Cole Poessnecker, a senior at West Holt Public Schools, has recently discovered a talent he never knew he had.
That talent? Making duck and goose calls by hand.
Although he’s only been making these calls for approximately five months, his ability to quickly catch on to the craft has already allowed him to turn a hobby he loves into a way to make some money and supply the community with quality calls made by hand.
After working on his craft for a few months, Poessnecker made a post on Facebook in early December stating that he was ready to start selling his creations.
Almost immediately, the response from the local community was better than he had anticipated.
“I would say so far I’ve gotten around 25-30 orders,” he said. “When I first posted my calls on Facebook, I figured I would swell three or four over a couple of weeks. But I sold six in the first ten minutes of posting. It really surprised me and boosted me to keep advertising and selling. I even donated two to the Pheasants Forever chapter.”
From the professional look of his calls, it would be easy to think that Poessnecker has had this passion for much longer than a few months. However, while Poessnecker has always loved to hunt fowl, the thought of making these calls never crossed his mind until he stumbled across a video randomly one night.
“What inspired me to try out this hobby was seeing a simple YouTube video and my passion for waterfowl hunting,” he admitted. “I though to myself, ‘I have to try this out’. With my limited tools I started crafting and made my first call.”
That first call Poessnecker made quickly turned out to be something special, and as his interest in the hobby grew, his calls started to look more and more professional. Eventually, he became good enough at his craft to start selling his creations.
From there, the orders started flooding in.
Now, thanks to the success he’s had in selling his calls, Poessnecker has been forced to start to think about the future of his small-but-successful business.
“Right now, my plan is just to keep building,” he said. “I would like to expand on the business side of things through social media platforms. I would like to make my call business a little side gig.”
While Poessnecker doesn’t have a website set up for his duck and goose call business quite yet, there are multiple ways to reach out to him to place an order. Currently, Poessnecker can be reached by call or text at 402-340-1133, or by Facebook Messenger. Each call generally takes him around four hours to make, although some calls can take longer if he is forced to glue a part, or if he has to apply polyurethane to the wood calls.