Andrew Swain is the proud owner of Quakemaker Guide Services, a professional duck hunting outlet that gives its customers the true outdoorsman experience with expert hunting guides.

While the service he provides his customers is a work of passion, it is the benefits to his family that drives Swain’s passion to grow his business into a recognizable, and hopefully, generational household name.

From an early age, Swain always maintained a powerful connection with the great outdoors, namely scouting crops on a farm during his formative years.

After graduating from Columbia High School in 2009, Swain attended North Carolina State University where he pursued agriculture.

As he tells it, he attended NC State and joined its agricultural track because it was the vocation he knew best.

In fact, after graduating from the university in 2014, he returned to scouting crops until a workplace disagreement changed the course of his career.

“I grew up scouting crops and I went to school for agriculture because really, that’s all I knew,” he says. “When I graduated I went back to scouting crops for a little while, but I had a disagreement with the guy I was working for. That sent me on a different journey.”

Swain joined the North Carolina Department of Transportation shortly after, coming into the organization as an entry-level transportation worker.

“I’ve been there going on 12 years now,” he says. “I started out entry level as a TW on the Bridge Department and I worked my way up a lot and became a supervisor.”

Always family first, Swain ended up moving to Raleigh for a time after his wife Chelsea was accepted into veterinarian school at NC State.

Here he transitioned from his previous position and into DOT’s Roadside Environmental division, later coming into a supervisory role here as well.

“After she got graduated from veterinarian school, we moved back home and I became a supervisor over in Dare County with DOT for around a couple of years before taking a promotion and going to Bertie county.”

These days, Swain remains a supervisor in Windsor, overseeing NCDOT’s activities in Bertie County.

“I enjoy it. It’s not bad work, and I really enjoy working with the community and improving the infrastructure that we have here in Eastern North Carolina,” he says.

While his work with NCDOT is enjoyable and sustainable enough, Swain’s love for hunting and outdoor recreation has framed most of his life and several early endeavors have given rise to an opportunity with incredible potential.

For years Swain and long time friend and Creswell native Austin Jones have hunted and fished together. The duo first met as teenagers working on a farm and have been largely inseparable since.

Swain fondly recalls those early days from a simpler time.

“I bought a Jon Boat at the junkyard in Creswell. I got it fixed up, we got some decoys and me and Austin started hunting the rivers,” Swain recalls.

He also recalls that during his high school days, those same hobbies led to early job opportunities.

“I got a job at Pocosin Lakes national wildlife refuge banding tundra swans and wood ducks. I worked with them for two years under a student temporary employment program. That was all when I was in high school,” he remembers. “My love for hunting just grew from there. Me and Austin got bigger boats, started hunting deer and things like that, right on up until we went to college.”

However, as the two friends married their sweethearts, started having families and took on greater responsibilities, hunting took a backseat to the realities of life...