For waterfowlers today, you couldn’t find anyone who hasn’t hunted over a MOJO spinning wing decoy. They’ve revolutionized the waterfowl hunting industry (and multiple other hunting industries for that matter). From their start with the “MOJO Magic Mallard” to countless other products that have hit the market to make hunters more successful, the vast majority of hunters today can agree on one thing; MOJO has had a huge impact on the hunting world.
But if you asked Terry Denmon, Louisiana native, professional engineer, businessman, and entrepreneur, about the impact his product has had on the hunting industry, he’ll humbly respond “I don’t really think about it, it really just doesn’t occur to me. I know they’re out there and they’ve helped lots of hunters kill lots of ducks, but I don’t really feel anything different. I’m just happy that the product is working.”
When explaining the origins of his idea Denmon says, “one thing that a lot of people don’t realize is that the spinning wing decoy was originally created in California. There was a rice farmer who was making these spinning wing decoys out of a 6-volt motor and an O-ring and a blade that spun, and it would turn and attract ducks. But it wasn’t manufactured that well. They had trouble in the wind, or when it got cold they froze, or they quit working when they got wet.”
And so started the beginning stages of the idea for Denmon’s ‘Magic Mallard’. “I had a friend named Murry Crowe, and he could build anything. He spent a lot of time building and repairing race cars, so he was pretty good at that stuff. He got a call to start making these spinning wing decoy things, but he didn’t know how to slow down the motor to the right speed or how to size the pulleys that it needed, so he called me. Murry wasn’t a duck hunter, so he explained this decoy to me and I just thought it was the craziest idea I’d ever heard of. I mean, who would think of something like that?”
But in 1999 Terry and Murry stuck with the idea of making this spinning wing decoy. “The first time I took one of our decoys out, it was on a 24 volt caterpillar cab blower motor, mounted in a hollow body decoy, with aluminum wings. The same aluminum they put on race cars. I just thought to myself ‘I hope nobody sees this’, cuz I felt really silly out there with this crazy decoy. But as soon as I turned my back to walk to the blind I heard a bunch of ducks fly over. It wasn’t quite shooting light yet, so I turned around and about 15 mallards landed right on top of that decoy. I was like ‘huh, maybe there’s something to this’”.
Terry continues, “really, it was all just about building a better mousetrap for duck hunters”. After filing for patents, and going through what Denmon calls the “patent wars”, they were able to come out with the “MOJO Mallard” spinning wing decoy, and buy out the competition. Now with a product to sell, a name for the company was in order. “I knew it had to be something snappy and easy to remember. Everyone was creating these short, snappy names that rolled off the tongue real easy. Well, when I was a kid we had a farm, even though that wasn’t what my family did for money, we still farmed on our property, and we had this piece of equipment we used but we didn’t know the name of it. So my dad just called it a ‘mojo’. So I went to my two business partners and was like ‘Hey, what about the name MOJO? And it just stuck”.
Terry and Murry went to friend Jeff Simmons who owned a local sporting goods store. The three created HuntWise Inc. in the year 2000. “That first year Jeff told us he could sell about 7,500 of our decoys, and on a piece of paper Murry had written down 7,500 as the number he could manufacture. I think we ended up selling something like 15,000.” With one of the hottest selling products on the market, Denmon had a company to build and a product to market. “There were some growing pains,” Terry says. “Starting out we just didn’t have the infrastructure to meet the demands of the big box stores. That’s how everything was sold back then. There was no online shopping. You had to sell your stuff through the big box stores if you wanted to be successful. They didn’t want to work with someone who was only a one-product company, and I don’t blame them. It’s a business risk. I didn’t want to be a one-product company either”. So back to the drawing board they went, creating new products to make their customers more successful in the field.
They not only entered the duck hunting arena, but MOJO’s presence became known in the dove, turkey, and predator hunting world. “We’ve made some fantastic products over the years that never even hit the market. We made these things called ‘leafy sheets’ where we molded a leaf and put them onto a mesh type of sheet for concealment. Because having a good hide is mainly about hiding the human figure. There have been other products we’ve made that are dang good, but we also have learned that people won’t pay past a certain price for a product. That’s part of being a good business is understanding what people will pay for the product your making. Otherwise, you end up losing money on a product no one will pay for” Denmon later bought out his two business partners to keep the company moving in the direction that he thought was fitting. “I didn’t want to be some ‘me too’ company. I didn’t want to be some company that just popped up with the same type of product that had already been on the market for 10 years.” Says Denmon. “So we ended up making things like the Flock-a-Flicker, and other things that I thought would help create that better mousetrap”. The Flock-a-Flicker, a floating device that is supposed to imitate birds flapping their wings on the water, was a motion decoy that added to MOJO’s arsenal of decoys, along with multiple other motion decoys to help hunters be more successful. “That’s really our goal,” says Denmon, “we want to make hunters more successful”.
When asked about his next project Denmon said “We get so many requests for something to help with goose hunting. And we’re trying. This past year we released our “Mini-Flags”. They’re supposed to work like geese beating their wings, or as a flag. Just to give geese that look of lifelike movement in the decoys. The hard part of getting a goose spinning wing decoy, is they don’t move their wings like ducks. They have a much slower wing beat. So it’s been hard trying to find a way to slow a motor down to match a goose’s wingbeat. I know people say that geese will flare off of a spinning decoy. I don’t think that’s always the case. I just think they don’t particularly like landing with them. We usually just turn them off when geese are working, but I have had plenty of geese land with one of our decoys running. It’s just one of those things where you have to pay attention to the birds.”
Denmon also realizes that his product isn’t a fool-proof system. “I live in Louisiana. By the time the ducks get to us, they’ve seen every spinning wing decoy and they’ve heard every type of calling. So you have to let the birds tell you how to use the decoys. If they want a bunch of them, use a bunch, if they only want one, only use one. You really have to treat it like you’re calling the birds. Look at how they’re responding. Do you want the decoys on a timer, or do you want them on the entire time they’re circling? You just have to let the birds tell you what they want” Terry says. He also says that during the late season, he recommends putting the MOJO’s a good distance away from the decoy spread. “Stick them 100 yards away if you have to. What some people forget is that these decoys are attention grabbers. The highest and best use of a spinning wing decoy is long-range attraction. Birds can see the strobe given off by them from distances much farther than the hunter can see the ducks. Because they were such a great ‘landing device’ in the early years, many hunters think of them as such, and if they don’t land birds, then they don’t use them, but they are giving up long-range attraction and that is a mistake”. That’s why Terry specifically likes his MOJO teal so much. “The wings beat so fast it gives off a strobe that really attracts the birds. That’s what birds look for when they’re flying is the strobe of other birds’ wings so they know where to go land. That teal decoy gives off the perfect strobe to attract birds from a way off just because the wings beat so fast for the size. I messed up by not making my mallard that size with that type of wing beat.”
In today’s modern era of waterfowling, the name MOJO is a commonly known name. One could argue that there isn’t a waterfowler out there that haven’t hunted, or won’t at least go on a hunt, with a MOJO decoy. In Louisiana folklore, “MOJO” means “magic”, and for countless waterfowlers, Terry Denmon helped bring that “magic” to their decoy spread with his pioneer-like mentality to help revolutionize the waterfowl hunting industry.
Photos Courtesy of MOJO Outdoors
