WILDFOWL PRO-file: George Parker of Blue Bird Waterfowl

If you’ve seen the product in action, you know just how lethal The Animator from Blue Bird Waterfowl is on ducks; but how did such an idea hit the market? WILDFOWL had the chance to talk to the man behind product, George Parker, and hear his story and how The Animator came to be.

The man behind the motion

George Parker, originally from Michigan and now residing in Northern California, started his business career as the top salesman in a pest control company, which took him to San Diego in his early twenties. That’s where he was introduced to sport fishing.

“I fell in love with catching yellow tail, yellow fin, calico bass, barracuda—you name it. On the boat was a Captain named Brian Castleton who introduced me to waterfowl hunting around 2009,” says Parker.

“I shot my first duck, I believe it was a wigeon, out in the Salton Sea. The mud out there is an absolute nightmare, but I was so determined to get that bird. It was probably only 100 yards from the boat, but I had to walk through thigh high mud. I swear it took me an hour to go 100 yards and back. But that was my very first experience waterfowl hunting, and I was hooked,” George says. Having been involved with fishing most his life, he found interest in being able to see what he was targeting as the birds swung into the decoys, as opposed to sport fishing where you can’t see the target species.

Building Blue Bird

Parker says he always wanted to create something cool. He notes that, “My curiosity and imagination, ever since I was a kid, propelled me to want to invent something. For years and years, I would come up with cool ideas, sketch them out, put all the planning into it, then do a quick patent search to find it had already been invented.”

Despite running into dead ends with his ideas, George stayed motivated to create a product that would have an impact. “I think God knew that creating something cool was part of my plans in life, because the way The Animator happened was not intentional at all,” he says.

The birth of The Animator came about while Parker was on a bad hunt, with quite a few spinning wing decoys out, but not a whisper of wind. “All of our motion was just kind of flat, so that got me thinking, we have these motors out there over the water, why aren’t we using them to move the water? They’re spinning wings, and that’s fine, but as a pack-in pack-out, public land hunter, I started to think about ways to use those wings to move the water.” Parker notes that his first thought was the original zip-tie trick, but he wanted to design something that was removable, adjustable, and more user-friendly.

Then, on the ride home with co-inventor, David Chan, Chan came up with idea for a camshaft design. An idea, George admits, he originally thought was terrible. When Parker got home, he started messing around zip-ties to see what he could come up with; then, decided it was worth looking into the camshaft idea to see if it might work.

He says that he attached a paper clip to the Lucky Duck spinner he was using, then he took a safety pin and taped it to a chopstick. As the motor spun, the paper clip went around in a circle, and the safety pin went up and down, moving the chopstick. Then, by adding a plunger from one of his kids’ toy darts from a dart gun, the first prototype for The Animator was born! “After that, I had to call and apologize to David because I originally thought his idea was kind of dumb, but then it was like, this might actually work!”

After videoing the chopstick in action and seeing the splashes it made when placed in water, then sending the video to a few of his hunting buddies, George received great feedback. The next test was making sure it hadn’t already been invented like so many of his other ideas. Luckily, no one had done this before.

Bringing the design to life

As one can imagine, a chopstick and the plunger from a children’s toy dart wasn’t the most aesthetically pleasing look, nor would it be as durable as waterfowlers need. So, Parker invested in a 3-D printer to bring his invention to life. “Come to find out, it takes around 12 hours to print one of these camshafts. So, I ended up getting three 3-D printers,” George says. “It was the ugliest piece of plastic you’ve ever seen in your life, but it did what it was supposed to, and I started showing people what I had made, and they were freaking out,” Parker adds.

He also notes that the excitement of other hunters is what truly got him excited. Saying that he would stay up all hours of the night making adjustments to be sure he got everything just right.

Spreading the word

The hard part of creating a new product in the waterfowl industry is spreading news that you have something that’s new and can help hunters kill birds. The marketing of products is where most companies die. For Parker, he was determined, and believed in his product enough to ensure The Animator didn’t fall by the wayside.

“You can only show so many people and contact so many people,” Parker says, “I was talking to everyone I could on Instagram or YouTube, just showing them what we had. We really didn’t have the money to launch the project yet. This was still just a prototype piece of plastic, and we needed to get some pre-orders because we wanted to cut molds and figure out how to turn this thing into a manufacturable product.”

Luckily for Parker, he did what he does best—be a salesman. Going back to his days in pest control, he knew he could use those skills to sell his product. With a tank full of water in the back of his truck, he went to a Sportsman’s Warehouse and showed those interested just how effective The Animator was. He then started doing this at Bass Pro Shops and did his best to get the word out. Finally, George found that his product was selling, pre-orders were coming in, and his idea was starting to come together.

The beginning of something special

Blue Bird started to take shape in October of 2022. “Everything happened between February and July of 2022. That’s when I started to take pre-orders for my design.” Then, building Animators in his living room. “When the first order came in, we had 1,000 Animators and it was the craziest experience of my life. I had boxes showing up at my house in the tens and twenties,” George says.

Parker knew, even though they were being professionally molded, he wanted to put them together by hand. He says, “I wanted to assemble every one of these by hand, in house, so that each one had been touched by me, and there wouldn’t be any problems when they hit the market.”

A revolutionary product

George shipped seven prototypes to hunters in different parts of the country to gather feedback and see where the product might stand room for improvement. What he heard back surprised him.

“Our first prototype response came back from Alaska, and the guy called me and said, ‘I don’t know what you’ve made, but the birds are trying to land on top of my decoys.’ I thought maybe he was just being nice to the guy who made it, and told him, ‘Respectfully, I need to know what I can improve, or if there’s anything wrong with the decoy. Is it making too much noise? Are they moving water? Is the battery dying too fast?’ And the hunter told me that he had never had so many ducks try to physically land on top of a decoy.”

The next report came from Colorado and was much the same to the first. But the big one came when the hunter reported about a five-man limit of ducks in Texas in an hour. The hunter told George that it was “pea-soup fog” so thick they couldn’t see much farther than their decoys for most the morning, and yet the birds were still piling into the decoys.

“That’s when it hit me,” Parker says, “this didn’t have anything to do with water motion. It had everything to do with the sound that was being made on the water. It sounds like the birds’ wings are slapping and clapping on the water. And that’s when our entire company changed. We had unintentionally invented the first ‘water call’ for ducks.”

The need for water noise

After studying into it more, it became more obvious to Parker why ducks flare off spnning wing decoys, and what’s been missing for decades—the utilization of the sound of water. Now, being able to add Animators to your spread gives birds the audible confidence of having mallards feeding in the corn, or wigeon chasing each other around.

“Put some decent calling on top of that water sound, and it changes everything,” George says, “It absolutely changes everything.”

The Animator’s performance

While the idea of adding a level of versatility to your spinners by giving them the ability to mimic the noise of birds splashing on the water is fantastic, it still leaves room for one to question how well The Animator might perform. That’s where Parker made sure to do his due diligence in calling customers and asking them how the product was performing, and making sure it was doing its job.

“The next question I had after selling all the pre-orders was, ‘do people like them?’” George notes, adding, “I would call customers ask them ‘how are they working for you? Are they doing their job?’ and I’ve found over the last few years that the efficacy of water sound does change by where you are in the country and the time of year. So, we’ve really grasped onto the idea that this is like any other type of call. In certain areas guys blow duck calls really hard, in others, hunters don’t use a call at all.”

Very similar to the idea of using a duck call, using The Animator is much the same. You might need the sound of splashing water at certain times, and at others, you might not need it all. But Parker says one thing for sure—you do need it, and it will help you kill birds.

However, like switching up calls depending on time of year, The Animator can be adjusted and tailored to make more sound, less sound, used on just one wing of the decoy, or however the hunter might find it to be most effective.

Or, on those days when the spinning wings are flaring birds, you can even take the wings off, and leave The Animators on to keep the sound of splashing water to keep the noise and the added motion to help you bag more birds.

Leveling up your spinning wing decoys

While creating the sound of splashing water is a lethal tool that The Animator brings to the table, it doesn’t end there for Parker and Blue Bird waterfowl. “These things can be used as a tool for so many things on spinning wing decoys,” Parker says. Noting that they’ve been used to keep water open in freezing temperatures, add more life to your spread, and create real and natural sound and motion amongst your decoy spread.

“We’re finding out from our customers that there are so many ways to use and utilize The Animator. It’s a product with infinite applications, that someone can use to the full extent of their creativity,” Parker says.

With The Animator being such a great success and helping hunters bag more birds and add another level a realism to their spreads, Parker still isn’t done. There’s more on the horizon for Blue Bird Waterfowl, all of which will allow hunters to step up their spinning wing decoy game.

Needless to say, George Parker’s goal to invent something that would have a lasting mark was accomplished, and there’s more to come! And we at WILDFOWL are excited for all of it!

To learn more about Blue Bird Waterfowl and The Animator, click here.

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