay for some debt and make some money. And so that's where now, you know, we make a lot of the calls on CNC machine. Actually, Butch was just starting to do CNC machine stuff before we purchased that. So, you know, now that Rich and Tom's, we've owned it for over 20 years and it's, you know, been going for a while and established. I can kind of do J. Stevens. I don't want to say on the side, but as I like to. And it gives a neat aspect to our shop because you can come in and tour and see how modern day calls are made. I kind of make calls, they're all by hand, but kind of an older way. And they kind of have a vintage influence. They don't really look like calls today. So that's something that I try to do with not just my calls, but everything in our retail front is anything we can do to promote the history of duck calls. That's kind

07:20 John Gordon of been our aim for, I guess, the flying duck, which is what we call our retail front and taproom. Yeah. You know, and we talked about this, John, that sometimes there's some real blessings inside something that looks, you know, really on the outside, like a tragedy and the fire that happened at Richenton and that how now it's been transformed into a real destination in the Stuttgart area. And I would encourage anybody, you know, if you're going to be in Stuttgart this season or in the future to go by Richenton and check out the taproom, the food truck, I tell you, which has got one of the best chicken sandwiches I've ever had in my life coming out that food truck out there and have a beer, look at some calls, buy a call. You know, I mean, you've got it all

07:59 John Stephens going on right there at the shop. Yeah. And you know, that was, it's kind of funny is like you said, it's never a good thing when you have a fire by any means, but it allowed us to step back. And, you know, sometimes you kind of get in a rut doing the same thing every day. And we thought, you know, nothing says we have to build this back like we had it. So we all just kind of gathered and started getting together and spitballing ideas of what, if we could do this or do that, what would we change? What could we add? And at first we wanted to have like a duck calling museum and we just couldn't really make that happen with our budget the way we wanted to do it. So we started thinking of other ideas, definitely wanted to expand our retail front and have an area where you could work with people with calls. I wanted to have some like some custom engraving areas and some other things that would, you could kind of make your call more custom when you came to visit us. But the real, I guess, unique idea I thought right off the bat was craft beer. And we were, we were just trying to think, you know, of different things that were say handcrafted or something. And it just seemed like at the time craft beer fit in really good with some of the things we were offering. So we went to Little Rock and visited some of the breweries there and we landed with Flyways, the one that we really liked and we kind of partnered up with them. And so now we have a tap room in our shop and we also still do have a vintage call collection that rotates every year. So we were kind of able to do a little bit of the museum, even though it's not a real museum, it's a display of calls. It's over, I think it's like maybe 170 calls. And like I said, we rotate that out every year. But yeah, the craft beer thing has been a real big hit. It's brought people in and it's allowed us to expose them to the history, you know, of duck calls and the craft without just really shoving it down their throat. You know, they can come in, get a beer. Some of our beers are made after callmakers. A lot of our coasters have different duck calls and little facts about duck calls on it. We've got pint glasses that have different callmakers and dates on them. So we try to everything we do, we try to incorporate something that has to do with the history of callmaking without just, you know, like I said, shoving it in somebody's face.

10:10 John Gordon It's just kind of little hints of it here and there. Yeah, it's a very cool experience. You know, like I said, look at the collection of calls y'all have and everything. And yeah, I think the Flyway beer selection was pretty cool. You know, you've got names like Pintail and Blue Wing,

10:24 John Stephens stuff like that. You know, if you're a duck hunter, it's a pretty cool selection. Yeah, we've also, we just added not long ago, over the bar, sometimes it's kind of hard to see, but we've tried to mount a Drake and a Hen of every species that's in our Flyway and we've started adding some more. So because we have a lot of people when they come to Stuttgart duck hunting, you know, they know a duck's a duck, but they didn't know there was this many different types. So we've kind of got a little legend or map that you can look at and to be able to identify the duck. So it gives you something else to do while you're just, that's been a nice addition. It's been kind of a struggle to keep it going just because we're in a small area and having people to work, but during duck season, it was great. And it really added to make our place kind of a after the hunt destination. If we're not a late night place, we close at seven o'clock. So we have a lot of people in during the day visiting, catching up with duck hunters, have it waiting on custom calls and just, you know, and join each other's company during duck

11:23 John Gordon season. Yeah, I can see where it's a real destination spot. And you're right there in the parking lot too with Max Prairie Wing. So all you got to do, you know, go, if you need some gear, go over there and swing by the shop, you know, before you leave town, it's really, it's a cool destination. Going back to Call of Palooza, there was a very cool part of that that I got to witness.

11:44 John Stephens And that's the custom call build off. Tell us more about that, John. Yeah. When we were putting Call of Palooza together the first year, we were trying to think of different events we could have, seminars, you know, like this year we had a painting class by Joe Buecher that you could sign up for. And the Callmakers build off just came up as an idea, like, hey, the way my shop set up, it's got viewing windows where you can see inside the shop. So wouldn't it be cool if we paired up different Callmakers randomly, we selected the members for the teams and had them compete in a build off during that week. And it's kind of like going off some of the cooking shows or whatever they get. Here's your wood that you can use. You got this time limit. You're going to be judged on, you know, sound, decorative aspects of it, design, you know, different things like that. And each year we've kind of changed up the format and the criteria. So that also keeps everybody on their toes. It's in the actual contest and it makes really a pretty good thing to watch, especially when they're doing the decorative side. Because, man, some of the guys that are in there are just totally awesome craftsmen and artists. And it's cool to see them do that. So I think this year we had four teams, four two man teams, each one competed for four hours head to head with another team. And then Friday or Saturday, we had the finals with two teams. So it was, it was fun. And that's like I said, that's probably the biggest, I don't want to say draw to Call of Palo Alto, but it's definitely one of the bigger events that

13:14 John Gordon people come to watch. Right. And one thing I thought was pretty cool about that is that not only those calls, you know, beautiful to look at, but it has to be a functional call. You've got to go

13:23 John Stephens out there and do a little routine on it as part of the contest. Oh, yeah, absolutely. That's one of my big things is it doesn't matter how good a duck call looks. I mean, the point of making it is to sound like a duck. So we, we, we judge that pretty, pretty hard as well. And we've got different categories set up and then I'll, this year I was the caller. So I would operate the call in front of the judges, give them kind of not like this one's better than that one, but just tell them how it felt when I blew it. And then they also, after they score them, they have a member that of the actual team use the call. And that's what they do outside, which that was kind of new this year. So that was kind of cool seeing, seeing the same call used by two different people and, and, you know, seeing how that worked, I guess, or how each one operated the call.

14:12 John Gordon Yeah. Yeah. And you were talking about the painting class that Joe gave. Folks, if you don't know who Joe Butcher is, it's hard to describe how he, what he can do with the duck call, the intricate

14:22 John Stephens carvings and painting he does with them are really unbelievable. Yeah. I've been a, I've been a fan of his, his calls and especially his painting for a long time. So it was really cool to, I guess he came maybe the first call of Palooza. He didn't do any seminars or anything. And then we had COVID and things got kind of screwed up. So we finally got everything aligned where when he came this year, he could do a painting class and I was signed up for it. And I knew better to just because the Friday of it, even though you think you would have time to do it, just because it's our place, a couple of things came up that I had to do during call of Palooza. Wasn't able to go to it, but man, seeing everybody's calls that was in the class when the progression of, of the learning was a

15:04 John Gordon pretty cool deal. Yeah. Yeah. I got a chance to, well, once again, you've got, you've got windows and all these, you know, the rooms in there so you can, you can take a look at what people are doing. And it was, it was pretty cool to watch folks, you know, like say, you know, something like a call, which is, which is a small scale, you've got to be pretty precise with what you're

15:22 John Stephens doing. And, you know, it looks like everybody was, was really having a great time. Yeah. And like I said, we had, it was mixed up of call makers. There was a couple of ladies in there that weren't call makers, just wanted to, to learn to paint. And then like we had two R and T employees actually that were enrolled in it. And one of them was Emily Hodges who runs our custom department. She's, she paints herself. So she said it just, it really probably added to her palette of what she could do

15:51 John Gordon with a paintbrush. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you got someone like Joe teaching you it, it, it, it's got, it's very valuable. He's, he's, to me, he's the best in that field with, with decorative calls. It's, it's, it's pretty amazing. Is there any plan maybe in the future, having a calling contest around Call of the Police? John, I know you've, you know, you've already got the wings over the prairie and all that. I just didn't know if there was any, any thought about that. Yeah, we've,

16:14 John Stephens we've, I think actually the first year we may have had two or three calling contests and again, COVID just kind of killed a lot, a lot of things. You know, we didn't have a calling contest or anything that year. Honestly, we just haven't, we've just had so many things scheduled, but yeah, we've talked about doing it. We had, we'd like to do it a little different than a normal contest. And we've played around with some ideas. So I think that's something, yeah, eventually you'll see back at Call of Palooza is a calling competition. It may not be exactly what everybody thinks of a calling competition, but it's definitely something we want to try to get back going.

16:49 John Gordon Yeah, yeah. It just, it just, you know, there's some really great callers who were there, right? So it just seems like a natural thing that to, that they would compete at Call of Palooza. You know, and I got to meet several folks that, you know, that are big names and calling some not so big names. So you've got guys coming from all over the guys and gals, both coming from all over the country to attend this event. Okay. It starts, let's see, how many days is it totaled for?

17:14 John Stephens Well, yeah, actually we started on Tuesday and ended on Saturday and we've kind of done it that way. I guess it's the second year. I'm not really sure if we're going to continue to do it that way, because we've seen that, you know, not, not everybody can take off work for, for that long. Some of the events we were having during the week, people wanted to come to, and so they kind of had to pick and choose when they were going to come. And so we kind of thought about maybe breaking some of those events up into different times of the year, allowing people, handle the weekends, allowing people to be able to schedule that. And then if you're like me, it's easy to spend all your money in one place, especially with four days. So, you know, it'll help spread it out a little bit for that too, but we'll definitely keep like the VIP night, which would be probably on a Thursday and then Friday, Saturday, all that still call a plaza. But we've had this year, we added a small batch bash one night and we have a Jay Stevens owner's group party that we select from the Jay Stevens owner's group Facebook page. We just draw names out of there and there are only 25, get to purchase a ticket to the event. So those are, those are some things that we could probably do at a different time of the year and allow people. I think actually doing that, we would not only allow people to use, not use their vacation, but come on the weekend. I think we would actually see more people on the weekend just because they're not having to go during the week here to something they want and then, you know, have to be back at work. So I think it could be a

18:43 John Gordon win-win. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Yeah, it's tough for folks, you know, to do things in the middle of the week a lot. And fortunately, we know, so we got there on Thursday and filmed, you know, those DU Nation segments with both you and Jimbo, but a lot of folks, you know, just can't really,

19:01 John Stephens you know, head off on a Thursday and get there. So that's a pretty good idea. Yeah, we're still kind of bouncing that around exactly how we're going to do it, but I think we're going to make a few adjustments anyway. How many vendors read the Call of Blues this year? I think we had 50, 50 maybe. I know we had 50 spots set up. So there might have been, like we had a couple for that were partners of ours from Express Boats or Gunner Kennel or somewhere like that. But so I'm guessing there's probably at least, was at least 40, you know, true vendors. So that was up from last year. I'd like to always want to continue to grow it. I'd like to see more people actually attend it besides just us callmakers. So that's something we're kind of looking at is how we can

19:47 John Gordon reach other people and let them know about it. Yeah, that was pretty cool. You know, I walked around that little vendor village area right there outside the shop. And if you were looking for a particular call, no matter what it was, duck, goose, you know, it was available. You could

20:04 John Stephens find what you needed. Yeah, that's, again, that's just kind of been one of our, I guess, visions is setting it up like that. And that actually, it kind of came back from dating myself back in the 90s when DU had the big expo in Memphis is, and there was a lot of callmakers there set up like that. And so that was just always thought that was a cool special time. So it's kind of what we were trying to recreate on a much smaller scale. And like I said, we've had, you know, all the callmakers, a lot of callmakers have come in, but we've actually had some people that this year, we had a couple from New York. I think actually, no, they said they were from Queens, New York, but they had came just to because they've seen it, you know, on online or been talking to other callmakers and they weren't callmakers. They were just duck hunters. So it was, that was pretty cool to talk to someone that, you know, they were tickled to death and they've been wanting to

20:57 John Gordon come to this event and they're from New York city. So it's pretty neat, you know. Yeah. I mean, you know, outside of duck season, I imagine there's not too many folks from outside of Stuttgart come through there. So this kind of event like this called Blitzer really gives folks another opportunity to come down to Stuttgart, which I think is a very cool town. It's cool to be around towns if you're a duck hunter that have a real duck hunting culture.

21:25 John Stephens Yeah. Well, it, you know, that's what it's going to have to have if you want to be around here in the summer because other than that, you got to battle mosquitoes and everything else. You got to

21:36 John Gordon be passionate for it. I mean, yeah. Yeah. Y'all are right there in the middle of a bunch of farm fields, you know, rice and beans and corn and everything. It's just, it's right there at the shop because Stuttgart is in the heart of the Arkansas Delta growing area. And it, you know, there's a reason that so many ducks and geese go there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, I've grown up here and I love it just the way it is, you know. Yeah. Yeah. What's interesting. I used to live in El Campo, Texas and Stuttgart reminds me a lot of El Campo. It was a big, it was definitely years ago, a big rice growing area. And of course the Texas rice base has really mostly shifted to Arkansas, but it's cool that in El Campo and Stuttgart that y'all both have the same high school mascot, the rice birds. And I thought that was pretty, that's only the place I've ever seen the rice bird as a mascot at Stuttgart. So it, those places with both with big time water fowling cultures are really similar. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's neat. I learn something every day. That's right. That's right. Any changes coming up for next year?

22:43 John Stephens You know, we're always trying to add events and do things different. And we rely a lot heavily on the feedback we get. We sent out surveys to people after that. I know we're going to, we always change the callmakers build off of our duck blind breakfast cookoff is something that we added last year. That's really become popular. And that's again, kind of play off some of the cooking shows is that you got, we got two man teams and I think there was six or eight of them and it's over two days. They have to cook on a low-co griddle like you do in the duck blind. And we fill up a blind bag full of certain ingredients and give it to each team member. And they have to, you know, use that to make their duck blind breakfast. And that's became a pretty cool event. So, you know, I'm sure that's going to, that's going to grow and we're going to have to change how we do some things with it. But right now that's it. You know, that's it. We got a few things on the board, like you said, like at maybe a calling contest and taking away some of the days so that I think we get a little more bang for our buck time-wise, you know, for Thursday, Friday, Saturday. But really that's just that we're trying to focus as much as we can on just getting that message out there and getting more traffic through here, just to expose them to the

24:00 John Gordon craft and also, you know, for our vendors as well. Right, right. Yeah. And I was really, I was fascinated by that cookoff. I was watching it on Friday and it reminded me of Chopped, right? It was a similar theme, right? You've got a certain amount of ingredients and time to work with and you've got to create a duck blind breakfast. I mean, the premise of it is awesome.

24:20 John Stephens Yeah. I thought that was actually Jim Runquist and Blake Fisher had the idea after. Somewhere they were traveling, filming RNTV and they just kind of everywhere they were going, I think in Missouri, somewhere they were, whoever they hung with them, you know, one day, the next day they were always having breakfast and they got to say, well, I like this better than that. And so then they just started thinking, what if we had like a cookoff and really turned into being a pretty cool event.

24:45 John Gordon Yeah. I've had every kind of duck blind breakfast. I think there is from, you know, honey buns to really elaborate stuff with them blinds that have stoves and everything in them, you know, bacon and eggs and toast and everything else. So it really, the breakfast is part of the

25:00 John Stephens duck hunting experience. Yeah, there's no doubt. That's one thing that's cool about duck hunting and waterfowl hunting in general is just all the different parts or, you know, that just kind of makes up the duck hunting culture or, you know, the fabric of the duck hunting culture. I mean, from breakfast to calls, like you're saying decoys, people that make decoys. I mean, there's so many

25:19 John Gordon different aspects that to me that makes waterfowl and enjoying. So it's a cool sport. Yeah, it is. There's no other hunting sport like it. You think about big game, you know, deer hunting, right? Well, there's not, you know, there's calls and decoys and everything like that, but there's not really, you know, a custom deer call culture or anything like that built around it. So it makes waterfowling unique. Yeah. And duck hunting is such a social sport too. I think that's another aspect. That's very true. I tell folks all the time. That's what really drew me into it as a kid was the fact that you didn't have to sit there and be quiet all the time and all this. You could really have camaraderie in the blind and hunt with other folks, like-minded people. And it really made it really attractive to me that I just, man, sitting on a deer stand waiting by yourself is not appealing. Yeah. And calling too is another big part of it, you know, being able to call to those ducks, see them react, bring them in. I mean,

26:27 John Stephens that's an aspect of it that makes it a lot of fun. Yeah. And that's probably, I mean, there's so many different aspects that people enjoy, whether they're a marksman or, you know, whatever. Calling to me is one of the biggest draws to duck hunting. And there's a lot of times I'll let ducks come in and out. I just, I feel like you got to totally fool them before you shoot at them. That's just, everybody does it different. And that's just, that's what I think we get the

26:53 John Gordon most enjoyment out of. Oh, I loved in its own time, just, yeah, just let groups of ducks go, especially big groups. I'll just call them, fool them and let them go. You know, you don't have to, you don't have to harvest the game to really enjoy the experience. And that's another great

27:08 John Stephens aspect of waterfowling that a lot of people enjoy. Well, yeah. And you know, that's a man, just, I guess that's kind of goes back to calling Palooza. You know, every deer has kind of got that same mindset that's setting up as vendors. And so when you, when you do come here, you get to, not only as a call maker or collector, man, you get to learn a lot and you get to, you get to talk to a lot of different people about the stuff that we all enjoy so much. And I think that's, I think to me, that's one of the things that makes calling Palooza so special is that even though it's kind of a small niche, everybody here is so passionate about that part of it, whether it's making or using them or whatever. That's why it's, you know, I just want to really try to get that message out there to people that maybe are interested in it or don't really know about it because it's a great place to expose people to that because you have so many different sources

27:55 John Gordon from, you know, different parts of the country here in this one spot. Oh, that's right. I was walking around the parking lot, just fascinated by all the different license plates from the different states. There were people that come in from all over the country to the event. So it really adds that flavor to you. So you've got not just the Southern calling community, but a lot of folks

28:12 John Stephens from the Midwest and the North. Yeah. And I'll tell you too, I'm always hard on us thinking, well, we could have done a little better job promoting it or getting people here doing things. But after the whole weekend was over, we had one young man that was 13 years old that came here, named Tucker Sherard. Sherard, I think that's how you pronounce his last name. He's from Tennessee. He made three or four of us little bitty miniature decoys, but he is interested in call collecting. He bought an older call while he was here. And, you know, to me, that's what the whole event was about is educating and getting younger guys, which he knew a little bit about it before he got here. But just seeing those younger people getting involved in this sport and hobby, I mean, that's the whole reason we did it. And that one instance, you know, made everything,

29:02 John Gordon the whole week worth it to me. Yeah. That's something I really noticed. A lot of families were there at Call of Palisade, you know, with their kids and everybody was enjoying it and having a great time and really introducing these young people to that culture. It's the future of

29:15 John Stephens it. Yeah. And, you know, for the, there's more probably younger people. Well, there's no doubt there's younger people involved in call making and call collecting, but within call collecting and decoy collecting, the base of it is, you know, I'm on the young end of that base. Right. I'm 50, so that, you know, that says a lot. And we just, we, and I don't know, I don't know if that's something when, as you get older, you get into or what, but man, there's so many cool things out there in history, kind of pass it on to the next generation, you know. And I, like I said, I know there's a lot of collectors that get into it when they're older, but man, it'd be so cool

29:53 John Gordon to see, you know, this parking lot full with younger people that were interested in collecting. Exactly. Exactly. Do y'all have a date, a range set for next year yet?

30:03 John Stephens We don't. What we try to do is we try to take kind of a few weeks off and then kind of start meeting back on it, let everything soak in and discuss when we are. More than likely it's going to be the same week. We've done it for the last two years, the day after, the Tuesday after Memorial Day, but I hate to say that now. And then if we change it, everybody's like, well, you said it was this day, you know. So that's probably, that's worked out to be a good time of the year for us. I know you got graduate things going in May, but for us, if we want to have it outside, April, it rains and at March, you never know what you're going to get March. We've had to move stuff inside from, you know, weather. So that time of the year, middle of May to June, is probably going

30:45 John Gordon to be about when it's going to be again. Gotcha. Gotcha. And I guess anyone can look up, you know, type in Kalapalooza on a search in the future and it'll bring it up.

30:53 John Stephens Oh, absolutely. And on our website, we have at the, in the top left corner, we have a section on Kalapalooza. So as we add things to it, update stuff, it's all in there. Any of our events are listed in there. Merchandise, when we do have like the nightly events or the painting class, all the tickets are listed under that. So anytime you can go to rntcalls.com and click on that Kalapalooza. If there's anything that we have set in stone for next year, have available, it'll be in that, be in that section. So that's a good place to always check. And then also, if you follow any of our social media on Instagram or Facebook, anytime we update or send stuff out,

31:32 John Gordon you can get it through that too. Excellent. Excellent. I would encourage anyone who's interested in calling, not just calling, but you're duck hunting, goose hunting, the culture in general, put this on your list. If you don't make it next year, try to get down there at some point to Stuttgart, Arkansas and check out Kalapalooza. And we've got some really cool segments coming out on the DU Nation series, one with you in your shop and people can really see your shop, what we're talking about and how cool that place really is. And then we've, we did one with Jim Rockwist and where you get to really see the other side of Rich in Tone. Like you said, the CNC production and all that, that's on Jimbo's film. So like I said, if anybody is more interested

32:13 John Stephens in Kalapalooza, check out DU Nation on YouTube and you can see this stuff firsthand. And man, and we appreciate y'all doing that. And hopefully man, through those two programs and some of the stuff that we're doing, hopefully we can get that message out there and maybe expose some, some new

32:28 John Gordon people to the art of Kalamaking and collecting. Man, I know you will. It's like I said, it's a very cool event. Kalapalooza, you should, like I said, it should be on everybody's list to check it out. John, thanks so much for being on the DU podcast again. You, you, you're a tremendous guest and we appreciate it very much. Oh man, well anytime I can be on and, and help you guys, I'd be more than happy to. All right. All right. Thanks a lot. Thanks so much for listening to the Ducks Unlimited podcast and supporting wetlands and waterfowl conservation.