Slayer Pro bags one-of-a-kind ‘fowl

Written By: M.D. Johnson
Photos By: Mike Wec

You ask any duck hunter worth his or her salt, myself very much included, and I would be willing to bet they’ll tell you that putting three birds – a drake mallard, drake black, and a woodie – on the strap in one short morning is a damn good hunt. Now, throw in a banded drake mallard, and you’re looking at one for the books. Social media shot, if you’re into that sort of thing. 

A good day? Heck yeah, that’s a good day. But for 37-year-old Rhode Islander, Mike Wec, his hunt, which incidentally included all the above, was destined to get better. An independent contractor and father of two, Wec serves as a member of the Slayer Calls Pro Team, as well as volunteering with Beyond The Battle, an organization that gets veterans into the outdoors to enjoy hunting and fishing. 

Wec’s duck hunt took place on December 15, 2023, on a small marshy pond in the state of Massachusetts, and came complete with all of the challenges with which ‘fowlers are familiar – unexpected ice; ripped waders; mud; submerged trees; and 30 degrees. Eventually, though, he gets into position with decoys set left and right, and shotgun at the ready.

Here, we’ll use the familiar Reader’s Digest Condensed Version format, albeit working somewhat backwards. Wec’s second bird of the morning – NOTE: SECOND bird – is a gorgeous drake black duck. Next, a big drake mallard and a hen woodie, an unusual bird, Wec thought, given it’s southern New England, December, and below freezing. Finally, another greenhead, this one wearing leg iron. A good day? Absolutely. 

But it’s his first bird of the morning that enters the hunt into the One-of-a-Kind category. 

“Important,” said Wec, “is that I’ve set my mallard decoys to the right side, and my six black duck decoys to the left, with a gap in the middle. About three minutes after legal shooting time, I see some birds in the distance. Three hundred yards away, I see a group of three going left to right. I hit them with my (Slayer) DUBAR call, and see the birds turning to me; two birds tight and one behind. A greeting call, and the two birds go to my right at 80 to 100 yards work the mallard decoys. The lone bird works to my left, another QUACK or two, and it’s dropping right into the black duck decoys. Cupping. Thirty yards, one shot, and it’s on the water.”

Ten minutes or so pass, and a single black duck works the blocks; one shot, and another bird’s down. At this point, Wec paddles out, picks up the black, and works to his first, which he’d thought was unusually light-colored. “I picked her up,” he said, and thought ‘Wow! This is pretty cool-looking.’”

And ‘cool’ it most certainly was. Following the hunt, and with the help of his wife, Wec would learn his ‘cool’ duck was actually, and to quote Ducks Unlimited, the “first genetically documented leucistic black duck” recorded. Leucism is an inherited condition in which animals display a partial loss of normal coloration or pigmentation. This is not to be confused with albinism, i.e. pink eyes and no pigmentation at all. The determination was made, courtesy of a unique research project conducted by Dr. Phil Lavretsky at the University of Texas / El Paso, known as duckDNA. Here, tissue samples, in this instance a snippet from Wec’s duck’s tongue, are taken and tests done to determine a species’ genetic makeup. “This is a huge showcase of what duckDNA provides both to hunters and scientists in cooperation at a level we’ve never seen before,” Dr. Lavretsky told Ducks Unlimited. “No more assumptions and biases. There’s no hiding DNA.”

Wec attributes his unusual trophy to any number of factors – weather; segregated decoy spread; shooting skills; and a little luck. Significant, though, was his use of Slayer’s new DUBAR duck call. “When I first saw (the DUBAR) call, I thought ‘Hey! Look at that! That thing’s pretty sexy!’ In my opinion, it definitely sounds deeper than any of the other calls I have. And I do believe it (played a big role) in bringing that black duck into range. Slayer calls it a mallard call,” Wec continued, “but I told the folks they may want to change that and start referring to it as a mallard/black duck call. It’s a neat little tool that’s very different than other duck calls. It sounds like a duck, but different.”