Ramsey Russell Worldwide: Terry Denmon From MOJO

Rocky Leflore: Welcome to The End of the Line Podcast, I’m Rocky Leflore in the Duck South Studios in Oxford, Mississippi. Joining me this Thursday, hey, Ramsey looking outside the window, its October 31^st sleet hitting the windshield.

Ramsey Russell: We don’t have sleet right now Rocky, but it sure cooled off last night and I’m proud for it son. I’m going to tell you what, yesterday was sultry and more coming back from Utah last week with such beautiful weather to come back here that old Deep South hunk with that man, I’m fired up about some cold weather coming through the front door right now.

“I’m 43 years old, I was thinking back on it. I can remember a couple of really cold Halloweens but I don’t think that I’ve ever seen frozen precipitation before November 1st.”

Rocky Leflore: I’m 43 years old, I was thinking back on it. I can remember a couple of really cold Halloweens but I don’t think that I’ve ever seen frozen precipitation before November 1^st.

Ramsey Russell: No, I cannot recall that.

Rocky Leflore: In Mississippi –

“This feels like – can you just imagine if this doesn’t get a duck hunter fired up, I don’t know what does. Never mind, it’s October 31st. I have heard reports where I hunted last week in Utah’s it’s got ice on it, inch of ice yesterday it’s going to warm back up but right now there’s an inch of ice.”

Ramsey Russell: Not in Mississippi, I saw something up in Utah but I cannot recall that right now. I cannot recall that Mississippi but I just stepped outside. And boy does it feel nipply out here right now, I love it. This feels like – can you just imagine if this doesn’t get a duck hunter fired up, I don’t know what does. Never mind, it’s October 31^st. I have heard reports where I hunted last week in Utah’s it’s got ice on it, inch of ice yesterday it’s going to warm back up but right now there’s an inch of ice. Canada’s frozen, birds are leaving, birds are flying. I hear a report from Oklahoma Kansas “boom” 40,000 birds show up on the refuge. I hear some reports from Missouri “boom” they got a sky full of birds. You see Rocky, it’s that time of year and I’m fired up.

Rocky Leflore: Take me back – real quick before we get to your interview with Terry Denmon. I want to ask you something, take me back to Ramsey Russell as a kid. Halloween today, we’re recording it is the morning of Halloween best candy that you can remember getting as a kid and worst candy. You remember when you was a kid?

Ramsey Russell: I hated – I don’t even know what they were, it was them orange and black and funny looking like bolt brocks, something bolt brock Ben candies the old folks handed out. I hated it. It’s just like, I don’t even know what flavor it was, it was just taffiesh, something I couldn’t stand. And, but I –

Rocky Leflore: What did you hope for? What did Ramsey Russell get?

Ramsey Russell: I like sweet tarts, milk duds, MnM’s that kind of stuff, all that kind of stuff. Them little old pixie sticks they’d hand out, man I like that kind of stuff in my childhood.

Rocky Leflore: Oh man, that was good. And now it just makes your mouth dry up.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, I know. I don’t eat that kind of stuff anymore. But I did it’s the one I got any teeth left as much. I mean look, man, remember when I was a kid in Greenville catching all them turtles making that big $20 a week catching those little snapping turtles and hustling green turtles at school for 4 bits, I blew it all on candy and video games, the rest I just wasted.

Rocky Leflore: I would say, I was a candy trader after Halloween day man. I could make some deals on some candy now.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. And every once in a blue moon, you go to a neighbor’s house and I don’t know if they handed them out to everybody or just the Children they recognize but they hand out like those caramel apples. I didn’t like the candy apples, I like the apples that have been dipped in caramel, I still like that, I would eat that right now. I still like the caramel apple, love that kind of stuff. But them old brock bolt, you know what I’m talking about just no, I couldn’t stand, I just hated it.

Rocky Leflore: I agree with you man. Some worst ones were candy corn, I remember the marshmallow orange looking peanut thing?

Ramsey Russell: No, I hated that. No, that’s exactly what I was thinking when you said that.

Rocky Leflore: Yeah. Anything that I would find in my mamaw’s candy bowl in the month of November, December I didn’t want to get it in trick or treat.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, my grandmother had a candy bowl, them hard candies and they kind of solidified it’s like 50 candies would get like one abstracted candies, different colors with different stride and then you kind of have to bang the pan on the table to get them to break free, I would eat them anyway, but I hated them. And they’ve probably been sitting there for 3 years, it didn’t matter they tasted the same. But I had to desperate to eat something like that though.

Rocky Leflore: That brings back memories. I remember those, my grandmother had the same thing. But anyway, hey, look, what did you and Terry talk about when you sat down with him?

“I said, no Terry I learned at school that’s what it is 1.8 times centigrade plus 32 is how you convert it. He got quiet for about 90 seconds maybe 120 seconds and he snapped his fingers go my gosh, you’re exactly right because the boiling point is this and the freezing point is that and you cross multiply and do this, he said, it’s actually 1.8 something.”

Ramsey Russell: I’m going to tell you all, Mojo decoys. Bona fide statistical fact, it is the number one most recognizable name in decoys. It’s also the most controversial. I mean, I’ve heard them blame from everything, the Kennedy assassination to the collapse of duck populations worldwide and all the stuff going on with that decoy. But at the end of the day Rocky, it’s also the most used decoys. I have hunted 6 continents and everybody used them. Everybody uses Mojo. I’ll tell you this funny story I was in Azerbaijan one time and the staff there that the guides, that boy they took you out were extremely – they were poor people. And one of the first mornings I was hunting, I had brought some Mojo’s over they had some Mojo but I was sitting out there with a couple of king mallards in the hole and very polite little Azerbaijani guide, I love him to death, his name was Adil. And he kept trying to communicate something with me and we could talk a little bit hungry, go, yes, no, on google translate, but you couldn’t have a conversation and so when it came down to him trying to communicate, he kept pointing to that decoy and saying something I didn’t understand. Well, I don’t know what you’re saying. So we’re push polling back and he tapped me on the shoulder and he kind of rubbed his thumbs and his fingers together like you know the universal sign for money. I go oh heck, here we are. Guy is going to shake me down. This dirty little son of a gun is trying to get money out of me. Now I understand, why I didn’t understand he wants money. I said no, universal sign for no. He keeps doing something and he reaches in his pocket and he breaks out some money, some Azerbaijani money and I don’t remember what the conversion rate was but I realized it was about $3 US dollars. And so I called my translator on the phone and they talked and the boy Adil was just real kind of embarrassed that I put the translator on the phone with him. I’m in the middle of a Lake for the first morning in a foreign country with a guy making the universal sign for money, I needed to talk to somebody right there’s a misunderstanding if things ain’t going right. He handed the phone back to me and my translator said Ramsey, he’s asking to buy your Mojo. He badly wants that Mojo. He says how much money did he offer you and I said about 3 bucks. He said, that’s not enough but Ramsey just know that’s every penny he’s got to his name. Every penny that boy had to his name, he wanted that Mojo. And guess what? I gave it to him for free, you know what I’m saying? I mean, every penny he had, he wanted that Mojo so badly, not in a million years could he ever afford to go buy one at retail, I gave it to him when I left and I gave him a tip also because he’s a very good guide and I really enjoyed hunting with him. Well, I was very fortunate years ago to meet Terry Denmon maybe over a decade ago through our mutual friend, Mike Morgen who’s my friend since I was 19 years old and Terry and I began to hunt together as I would have guessed on their show and as you sit in a duck blind with somebody, you really get to know them as you travel with people you really get to know them and I respect Terry as a dear friend number one, I would say, one of my very best friends on earth but also respect him as the person and the businessmen and his idea and where he’s taking his company and where it’s gone. And I had heard the story of how he fell into this, now he’s an engineer by training we talk about that. How did you become Mr. Mojo? It’s a very interesting story how he fell into it. Somebody had basically called and asked him a favor, like back when they were being run by pulley wheels, 2 pulleys and a band somebody needed a little formula to figure out the conversion from big wheel to a little wheel and how to get this kind of rpm, so the wing flash just right and Terry being the inquisitive guy, he’s like what are you talking about? What is this for? He told him to answer real quick cause he can do that kind of stuff and he’s a smart man. Let me tell you this too about my buddy Terry, one day we were in Argentina going duck hunting and he read up temperature on the dashboard and centigrade and he goes, well, I wonder what that is in Fahrenheit and I said, let’s say it was 10 degrees, I said, well that’s 52 degrees, he says, how do you know that? I said, well, because you multiply 2 times Celsius and add 32 you come up with it. I said, it really not 2, its 1.8 but I just round up at 2 because I can’t do 1.8 all the time. He said, no I don’t believe there’s a formula like that. I said, no Terry I learned at school that’s what it is 1.8 times centigrade plus 32 is how you convert it. He got quiet for about 90 seconds maybe 120 seconds and he snapped his fingers go my gosh, you’re exactly right because the boiling point is this and the freezing point is that and you cross multiply and do this, he said, it’s actually 1.8 something. He can figure that out in 90 seconds off the top of his head that’s a genius in my book. I can’t matriculate like that. I’m a Jethro Bodine matriculater. I’m going to tell you all, that’s me baby and I need all my fingers and all my toes once we get up into that level of stuff and then then a whole lot of other things. But he’s a smart man, he’s an interesting guy. I think that lot of them are, the whole point of a decoy back in Utah back in the market gunning days I read those guys would get out of those mudflats and at the crack of dawn, they take a shovel and scoop up little mud piles out in that shallow water and early in the morning as the ducks were coming in, they would mistake those little mud humps out in the water as ducks. And then as the boys started shooting ducks that actually weighed out, put ducks on top of them little mud humps so they look like ducks. The whole purpose of a decoy it is to lure ducks within range. And I defy anybody to tell me a decoy that does it better than a spinning wing decoy. Show me, prove me wrong, they work and for good, for better, for worse, for public land all things equal a kid that doesn’t have 20 years calling experience and know how he got a little advantage. He can go out and be successful and you’ve got to be successful, young people have to be successful or they’re going to lose interest. That’s what it really allures me to it as a product it works, it does good, I think it’s a very interesting story. Mr. Denmon’s a very interesting man and I’ll say this, he’s a very good hunter. If I held up 3 fingers I’d say he is one of them fingers worth of duck hunters I have ever met in my life. A lot of people I hunt with when ducks start coming in and hitting the decoy and time to shoot, they react emotionally, Mr. Denmon is an engineer and one of the hardest – the first time we ever hunt together because I kind of think on one side of my brain, he thinks on that analytical side of brain, it just took a little visiting, we were fine after a day or 2, but he thinks differently, he’s non-emotional that rational side of the brain that comes with that heavy level of engineering and matriculation that I ain’t and we became good friends because of duck hunting. And I’ll say this, I was always impressed how I would describe him as like a Frank Sinatra era mafia hitman of stone cold duck hunters, that’s how I think of Terry Denmon. He never got emotional when those freaking ducks were coming in, whether it was 1 Rosy billed pochard or 50, he never reacted emotionally. He was shooting ducks Rocky, before I was trick or treating in Greenville Mississippi he’s been killing ducks since way back when. Way back before Mojo that man was killing ducks and when those duck would come in, I just remember observe them one time, he was a non-emotional shooter, he just went through the motions and ducks started falling. He’s a very good duck hunter, turned up putting out decoys. He’s always said, if it ain’t working, change it, don’t be scared to get out in the decoys and change it but read the duck and if it ain’t working change it. And so anyway, I really think this interview is a very good glimpse into the history of Mojo which to me is fascinating. Just imagine back in the late 90’s Rocky, he talks about this, imagine that being such a coveted product, if they were literally selling them in brown paper sacks, almost like a drug deal going down at 08:00 at night because if you let it be known the light of day you couldn’t keep up with demand, it’s hilarious. Everybody wanted that thing. And –

Rocky Leflore: It was crazy.

Ramsey Russell: It was crazy.

Rocky Leflore: Real crazy at the time.

Ramsey Russell: And they’ve continued to innovate, they’ve continued to build products and decoys and it’s all about making it more efficient for people to shoot duck. I killed a lot of ducks without a Mojo but part of my bag of tricks is Mojo several of their products. But this is not really about – the people listening to is not really about, it’s not a sales pitch for Mojo. It is a very interesting story about Terry Denmon as a person, Terry Denmon as a Mojo business guy and about the history of Mojo that I just find utterly fascinating. I’ve heard him say it many times and I always love to hear him talk about this story.

Rocky Leflore: Well, we need to get to that now because we could keep talking about the history for a long time. But anyway, Ramsey enjoy the conversation but we need to get that interview with Terry now.

Ramsey Russell: This is Ramsey Russell getducks.com, where its duck season somewhere. And today I’m on the outskirts of Monroe, Louisiana headquarters of the most recognized name in the decoy world with Mr. Terry Denmon, how are you Terry?

“I’m doing great today, Ramsey, how about you? Rain though here turned cool? If you would come a day ago would have been 99 it had been driving by whole night –”

Terry Denmon: I’m doing great today, Ramsey, how about you? Rain though here turned cool? If you would come a day ago would have been 99 it had been driving by whole night –

Ramsey Russell: Feels like fall out there today.

Terry Denmon: Makes me want to go hunting.

Ramsey Russell: Makes me want to go hunting too. But Terry, Mojo Outdoors is the most recognized name in decoy. There’s folks that love them and folks who hate them. I bet everybody listening hunt it over one, whether they do it regular basis or not. But tell us about Mojo. I’ve heard the story before, we’ve been together a long time but how did this all come about?

Terry Denmon: Well, it actually came about probably about as much by happenstance as anything else. But it was 1999 and there was a family of people that I grew up with named the Crowe and they were big farmers and we happen to own a farm together down in Catahoula Parish. Catahoula Parish been a pretty famous duck hunting place because of Catahoula Lake and all the things around here, Honey Break, the famous Honey Break, now setting off a Catahoula Lake, which is as far off Catahoula Lake as Honey Break was good duck hunting, beautiful duck hunting country. And me and one of the 2 Crowe brothers, we were best friends and we duck hunted together a lot. He died and I was also best friends with his little brother Murray Crowe, he’s going to be an important part in this in this story. But he had moved to Monroe, his dad died, his brother died, he got out of farming and moved to Monroe and he always liked to mess with cars and engines and he’d build race cars, he built pulling tractors, he had balanced people’s race engine for him he’s a tinkerer, okay, had a degree in agribusiness now. Okay so don’t start thinking to back room back here but the guy was well educated from a good family but he just liked to tinker. But he hated the duck hunt he would not duck hunt, big game hunting, white tail hunter mostly, but even though we had this fabulous duck hunting place standing Catahoula Parish, he would not go – we’d go down there and he won’t go deer hunting back then it wasn’t that good, a different deer hunt, its great duck hunt, he just hated duck hunting. So it’s 1999, I’ve still got that farm down there that we had all those years. I’m duck hunting on, it is December middle of duck season and he called me up one day and he wants me to help him. I’m in the engineering business that’s what I do for a living. I own an engineering firm, we designed roads and airports and reservoirs and things like that, Dams.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Terry Denmon: Things like that not duck decoys. And so he called me at one time, he starts telling me about this decoy that Jeff Simmons on Simmons sporting goods, the town of Bass strip up on the road, you’ve been there before, it’s a Bass pro size sports. Its 8500 square feet. I mean, they got anything you want in there and Jeff’s a real good retailer. If you would know.

Ramsey Russell: And a duck hunter.

Terry Denmon: And a duck hunter, he really is and a turkey hunter. Well, he had found out about this decoy. In fact, a guy came from California and hunted with him and according to Jeff had one of these things and Jeff wouldn’t let him put it out. They killed a limit of ducks and then Jeff let him put it out and zoom, here comes the ducks. So the next morning Jeff let him put him out of Star Wars that he killed limit ducks in no time. He has told all these people about them and you could get one out of California at that time. It was called a fatal deduction. You remember fatal deduction?

“Was it the same duck body with spinning wings that we got now? Or was it the original field post?”

Ramsey Russell: Was it the same duck body with spinning wings that we got now? Or was it the original field post?

Terry Denmon: No, the field post – a guy named McBride had that. He was in California too, he’s probably the first one that started it. But he never generated any commercial success with that. So these other guys came out with one they had a duck body, okay, they had spinning wings didn’t have very good mechanism to make them spin. But it was a sensation when people used it. I do know that it got to max prayer wings and Stuttgart Arkansas which is not very far up the road. And I thought that’s where Jeff learned it. But Jeff told me he saw it from the guy from California that came. But anyway, somehow he developed a list of people that wanted one of these we’re in the middle of duck season now, okay, so it’s not before duck season. So he calls up Murray because he knows Murray can build anything. And he gives Murray one of these and says, can you build me some of these like now, I want start selling them tomorrow.

Ramsey Russell: Right now?

Terry Denmon: Yeah, and so Murray looked at that, yeah I’ll build it, it shouldn’t be no problem. Well, the way the guys in California had done it, Robert Mathews was the guy that was doing that. He had taken a real small fast speed motor, like runs a VCR or a remote control car turning, probably 2,500-3,000 RPMs in order to slow the wings down, he had to use a little pulley system and that’s the best way of speeding something up and slowing it down. And his little his belt on the pulley system was an O ring but he was probably turning, reducing the speed from 2,500-3,000 RPMs in the motor down to probably 500 somewhere in the vicinity of 500 what’s your wings need to turn. So he gives this thing to Murray and says, can you build these? And Murray says, yes, well then Murray figured out he didn’t know how to get the wing speed and the motor speed coordinated to produce the correct wing speed. So he calls me up –

Ramsey Russell: Right off the get go, everybody kind of figured out that there was a cadence to that strobe. It wasn’t just movement, it was a magic number.

“And so he put a 6 volt motor which is commonly what we would have to use to a 24 volt motor and he slowed the wings down proportionately for 24 slowed down about a 6. So he slowed down about 3000 RPM motor to about 600 RPM it was perfect. So now it’s quiet, it’s fast and smooth with nothing to stop it because that little pulley system they had, if it got wet or the wind blew wouldn’t turn, you couldn’t stop this thing, it tried to turn underwater, you dropped them underwater and I dropped them underwater, you look down and still trying to turn underwater.”

Terry Denmon: That’s correct. And I don’t know about your term right off. So right off they figured out if you punched the button, the darn ducks came to it, they figured that out. I know they had that much down. So Murray, I’m his good friend, I’m an engineer, he called me up and he started telling me about this duck decoy and he wants to know if I can size these pulleys, well, I just kept jumping over that part saying, tell me again what kind of decoys there’s flashing white. He was using the term flashing white. And he said, I don’t know. I just know Jeff’s got some people wants to buy some, he wants to sell them to them. He asked me if I could make him, I can make them, but I don’t know how to size the motor. I said, okay, I’ll tell you what, I’ll come up there tomorrow at about lunchtime around noon so Murray’s shop was about 20 miles up the road from my engineering company. So, I drive up there and then I started looking at this thing. Now, I still hadn’t figured out how it works and why it works or anything I’m just looking at the physical specimen, he’s got his hand there. So, but we did figure out one thing or Murray figured it out, I don’t know he or I who, how that exactly came about. But they were doing it by the hard way, by the wrong way using a little high speed motor and a little pulley system. So Murray said, I think I know a solution to that. So I’m just helping my friends. I said, okay, I’m going back to engineering. So I go back to my shop next day, he called and said come up here and look at this. So I drive up there, he has taken a caterpillar blower motor, double shafted caterpillar blower motors blowing 200 fans up in your caterpillar cab and the motor beats somewhere around 10 or 15 times as big as those people were using on the previous ones. He built race cars. So what they wrapped race cars with back in those days was 04 aluminum, I don’t know if they still use that or not. So he had 4 of 8 sheets of 04 aluminum there. So he cut wings out of that 04 aluminum, there were already white on one side from when he got the car and he had to paint and put a sticker on the other side. He milled some shelves out of aluminum stock and he’s pop riveted the wing to the shelf and he could fit the wing shelf right over the motor shelf. Okay, so that’s what we call the direct drive, which is what own things in existence today. So he solved the problem in the way that worked was that in DC Motors as opposed to AC is what you got in your house, DC is a battery as opposed to AC is that the motor turns proportional to the voltage that you put to it. So caterpillars, all big diesel machinery back in those days were mostly 24 volt. And so he put a 6 volt motor which is commonly what we would have to use to a 24 volt motor and he slowed the wings down proportionately for 24 slowed down about a 6. So he slowed down about 3000 RPM motor to about 600 RPM it was perfect. So now it’s quiet, it’s fast and smooth with nothing to stop it because that little pulley system they had, if it got wet or the wind blew wouldn’t turn, you couldn’t stop this thing, it tried to turn underwater, you dropped them underwater and I dropped them underwater, you look down and still trying to turn underwater. So, I said, okay man, you got it. So he starts making these things. Well, he called me about another day to come up there, so I drive up to his shop by midday see what’s going on with it –

Ramsey Russell: Are you using this to own duck hunt at that time?

Terry Denmon: I don’t have one at that time.

Ramsey Russell: You couldn’t get one.

Terry Denmon: I got one by the time they come off the assembly line, but right now none of them has come off the assembly line. So he came up there, he said, look, I guess I need to give this thing some kind of name. And I said, yeah, I would think so. And so he said, what do you think I ought to name it? I said, I don’t know. Murray is a tinker, tinkers don’t like business, they like tinkering, they want somebody else to do business for him. I said, I don’t know Murray, but I do know that in the trend in corporate America today will be short, easy to remember rolls off the tongue, nothing long, there’s no general motors anymore, there’s no ford motor company, there’s no way that stuff anymore, its apple, its Microsoft, its ABC, IBM states like that. He said, okay, I got that. So what do you think it ought to be? I said, you remember back when he and I grew up, my parents weren’t farmers, but we had a little farm but my dad thought we ought to farm. So we had a lot of hand labor farming, I was the hand labor farmer. We had a little device there, I don’t know what it was, I really think it was somebody’s first step being a garden ploughs. It was a motor and 2 wheels kind of tractor wheel type with a pair of handles and had a clutch and you put the clutch in it would go and so we didn’t have any ploughs or anything to go with it. We would pull trailers and stuff like that with my dad called it a Mojo. He said, get that Mojo over and hook that trailer. Yes, sir hooked the Mojo to the trailer. I said you remember that? And he said, yeah, I do. I said, nothing is easier to remember, shorter, smooth, roll off the tongue than Mojo. He said, okay, so we called it a Mojo Mallard. And I went back to the engineering company and I got my graphics PR lady there to make him some stickers and they said Mojo Mallard and put that on the motor itself. You can find one of those things, don’t let it get away from you, I can tell you right now do not let it get away from you. And that was about – you walk in the park store that motor been about $80, but he found a re-climber if you know what a re-climber is, when they changed models, they got all this leftover inventory they just dump it. So he found a re-climber up in Nebraska and he bought those motors for about it seemed like $7 or $8 apiece and about an $80 motor. And hooked an old 12 volt lantern battery to it, put inside an old duck shell of some kind and there you go, there was the first Mojo Mallard. And he got some of his other car racing buddies that had little shops all around the Bass strip up there to help him build those and however many they could build in a day, they would take the Jeff Simmons sporting goods that night it would be dark end up putting time and the people would come that night and pick them up.

Ramsey Russell: Didn’t advertise? 

Terry Denmon: I don’t know.

Ramsey Russell: Couldn’t turn out production quick enough.

Terry Denmon: There was a joke going around Monroe Bass strip area back then and says, well they throw a Benelli in the back of the truck, but that was a pretty high dollar. So, they locked their Mojo up in the cab. I don’t know if that’s true or not but it did, but I got one of the very first ones that came off. I had a hen, I want a drake but I couldn’t get a drake, I got a hen. So, I’m going to go hunting down our farm, got little pairs and I got my buddy, he’s an engineer to he ran the line oil refinery of male rate at that time. So we go down just me and him this week day, nobody else wants to go hunting with us, so we go down there and I go out to my favorite blind or a pit blind, not in a levy, just out in the water. I go out there and it’s just kind of turning grey is not shooting time yet but this is kind of turning grey. So I’m just waited out into the decoys and I put this thing on the pole and I kind of remember looking around and make sure when nobody’s looking at me because I was feeling kind of foolish to take it up when nobody’s looking, so I hit the switch, I turned it on, I start slowly waiting back to the pit blind because everything is set up, I guess it’s not time to shoot yet. And I hear I turn around I bet there’s 40 or 50 mallards landing on time. I said wait a minute, it might be something here, I don’t know. So anyway, so Murray goes on through the season however many he can make, he’d take them up to Jeff, Jeff would sell them at night –

Ramsey Russell: Jeff figure out how many he made that first season selling them back at the door like that?

Terry Denmon: I used to know and it was a few 100 something like that’s all he could make. And Jeff said –

Ramsey Russell: The man was probably a lot more than that.

Terry Denmon: Oh yeah, it was for a fact. I’d say I could only get one that’s all I could get. So, season ended no more demand, so Murray goes back to – he owns a few 100 late model wrecked cars and it’s either robbing parts off of them or he’s rebuilding them and selling them and stuff like that. So I would go talk to him all the time anyway. So I said Murray, you ought to go in that business and I said, that’s a demand for that. And so next time I said Murray you all give us some thought now, maybe you want to go in that business and he said, I don’t want to do that. And so at one time I kept phone, one time I said, if you want to go in that business I’ll go in it with you, he said, I’ll do that and I said, I figured out right quick. He didn’t want to mess with a business.

Ramsey Russell: He wanted tinker.

Terry Denmon: He could build him, he didn’t want to mess with them. So okay, let’s do that and it’s probably February now, duck season ended in January. I said, well Murray, I can set the business up, I can get us the money, I can do all that stuff, that won’t be a problem, you can build them out no problem, somebody’s go to sell. And so we talked around about people we knew that might sell them, we even did discuss Phil Robinson, he’s our good friend, he was Murray son’s school teacher at the time but if anybody hated selling more than me and Murray’s feed though. He like that duck call I would make one, but I’m not going to sell them back then they have to talk to Miss K, if you want do anything with them. So we finally decided on Jeff because Jeff knew all these people, he’s really well connected in the industry with a lot of big brands. So we got together and we said, okay, let’s do that. And so we said, well how many of these things I think we ought to make. Well, I’m out of that picture I don’t know. Jeff says, I tell you what I’m going to sports Inc. you don’t know what sports Inc. is? Buying group show in Phoenix this weekend, he said, when I come back, I’ll have you a pretty good idea about how many of them I think I can sell, okay, that’s cool. Murray and me while you would be figuring out how many you make because we’re just making them by hand.

Ramsey Russell: Just one man operation.

Terry Denmon: Well, he had his buddies making them around there, but he had a shop now we could set up a little better but it wasn’t going to be very good in the very best. It wasn’t going to be very good. So we get together the next week, I don’t know if it was Monday or I don’t know what day it was next week get together. Jeff says, all right guys I believe I can sell 7,500. And said Murray, how many you think you could make? And I remember Murray had a piece of paper there and he said 7,500. What’s the chances of that happening? So Murray, he said get it done now he really is. So he set up, he got some people to help him, he set up built some jigs and molds and things like that to kind of expedite the building of them. We printed those Mojo Mallard stickers again, except this time we put a sequential number on them for a serial number. If you ever find one of them things raise up it’s got a serial number on it. And so when the year’s over with we made – we didn’t not 7,500 we made 15,000 sold every one of them didn’t have any left over.

Ramsey Russell: How many could you have sold?

Terry Denmon: I don’t know, the only major distribution we had that year was max prairie wings and in that we just had a little local sporting goods store, there was no Amazon, we weren’t selling on the internet, this is 2000 and we don’t have any way to sell like that. So I don’t know how many we could have sold, but I don’t think we could have sold a lot more than that. I don’t think we could have sold 20,000 or 30,000 or something. We just had no distribution, no way to get them out. Back in those days, it took a long time to build up a brand because you didn’t have instant communication.

Ramsey Russell: Social media. 

Terry Denmon: Social media. We couldn’t get on TV by anyway, the outdoor channel was just kind of in the infancy stage then and before the outdoor channel, the only outdoor TV was American sportsman or something like that. Well, you wasn’t going to get on anything like that, you couldn’t do then what you could do today you just couldn’t. And that could be an advantage or a disadvantage like once we get started anybody’s trying to catch up with us they have a hard time because you can’t get distribution, you can’t get your word out there.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Terry Denmon: You run ads and print magazines back then, but delay on them several months. You got to get that going for several months before you wanted to air.

Ramsey Russell: I can remember where I was and what day it was. I would say it was Super Bowl Sunday 1998. Duck seasons was over, we were hunting Canada geese on Columbus Lake and the geese hadn’t showed up like they were supposed to, they eventually did but it was a long time, it was about noon, we’re back quick when they started to come in. And Mr. Mclngvale who I only hunted with that one day who had a fine black lab that made me want a good dog started describing like you say a white flash, a magic decoy. And hear him describe it as I think back then I’m almost imagine a hologram or something being beamed out just holographical that would just attract every duck in the universe. And break the following year, I’m in Washington State with a good friend of mine who was a tinkerer and I just described from what had been described to me, I hadn’t seen one, you couldn’t find one to look at, I didn’t know about going to the back alley at midnight at Simmons to buy one out of a paper sack and this boy, he went and bought a race car motor and I don’t mean like a little bitty race car, I mean like one of that probably does 80 miles an hour down a go kart and built this thing and it worked. And I never forget the first time I used it, I was with 2 friends from Mississippi State, 2 professors and we stood, we got drawn to hunt up there Knox B refuge and I brought it out with all the confidence in the world because I’ve heard how magic this thing was. And they hooted and laughed and howled and pointed fingers and made fun and then the wing, the homemade wings flung off into the water and sunk never to be seen again. And then the ribbon really started. But it ended the minute the first flock of mallards flew over and it looked like they just hit the end of a magic rope and they just went from flying to dropping right on top of that one armed decoy. But I’m going to say it was at least a year after that or 2 before I could just go buy one. It didn’t exist. It was a revolutionary decoy product. And boy since 1998-99, 2000 I’ve heard everything about Mojo decoys, I mean up to and including possible that decoy contributed to the JFK assassination. I mean, endless of the things that have been said about this decoy. But at the end of the day, since primitive man invented a mud and grass decoy, the whole purpose has been to bring birds in and I’ve never seen a decoy universally and I’ve hunted over worldwide homemade ones guys in 3^rd world, parts of the world that took an old tape recorder 2 years ago and made one because they couldn’t find one and it is absolutely transformed people’s ability to hunt ducks.

Terry Denmon: Absolutely, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Terry, where do you think – what intrigues me about that decoy is that somebody had to envision that flash and that contrast to mimic a duck’s wings to where a duck would come in. Where do you think that originated, where do you think somebody came up with the idea of this anyway?

Terry Denmon: I’ve been told, I don’t know this, I’ve just been told from some guys in California that the thought originated in California. Now, we know the decoy originated in California, but they say the thought originated there because they said, they grow all those fruits and vegetables and things like that and they said they had a bunch of big fans out in a strawberry field drying the strawberries, drying to do off the strawberries so they could pick them, started picking them earlier. And they noticed those ducks they do have a resident flock of mallards in the valley in California there. And they noticed ducks working those fans and however, the fan is not alternating white and dark and white and dark, so that doesn’t tie together 100% but it could have got him started on the thought process. And I know when we started making them, a guy from Canada caught my attention one time he sent this little video and he said, let me tell you why your decoy worked. Well, we thought we knew, but I’ve never seen it visually like this, graphically maybe a better term than that. But he had taken some video of ducks landing keep in remember it’s dry field, the water kind of thing is a dry field, he was in Canada, as it was getting dark and it’s much easier to see it in low light. You can put a filter on your camera and make it even darker and you can see it even better but you just see these flashes of white, little momentary flashes of white.

Ramsey Russell: A little strobe effect.

Terry Denmon: A little strobe effect. And so it kind of passes through the flock of them because they only do it for a couple of beats and then the next one over here do it and another do it, until it’s just little flashes throughout the flock of ducks. I liking it to fireflies, lightning bugs because you want to – lightning bugs are real thick you just see like for just a second or 2 in all different locations and I think that’s what I like in it too. So, it’s really not real clear where the concept came from. We do know this about that now that we know it, that’s how ducks found other ducks, that’s how doves find other doves, that’s how pigeons find other pigeons, not all birds but those birds that do give off that flash – geese don’t do it because they don’t beat your wings fast enough. So we know that’s how birds find the birds with their like kind and so that’s what caused the attraction of it to begin with. I just don’t know who came up with the idea of turning a blade, white on one side dark on the other one and generating that flash.

Ramsey Russell: What’s your revolutionized duck hunting? And I would say, I’m not really certain about the years but I do remember the 1^st year if they were more widely available than they were back in the early when it was kind of a top secret thing, I was working for US Fish and Wildlife service. I was flying midwinter waterfowl counts up there in North Delta, Mississippi and 500 to 1000ft is where we fly, get about 1500 going property to property, get down about 500 when we’re actually circling and counting birds. And I remember on a clear day something catching my peripheral vision and it had to been 2 miles away and it was a Mojo, the 1^st time I ever saw one from the air. And I would get back looking at the ground doing my count and every time he would catch mine, I could not look. Because it attracted me and have you all ever done or what are your thoughts on how far a duck can see that and will respond to that?

Terry Denmon: Well, we thought about that a lot, we worked on it some hard to get an absolute answer to that. But not the 1^st or 2^nd year we were really in the business, we had a crop duster. I live in the Mississippi Delta like you crop dusters everywhere. I had a crop duster call us and say I could see one of those things from 8 miles away.

Ramsey Russell: 8 mile.

Terry Denmon: He knew where the Mojo was and he knew where he was, they just fly by the seat of your pants like that. Now, that doesn’t mean a duck can see it from 8 miles because the human can. But everything that I’ve ever studied on it indicates that they can see it for miles. And if you start thinking about a duck’s vision, you get out go wading in the decoys what happens? Ducks fly up, they’ll fly up within 100 yards of you before they figure out what you are.

Ramsey Russell: They see in a certain distances movement.

Terry Denmon: They see movement. Okay, and so they fly up there, I’ve killed them, I know you’ve killed him too. Sometimes you’ll just bend over where you don’t look like a human fly, pretty close to you like that. So that tells me without question they saw some movement. They have seen the ripples in the water, all that other stuff. They flew over there to check it out, they had to get within 100 yards before they figure out what you were big as a human is. I’ve read and this is pretty consistent that they say ducks can see motion about 3.5 times better than they can see static objects. I know that they can see the strobe off of this spinning wing decoy for miles, especially on a clear day. And if it’s a lot water moisture air they’re not going to see it, this is how I start with, they fly very high in the clouds. So that’s going to be a different day, but a clear day I know they can see it for miles, they can’t see just movement that far off, they can’t see it that far off. And so that caused us to break as we deal with motion here at Mojo, it calls us to break that down into 2 distinct separate categories that really don’t have much to do one another. One of them is simple motion, that’s things moving whatever they might be and it can be good or bad, you move around the blind they see –

Ramsey Russell: Ducks moves, they don’t just sit still in the water.

Terry Denmon: They don’t, unless they just sleeping, they’re doing a lot of moving and the other half of that is what we call the strobe off of a spinning wing decoy. And you’re not ever going to successfully day in and day out use a spinning wing decoy unless people start thinking about things like this because it makes a lot of difference in how when, how many, where you put them and all kinds of things like that, but you can attract ducks, I believe this with all my heart and soul. You can attract ducks with a spinning wing decoy that would never see your spread otherwise, there’s no movement that you can put in that spread.

Ramsey Russell: Wouldn’t come look at it. Now, I believe that wholeheartedly like, I’ve heard a comment for many years, maybe since the 1^st year it was available that whether the ducks get educated, they don’t coming in, they aren’t finishing, they’re still and what I’ve always felt like I’m out there hunting, I’ve got a Mojo and the ducks stall 150-200 yards out of range and they work. I’ve always wanted myself maybe that duck had no intention whatsoever of coming nowhere near where I’m standing had he not seen that bird? And to me it’s just the law of probability. The more birds I can attract it just give me a high look, the more birds naturally might finish and get within gun range. That’s how I’ve looked at it.

Terry Denmon: You think about this. If you were flying, if you’re a human and an airplane flying, you did a lot of that or you was a duck up there and you was flying over the Delta Mississippi river delta where we at are these other areas of the country where there are lots of water, you’re going to see a lot of water motion of all different kinds of things from other animals in the water to machines in the water to, I don’t know what all pumps running, all kinds of different things. So, they can’t just go check out every motion that they see something got to tell them that it’s in their best interest to go there or some interest to them to go there. So, I firmly believe that concept. I believe that you will always kill more ducks with a spinning wing decoy if you use it properly, then you will without it always, we never go – we get that question off and said, you all ever hunt without one? No we never hunt without one unless we hunted someplace where they aren’t legal. But we do very considerably how we would use it to mitigate some of those problems you talking about there.

Ramsey Russell: You and I have – we’ve hunted one everywhere in the world, we’ve hunted together and we’ve gone out and moved it and done it, moved to the left and moved it out of sight and moved it here and moved it there until it tell us what it fits the ducks narrative of why they’re going to come in or how they’re going to finish it.

Terry Denmon: Yeah. And how many do you use? That’s a question we get asked often. I don’t have the answer to that. I mean, I can’t tell you on what day to use how many. I can tell you this on some days, if you put out 8, you’ll kill a lot of ducks, you put out 1, you won’t kill many. I’ve seen that time and time again and people have told me about it time and time again and some days you put out 8, you are not going to kill any, it’s just too much flash for them. And I know that the biggest difference is clear bluebird versus cloudy old ceilings, that’s 2 totally different types of days, you’ve got to be careful with that. But after that you can kind of figure out on your own and somebody don’t have to tell you what to do now if somebody knows and they can tell you give you a jump start on things but there’s a lot of variables decoying ducks is not easy unless the ducks want it to be easy. Some days it’s just going to come over and land in your decoys, make you think you’re a duck hunter, so make you think you’re a duck caller some days they are not going to let you kill them.

Ramsey Russell: Talking about motion, I can remember back in days I was flying those counts. You see a spread, you see some birds, you see something across the field or wherever you’re looking, when you’re out there walking in a duck hole it looks muddy, that water is not muddy in a bean field or rice field, it’s clear as a bell and you can see the bottom from 500ft but where there’s decoys is clear as a bell, you can see the strings and anchors on some of them sometimes on a clear day, but where there’s ducks, where there’s live ducks, those older ducks, it’s muddy because they’re always paddling, they’re always swimming, always dabbling, they’re always flapping, they’re always disturbing that water and it’s like a big old mud hole around where those birds are sitting because of that motion you’re talking about. And it’s not just the flapping wings, but you sit there and you sit across the field on the ground level and just watch a raft of birds something’s always flapping, something’s always flashing.

Terry Denmon: Oh, they can make – I know you’ve seen this as much many places you’ve been in the world, but if you catch them when they’re doing this particular thing, it’s worse than a bunch of hogs out in the water, it’s noise and its water. I’ve seen them when they – I think they’re washing their feathers is what they’re doing. When they’re sticking their wings down the water and throwing that water up in there you’ve seen that too. And you can hear them from a half a mile off and it’s just a terrible commotion there. So that leads me to one of my sayings is it’s not motion that ever scares a dove. It’s the wrong kind of motion. Motion itself is not scared them. They generate tons of motion –

Ramsey Russell: At the wrong time or something like that. I mean like, if you’re a purist and you’re hunting with decoy because there are times and places for whatever reason I’m hunting with just static decoys, how those birds are placed and where those birds are relative to where that bird’s going to land or how it’s going to work into that hole, it’s all very important. So, by naturally by taking a Mojo where I put it in relative to how they’re going to work or how their behavior is with regards. I’ve always said, my favorite duck truly is a dumb duck and by the time we get dealt a hand down here in the Deep South anymore they’re anything but dumb, they’re smart. And I’ve always wondered Terry, people that say, well they’re still or them things don’t work and they’re not as effective, I personally don’t believe it’s that environmental cue that flash, that stroke, what they see, I think it might be the behavior of hunters associated with it, maybe they’re not hidden. I mean, how many times might have ducks see those flashes, strokes or that pattern that they’re also associated with somebody moving pile, somebody moving at the wrong time or calling too loud, I mean there’s a lot of different reasons other than just a single decoy or 2 out there. That’s just how I look at it.

Terry Denmon: I think you’re absolutely right. Who’s using the Mojo might be a few birdwatchers or somebody like that other than that it’s hunters trying to kill ducks. So, if you’re a duck you see one of those things, if you could distinguish it from real ducks, you fly over there as hunters, they scare you, they shoot at you, they kill you, they kill your mother whatever happens in that certainly, if ducks couldn’t catch onto that in 20 years, we wouldn’t have ducks that I’ll be dead today.

Ramsey Russell: Our favorite outfitter down in Argentina Diego told me one time he really doesn’t use the Mojo’s to attract ducks, he’s got the ducks coming in. He uses them to draw the ducks attention to it instead of to his hunters that oftentimes aren’t concealed at all just refused to hunker down or wear camo or do something. He says, it’s almost like my blind, he said because all they see is that they don’t see this hunter over here not even pretending he’s duck hunter.

Terry Denmon: When we first came out with the Mojo’s, I determined that they were doing several different things for you. Number 1, they were causing ducks to come look at your spread that wasn’t going to come look at your spread after that. So they’ve automatically increased the number of ducks coming around there. And number 3 is that they take the focus off of the hunters, so not only did you kill more because they attracted more, you kill more because they made it easier for you to decoy them whether or not they were landing on it or not, it did grab their focus. You could watch them coming in, if you watch them real carefully coming in you could see them looking right at it. And so it would allow you to get away with little more movement, face showing, things like that.

Ramsey Russell: One of the sentiments I’ve heard shared in the last 20 years, I guess, a long time since Mojo really started coming out one of the sentiments I’ve heard shared, it was the animosity stemming from let’s just say Arkansas, I’m not picking on them. But coming from them say a public timber hunter, here’s a guy that cut his teeth on a duck call whose daddy might have been a world champion. They hunt hard, they scout, they call, they do this thing and then watch this guy has been hunting for 3 months, sticks out of Mojo and all things equal, he starts pulling ducks off of. And I get where you’re coming from boy, don’t you like it when you learn something in a fair fight. I can out call you, I can out position myself, but at the same time, I just keep harping on this, how important it is to get people into hunting in general. And so all of a sudden comes along with decoy that anybody can use. A 7 year old can go out now and have a chance at killing ducks, which at the end of the day, if you don’t kill ducks, he is not going to hunt. And that’s where I’ve always fell back. Personally, I use Mojo or I’m going to start using them from the get go from day one, let me put this way from the minute to hunt starts Mojo’s going and I may have to go move them or do something differently, but I use Mojo because I want to kill ducks. That’s just me personally.

Terry Denmon: Down there where you and I live Ramsey, if you’ve got money and you’re willing to spend it, you can kill ducks, you can go rent lease buy the best duck hole around here. An ancestral duck hole and you’re going to have ducks if you treat it right. And so one of the main advantages, we always thought in the beginning was, I live in a college town there’s a public refuge right outside town gets a lot of ducks or them mallards that’s the only place them kids got, they ain’t got money, the only place they got to go and following up on what you said there, it’ll allow them to go out there and go hunt and kill ducks.

Ramsey Russell: And kill ducks. And at the end of the day, I don’t care whether you’re all hard-core hunting with a black powder gun and leather waiters or however Davy Crockett hunted ducks or not. I mean the end of the day, the end results are dead ducks and that’s the whole point.

Terry Denmon: I went through the same thing with crossbows and draw ox, you know what the draw ox is on crossbow? When I was on the Wildlife and Fisheries Commission we had a group of very active group of archers around Baton Rouge, which is our state capital that’s where we had our wildlife and fishers commission meeting most, they’d be the only one to come because they live right there in town where they have it anyway and they were adamantly against allowing draw ox or crossbows or anything like that. And so I would always ask themselves why? I said well we like traditional and I kind of boned up on my archery terminology I’m going to screw this up, but you’ll get the point. Well, I said let me see if he’s got this straight, you’ve got a double compound bow with a whisker biscuit wave in an air and you tell me you’re hunting traditionally? You got to get you a piece of stone and a wooden handle and put it in if you’re going to hunt. And one day this old guy showed up at the commission meeting and he started telling us about how all his older buddies was not being able to hunt like they used to because I can’t get up on a platform and draw a bow back anymore, I can’t stand up when I go to platform and draw it back and all I’m asking you to do just to approve the draw ox so I can cock my bow before I get up there and then I can hunt again. He had pretty much had tears rolling down his eyes before he got through that and so I said there’s a crack in the door right there guys and so we went from there, it took several years, we’ve got draw ox approved and we got crossbows approved because out there is, let them go hunting, we’ve got plenty of deer, now we’re supposed to be talking about ducks but we got plenty of deer, we raise deer just turning like we raised cows. Let everybody go hunting as long as it’s moral and ethical and we can make the rules now, we can make it legal that’s not a problem at all. Let them hunt, we need more hunters. The population of the – let’s see back then, we were down to a little under 5% of the population in the United States buying hunting license.

Ramsey Russell: That’s scary.

Terry Denmon: Yeah, we’ve become insignificant at some point.

Ramsey Russell: I worry, that’s exactly the word I was thinking is political relevance. At some point time we need more hunters. I’ve already heard reports of DNR’s and state agencies and I’m sure federal agencies that worry about it. Where’s the funding going to come from? Because we hunters a foot in the bill. And a lot of these state agencies are getting their operational and management revenues from hunter drive proceeds. We need more hunters. A politician don’t say anything money and –

Terry Denmon: Votes.

Ramsey Russell: Well, votes and money. Well, it’s like I’m thinking I always thought about this, you told me one time about the most unfair tax on God’s earth, we talked about the death tax. And it affects so few people 1% you work your whole life, you save money, put your kids through college, you invest, you do everything when you die, they take it half. All that untagged all that after tax money they’re going to take half. But it affects so few Americans that no politician is willing to spend any time on it because it is not relevant to them. And I see the same thing could happen. I’ve been to Australia, I’ve been to Netherlands, I’ve seen what happens when hunting becomes politically irrelevant. Hunting, it is no longer and I think it could happen in America.

Terry Denmon: Oh, it’s headed that direction. I don’t know how far to go but it’s headed in that direction.

Ramsey Russell: It seems like it. Speaking of this Terry, changing the subject of decoy, I know you’ve been hunting for a long time. I remember us talking about in Mexico.

Terry Denmon: You saying in any way that I am old, are you?

Ramsey Denmon: No, I’m not saying you old, you really not too much older than me. But godly, I think we were hunting Mexican mallards in Sonora one time and got to talk about it and I think you’ve been duck hunting since I was 17 years old or something. And you say oh, that can’t possibly be and you did the math and it was pretty close. What have you seen other than – what have you seen change? When you think back as hunting, what it was when you were young or years ago versus now. What are some of the changes you see happening or some of the good and the bad changes that have happened?

Terry Denmon: Well, the biggest thing you see, I think is outside of media now, there’s a lot of media now, so you can learn, there’s the internet, you can research, you can go find anything you want now that would probably the biggest single change since in the early beginnings, but jumping over that just more ordinary things than that, it’s the equipment. Hunting has become a quick but intensive sport. I don’t know if that’s good or not, I don’t know if that’s a good system but we’re in that business, we’re doing that but that don’t necessarily make it a good system. And so it and other things allows people to hunt most anywhere they want to hunt. When you and I were little, there were still areas people couldn’t get to. They’d be mallards over there by the thousands in some place, there was no easy access. A few people strap something on their back and go hiking through the water 3 or 4-5 miles to get back there and shoot them but the average person wasn’t going to do that, they weren’t going to go to through that much trouble and now the land gets to be, at least even today it gets to be owned, you own some gets to be on just for recreational purposes and by recreation I’m mostly talking about hunting. And then that’s made a huge difference. But we don’t have these big gigantic areas anymore where people can’t get to, in the place of them we have federal refuges, state refuges and the hunters typically tend to be against those if they don’t allow hunting. They just say, well, they shouldn’t do that. But we had refuges back when you and I started they just wouldn’t call refuges, they were just areas you couldn’t get to. And it’s good for the wildlife to have someplace, if a duck every time they got ready to sit down and drink the water somebody either scares them or shoot at them, they’re going to leave that part of the country, they’re going to go to some other part of the country. So you just can’t have it to where you can have a place and just go out there every time shoot all the ducks you want to shoot that just don’t work, that system won’t work.

Ramsey Russell: It doesn’t exist anywhere in the world. You and I have seen that, I mean some of the best hunts we’ve been on don’t get a lot of hunting pressure or there’s no local hunting pressure or the guide outfitter opts not to hunt but every 10 days. So the ducks get plenty of rest so they stay into the area and I’ve seen that everywhere.

Terry Denmon: Yeah, some of the places we go like Canada, some places in Alaska, Mexico, Argentina places like that. It’s kind of like it was back when you and I grew up. We played a lot of game not very many hunters because most of those people, the locals don’t hunt. So the only hunters there are people that come from either Europe or the United States or somewhere like that that nobody else is hunting them. And so the hunting pressure is very low and of course that’s why you and I go there.

Ramsey Russell: That’s exactly why we go there, isn’t it?

Terry Denmon: Absolutely, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Terry are there any challenges or any – like when you just sit back and think about the future of hunting. What would you recommend to a young person or for younger people that’s got a long future ahead of them in hunting, what advice or what concerns or anything that concerns you about the future of hunting or conservation in America? Just some thought you got along that line.

Terry Denmon: Well, Ramsey if you think about it hunting is not an easy sport. It’s not a comfortable sport. It’s get up way before daylight, go out in the rain, the snow, whatever it might have the cold, the freezing and the alternatives that are available to these Children today stay home, playing electronic games, watch TV, things like that so you can see why it’s hard to get a child started hunting unless he just grew up in a hunting family, you have a better chance at that. I have 2 sons, both of them hunted in high school. My older son once he made to college it turned into beer and girls and he didn’t care too much about it but we had that great hunting club down in the hunting camp and farm down in Catahoula Parish and all his buddies want to go, so he would have to drag them, he would have to bring him down there every year but he didn’t care anything about hunting. And my other little boy that’s all he ever want to do with hunting fish. So there’s something in there but you touched on the trick to it while ago and that’s success, early success. And so we want to get people into hunting somewhere other you’ve got to somehow foster some early access for him whatever that is. And you can see it happened to you and you and I have observed in our life, there is a moment, it may not be a 2^nd type moment, there is a moment in a short period of time when hunting either grabs you or don’t. And once it grabs you got to do it. I mean, it’s in your genes from a million years ago from 200 years ago.

Ramsey Russell: Instinct.

Terry Denmon: Yes instinct, but living in these cities today as both youth they’re not exposed to it. So even though it’s in there they don’t feel it because they hadn’t seen it. So that’s what we got to do is we want preserve hunting, we’ve got to get the youth involved in it. One of the things I’ve noticed that the industry did was when they got women involved in hunting. When I was on the commission the idea then was to get kids involved in hunting and so we’re trying to get these kids to go. But in the old time families in country families, rural families, dad hunted, mom stayed home cooked, clean house, raised babies and things like that. So, if mom wasn’t hunting then the kid had a choice that I want to go out there in the freezing rain with dad or do I want to stay home in the warm house with mom.

Ramsey Russell: Make cup cakes with momma.

Terry Denmon: That’s exactly right. But when they left the concept not left it, but when they started focusing on the concept of getting women involved in hunting, then our effort ratchet up a good bit then because if dad’s going to go hunting this weekend, mom’s going to go with him.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Terry Denmon: kid’s going to go with them too. If they don’t do anything but stay around the camp, if they don’t get out there. But if you get them outdoors there’s something about being outdoors, there’s something about being outdoors when the storms coming. You can see the lightning there, you can see the wind or all those things, as you say it’s ingrained in us, but something has to bring it out.

Ramsey Russell: Thank you Terry. Ramsey Russell getducks.com. Check us out on Instagram @RamseyRussellGetducks. Thank you all.

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