Patience is important to a successful day of duck hunting.
But sometimes a hunter will get extraordinarily lucky.
And a duck hunter shocked everyone by bagging one duck that no one thought existed.
Duck hunter bags the first ever leucistic black duck
Mike Wec ventured into a cold and windy marsh in Massachusetts for a day of duck hunting last December.
His first shot landed him a first-of-its-kind duck discovered in the wild.
Wec drew three ducks toward him with a couple of quacks.
“It looked like a hen mallard or a hen black duck, and her belly was tannish,” Wec said. “She cupped her wings and came into the black duck decoys.”
He dropped the duck with one shot and left it in the water as he waited for the next duck to come in.
“I paddled about 20 yards past the first duck and glanced at it and I’m like ‘Wow that is a light-colored duck,’” Wec recalled. “It flew like a mallard and looked like a mallard or a black duck, so I had a feeling maybe it was a farm-duck mixed mallard. I picked up the black duck and came back and picked up the [white] duck.”
Wec knew that he had to preserve the unusual white duck when he called it for the day, so he called his wife, Ashley.
“I knew I had something special and I knew I had to wrap it and put it in the freezer,” Wec explained. “I‘m like, ‘I don’t know what this is, and I’ve been told to mount so many birds before and I haven’t. This is the bird I’m gonna mount.’ So she’s like, ‘Well can’t they DNA test it?’ and I’m like, ‘I doubt it.’”
Discovering the duck’s DNA
Ashley Wec did a search on the internet and discovered that the University of Texas at El Paso was conducting a duckDNA study.
The study uses the tissue of harvested ducks to conduct a genetic analysis on them.
Researchers at first said that there was no availability to test the DNA of a duck, but they were intrigued by the photos of the white duck she sent them.
It took five months but the DNA results finally came back for the duck.
The duck was a hen and completely an American black duck.
It had no European duck or farm mallard genetics.
The white duck became the first documented leucistic wild American black duck.
“This is a huge showcase of what duckDNA provides to hunters and scientists in cooperation at a level we’ve never had before,” Dr. Phil Lavretsky, with duckDNA, told Ducks Unlimited in a statement. “No more assumptions and biases, there is no hiding DNA.”
Leucism is similar to albinism but has some key differences.
“Leucism results in the partial loss of pigmentation, while albinism results in a total lack of pigmentation. In this case, the bird’s different shades of blonde feathers and black eyes were clear indicators of leucism,” Field & Stream reported.
Albino birds have pink or red eyes and impaired vision.
🚨Ducks Unlimited and @UTEP‘s new #duckDNA program confirms the genetic makeup of the first documented leucistic American black duck! 🧬
This waterfowl wonder was taken by Massachusetts hunter Mike Wec this past season.
Dr. Phil Lavretsky (@LavretskyLab), leading the duckDNA… pic.twitter.com/J0TQHIlvgp
— Ducks Unlimited (@DucksUnlimited) May 16, 2024
Mike Wec bagged a history-making fowl with his first shot on a cold December morning.
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