Like clockwork, every year, one customer in particular reaches out to leather craftsman Nik Faulk and orders a new game tote customized with his family name and the year he purchased it. “He’ll give it to one of his family members he hunts with, and then the next year he gets a new one,” says Faulk, owner of Feather & Fin Leather Goods, who got into leatherwork as a hobby and instead found a calling. He says he enjoys that kind of relationship with many of his customers. “If I make something for a dad or mom, they use it; when their son or daughter gets old enough to go hunting with them, they pass it down and come back to me for another. It is not only special for them but for me as well. Knowing that I had a part in creating great memories will be remembered forever.”
How Faulk got here is a story in itself. Feather & Fin might never have happened if it weren’t for two seminal moments in Faulk’s life. The first came in 2005, when Faulk was a rising star on the professional rodeo circuit. He was sidelined for a while after he tore two ligaments in his knee and could not compete. He was in a holding pattern with time on his hands while he healed.
“The mom of one of my traveling partners made Native American beadwork and leather goods,” he remembers. “I thought that was pretty neat. So I bought a leather kit and made a wallet. Then I made a few belts, just something to dabble in.” He kept up the hobby, but in the meantime, Faulk was onto other adventures; he earned a rodeo scholarship to Southwest Oklahoma State University and after graduation joined the United States Coast Guard. “It’s an eclectic background,” he says.
While in the Coast Guard Reserves he returned to his home state of North Carolina to spend time with his grandfather, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. A local company had already recruited him for a job as an electronics and instrumentation technician, and he counted his blessings.
A second pivotal moment came in 2015, when Faulk and a friend were planning a hunting trip. He wanted to raise extra cash to pay for it. “I’d made a few leather game totes—the kind you carry your ducks out of the field or water with—for myself and my friends, so I decided to sell some. Overnight it went from me with just a small tote of tools to a full shop with three sewing machines that cost more than my truck and more leather and hardware in my house than most leatherwork stores have.”
Faulk, who has never run a single advertisement for his business, says people seek out his products not only for the meticulous labor of love they represent but the bonds and memories they create. Products are passed down from one generation to the next and become imbued with stories of time spent with family and friends.
An Artist’s Touch
Faulk jokes that he’s worked with enough different animal and fish hides that “if they were all still alive, I would need a zoo to hold them all,” but his leather of choice is cowhide. He says all of it comes from the food industry, making leatherworking “a green industry before the term was coined.”
His work process goes beyond making leather goods that will last; Faulk also enjoys the artistry, including designing custom images. “When it comes to design, imagination is the only limitation,” he says. “I have covered the full spectrum of fish species and scenes—from a rising brook trout on a quill gordan to redfish eating a kwan fly or even a channel catfish stalking a bream.”
These scenes aren’t hard for Faulk to conjure: he still finds time to spend in the field, personally as well as professionally as a licensed fishing guide in North Carolina and Virginia. He’s broken the state record for catching long-nose gar and is now chasing the world record.
Last November, Faulk’s day-job employer, Grizzly Tobacco, flew him out to Washington to duck hunt with veterans as part of the company’s partnership with a veterans’ support group, The Fallen Outdoors. “We take veterans and their family members hunting, fishing, hiking, kayaking, canoeing, and it’s all free,” he says. “All they have to do is show up.” Faulk appeared in commercial spotlighting the event.
Faulk ties almost everything he does back to his relationship with the outdoors and with people, which brings him full circle back to his business. With a passion for conservation, education, animal rescue, youth, and veterans’ causes, he donates a portion of each sale to charities that serve those missions. But he’s equally passionate about bringing joy to the people who invest in his dream. “I don’t know how to describe how good it feels when I can make something for someone and see the joy it brings them,” he says, adding that he has dozens of pictures customers have sent of themselves or family members using his leather goods. “It’s like that joy of Christmas, when you bought that one thing for someone that you know they really wanted. It’s special for them, and they’re excited. Imagine getting to see that almost every day.”
