I've been buying, testing, and breaking waterfowl gear for over fifteen years now, and you learn things after a while. You start to pick up on which companies actually understand what it's like out there at 5am when it's freezing and your fingers aren't working right, and you figure out pretty quickly who's just slapping camo on generic stuff and calling it innovation.

Rig'Em Right has been on my radar for years. I see their gear everywhere. In layout blinds across the Midwest, on public land refuges here in California, in the hands of guys who hunt harder than most. People swear by it. But I never really dug into who they were or how they operated until we got the chance to partner with them for a full season of gear reviews. Before we started testing their products, I figured we should start from the beginning and actually understand who these guys are, what they believe about building gear, and why any of it should matter to you.

So I got Matthew Cagle, the founder, on a call a few weeks back. We ended up talking for over an hour, and honestly, it was one of the better conversations I've had with anyone in this industry. What follows is the foundation for everything we're going to be reviewing over the coming months. Here's what I learned.

The ManThe Basics

Matthew's 53 years old and lives in a small beach town on the North Carolina coast, population around 20,000. His wife's family has been there for generations. Fifth generation outer bankers, and her dad's still a commercial fisherman while her uncle builds boats. Matthew says she's as salty as they come, and he means it in the best possible way. She grew up working on fishing boats and is tougher than most men he knows.

Here's what got me though. She still runs the forklift at their warehouse. Still builds shipments when they're behind. When a container shows up and they're short on hands, she's back there moving boxes with everyone else. The company's been around for twenty years, they sell in major retailers across the country, they ship internationally to Canada and Europe, and they still only have eight full time employees. Eight people in a small coastal town doing everything themselves. That tells you something right there about how they operate and what they value.

The OriginWhere It All Started

Matthew didn't come from a hunting family, not really anyway. His dad worked constantly and wasn't into the outdoors at all. Didn't hunt, didn't fish, just worked. Matthew's grandfather on his mom's side was the hunter in the family, but they lived three and a half hours apart. Those trips were special when they happened, but they didn't happen nearly as much as he wanted them to.

When Matthew did get to hunt as a kid, his gear was an absolute disaster.

"My gear was terrible. Horrible. I'd go to my dad and say I need a blind bag, and he'd give me an old blue duffel bag he probably got at some convention. My feet were cold and getting wet, so he'd literally put bread bags over my feet. Big old thick wool socks and bread bags. It was awful."

If you've never had the pleasure of experiencing bread bags as waders, let me tell you, they don't work. At all. They just make everything sweat and somehow get even colder than before.

But here's where the story gets interesting. Most people would just deal with bad gear and move on with their lives. Matthew spent years mentally cataloging every single thing that went wrong. Every zipper that froze solid. Every strap that snapped at the worst possible moment. Every pocket that made absolutely no sense. By the time he was old enough to drive, he was hunting every spare minute he had. And by his early thirties, working a sales job with a flexible territory, he'd been designing better gear in his head for well over a decade.

The DetoursThe Ideas That Went Nowhere

Before decoy rigs ever existed, Matthew had much bigger plans in mind.

When camera phones first came out, he immediately saw the potential and got excited about what was possible. Trail cameras that could send pictures directly to your phone. He had the whole concept figured out. The website, the branding, the product itself, all of it mapped out. He went to Motorola because they were the dominant player in phones at the time and pitched them on building it.

They wanted hundreds of thousands of dollars just to build a prototype. So that was the end of that idea.

He had another concept for a wader dryer that he thought could work in the market. Same exact problem though. Way too expensive to even get started without serious capital.

Then he looked around at what he could actually make himself without needing a small fortune up front. At his hunting club, they'd been using these decoy rigs and anchors that Matthew had put together over the years. Nothing fancy or complicated, just practical solutions that kept lines from tangling and decoys where they needed to be. And every single guy who came through the club wanted a set for himself.

"I said, these would be something I can actually make myself in the garage without spending hundreds of thousands of dollars," Matthew explained.

So that's exactly what he did. Started making rigs by hand and selling them locally around North Carolina. That's how Rig'Em Right got started. Not with venture capital or investor pitches or a polished business plan. Just a guy in his garage solving a problem he'd been dealing with his entire hunting life.

The BreakthroughThe Wisconsin Breakthrough

The first real test of whether this could be an actual business came at the Ducks Unlimited Expo in Wisconsin. Matthew showed up with about a hundred packs of rigs that he'd made completely by hand. He was sourcing parts from West Marine and Bass Pro at the time. The string winders literally came straight from Bass Pro Shops. The little bags the rigs came in were even better. Makeup kits. He was buying them somewhere, dumping out the makeup, and repurposing the bags because they were exactly the right size.

He set up his display at the expo not really knowing what to expect and spent the entire first day doing demonstrations on repeat. Throw the decoys down on the ground, pick them back up, show people they don't tangle into a disaster. Over and over again all day long. Guys would look at him skeptically and say "that's gonna be a mess," and Matthew would prove them wrong every single time.

They sold out in eight hours.

"People were ordering them and we had to ship them later," Matthew told me. "That's where we met the folks from Duck Commander too. They loved them and endorsed us, and we were kind of off to the races after that."

Within a year, things started moving fast. A local shop called New Sport Shop agreed to carry them, then Macks picked them up. And then Matthew, who admits he was "too dumb to know that I couldn't," walked straight into Cabela's with his handmade rigs.

They loved what they saw and asked how many he could make. Matthew told them as many as they needed, not really thinking through what that would require. They came back with numbers. Thousands of units across multiple products.

He called his wife right after that meeting. "Honey, got good news and bad news. We got the order, but I just wrote a check that my ass can't cash."

A buddy of his knew someone with overseas manufacturing connections. Matthew got on a plane, figured things out on the fly, found a factory that could actually handle the production volume, and somehow made it all work. That entire sequence from the Wisconsin expo to the Cabela's order to overseas manufacturing happened in about a year. Looking back, it's absolutely insane how fast that escalated.

The CompanyTwenty Years Later

Today Rig'Em Right has around 250 SKUs in the lineup. The decoy anchors and jerk rigs they started with are still core products, but they've also built out all the soft goods they've become known for over the years. Blind bags, backpacks, slotted decoy bags, neoprene hand warmers, dog vests and dog stands, gun cases, apparel, and now a full line of decoys with both painted and blackout options.

Here's the part that I think really matters though, and it's what separates them from a lot of other companies. None of it was planned out in advance.

"We've literally never put together a business plan. I don't even know what we're gonna do next year. Just keep making stuff and selling it. We're very loose and not so corporate around here."

That sounds completely crazy at first, especially for a company that's been around for two decades. But when you understand how they actually work and make decisions, it starts to make a lot of sense.

Every single product in their lineup exists for one of two reasons. Either Matthew personally ran into a problem in his own kit that nobody else was solving properly, or customers kept asking for something repeatedly until it became obvious there was genuine demand for it. The Shell Shocker blind bag, the Lock and Load, the Low Down backpack. All their top sellers came from actual problems encountered in the field that needed fixing, not from brainstorming sessions in a conference room trying to predict market trends.

Their whole expansion into soft goods wasn't even intentional at first. During the 2008 recession, some of their competitors ran into serious delivery problems and couldn't keep products on shelves. Customers started asking Matthew if he could make certain items they couldn't source anywhere else anymore. Things like slotted bags, neoprene accessories, various styles of blind bags. He said yes, figured out how to make them work, and the product line just grew organically from there based on actual demand.

"It was really just one product at a time," he said. "Customers asking for things, us developing a following, and we just kept adding."

The PhilosophyHow They Actually Build Stuff

This is where things get really interesting, and if you care about the gear you buy and use in the field, pay close attention here.

Matthew's entire approach to product design comes directly from all those years he spent using terrible equipment as a kid. He has a specific frustration with unnecessary complexity that almost borders on obsession. Pockets that don't actually serve any useful purpose. Features that look impressive in catalog photos but fall apart the first time you use them in real conditions. Design choices that prioritize aesthetics over actual function.

"I get frustrated when I buy a backpack and it's got all these pockets," he said. "What is that pocket for? It looks like it's designed for something special, but it's not. It's just there. They had a blank piece of canvas and they wanted to put another pocket on it."

He gave me a perfect example that makes total sense when you think about it. A lot of blind bags on the market have the ammo compartment positioned off to the side, but that's the heaviest thing most people are carrying. If the weight isn't properly centered, the whole bag flops around on your shoulder all day long.

"If I'm taking three boxes of ammo in my blind bag, they need to be in the center where it don't flop around when you put it on your shoulder," Matthew explained. "Don't put a whole lot of pockets on there just for the sake of having something that doesn't have a specific purpose to it."

The premium layout blind Matthew has designed is a perfect example of this philosophy in action. It's completely finished and by all accounts it's excellent. But current tariffs have pushed the price point too high for where the market is right now. So it sits on the shelf. He won't compromise on materials or construction quality just to hit a lower price point, even if that means delaying the launch indefinitely.

"There's plenty of people that make cheap blinds that are fine," he said. "You might have to buy one every year, but there's a place for that. Especially when you've got a crew of dudes and need six or eight blinds. That's just not the space we play in."

The PeopleThe Family Side of Things

I want to spend some time on this aspect of the business because it reveals a lot about how this company actually operates on a day to day basis.

Matthew's wife has been deeply involved since the very beginning. He says she does everything from boardrooms to bathrooms. She ran the warehouse herself for years, still builds shipments when they're backed up, still operates the forklift, still unloads containers when they're short on help. The day before we talked, they were headed out to tailgate at an NC State football game when the cleaning lady called with bad news. A pipe had burst at the office and there was water everywhere. They dealt with it and moved on. That's just what running a small business actually looks like sometimes.

Their two daughters grew up in the business too, whether they particularly wanted to or not. When a shipment of goose flags arrived from the factory overseas without any glue applied because someone forgot that critical step, the entire family spent Memorial Day weekend in the office running an assembly line. The girls were six and ten years old at the time. One unpacked boxes, Matthew and his wife applied glue, and the other daughter repacked and taped boxes back up. For the entire holiday weekend.

"People ask if my daughters want to take over the company one day," Matthew said. "Hell no, they don't. They love to hunt. That's not it. They just had to deal with too much turmoil in their lives around this thing."

Both girls have moved on to pursue their own careers now. One is in her third year of veterinary school at NC State, and the other is doing undergraduate work out in Colorado. But they both still hunt whenever they get the chance. And apparently they're pretty selective about it these days, which makes sense when you think about what they've experienced. When you've spent your teenage Halloweens shooting greenheads in northern Alberta, scratching out a few mergansers in a local North Carolina swamp doesn't quite deliver the same experience anymore.

Matthew told me a great story about taking his oldest daughter on her first deer hunt when she was maybe four years old. He shot a doe and watched it trot off a short distance in the woods. His daughter walked over to where it was lying, stood above it in her little cowboy boots, reared back, and kicked it right in the head. Then she said "my daddy killed you."

"I was like, all right, we're good," Matthew laughed. "She's got it."

The BuyersWho They're Actually Building For

This is a harder question to answer definitively than you might think at first. Rig'Em Right sells approximately 95% of their products through retailers, so it's primarily a B2B business model. They don't have detailed customer profiles on exactly who's buying their stuff at the counter at Bass Pro or Cabela's or local hunting shops. But Matthew has developed a pretty good sense of their customer base over the years from attending trade shows, from emails and messages people send, and from talking directly with people who use his products in the field.

"We definitely have a younger demographic, 30 and under," he said. "But old guys still hunt, you know, and they're still using our stuff. I don't think I can really nail down who I think our customer is. We sell to the guy that goes out a few times a year. We sell to outfitters that start in Canada and don't stop till the snow geese fly back north. Five months of hunting. We've got those guys too."

The common thread running through their customer base seems to be serious waterfowl hunters. People who take the sport seriously enough to invest in quality gear. People who've gotten burned by cheap equipment in the past and are tired of replacing things every single season. People who genuinely care about whether their gear actually works when it matters most.

What's particularly interesting is how Matthew talks about which products resonate most deeply with customers. The dog vest comes up constantly in his conversations. He gets stories at every trade show he attends from people whose dogs were saved by the vest in genuinely dangerous situations. Sticks going through the chest cavity. Fights with other animals. All kinds of scenarios you don't even want to think about happening to your dog. One story actually made it into Wildfowl magazine about a dog that got caught in a shop explosion and fire. The veterinarian told the owner flat out that the vest saved the dog's life.

"That's probably the most rewarding feedback we get," Matthew said. "Stuff surrounded by the dog vest."

The Road AheadWhere They're Headed From Here

The next five years for Rig'Em Right are focused primarily on decoys. That's the big strategic push. They launched their first floaters this year with both painted and blackout options available, and next year they're adding redheads, bluebills, wood ducks, and gadwall to the lineup. The ultimate goal is to build out a comprehensive assortment within the next few years that covers everything a serious waterfowler needs. Honkers, snows, full body decoys, the complete package.

The blackout decoys are worth discussing because they illustrate how Matthew thinks about product development as a whole. He's been painting his own decoys flat black for years out of personal preference, and a lot of serious waterfowl hunters have done exactly the same thing. It's not a new concept by any stretch. When they launched the blackout line commercially, social media predictably blew up with people pointing out "you didn't invent that."

"We never said we invented it," Matthew said. "We're just making them now for the guy that doesn't want to go buy a bunch of rattle cans and paint them in his driveway."

That's really the approach in a nutshell. Take things that hunters are already doing on their own out of necessity, make them more convenient and accessible, make them higher quality with better materials, and deliver them at a reasonable price point. It's not about inventing revolutionary new concepts that nobody's ever seen before. It's about taking existing practices and simply doing them better with more consistency.

The dog gear line is expanding as well. They launched a dog stand this year and more retriever accessories are currently in development. And that premium layout blind will eventually make it to market when the tariff situation stabilizes and the numbers finally work out properly.

On the soft goods side of the business, things are more mature and stable at this point. The bags and packs that really built the company's reputation are established products now. There are some new camo pattern options being added here and there, refinements based on customer feedback and field testing, but no major new product categories are coming in the immediate future on that front.

Beyond BusinessWhat He Actually Cares About

I always make a point to ask founders what they would say to a room full of their customers if they had the opportunity. It's usually a pretty softball question that generates safe, predictable answers about company values or product quality or customer service or whatever sounds good in the moment.

Matthew didn't go that route at all.

"Get kids out there. Get them off social media. Don't let them bring their phone to the deer stand or their iPad. I know they'll keep them quiet. I get it. But there's other ways to keep them quiet."

He talked at length about overstimulation being a genuine problem with kids today. Children who can't sit still anymore because they're conditioned to constant scrolling and instant gratification. Who don't know how to slow down and actually experience something without immediately documenting it. Who completely miss the frost forming on the ground in the early morning light, the owl coming in to roost nearby, the woods slowly waking up around them with all its sounds and movements.

"We need that next generation so bad to continue hunting," Matthew said.

His brother actually runs a weeklong waterfowl camp in North Carolina during the summer months where kids get hands-on experience learning everything from decoy carving to calling techniques to shooting out of layout blinds. Delta Waterfowl is actively involved with the program too. Matthew sponsors youth hunting events constantly throughout the year, and it's abundantly clear that this is something he cares deeply about far beyond just good PR for the company.

The other major thing he got into during our conversation was advocacy for hunters as a community. He genuinely wants hunters to be better at explaining what we do, why it matters, and why it's ethical and necessary. He's visibly frustrated that people who barely spend any meaningful time outdoors have somehow become the loudest voices on conservation issues that directly affect hunters.

"The whole environmentalist movement, we've let people who think they're outdoors people be the champions of conservation," he said. "Somebody with a paddle board on their Subaru, they're the ones barking loudest on hunting. But they're not in the woods. They don't know. And they're working their way into positions of authority to write legislation."

He wants hunters actively involved in clean water initiatives, in public land preservation efforts, in all the regulatory and legislative decisions that directly affect the natural resources we depend on as a community. He wants the hunting community to stop passively ceding that ground to people who don't actually understand what they're talking about because they've never spent serious time out there observing and understanding these ecosystems firsthand.

You don't hear that kind of raw honesty from most brand founders in this space. Most of them play it completely safe and stick rigidly to approved talking points. Matthew seems genuinely worried about where things are headed if hunters don't step up and get actively involved in these conversations and decisions. And based on what I've seen over the years, I think he's absolutely right to be concerned.

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Hunt Bums has a gear review partnership with Rig'Em Right for the upcoming season. As always, our reviews reflect real field use and our honest assessment, good or bad.