black hybrid?

Paul Meisenheimer

Paul Meisenheimer

Well-known member
I got out with my buddy Ernie on Sunday afternoon. We were no sooner set up than a pair of blacks came in and as luck would have it we both pulled on the same duck. Upon closer inspection it appears to be a hybrid showing thin white borders above and below the speculum. Everything else appears to be correct. There is no hint of green in the head.

We had a pretty good outing, hunting for a couple of hours and taking some very nice birds. Our bag included two drake cans, two drake redheads and a drake bluebill.

We also met a father and son who were set up in a difficult spot and we invited them to join us to hunt over our spread. Hopefully they enjoyed the experience and we made a couple of new friends. It was good to see a father teaching his young son and although they were both inexperienced they were good folks to share the afternoon with. They also managed three nice birds.

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If you had shot it down here on the Gulf of Mexico coast, I would tell you its a drake mottled duck. But then mottled ducks normally only have a light white band along the bottom of the speculum. So maybe a drake mottled duck with just a little bit of mallard in the gene pool.

So my dollar would be on a hybrid black duck given the location. To me, the relatively light coloration and two bands on the speculum say hybrid.
 
I'd say yes based on the speculum and the bill appears to be more yelloe like a mallard. I have shot a few of them and they vary in their differences. This one is from last week:

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Cool bird.
The green streak on this one makes it easy!
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I have shot quite a fair number of hybrids mallard x black, but most of them like the two above. I've shot just a couple the more complete blend of mallard and black - like a 50-50 mix of all characters with the mallard wings, and mallard breast on a black, they are really pretty birds imo.
 
How do they handle hybrids in CT and other points north, do they count towards your mallard limit or just your general 6 bird limit??
 
How do they handle hybrids in CT and other points north, do they count towards your mallard limit or just your general 6 bird limit??
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Don't even ask. I have got so many different answers.

The area I've shot the most of them (and quite a few) is in upstate NY. Years ago, I called the regional DEC headquarters and talked to the lead enforcement officer there. His answer was that they count as hen mallards. Of course I said excuse me, but WTF are you talking about. His answer was: what do you want, I can't expect my guys to be able to tell the differences among hybrids and hen mallards. From then on, I've asked and you get just about every answer you can come up with.

I always put them in a conservative spot in the bag and count them as a black and hen mallard. It really isn't a problem here since I don't shoot many here at all. I never shoot them on the coast here.
 
I have gotten about 6 of them over the years. Often you don't really notice it until later. Here are a couple of photo's of a pair of ducks I shot a few years ago. There is an interesting twist to this story. Here is the drake:

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It is pretty easy to see the green on top, but there were also some feathers on the underside of the breast and along the flanks. I thought this was a black duck when I shot it. Here is the hen. Notice the two faint white bars on either side of the speculum. The one on the bottom is normal, the one on the top is to me the give away that it was a mallard, and that is what I saw when I shot these. The two white lines were really visible on the day this happened, even thought they seem a little faint in the photo. So I shot these two as a pair thinking that I had a hen mallard and a black together, which is not really uncommon.

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Now this caused a bit of a stir amongst the crew, several claiming I was crazy about the hen and lucky since the drake was a hybrid. But the interesting thing to me was, when I got the results of the wing survey that I have done off and on for several years, the hen was listed as BlackXMallard, and the drake was listed as an American Black Duck. I am not really convinced that these hybrids are a new phenomena. I wasn't around shooting black ducks a hundred years ago, so I really have no idea of how many hybrids were around. And all of the ones that I have personally shot seemed to be closer to a black duck in coloration than a mallard, and my gut is that next generation takes them back to a black.
 
I agree with the esteemed panel--that's a black duck hybrid.

A Maine warden told me hybrids did NOT count against my 1 black duck limit. I forgot to ask him whether it counted as a mallard, or as an "other duck".

We mostly tend to see hybrids late in the season, when they are mixed with a few mallards and a lot of black ducks, so the mallard vs other duck distinction is not one that matters much.

But black duck vs. hybrid matters a lot--it's usually the difference between being able to take a shot at the next group of birds that come in.
 
I was pretty confident on the hybrid ID but thought it a bit unusual to not have any green in the head. Most hybrids I have shot in the past have had other mallard features as well.

In Ontario we have simple rules about the duck bag limit; six ducks, only one of which can be a Black. Hybrids do not count as a Black. No Harlequins are allowed as they are protected here. That's it for rules.
 
Most of the hybrids I have shot usually have a little green on the head. Here is one I got a year or two ago. A little out of focus but you can see the green right behind the eye.


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We shoot quite a few mallard x black crosses here. The majority of the time I count it as my black just to be safe. The bird has to possess some very blatantly obvious traits for me to call it a mallard. I've talked to a lot of wardens about this and have gotten many different answers. As far as how the warden will interpret your bird I think a lot of it will depend on your individual warden and each bird on a case by case basis.
 
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Paul, the two of you had a fantastic hunt. Congrats. Your black duck/mallard hybrid looks much like this Mexican drake I took a shot of towards the end of November while hunting on the Rio Grande. This is one of the darker ones that I have ever seen. He is on the far left side.
Al

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Here are a couple of mallard/black hybrids we have shot in the last couple of years

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After Shane Smith got done with it

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Last year

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Paul,
If that bird had been checked in at the waterfowl unit on long point it would be counted as a mallard.
Bill.
 
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