Review: WindWhacker waterfowl motion decoy upgrades

For the past several years, the best trick in my duck hunting decoy bag has been the WindWhacker.

Boyfriend and I had been using a WinDuk, but found it to be of little use on days with only light breezes - it takes a decent amount of wind to make its wings spin. Then in 2008, I went hunting with my friend Brent up in the Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge and he pulled out the most ridiculous decoy I'd ever seen: Two metal blades painted black on one side and white on the other, suspended from two wire arms that stuck out of the top of a pole. It didn't look remotely like a duck.

But crazy thing: Its blades started spinning in the lightest of breezes, and the motion was enough to attract the attention of ducks, who are often too curious for their own good. Bonus points: It's lightweight and takes very little space in your gear bag.

I went home and ordered two sets, and I've been taking them into the field with me ever since. Read more...
Here's my ultra-amateur backyard video of how it looks (and yes, I know the lawn looks like crap - I don't water it in the summer):



This summer, WindWhacker inventor Don Rohrke found some of my posts here where I mentioned the WindWhacker, and he got in touch with me. Couple funny coincidences: He's a retired college professor (which is what I do for a living), and he's an alum of Sacramento State, where I teach now, and I'm also an alumna.

Rohrke wanted to let me know he and his son had made some improvements to the WindWhacker, and offered to send me a new set. "Hell yes!" I said, and now that I've hunted with the new set a couple times, I can tell you that the upgrades work really well.

The first is pretty simple: The old WindWhacker blades attached to the arms with a metal snap/swivel, and you could sometimes hear the clank of the metal on metal. Now WindWhacker provides a pack of silent tethers (including extras), and that noise is gone. Here's how it looks:


But the best improvement is to the top of the carbon fiber support pole. The old top was pretty simple:


Here's what I hated about that: Sharp edges made it a little unpleasant to insert the arms into the pole, and really unpleasant to push the pole into the mud with ungloved hands.

The new pole solves that problem:


Not only does the plastic top have no sharp edges, but the cap provides a much larger and smoother surface for pushing the pole into the mud. And bonus points: If a really strong wind comes up, there's no chance it's going to yank the arm and blade out of the pole and send it into the water (which has happened to me just once in the past two years).

That's it - pretty simple. I suppose if you were handy, you could rig up something like this out of spare junk in your garage. But I'm not handy, so it's worth it to me to pay for one that works well. I also really like supporting hunting entrepreneurs who see problems, solve them and try their luck on the open market. If you feel the same, you can click here to buy directly from Rohrke.

A set like the one in the video above costs $50.

If you deal with high winds a lot (like I'll probably be hunting in tomorrow), you'll find you need two poles, and you can suspend one blade horizontally between the poles. If you let it hang vertically, it will swing around way too wildly and clank against the support pole.

Rohrke also makes specialized goose blades, and while it may be too late for folks in many states, he makes a WindWhacker for dove hunting too. California's second dove season starts a week from today - woot! - so it's not too late for folks here.

© Holly A. Heyser 2010