The top salesman goes to a little guy, about 10 or 12, working in the Derby City booth. His name was Cody, I believe. I walked by their booth and he asked me if I’d ever played one of their calls.

I thought I’d have a little fun here (kind of a sucker for kids) and soon realized I was in over my head. I asked him how they sounded. He told me to play it and then tell him. He proceeded to tell me all about the calls, how they were instrument grade woods for the pots and 500 year old maple strikers. He then got a piece of wood and showed me the growth rings, telling me all about the closeness of the grain and how it came about. Told me where the wood came from and such. Told me most people picked out a striker with the same type of wood on the striker head as to the call that they bought. He showed me a slate and aluminum version of all of the series of calls. He was showing me all of the different styles, what was new for this year and etc., etc.

He was buzzing around that booth like a bee. If I had a question, he had an answer. I promise if I had asked any other person, I would not have gotten all those answers. He had taken what he had heard from every single person in that booth, combined it, and had one heck of a sales pitch. He had all the prices down. What each call came with and so forth. I could not pass all that up. I’d already told my wife I was through buying. The bank was closed and all that stuff. When I came walking up, after buying the call, she said “I thought you were through buying calls.” I said, “I couldn’t help myself after that sales pitch.”

Here is a link to the original posting from a user on the Osage Roost.

Derby City will debut its limited run of American Chestnut calls at the NWTF Convention in Nashville, February 18-20.  We have 15 calls in all three of our designs (Turkey Track, Magnum, and Spur).  Each call is numbered.  The calls were made from an American Chestnut that was planted by Derby City Pro Staffer, Dave Berry’s, father in the 1950’s.  This tree survived the Chestnut blight, but was damaged from an ice storm and then killed by a lightning strike.

We will have pictures of the tree being processed, along with other information about how rare this tree really was.  There are some very cool wormy pots in this run.  They will go for $100, except for all the numbers 1 and 15.  These will be even more special.  Stop by the booth quick, we have already had several people inquire about these calls.  These calls must be purchased in Nashville.

Derby City Calls had a booth in the innovations zone for this year’s ATA show.  The trade show is an order writing event and is geared more to Archery, however, we had many people interested in checking out our high quality turkey calls.  Derby City signed up 6 dealers who will carry our calls this spring.  These dealers ranged from the deep South, up into the midwestern United States.  We hope to have a dealer page set up for our visitors soon.  This would allow you to drop in and check out what they have to offer if they are located close to you.

Derby City’s Jeff Sullivan, Brent Stoner, Rick Denkhoff, Dave Berry, Scott Cronin, Tedd Moffett, and myself helped man the booth for 3 days.  We met a lot of good people in the hunting industry and made some good connections.  We hope to establish good working relationships with many of these people.  We were really pleased with the responses we received on our calls.  Many people were interested in our newest release, the turkey track.  This call will be available soon on our website.  There are some pictures in this blog that show you the new design.  Let me assure you, this is not just one beautiful looking call, it sounds phenomenal.

We all had a great trip and are now focusing our attention to Nashville for the NWTF National Convention in February.  We will have several Turkey Track calls on hand, for all you diehard turkey hunting fanatics, to try.  If you are looking for a true one of a kind call this year, all I can tell you is “TRUE AMERICAN CHESTNUT.”  Hopefully, this will get you excited to come and see us.

If you live in or around the Louisville area or are just passing through, we invite you to come and visit with us.  Let Derby City help you fill those tags this year.  We would like to thank everyone for a great start in the call making business.

Derby City has a new treasure. We took our banner to Nashville and had it signed by many great people. Our friends from Osage Roost, great call makers and a few famous hunting celebrities signed this banner. Thanks to everybody for signing the banner. We will hang it proudly in our shop as a reminder of what a great time Derby City Calls had at the 2010 NWTF Convention.

Derby City would like to thank John Allen for supporting us at the NWTF Convention. Black Gold was the only dog food supplier at the show and was well received by the people. Many people came by the booth to say they feed Black Gold to their pets. For everyone who loves Black Gold,  go to their website and click on “find a dealer”. Enter your area code or zip code, the range of miles you are willing to drive,  and that should bring up dealers in your area . Do yourself and your pet a favor, pick up a bag of Black Gold.  Your pet will love it.  For more information on Black Gold, click on the link on Derby City’s home page.  Thanks again for your support.

Derby City recently sent some call building supplies to students at Muhlenberg County High School.  Under the guidance of teacher Scott Cronin, these students have been busy building turkey calls since the beginning of February.  Mr. Cronin, his fiancee Morgan, and all of his students came by and spent some time at our booth on Friday, Feb. 19th.  Scott teaches a wildlife management class and always covers a unit on wild turkeys.  He wanted to have his students build turkey calls, but needed some supplies to get started.  Derby City was fortunate enough to be able to donate the materials to build these calls.  We appreciated Scott, Morgan , and all of the students for coming by our booth.  They are a great group of kids.  We look forward to helping them again in the future.

All the guys here at Derby City Game Calls have been working overtime to get ready for this years NWTF Convention.  We have a lot of exciting products for sell and to display.  From our Magnum and Spur designed Turkey calls, to our new Tracker Trough call. Along with these we are also bringing unbelievable sounding and gorgeous Old Growth Strikers, we even have our very first Special run “250 year old California Old Growth Redwood”. For those attending the show come by and say hello, we are located at Booth 1061.  Brent, Jimmy, Bob, Eric, Jeff and Dave are all coming down this year and we look forward to meeting a lot of new friends and having a good time.

See you there!

The NWTF Southwest Spurs chapter located here in Louisville Kentucky held it 8th annual Hunting Heritage Banquet on February 6th.  This event was held to help raise the necessary funds needed for support of the many programs the NWTF is involved in. The banquet was a huge success with about 180 in attendance.  Derby City Game Calls was proud to help by purchasing a corporate sponsorship table for eight of our guys and donating some of our calls and strikers for raffels. The local Southwest Spurs Chapter is a great organization and is very active for the NWTF, we are very proud to be members of it.

Derby City Game Calls will be displaying at this years N.W.T.F Convention Feb. 18th thru 21st in Nashville, TN. We will be located at booth 1061.   We will have a large selection of Pot Calls on display along with a bunch of our famous “Old Growth Strikers”.  We will also be showcasing our new trough call along with musical instrument grade wood and supplies for custom call builders.  Come by and say hello to the gang and test drive our very first limited run “250 year old” California Redwood pot call.