Peyton Lemmons is like other high school seniors. She enjoys hanging out with her family and friends, walking her dogs, scrolling social media, working in the summer and duck and deer hunting with her dad and younger sister.

She also is a budding entrepreneur and often can be found in her dad’s shop on her lathe, shaving down barrels for duck calls. Hunters manipulate the small devices using their breath and hands to create realistic duck sounds designed to lure waterfowl.

Lemmons operates P-Town Calls, which sells handmade wood and acrylic duck calls, as well as hats, beanies, sweatshirts and T-shirts in assorted colors repping the P-Town logo. 

She’s made over 700 calls and has shipped them across the country in the four and a half years since she made her first call. The calls cost $90.

Customers are often surprised to discover who makes P-Town Calls.

“All the time people are so shocked: ‘Oh, you’re a girl!?’ These guys will message me saying, ‘Hey dude,’ or ‘Hey man, can I get this call?’ and when they come to pick it up, they’re like, ‘Wait, you made this?’”

Lemmons has been hunting with her dad, Dennis Lemmons, older brother and younger sister since she was 8 years old.

“I’ve been around it my entire life. ... There are pictures of me at 5 years old holding up ducks. (Dad) would go hunting and come back and I would pick out the prettiest bird he shot,” she said.

Lemmons, who was in middle school during the Covid-19 pandemic, said that she and her dad did a lot of duck hunting during that time because “it was one of the only things you could go do.”

She remembered joining her online classes and completing schoolwork from the duck blind on more than one occasion.

During eighth grade, she took an online wood shop class. “Something about it really interested me,” she said.

Her shop teacher encouraged the class to try making something. Her dad had previously made a couple of acrylic barrels, so Lemmons decided to try to make a duck call out of wood and borrowed a lathe from a friend.

With pandemic social distancing precautions still in full effects, Lemmons said, “I had nothing really to do, so I just started making a lot of them.”

She grimaced holding up her first call – made from a Russian olive tree – because it doesn’t compare to the ones she has shaped more recently.

Her dad, followed by several of his friends, were her first customers.

Word of mouth brought in more interest and Lemmons had to start thinking about a name for her fledgling business to put on the bands that encircle the barrel of each call.

Expanding product lines

As word spread, she began to increasingly receive inquiries about acrylic calls.

“Wood is cool, but (acrylic) is more flashy, eye-catching ... I didn’t make acrylics for the first year. … It’s more volatile to work with. It’s not as forgiving as wood and can literally blow up in your face,” she said.

“It can get frustrating, but it’s worth it when you see the final product,” she said.

Once she added acrylic calls to her offerings, business really took off.

As her dad explained, “Acrylics sound different than wood, which absorbs sound. Acrylics are a louder call that will reach out further, especially here in this area because we have big open water.”

Lemmons orders blocks of different wood and a vast array of acrylic designs from companies that supply the materials for making calls. She then cuts the block down and shapes and sands it on a lathe until it is as smooth as possible for creating the clearest sound.

Peyton Lemmons shaves down barrels for wood and acrylic duck calls.

| Photo by Laura Kostad

She shares pictures of the calls on her social media channels and people reach out about which ones they want to buy.

Lemmons orders the reeds from Echo Calls and the inserts that the reeds attach to and assembles them to create three different kinds of duck calls: double reed, single reed and cutdown. She said the Open Water Double is her most popular device.

She explained that a double reed call is the most accessible for beginners, whereas single reed calls require more experience to master, but do give the user more creative control over the sound produced.

Her younger sister, Breanna Lemmons, makes macrame lanyards to attach to the calls and bands as well as dog leashes that she sells alongside Peyton’s calls.

Peyton Lemmons said it’s challenging to find time for the business as a senior at Pasco’s Chiawana High School who is concurrently enrolled in the pre-veterinary technician program at Tri-Tech Skills Center in Kennewick.

She said preparing enough gear for the Christmas rush is always a struggle.

“Starting a business is hard,” she said. “I would like to be selling a little more, but I’m surprised at how far it’s actually come in four years.”

Lemmons and her dad have been humbled by the support of their friends and the community.

“I have a lot of the same customers; they all have five of my calls on their lanyards but they just keep buying more. Then they tell their friends,” she said.

Stage presence

One fun connection was through a friend of her dad’s whose son, Tim Rencken, plays fiddle, steel guitar and other strings in Riley Green’s band. The singer-songwriter from Alabama was the Academy of Country Music’s New Male Artist of the Year in 2020.

Rencken often wears a P-Town Calls trucker hat while performing and asked Green to sign a P-Town Calls hat for Lemmons. He later nabbed backstage tickets for Lemmons to attend last year’s Watershed music festival at the Gorge Amphitheater where she got to meet Green in-person.

Growing the business

Even with graduation fast approaching and a new phase of life waiting in the wings, Lemmons is still working with her dad on how to continue growing P-Town Calls.

“I would hope to expand into a bigger business, but it just depends on how much people want to buy them,” she said.

She sells elk calls for $50.

“I’ve been starting to explore cutting my own reeds,” she said, also noting that she has been branching into goose calls. 

“I get a lot of requests for goose calls. I’m still working on mastering it. There’s more that goes into the reeds,” she said.

Lemmons said she’s also been thinking about attending some sportsman shows in Idaho and Montana to showcase her wares, expand her reach and drum up more business.

In the meantime, she is in the process of launching a website designed for P-Town Calls that would streamline the purchasing process, especially for apparel, and looks forward to announcing its launch soon.

P-Town Calls: 509-302-7953, Facebook, Instagram, website coming soon.