History of GrindFest Outdoors
At the age of 26 I was invited to go duck hunting with a college buddy. I went to my local sporting goods store and purchased a Remington 870, a camo beanie, and a long sleeve t shirt big enough to fit over my jacket.
October 24th, 2010 I met my buddy Bjorn at 5am at Linwood lake. I wanted to see what this duck hunting thing was all about, but waking up before dawn was never my thing.
We piled some old decoys in a 12 ft John boat and Bjorn motored us out to a point on the lake where we set decoys, pushed the boat into the reeds, and waited. Eventually two honkers came in. Bjorn said, "freeze". I froze. My heart pounding. Bjorn said, "kill em", and I pulled up and put my bead on the lead bird. We both shot. Two birds dropped. I looked at him and said, "was that me?". He said, "yep", you shot the one on the left. I said, "Does this feeling ever go away"? He said, "nope".
He was right.
At the bitter end of the Minnesota waterfowl season, 2016, my buddy Jacob and I busted ice with our 14 foot v-hull on the Mississippi River. The ice was thick and we busted a prop and got zero ducks. Discouraged, we threw all the decoys in the boat and shoved that sucker into the garage.
Come Fall 2017 I pulled the boat out and found a tangled mess of decoys. It took me 2 hours of untangling stupid line, cursing my buddy in my head (even though it was equally my fault).
I needed to find an easier way to rig...
That year I ordered some weights off of ebay, and a cheap monofilament Texas Rig kit I found online. Wow! I was impressed with Texas Rigs. I never wanted to go back.
However, the following year, all my lines were kinked up and had memory. My buddy had gotten another style with a sliding egg weight, and the monofilament would get kinked and the egg wouldn't even slide all the way down.
I started looking into using coated steel cable, based off of another company I had heard of.
I ordered a lead mold, casting pot, cable, crimps, crimping pliers, and carabiners. I was able to melt down my old sinkers and make 4 dozen...
Then I realized that I had actually spent more money on all of the materials, than I would have spent buying them @ 45$ per dozen.
My first goal was to just sell enough of these to pay for my own rigging.
So I made some for friends.
Then I sold some on Craigslist (remember that?).
Then some on other marketplaces.
People started talking about them, hunters would come back for more. I was encouraged by a few customers to try and sell more and make a legit company.
So I got more equipment, and started ordering materials at higher volume, and things naturally started to pick up.
I have poured all of my profits back into the company. I have put hours of time developing these products and hard manual labor making them all, the best that I can possibly make.
As things grew, I was able to source more product for less overhead and purchase machines that has helped me speed up and improve quality.
My first goal was to just make enough money to pay for my own rigging.
Lets see where this thing goes.