For Shaquille Townsend and Ricky Callis, what started as a nickname on a hunting trip would become the title of their new outdoor apparel start-up.

“Bufflehead Bandits” was the name Callis gave to their hunting party, a moniker that stuck and became a tradition between the two friends.

“I’ve always been a bufflehead hunter,” said Callis, who hails from Mathews and serves as a firefighter when he’s not working marine construction. “A lot of hunters joke that bufflehead is a ‘trash duck’ … but around here especially you gotta work with what you got and be who you are,” he continued.

Townsend, a Navy veteran, has studied art since before his time at the U.S. Naval Academy. When he’s not working as an accountant for his family’s bakery, he is doing custom paintings, and it is this background that would inspire the idea for a business.

Townsend took Callis’s nickname for their hunting party and ran with...