Rising Stars: Meet Dustin Willey

Today we’d like to introduce you to Dustin Willey.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started? 
It all started in 2021 when my little brother shot his first turkey during youth season here in Ohio. I did a fan mount for him but wanted to do something a little more memorable for his first turkey. I got the idea to buy him a turkey call with a picture on the inside. I looked at the prices and thought, I can make that. It all started from there; I purchased a lathe, tools, call supplies, and watched hours of tutorials on how to make slate calls. From there, I began perfecting the craft and fine-tuning “my design”/ “template” to get the sounds I want out of them. It has tremendously blown up with the help of my wife engaging in the use of social media to promote our small business. We have sent calls to 15 different states, with a large portion of them going to local hunters around Hillsboro. We are always wanting to know how we can make our products better to better suit our customers as well as broadening our product range of calls to make calls for every season and passion of hunting. 

We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I would say the biggest struggles in call-making is the time. It takes 3-4 hours to make one turkey call because they are all hand-turned on a lathe. This goes with anything that is made by hand; if you want a good quality call, there is a lot of time involved. I would also add the design and dimensions is another challenge that we face every day. We want uniform sounds across all of our calls, but we also want them to be unique and hold up in crazy conditions out in the woods. 

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
Well, it all started with the turkey slate calls, and that is truly the bread and butter of our business. We are expanding into deer grunt tubes, coon squallers, and duck calls. I also enjoy doing deer European mounts as well as fan and wing mounts for turkeys. I would have to say the uniqueness sets are business apart. Like mentioned before, each call is handmade and hand turned so they each have their own unique characteristics. We cannot mass produce the same call over and over again. I am most proud to hear from customers and friends that have bought a call from us and have success with that call out in the woods. It also makes me proud to know they are using the calls that we worked on. This gives us a great conversation started to find ways to make our calls better. 

So, before we go, how can our readers or others connect or collaborate with you? How can they support you?
The best way to work with us is to message us on Facebook or Instagram. We are always interested to hear new ideas, whether that’s on how to better products, better engage on social media, or just willing to sit down and talk about what we do and how we do it. We enjoy sharing what we do and educating people about turkeys and wildlife. 

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://instagram.com/dogwoodcustomcalls?igshid=OGQ5ZDc2ODk2ZA==
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100090474255324&mibextid=LQQJ4d

Image Credits
Ashleigh Willey
Dustin Willeyy