Ep. 718 - duckDNA, Mossy Oak Waterfowl Conservation Stamp, and New Discoveries - Ducks Unlimited Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Mike Brasher (01:42):
Hey, everyone. Join us on this episode where we
announce the return of Duck DNAfor the twenty twenty
five-twenty six season. We visitwith Doctor. Phil Reztsky at the
University of Texas El Paso andhave him share some updates on
some very cool results thatwe've gotten from the first few
years. We also have KayciMesserly and Ty Sharrow joining
us here to tell about some ofthe great work they've been
doing associated with Duck DNA,and we hear from Daniel Hayes of

(02:05):
Mossi Oak on their great supportof Duck DNA through the Mossi
Oak 2025 Waterfowl ConservationStamp.
Tons of information. Stay withus. You won't wanna miss this
episode.

VO (02:19):
The following episode of the DU podcast features a video
component. For the fullexperience, visit the Ducks
Unlimited channel on YouTube,subscribe, and enjoy.
Can we do a mic check, please?
Everybody, welcome back to theDucks Unlimited podcast. I'm
your host, doctor Mike Brasher.
I'm your host, Katie Burke.
I'm your host, doctor JaredHenson. And I'm your host, Matt
Harrison.

(02:47):
Welcome to the Ducks Unlimitedpodcast, the only podcast about
all things waterfowl. Fromhunting insights to science
based discussions about ducks,geese, and issues affecting
waterfowl and wetlandsconservation in North America.
The DU podcast, sponsored byPurina Pro Plan, the official
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(03:09):
always advancing. Also proudlysponsored by Bird Dog Whiskey
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to every moment. Enjoyresponsibly.

Hey, everyone. Welcome back. I am doctor Mike
Brazier. I'm gonna be your hoston this episode, and it's a very
exciting episode. I'm happy tobe joined in studio by two of
our conservation scienceassistants.
First, to my right, Ty SharrowTy, great to have you.

Ty Sharrow (03:49):
Great to be here.

You've been with us here at Ducks Unlimited since
when? February?

Ty Sharrow (03:53):
February, yeah.

You've been working hard behind the scenes
on a whole variety of things,duck DNA being one of those, and
I guess I just sort of let thecat out of the bag. We're here
to talk about duck DNA, excitingstuff, and so you're gonna share
some of what you've been doing.Also, to my left, Casey
Messerly, another one of ourconservation science assistants.
Casey, good to have you backhere.

Kayci Messerly (04:14):
Glad to be back.

I will give a shout out to our other
conservation science assistantsthat is in the studio here with
us that's off camera helping uskeep us straight on various
aspects of the conversation.Katie Tucker, she was on last
year with us, and Katie is stillhere and involved in a variety
of things. And so we are indeedhere to talk about Duck DNA
returning for the twenty twentyfive, twenty six season. And as

(04:37):
always, when we do so, wewelcome our friend and famous
guest, doctor Phil Thevetsky,all the way from El Paso, Texas.
Phil, great to have you back.

Phil Lavretsky (04:49):
Always glad to be here. Yeah. We've here we

are again doing another one of these. We are
excited to announce officiallyon our ducks on on the ducks
unlimited podcast that Duck DNAis back for the twenty five,
twenty sixth season. Theannouncement the official
announcement, I guess, that wefirst put out, I guess that went
out by way of social media,something of that nature, that
was when? Early September?

Yep, on Instagram.

Okay. So Instagram, Facebook, we made
that announcement. We alreadyhave how many applicants? What
do we have?

We've got 2,700 and a couple extras in there.

A couple extra. Great. So if you've already
applied, thank you. If you havenot applied yet and you're
interested in having your namein the hat to, you know, be
eligible to participate, go toduckdna.com, follow the
instructions. We're gonna stepyou through a lot of that and
some of the changes that we'vemade this year.
We're gonna show you some fancythings. We're gonna be some

(05:48):
results from the past couple ofyears. We're gonna talk about
some of what we posted onInstagram and some of the
questions we get. In a in a fewminutes, at some point here
during this during this episode,we're gonna be joined by a good
friend from Mossy Oak. I'm gonnasort of leave a little bit of
mystery there in terms of who'sgonna join us, but we have some

(06:08):
exciting things to announceregarding Mossy Oak and their
support for what we're doing.
So I think where we will startis introducing folks to sort of
the new process, the new waythat you apply. We've for the
past two years, we've we've hadour our standard three vial

(06:31):
kits, and then you can contactus by Instagram or email and
request a kit if you had ahybrid bird or something of that
nature, and we've we've tried toformalize the application
process for both of those kits alittle more this year. So what
I'm going to do is we're gonnago to the we're gonna go video
here, so if you're listening tothis in your vehicle or

(06:52):
wherever, you know, you'll wannacheck out some of the video that
we're putting together for this.We're going to duckdna.com, and
we're gonna show this on thescreen, and then I'm gonna let
Casey you're gonna I'm gonnanavigate. You tell me what to
do, and and we'll kinda see allthis as it as it comes up, if
that's okay.

Sounds perfect.

And, Chris, you let me know when we are ready.
We're good? Okay. We got thethumbs up. So duckdna.com
website is the same as it hasbeen.
There's a bit more informationhere, results and so forth, and
we're gonna talk with Ty aboutthat here in a second. But you
go here, three different placeswhere you can apply. If you
participated or if you appliedin past years, you have to have

(07:34):
to apply again. So what we'regoing to do is go to the
website, duckdna.com. I'm goingto navigate.
Casey, you're going to kindatell me what to do here, and but
we get to the Duck DNA websitekind of the same as it has been
in previous years, a few morebits of information that we'll
get to a little bit later on.But yeah, first thing, go to

(07:57):
apply today. I think I said thisalready, but I'll say it again.
If you applied in previousyears, participated in previous
years, you have to apply againto be considered or eligible for
being selected this year. So goto apply today, and this is
where it gets different.

Casey? Yes. So after you click that apply today
button, you get taken to our newDuck DNA application portal, so
this is new for everyone whetheryou've applied before or not,
And so what you can do is youcan then scroll down and you've
got a little additionalinformation, and at the very top
there, we have got two optionsfor events. We have our standard

(08:35):
sampling program and our hybridsampling program. So these two
options should sound prettyfamiliar to most of the people
that have applied before, butwe've created a spot where you
can select in one locationeither option.
So that standard samplingprogram is what you get when you
apply and you haven't had a birdharvested already. You get the

(08:57):
opportunity to receive threevials to harvest and submit
mallard like ducks over thecourse of the hunting season,
and then our hybrid samplingprogram is if you have already
harvested a unique orinteresting looking duck, and
this is when previously you hademailed us. Instead, you're
gonna go to this portal thisyear and click on apply today

(09:20):
for the option that is bestrepresentative of what you wanna
do this season. And you are ableto apply for both. So if you get
a hybrid later in the year, youcan still apply for that hybrid
program even if you sign up forthe standard sampling to start
with.

So So I'm kinda playing around here. I don't
know.

Yeah. So you're perfect. So it's it's we'll
Where

do you want me to You want start with your plan
today?

Yeah. Click on the apply today for our standard
sampling program. Okay. So thisis gonna take you into our
portal where it's gonna ask fora little bit of information so
that we can make sure that weget the kit or select the right
person and can contact you. Soit'll ask for information like
who you're registering, so ifyou're registering yourself or
your child, if they're outhunting with you, your name.

Can I? You sure can. Yeah. So you will see this
thing here that says sign in. Sothe platform that we're using is
RunSignUp.
We've had maybe a couple ofquestions about this. If you
have ever used RunSignUp, ifyou're a it's used for mostly
for, like, marathons or runningevents, things of that nature,

(10:26):
but we have adopted it for this.So if you have a RunSignUp
account, if you're familiar withthat, you'll know what it is. If
if not, don't worry about it.You can sign in, and it will
automatically bring up a a bitof your information, I think.

Yes. So if you've already used RunSignUp
before and your information isin the system, you are able to
kind of auto populate much tothe same vibe as like what's on
your phone, that it'll fill someof that information in for you
before.

Yeah. So I'm gonna do this here. So me, me, email
address, yada yada yada, we'regonna do all that. And so I
guess it's asking me to toregister right here.

Yeah. So it's asking you to register

k.

Here. And then here, you'll see the option
again to select the programyou're interested in applying
for. So just make sure that theone is selected that you want.
Typically, since the huntingseason hasn't occurred, most
people will be applying for thatstandard sampling right now, but
there are a few individuals whohave hybrids from previous years
that have already submitted forour hybrid program as well.

Okay. And so then I would do all of this.

Yep. So we have our little privacy waiver to say

do this here. What if I do this? Do you want me to
do this? Okay. So we had to takea little small break there in
order to enter some information.
We are back now, and I am loggedin to my RunSignUp because we
wanna do this so you can see therest of the process here. So if
you already haven't run sign upaccount, they would use that. If

(11:53):
not, then they would they wouldregister, and and then it would
take them to this. Right? Theywould enter their information
and Yes.

So that'll capture your information that we
need, and then you have theopportunity to double check that
you're signed up for the rightprogram. Most people will be
signing up for that standardsampling program right now, and
then you click the continuebutton. Oh, well, click the
waiver.

Waiver, do the continue, and Perfect. Now then.

So now we capture just a few more pieces
of information. We wanna keepthings short and sweet for you
guys. So our first questionwe're gonna ask is in which
state you primarily hunt in. Soyou'll go through the list of
states and select the one thatyou hunt the most in, and then
we're gonna ask you about your,what we call your hunting
avidity. So how many ducks didyou harvest?

Definitely more than 11. Actually, that's not
true. That's that's not true inMississippi last year, so more
like that.

And we we prefer honest answers in this
information. This is just usedfor us to look on the back end
to help us understand samplingand harvesting and the types of
birds harvested by certainpeople. Lastly, we have a
section that is only for hybridparticipants. So if you clicked

(13:11):
on that standard sampling, youcan just ignore this little
section. You can click continueand move on, but if you have a
hybrid, please upload photos ofthat hybrid.
This is gonna help us alsounderstand what we're looking
at. So this is gonna give usinformation about what that
hybrid looks like so that we canfill some of the buckets we need
to fill to make sure that wehave all of the information we

(13:32):
need to do our genetic testing.

And then we hit continue, and, oh, what is this?

Oh, wow. So this is something really cool that
we've been doing, and recently,for a limited time, we were able
to accept donations, and inreturn, we could send supporters
their choice of these lovelyDuck DNA branded hats that you
see here.

And we do wanna give a big thank you to everyone
that donated because these hatswent fast, Surprised us in many
ways, and so thank you for that.So much so that we are now
officially out of inventory. Soif you've missed out on getting
yours, sorry about that, but weare excited to let you know that
we have some things in theworks. Maybe There an

(14:14):
opportunity to get one of thesehats in the future. If you're
interested, drop us a line atdupodcast@ducks.org so we can
get a good idea for the level ofdemand and also so we can reach
back out to you once those dobecome available.

So you do wanna make sure that you hit the
complete registration button.That is gonna make sure that
your registration goes all theway back to me and that we have
it available for selection.

There we go.

And you also get this really cool opportunity at
the end to click on this supportDuck DNA button, which we may
talk more about later.

I bet we will. Looks looky there. It takes us
to the Mossy Oak store, if folksare seeing that, and pretty
soon, we will be joined bysomeone who can tell us a lot
more about that. So so, yeah,anything else on the
registration that we need totalk about, that new process and

(15:07):
so forth?

Yeah. The biggest reminder is that if you
run into any issues or you'reunsure about something, we still
have our email available, soplease reach out via email to
me, Ty, or Katie. We'll we allman that system. We also do have
our helpline phone number on ourwebsite as well. Pick up the
phone, give us a call, we'rehappy to help you in either

(15:28):
method that works best for you.

Thank you very much, Casey. And so now what we
wanna do, Chris, just kinda keepan eye on if if our guest joins
us, just let me know. Ty, what Iwhat I think we'll do now is
talk about some of the resultsfrom last year. We're gonna
bring Phil into this as well,but one of the things, that we
added to the website last yearwas a results page. You have

(15:52):
been working hard to summarizesome of the results, and we're
gonna get to that in just asecond because we have just been
joined by our very specialguest.
The timing is excellent. DanielHayes, all the way, are you in
West Point right now?

Daniel Hayes (16:08):
I'm in West Point right now. I'm at we got a big
old porch on the front of ouralmost 200 year old cabin out
here where we duck on Yeah.Mountain country.

Anybody that follows you and your family on
Instagram will recognize thatcabin as the source of a lot,
the background, backdrop for alot of photos and a lot of
information that y'all put out.Daniel Hayes with Mossy Oak.
Great for you to be with us. Wejust went through, Daniel, our
application, new applicationprocess for for Duck DNA, and

(16:38):
one of the things that that weonce once people go through that
application process, and Daniel,I don't know if you've actually
gone all the way through this,there is an option on the very
last page where it gives folksgives gives folks an opportunity
to support Duck DNA, and ittakes them to this page right
here. Chris, if we can get thatup, the Amosy Oak 2025 Waterfowl

(17:03):
Conservation Stamp page whereyou can get yours, and there is
a very good reason why we aredirecting people to this site,
and it relates to a verygenerous offer that you and your
family and your entire companymade to Ducks Unlimited, UTEP,

(17:25):
Doctor.
Lavretsky, our staff insupporting the Duck DNA project.
And so, Daniel, I want to giveyou an opportunity to talk about
that from your perspective, andthank you again for joining us
here.

Yeah. Thanks for having me, you and Phil. It's
it's been great to build afriendship through Molsty Oak,
and we're so proud of thegamekeeper side of of the brand
and and all that dad and mygranddad have injected into
Molson Oak with the culture ofconservation, and we always say
that one of our biggest goals isto make conservation cool.
Certainly, the two of you havehave gone as far as anybody in

(18:00):
recent memory in the duck worldto make conservation cool for
waterfowl. You're doing a heckof a job, so I think we're all
kinda kindred spirits.
And we're we're honored tosupport and be a part of this
project. I didn't even knowabout it when when Phil first
came on the Gamekeeper podcast.I was not in West Point that
day, and Bobby Cole sent me thelink after the episode came out.

(18:22):
And my brother, Neil, and I bothlistened to it, and we were mind
blown. All this was kindahappening under a bunch of duck
hunters' noses without everreally being brought aware of
it.
And so it was one of thoseepisodes that that you hear
occasionally where you send itto every single duck hunting
buddy that you have because youwant them all to to hear it too.
And and that's how you know thatyou're you're onto something is

(18:42):
that I think that thousands ofduck hunters have had that same
response when they hear aboutthe work that you're doing. They
want everybody in their grouptext or everybody at their duck
club or that they they hunt withto hear about it. And so the
work started to get around and,you know, then people start to
look for more information aboutit and wanna get educated about
it. And and that's where you youstart to uncover how cool the

(19:02):
work that you're doing is wherefor the first time in a long
time, there's not a lot ofprojects that have that that
hunter citizen scientist aspectto it in the year 2025, but this
has such a cool aspect ofparticipation that you just
don't get very much anymore.
So it it's all been such a coolproject for us to learn about
and and help spread the wordabout. Yeah. Well, Daniel, we
our entire group here, and

I know Phil online as well, have been absolutely
thrilled to welcome Mossy Oakinto, you know, the support for
this project. We had aconversation with y'all several
months ago, and you shared withus the idea of wanting to use a
proceed from the sale of thesewaterfowl conservation stamps to
to help fund this project, and,you know, we were ecstatic, and

(19:46):
we're like, absolutely. We wannado it. They have we have a ton
of ideas on how we can helppromote, what y'all are trying
to do sort of in tandem and andthen helping the project in the
process, and so this is a greatI mean, we've done a little bit
of of that kind of promotion upuntil now, but with this with
this episode and a lot of stuffthat we have forthcoming, I

(20:09):
think we have a really goodopportunity to showcase what we
can do as as partners on thisproject, and so I guess just to
to kinda get into some of that,when people go to the Mossy Oak
store, and I mean, if you get ifyou arrive there after you've
applied for Duck DNA or if youjust go there on your own, you
will go to the you'll you'llfind the waterfowl conservation

(20:31):
stamp, get yours today.
They can purchase as many ofthese as they want. Right?
There's no limit on the numberthat you can purchase. So, me,
Daniel, but I think what thissays here is there's a beautiful
message here from your dad downhere at the bottom of this page.
It talks about what conservationmeans to him, means to your
family, talks about theexcitement and the interest that

(20:52):
y'all have in this project, andit says that 100% of the
proceeds from the sale of thesestamps will go exclusively to
support UTEP and Ducks Unlimitedin delivering the Duck DNA
project.
I mean, is a really cool thingfor I mean, anytime in in our
profession we get support forthe science that we think is
valuable, it's it's a reallyspecial thing, but to do it sort

(21:16):
of under the banner of nameslike Ducks Unlimited and Mossy
Oak, I mean, that's pretty cool.Mossy Oak, it it also means a
little bit something extraspecial to me just because
you're a Mississippi born andmade, and you continue to be
there in Mississippi business,and I have Mississippi ties
there, and so I have a lot ofpride there as well personally,

(21:37):
but it's so cool, and everythingthat you've done here, think,
allows that to shine through. Sothank you, Daniel. Anything else
like tell us about the artwork.Share with us anything else here
about what's going on.

Yeah. We we wanted the the artwork to kinda have a
little bit of of old schoolflair. So our you know, really,
the when the stamp originated,we've we've done four wild
turkey stamps. And when itstarted, it was really just
because, you know, the pastfive, six years, there's been a
lot of concern in the turkeyhunting world about the state
and the health of wild turkeypopulation. And Phil did a lot

(22:16):
of crossover work there with ourour buddy, doctor Chamberlain.
So he he knows a lot about it,but there was a lot of concern
for the the health of the wildturkey. And we were kinda
sitting around talking about welove old, you know, old books
and print stories, all that kindof good stuff, wildlife art. And
we're, you know, talking aboutthe fact that you have the

(22:36):
migratory bird stamp, which isthe most famous stamp in the
world. But forty years ago, youcouldn't hunt or fish for any
species in any state in thecountry without having either a
fish or wildlife specificlicense or a stamp for that type
of game. And, you know, ifyou're looking really broadly at
every every state, they're kindagonna cater to the big two,

(22:58):
whitetail deer and largemouthbass.
And so from a really distantview, you wouldn't think that
any other species even exist.Thankfully, because of the
conservation history that fromDucks Unlimited and just from
our government, ducks havealways been taken care of. But
because of that, we're we'relike, hey. Well, you know, why
don't anybody sell a a turkeystamp anymore? There's only,
like, two states at this timethat do it.

(23:20):
Every every other state otherthan the duck stamp has kinda
discontinued every other speciesstamp. And so we're talking
about it. We're like, well, Imean, there's no rule that says
Molsior can't just make our ownstamp and see if anybody buys
one. So, you know, we we printedturkey stamps. We've listed them
on our website for $15.
Every penny of that $15, we justcovered the cost of the printing

(23:40):
and stuff like that ourselves.And so all $15 went to this
grassroots fund we startedcalled Gamekeeper Grants so that
we could write grants towhatever project we wanted to.
Put it on our site, and it wasright when turkey season had had
kinda gotten kicked off. Andbefore the end of turkey season,
we had sold over a $100,000 ofturkey stamps, which was just
crazy. It blew us away.

(24:02):
And so we've we've done thatevery year since. And we didn't
wanna we wanted to do a duckstamp, but we didn't wanna do a
duck stamp unless we had becausethere's just not the same state
of concern with ducks as therewas with turkeys. And because of
the way funding is set up forfor ducks, it didn't seem as as
urgent to just do it withouthaving a project tethered to it.
And so once we met doctor Philand learned more about duck DNA,

(24:24):
I was like, oh, this is this isperfect. We you know, as nobody
knows better than DucksUnlimited because the the iconic
magazine and all other forms ofmedia that have matured over the
years through Ducks Unlimited,nobody knows better the
importance of culture andmarketing and message behind
conservation.
You can't just have funding. Youcan't just have good people that
are willing to do the work. Youhave to have buy in from

(24:46):
whatever your community is.Nobody gets that better than DU.
That's always been a pinnacle ofof Molsty Oak's culture, what we
stand for.
That's why Gamekeepers exist andall that. So, anyway, we learned
about Duck DNA. We're like, thisis the perfect project. It's a
great thing for Malsy Oak to touse the gamekeeper side of our
brand for and the core part ofMalsy Oak to help spread the
word about. And then also thestamp is a is a really cool

(25:07):
direct way to raise more fundingand to give you know, if
somebody just has $15 to give orjust has $30 to give and they
want it to go to a good cause,you know, every penny if you,
you know, if you're alsoenthusiastic about Duck DNA, you
know, every penny from thatdonation to buy a stamp is gonna
go to this project.
And you get a cool little pieceof artwork that's preserving you
know, it's it's pretty hard tomake a living as a wildlife

(25:28):
artist these days. Not a lot ofthem. And so you're preserving a
cool art form as well. So all ofthat together makes for a really
cool project that we're reallyexcited to to help support and
and do whatever we can. And thenalso, we've got you know, we the
DU Expo was was such a blast andhad a great turnout for first
year being back in Memphis.
And we had our Friday nightgathering, drink one for the

(25:48):
ducks, and it was 10 or $15cover charge to get in the door
there, and all that money goesto Duck DNA as well. And so it's
just fun to have all these anylittle project that we can do in
the duck world right now thathas a conservation message tied
to it. It's fun to have Duck DNAbe the recipient of it. It's
such a worthwhile project thatwe wanna make sure that it's
easy to get enthusiastic aboutanything, not just in

(26:09):
conservation, right when youhear about it, and then your
enthusiasm wanes, but, you know,you need commitment year after
year after year. So hopefully,all these different sources of
funding and enthusiasm behindDugDNA will will help the
longevity of it.

A couple of things to point out here, Daniel, like,
again, massive thank you to youand your family for doing this,
and then I'm gonna give Phil achance to to say a few words and
offer his thanks as well. Butyou mentioned the the federal
DUG stamp. Coincidentally, todayis the day of the federal duck
stamp judging of the contest.It's going on right now as we

(26:44):
record this. We were actuallywatching it a little bit before
we came in here.
So that's pretty cool toreference that stamp while we're
talking about talking aboutthis. The other thing that I'll
do, you you mentioned the stamp,the so this is I actually got
this at the the DU Expo, whatI'm showing here, the the
envelope containing one of thestamps. I sort of borrowed a

(27:07):
borrowed a page from whattypically happens with the
federal waterfowl stamp. Ifyou're there the first day of
sale, you get signatures, youget people to sign it, all that
kind of stuff. So I met you andyour dad and your brother, and I
got all three of you to signsign my stamp, and so that's
pretty little or a prettyspecial thing in itself.
And so this is I guess if weChris, if we can we do the the

(27:30):
overhead shot? This is what thestamp looks like, and I'm
assuming yep. There's thethere's the stamp. Now I don't
know that you will and then I'mnot trying to suggest everybody
swing by well, I guess I couldsuggest everybody swing by West
Point and see if they can getthe signature. If everybody's
there, sure, more traffic forthe business for you.

You might not slam me if I'm out

here, obviously.

That's right. But anyway, it is it is modeled
after sort of the the design ofthe of the current federal duck
stamp in terms of the shape andself adhesive nature of it, so
pretty cool in that regard. Theother thing that I will point
out, and this overhead shot willhave just revealed, is that this
is a mock up of the kit, firsttime this has ever been seen by

(28:16):
the public, I think. Actually,it may have been seen one
version of this may have beenseen elsewhere at at a DU event
associated with DUX. This is thenew kit that people will that
lucky participants will receive.
This is a mock up. This is someoutstanding work that Katie
Tucker did on very short noticewhen we came up with this idea.

(28:37):
It's like, let's get the theshadow grass camo. We actually
have one that's in in Bottomlandalso, but we ended up going with
shadow grass, and Katie printedthis off, and and I don't know
if we used Elmer's glue.Probably didn't use Elmer's Was
it Elmer's It was Elmer's glue.
She's shaking her head. So thiswas, like, in our office mocking
this up to show to Daniel andand his team, but this is what

(29:00):
folks will receive if they areselected, is a mossy oak shadow
grass camo pattern that isprinted on the the kit. This is
a single vial hybrid kit, doesnot have any of the material in
there. But, yeah, we did thisin, what, like a day, two days,
something of that nature, and soit was that was a pretty cool

(29:20):
thing in itself, and it'sexciting to be able to share
that as part of this episode.I've talked enough.
Phil, I know you have someexciting things to say and words
of appreciation to pass along toDaniel and kind of what all
means to you and the greatrelationship that you've
developed with Daniel and hisfamily.

Yeah, I was wondering if I was gonna talk. I
was waiting. It's reallydifficult for me to wait. In
fact, you took my sort ofthought behind it away because I
have

my name

right here, but it's not signed. But it's going
on our YETI. And I yeah. Everyactually took a a picture of us
talking here because as you weretalking, Daniel, a, hey, how's
it going? B, as you weretalking, it blew my mind because
because a long time ago, at onepoint, I was sitting in a blind

(30:13):
thinking about what I was seeingin my data and thinking about
like, God, I wonder if anybodyelse gives two thoughts on what
I'm seeing and if it's importantto them.
And your words of encouragementand thankfulness of like, Yeah,
thank God we we now know what weknow, you know, really speaks

(30:34):
volume. And I appreciate that.And I appreciate you, your
family, Mossy Oak for everythingyou guys have been able to do,
becoming a partner on this soquickly. I mean, huge things.
And as you were saying, I mean,I wish I was at Ducks and at
this drink event.
I didn't even know about that.I'm learning so many things

(30:55):
right now. I didn't even know.That was actually the first time
I ever saw our box.

Oh, really? So you're thinking, what other
surprises do we have? I waslike, yeah.

No. I mean, like I said, bottom of my heart,
thank you to you, your family,and Massey Oak for everything
you guys have done. And I hopethat this partnership will
continue to grow and and nowinto the future. Hopefully,
everybody else, gets excitedabout Duck DNA as we are, as you
are. I think you're right.
We're gonna share some of theresults that we're just starting

(31:27):
to find and and a lot of thethings that we found would not
be possible if it wasn't forDuck DNA and the hunters out
there. And thankfully, thehunters think it's cool. They're
getting a piece of information.They're helping to grow our
knowledge base of what are theproblems if they are there, and
what else can we do about them.So, again, thank you.

Yeah. Thank you, guys. You're the ones doing the
work. We're just trying to helpout and support where we can,
and that shadow grass looks sogood on those boxes. I haven't
seen it in person yet.

Yeah.

We're gonna make sure

you get a copy. You and your family get get a
couple of those kits, and andand we are we haven't seen the
printed versions yet. We'restill waiting on those. We are
we are optimistic that they aregoing to be be outstanding, and
we'll make sure you get a copyof those.

We we we made a custom batch of Whistling Wings
Light with our friends at FlywayBrewing for that party, Phil, so
you missed out. We had a chefmask can. We printed the stamp
on the side of the can. It's agreat duck camp beer. We have we
have a few cases left, so we'llhave to send you a couple of six
packs.

Or bring me out there either way.

Yeah. We'll just come pick up and get it.

I'm happy to come out there. What are you are
you guys teal hunting? What areyou doing?

We're not doing anything right now. It's it's 91
degrees, and we're

Oh, Jesus. We don't

have a lick of water anywhere. That's not a
fishing pond.

Right on.

We're not doing much of anything. We got

we're just praying

for rain till the time November gets here.

There you go.

So, Ty, Casey, y'all are also involved in this
that I think y'all may have hada chance to meet meet Daniel,
but any opportune anything tosay, pass along based on your
experiences or or what you havegoing on?

First of all, just a giant thank you. This is
something that we're all soexcited and passionate about,
and we get to see how excitedthe hunters get with this
opportunity as well. And part ofour questions over the last year
was, are we gonna have to startcharging for some of this? You
know, like, where do we stand?And this has helped alleviate
some of that as well.
And so I know the hunters aregonna be extremely grateful and

(33:25):
absolutely thrilled to also getto engage and be a part of this
and its new form that it'staking on.

Ty Sharrow (33:31):
Yeah. Just a big thank you for doing this. This
is a great idea. I think theartwork on it is beautiful and
another opportunity to featuresome wildlife artists, and it's
there's definitely demand forgetting back to the project and
getting back to conservation. Sothank you.

Heck yeah. A couple of things I forgot to
say. One is pointing out thatBlake Gore is the guy who did
the artwork, but it was based ona hen mallard brood photo by
Gary Kramer, who's beencontributing to the magazine for
years and years. So the otherthing I wanna say is that today
is our big charity event, theFoxhole Shootout down here in

(34:05):
West Point. I'm actually headedback out to the venue now.
We've we've got a bunch of livefire cooking going on all day.
Those guys are out theresweating their butts off and
leaving away for what's gonna bea really good meal. The the
primary benefactors of of ourevent are St. Jude Children's
Hospital and Catch a Dream, butthe mission is kids and
conservation. That's where mostof the money goes.

(34:25):
But then we also have a littlebit of money from the night
going back to Ducks Unlimitedand and to Duck DNA as well. So
that's a good conservation partof this. And another thing I
wanted to say that I thought wascool that happened on its own,
but with the turkey stamp, we wesaw people that started you
know, Phil said he's gonna slapone on a Yeti cooler. We've had
plenty of people do that. Butwe've we've had some people that

(34:47):
have bought batches of stampswhen turkey season ends to use
it as a self tag so that if theykill five turkeys, they buy five
turkey stamps at the end of theyear.
And our buddy, Jared at OnAxe,actually started he's done it
each year, and he has thiscooler with all his stamps lined
up on it. It it looks prettycool year over year. So I don't
if somebody has a successfulducks season, I think they might
go broke, donate money.

Maybe you might have

to divide by six or something. I'm I'm gonna win
that you buy tag, man.

We're okay with that, Daniel. We're okay with
that, Daniel. We could I don'tknow. Think about that. Could we
do, like, a I don't know.
I don't We could do incrementsof a 100 or something, and we
can figure something out if thatbe the case. Yeah.

Y'all are having a better season than we have the

past couple

of years. Yeah.

Yep. Daniel, I do know you have to get back to
your your charity event, thefact that you're, you know,
Saint Jude is right here in ourbackyard. We've actually
collaborated with them on a fewthings lately, and we've talked
to some of their folks about apotential a potential for some
of what we do through Duck DNAto allow them to reach out to

(35:53):
hunters for some of theinformation and engagement that
they're looking for as well. Sothere's all sorts of sort of
tangential sort of connectionshere with what y'all are doing
and the things that we'reinvolved in now, so that's all
really cool. Again, and andthat's wonderful news about some
of of what y'all are doing thisevening coming back to to DU as
well, but, you know, again,thank you.

(36:14):
I guess one of our challengeshere as we close out, you said
there was over a $100,000contributed to the first the
inaugural turkey stamp. I mean,I certainly hope waterfowl
hunters can get behind this andand blow that number out of the
water. You can do that throughthe stamp. If you if you have an
interest in giving at a higherlevel for for any of this, get

(36:34):
in touch with us or get in touchwith your Ducks Unlimited
director of development. Ifthere is interest in that, we
can can have those conversationsand figure something out.
But but this right here, the2025 Mossio Waterfowl
Conservation Stamp is anoutstanding way for everyone to
get involved at really whateverlevel they want to as well. And,
Daniel, it's made possible byyou and your family. Thank you,

(36:58):
and we'll stay in touch as theseason unfolds and may get back
together on another episode, butI wanna let you get back to what
you're doing. So thank you,Daniel.

Yeah. And on our site too, I should have one on
right now, but I've got my oldShadow polo on. But we have two
new shirts that we made forducks. One just says
conservation is cool across thechest. That's a great shirt for
anybody.
It's on a Shadow Grass t shirt.And then we have another one
that has the stamp printed onthe shirt. So both of those are
great great T shirts for thisproject. And let's we we should

(37:28):
if you find a little a SaintJude patient who who loves
ducks, we should and has alittle bit of artistic ability,
we should let them paint theirown little stamp. We'll do a
little kid's shirt or do a youknow, I love you talked about
the the federal duck stampprogram.
I love how they always do thekids competition.

So Yeah.

For sure. We dig a little deeper there and do
something cool.

Sure. And I left that shirt, the the one with the
stamp on it is actually in myoffice. I came down here without
it. So but yes. So I have thatone, and I don't I can't find it
right now on the site, but it'sthere.
But, anyway, go to the Mossy Oakstore, search for the waterfowl
conservation stamp, waterfowlconservation t shirt, find all
those good things that supportthe project. So thank you,

(38:08):
Daniel. We'll let you get backto your day.

Yep. Thanks for having me on, and I appreciate
y'all's friendship.

Okay. Thanks, man.

See

you. See you.

Alright. Well, thanks to Daniel. I probably
what we'll do right now is takea break, and then we'll come
back, and we will talk with Philsome more, and finally give him
a chance to talk in a little bitmore detail along with Ty about
some of the results that we'vehad come in for the first couple
of years. So y'all stay with us.We will be right back.

VO (38:38):
Stay tuned to the Ducks Unlimited podcast, sponsored by
Purina Pro Plan and Bird DogWhiskey. After these messages.

Hey, everybody. Welcome back. I'm doctor Mike
Brazier. We're gonna continuethis episode where we're talking
about duck DNA. And, so again,thank you to Daniel Hayes who
joined us prior to the break.
I wanna go back to the website,Mossy Oak website, Chris,
because during the break, I didfind the duck stamp t shirt that
Daniel was talking about. Thereyou see it in the Mossy Oak, the

(40:57):
original shadow grass, conserveour wetlands featuring the stamp
that appears on, on thatwaterfowl conservation stamp.
So, and it does reference thethe stamp here, and and when you
purchase the stamp, you dosupport Duck DNA. It takes you
back to there. So very easy tofind both of those, and, yeah,

(41:18):
go check those out.
Great opportunity to to supportDuck DNA, Ducks Unlimited, and
UTEP, and all the great workthat's going on. And so speaking
of great work that's going onand results that we have gotten,
Ty, do you want to take usthrough here? You go to the
homepage, and we've got viewresults, and you've added a lot

(41:38):
of information to that.

Ty Sharrow (41:39):
Yes. We've had plenty of samples and plenty of
plenty of new data to add tothis, but this past season was a
great year. We greatly expandedfrom our first season. In total,
we had eleven fifty eightsamples that have come in to
Duck DNA.

That just last year.

Ty Sharrow (41:55):
Yeah. Just last Yeah. It's almost twice as many
as we had in that first season,so we definitely expanded. And
hopefully, this season, we'll beable to expand even more and
accept more samples and get evenmore data. So, yeah, Mike
mentioned on our homepage, ifyou press this new button, view
results, and this has a greatlyexpanded and updated results

(42:16):
page for us.
There's three different tabsthat you can look at. You can
look at all seasons, which hasour total results, and then you
can get a breakdown between ourtwo previous seasons.

I'm gonna go to '24, '25 just real quickly. Yes.
It shows that.

Ty Sharrow (42:30):
There you are.

Now I'm gonna go back to all seasons because we
have more information on thatall season page. Right? Okay.

Ty Sharrow (42:35):
Yeah. We have some more detailed breakdowns of how
many participants we had byflyaways, how many samples by
flyaways. You can see, if you'reviewing, a nice map of all our
samples that we've receivedsparkled all across The US from

All 48 states.

Ty Sharrow (42:50):
All 48 states, believe it or not. Yeah. You can
see there are still some areasthat we have not had samples
yet. So if you hunt there,definitely apply, and we will
definitely like to have youryour samples from there. And
also below that, we have somescientific insights, just a few
of the really interesting thingsthat we found through Duck DNA,
highlighting some of theinteresting three species

(43:12):
hybrids that we've come across,that famous Northern shoveler
blooming teal, cinnamon tealhybrid, that three way cross, so
that was really surprising andinteresting to see for sure.
Then also some of the firststate records that we were able
to genetically confirm throughduct DNA. We had a Mexican duck
in Idaho, another one inArkansas, and also a Bicol teal

(43:34):
in Nevada, which was reallyexciting to see and have come
in.

We double and triple checked that Mexican duck
in Idaho, didn't we?

Ty Sharrow (43:40):
Yes, we did.

One of the things I will say is that, you know,
the group here that we havedoesn't just give Phil and
Virgie and his lab a pass andjust say, okay, this is what
Phil says, it must be what itis. I mean, there's been
probably a dozen or moreinstances where you don't know
all this, Phil, but they come tome and they're like, we have
some questions about this, andit's like, should we reach out?

(44:06):
I'm like, yeah, reach out. Askyour question. Let's double
check these types of things, andthat has proven very valuable in
some instances because there'sadditional information that
comes into play at times, and Iwould prob I mean, most of the
time, Phil replies back andsays, yeah, that's what I said
it is.
Right?

Is that fair?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, but I guess the other thing
would say that y'all y'all y'allare pointing out and bringing to
his attention these samples thatmay look a little bit curious.
Right?

Well, and I think Phil said on, like, the
last episode we had, like, Phildoesn't get all the extra
information we get, right? SoPhil is running these, I will
say blind, right?

Ty Sharrow (44:45):
Very objectively.

Yeah. So Pretty much pretty yeah. Was just gonna
add, I I don't look at thepictures. I don't look at
anything. It's just I call themas it as it is.
If they're if I see mix ups, inin in things, then I might ask
for more information. Buttypically, I just don't even
look at it. So a lot of timeswhen I see the Instagram, like

(45:09):
recently with the teal, that'sthe first time I'd ever looked
at that picture. You're

missing out. You're Thank missing so

God, thank God the genetics is so right.
Anyways.

But it makes it a super fun day in the office
too because everyone's like, isit real? Is it not real? Like,
is it? And so we all get reallyexcited and, like, it's just an
adventure. It's a fun time, andthen we get to kind of sit a
little earlier than, you know,we release some of these images.
We get to sit on it and kind ofget excited about the release of
this next one, you know.

What else, Ty?

Ty Sharrow (45:43):
Yes. If we keep going down, we've got this big
table of all the differenthybrids that we've come across.
Plenty of mixes with wildmallards, and then some
interesting ones with game farmmallards, including like a wood
duck with a game farm mallard,some model ducks, and then even
our breakdown of some of thethree types of hybrids we've
had. So that includes mostly,it's been wild mallards with a

(46:05):
game farm mallard and then athird species of duck, but we
have a few, like I mentioned,that that three way teal hybrid
too.

There's some geese down in here. Yes. Foreshadowing
of some exciting stuff coming inOctober, y'all. Stay tuned.

Ty Sharrow (46:17):
Yes. That'll be definitely check the the social
feeds for that one. We'll beshowcasing some of those. And
then if we keep going down,we've got highlighting some of
the Game Farm Mallard ancestryresults. This is one of the the
big objectives of Duck DNA is tolook more into this.
And we have some really coolmaps that you can see broken
down by flyways. And this isthis first map here that is

(46:39):
looking at just mallards and thepercent of game ancestry that
we've had from those Mallardsamples. So you can see in the
Atlantic Flyway, 73% of Mallardsthat we've received from those
standard kits had some game farmancestry in them, which is the
highest compared to the otherflyaways, which Mississippi had

(47:00):
22%, Central 10%, and thePacific Flyway had 20% of
Mallards with those Game FarmAncestry genes in them. And then
also you can see it in a piechart form, better
visualization, and you can seebetween the Pacific, Central,
And Mississippi flyways, it'sall kind of relatively similar,

(47:20):
about 80 to 90% of birds hadwere pure wild mallards, and
then one to 2% were those puregame farms, and then a mix of
nine to 22% were those hybridsbetween wild and game farms. But
if you look at the Atlanticflyaway that is switched with
71%, again, containing thosegame farm genes of a hybrid

(47:43):
between that and the the wildtype.
And then two, you can seespecific locations where we've
come across those samples thathad game form Mallard genes. And
looking at it, it is a prettyeven spread all across The US.
Atlantic Flyaway does have alot, but even everywhere from
Texas to Oregon and Maine andMinnesota, they all have had

(48:06):
game farm mallard genes in thosemallards.

45 of the 48 states that we've is where we've
encountered the game farmancestry thus We're pretty sure
that given enough samples andtime, we'll find game farm
ancestry in in every state here.California, the Pacific Flyway
is particularly interesting. Iknow Phil thought about that,
and I even had a question on acall the other day. You know, we

(48:31):
are really interested, like, arethose associated with game farm
releases, or are they associatedwith birds that have been
released into some of those cityparks and urban areas and that
occasionally venture out intoareas where they're harvested?
Phil, do you have any insight,any thoughts on that?

Yeah, no, that 20% is being heavily pushed by
California, and I do know thatthere is a breeder, specifically
of game farm mallards inCalifornia exactly in that
little hot spot that we found inthat Central Valley area that

(49:13):
are clearly being put out. It'scompletely outside of this.
These proportions, likeespecially for across these
flyaways, are almost identicalto when I do external surveys
for, let's say, Fish andWildlife or state agencies, and
that ratio was almost identical.When we got 100 birds out of the

(49:35):
Klamath, 20% of them had gamefarm or were just simply feral
game farms. So they're in thatpool and that was a random
sampling out of the Klamath areain Northern California and
Oregon.
And it mimics what we find here.So I'm fairly certain that the
Pacific Flyway signatures islargely driven by that. We

(49:57):
definitely need someparticipants out of Washington,
more of them.

But, yeah, no. Know, we enrolled a large number
of people from Washington. Iwanna go back and see where our
samples are. Yeah. Look at this.
So a large number of duck DNAsamples from Washington. The
other map I was showing, are thelocations of birds with game
farm ancestry, which isinteresting. I got another map

(50:25):
we're gonna show you here in abit too where we can get a finer
level information that nobodyelse has seen. Has Phil seen it?

Ty Sharrow (50:32):
I don't think he has. No. Know.

Don't think I've ever

seen it. Yes. He's all.

Well, should visit our website more often,
Phil.

Come on. That's right. Okay. What what now?

Ty Sharrow (50:44):
Yes. Yes. So there's more maps, more more graphs too
to look at. So one of the thingswith those standard kits, it's
not just for Mallard's, it's forMallard like ducks. So that
includes black ducks, Mexicanducks, and mottled ducks.
So further down, we have abreakdown of each of those three
species, some more pie chartslooking at the percentage of
their hybridization not justwith game for mallards, but

(51:08):
other mallard like ducks. Youcan see American black ducks, we
had a whole bunch of samples ofthem, almost 300, so a good
sample size. And about 42 werepure black ducks, and then
another 42% were black duck wildmallard hybrids. That remaining
percentage was mixed with a gamefor mallards and one black duck
mottled duck hybrid as well,which is interesting. Mexican

(51:31):
ducks, haven't had many ofthose.
We'd love to have more toanalyze, only about 18. But
again, that was about 50% werepure Mexican ducks, and then a
bigger breakdown of hybrids withthose game farm birds. Then
finally, those mottled ducks.For this one, this is combining
the Florida Coast population andthe Western Gulf Coast

(51:53):
population, which doing duckDNA, we can separate those two
subspecies, but for this piechart, this is combining them.
And you can see there is a muchhigher degree of hybridization
with them and wild mallards andcamphor mallards and other
mallard like ducks as well.
So that for that species, itdoes seem like they they are

(52:13):
hybridizing more with with othermallard like ducks. Know that's
something that Phil's gonna begetting into a little bit more
detail later, but, yeah, this iswhat we have on our website.
That's just a big

mix of things right

Ty Sharrow (52:24):
there. Is. It's widespread.

Model ducks, wild mallards, the game farm wild,
game farm, black ducks, Mexicanducks. Yeah. And the Mexican
duck thing, so that's the otherpart that does sort of
predispose model ducks to tothat wider, I guess, range of
hybridizations is you've got aWestern Gulf Coast population
where they do interact withMexican ducks, then you've got

(52:50):
the Florida population of modelducks where you're gonna get
more encounters with blackducks. And then, Ty, as you
said, we can go to the specificyears and learn get a few
additional details about wherethese birds have been have been
sampled from.

And I I was just gonna note that American black
duck, we published a paper, butthat that found the same exact
thing, but the introductions ofmodel duck into Carolina, South
Carolina, that's the reasoningbehind that. And we found a
couple different papers, NorthCarolina and South Carolina,
where we find the samesignatures of breeding ducks in

(53:30):
that area. So this is it. It'snice to see that things are
kinda holding up, and now we cansort of monitor that. Yeah.
Breaking that model duck up intoFlorida and Western Gulf Coast
will get you a bit betterunderstanding of what's
happening there. But we'll chaton that some more. But, and then
I was also gonna say theAmerican black duck thing. What

(53:52):
I was hoping to see is a heatmap of that, because my
hypothesis has always been thatinterior US side are hybrids,
and coastal black decks are yourtrue black decks. So I'm
wondering if our sample sizesare big enough now to try to
figure that kind of thing out,but

I don't know if they're large enough yet. I know
you have done some heat maps,but I don't know if it was for
black ducks based on that. Butyou did some interesting things
with black ducks, looking atwhere the hybrids mostly occur,
I think, East West or somethingof

Ty Sharrow (54:25):
that nature. So did have I wanted to plot the black
ducks and mallard duck hybrids,and that was something
interesting we found because wehad quite a few that were in the
Pacific And Central Flyway,black ducks usually are only in
the Atlantic and and some in theMississippi Flyway, but we saw
that there were some hybridseven far off West, even we had
several in California. So thatwas very interesting. We're

(54:47):
thinking that those are more ofthe second or third generation
hybrids as those genes get morediluted and those birds migrate
and move more that they canspread further west. But even in
California, you can get a blackduck mallard hybrid, but you
gotta confirm it through DuckDNA.

Are we ready to show Phil this next thing that
you've developed?

Ty Sharrow (55:05):
I think so.

Okay. Here we go, Phil.

Oh, man. Oh, boy. So

many surprises on this.

Ty Sharrow (55:12):
Yes. This is the Duck DNA interactive map, and
this has not been added to ourwebsite quite yet. That results
page is published, and you cancheck that out right now, but
this will be added hopefully inthe next coming weeks.

Too advanced for you? I'm struggling here.

Ty Sharrow (55:27):
A lot of buttons and things to scroll in with this
for sure.

So this is, like, reminiscent of that whole the
COVID COVID dashboard, likeJohns Hopkins had, and and so
now this platform is you candevelop this where it summarizes
it at the county level. Well,state level or county level,
right? So tell us what's goingon here.

Ty Sharrow (55:48):
Sure. This stuff.

I gotta

Ty Sharrow (55:51):
On this left side, we have some filters that we can
use. As we've talked about, wehave two different

Arkansas.

Ty Sharrow (55:56):
Sampling kits, those hybrid and standard, so you can
or both, you can switch inbetween those if you'd like, and
then search by state. So if youwanna look at results just from
maybe Arizona, you can clickthat. It'll zoom in.

I'm in Arkansas though. Oh. Yeah. Arizona. Was
Mallards.
There are some.

Ty Sharrow (56:17):
Any any state you'd like to look at. So Arkansas,
it'll zoom in there, and on theright side, it has some of those
metrics and stats, and that'llbe specific to what filter
you're choosing. So that isshowing now those stats for
Arkansas, how many samples thatwe've received so far, how many
participants. Even has a piechart breaking down, again,

(56:38):
those Mallard like ducks andwhat proportion other ancestry
contains game farm genes. As youcan see in Arkansas, they've
got, what, 6% have had containgame farm genes.
That's interesting. Then belowthat, we have a table of all the
different samples that we'vereceived from that state saying
the identity of that taxa andthen how many we've received.

(57:01):
Then even if you want to lookdive even deeper down, we can
look at the county level as welland look at those same metrics,
but at the county level.

Yeah. I'm trying to figure this out here on the
fly. You're watching me. Right?So I am.
Okay. I can do this. Will thatwork? So Yes. And will it change
over here?
No. I have to go over here andselect this. Like, if I wanna go
to Arkansas County in Arkansas,then I can do this, and then
it's gonna change this overhere, and it will show it had

(57:30):
five participants, 13 samplessubmitted from Arkansas County,
Arkansas. They were all 100%wild mallards. So locations that
you see plotted are not yourharvest locations.
They are the centroid of thecounty in which you indicated
your harvest occurred, just tobe clear. Over here, we have

(57:52):
this is Tallahatchie County.Chad Manlove is a big supporter
and promoter of the project. Heworked here with us our
development department, and soChad has been hard at work, and
his boys have been hard at workfilling a number of vials from
Tallahatchie County, and so inorder to get there, I think what
I'm gonna have to do is I haveto reset up here, and then I

(58:14):
have to go to Mississippi.Right?

Ty Sharrow (58:16):
Yep. You can type Mississippian.

If I can spell it right. Oh, I have to type it all
the way out.

Oh, I think I see my my pie chart. While you
do, I have to

do this. I have to do this. I had to reset on the
county thing yet at first. Okay.There we are.
Now we do this. Alright. And soTallahatchie County, we're gonna
go so and for the state ofMississippi, it's not this. The
oh, 92 sample total samples fromMississippi, 19 participants,
and we're gonna go toTallahatchie County over here,

(58:52):
and it's gonna tell me what I'vethe percentage over here. I
could have clicked on it as Idid, and it'll tell me the total
number of samples, but if I wantthe percentage, the breakdown by
ancestry, I have to change itover here.
Right? And then it shows uphere. So 91% of the samples from
Tallahatchie County over thefirst two years were pure wild

(59:12):
mallards. Right? Yes.
What do you think of that, Phil?That's pretty cool.

This is actually a dream I had. Could you you
filter for just a particularhybrid? So basically being like,
I wanna I have a I really want apintail mallard hybrid. Where's

(59:37):
the highest likelihood that Imight be able to do that? Have
you can you filter for that?

Ty Sharrow (59:42):
Currently, we cannot, but that is something
that we can definitely work on.

So I went up to the top left, and I selected
just hybrid. Right? And so 387let me do this. Oh, okay. So I
was actually on both sample kittypes originally.
Did you know that?

I was aware that

you were on there. Yes. And you let me do that.

Kayci Messerly (01:00:00):
I thought I thought

Mike Brasher (01:00:01):
you knew what you were doing. What I was doing?
No. See? Yeah.
You were wrong.

Phil Lavretsky (01:00:05):
We we are learning as

we're going. See how I turned that back onto
Casey? It was it was her fault.Yeah. She was wrong.

Ah, yes. Not the

That's person right. Gave me the So we can go
to the hybrid kit type, and itwill show three eighty seven now
does this include, like,somebody submits like, I
submitted a bird that I thoughtwas a 100% wild mallard, but it
came back, like, 75% wildmallard, 25% black duck. Is it

(01:00:35):
in here? Or is this only thekit,

Ty Sharrow (01:00:38):
the hybrid? That's based on the kit.

So this is based on what you registered to do. So
if you registered for a hybridkit, then you're under the
hybrid selection. If youregistered for that standard
kit, then you're under the Okay.

Cool. So and we have had some show up. Alright.
Well, this would explain a fewthings. So we have had some
people submit something thatthey thought was a hybrid, but
it turns out not to be.
Right? Okay. That's what's goingon there. Widgen. Yep.
And some of these also, think,would be well, no. They're

(01:01:10):
they're just unique lookingbirds also that we would have
sampled.

Could be blonde or

Yeah.

Some leucism So or

back to Phil's question, we can't necessarily
we can't do that yet. Right?

No. But you can still explore, like, what county
that you do the most hunting in.You can see what we've analyzed
so far from there, what you canexpect in nearby counties. If
the county that you do hunt inis not on our map yet, you can
go out and and scout for thereand try to get some some more
samples and fill in that map.

So I have a lot of other questions here, but we're
gonna probably move along. So gocheck this out. Well, you can't
check it out just yet becauseit's not up for viewing. It will
be soon, we hope. So, okay,we're gonna try to move through
a few other things.
Phil, I know there was one thingthat we encountered during the

(01:02:00):
first two years, and it relatedto model ducks from Florida. It
was a particularly interestingdiscovery. We had a number of
people that would submit birds,presumed 100% wild Florida
mottled ducks. They lookedbeautiful. They had amazing
photos, had all thecharacteristics of mottled

(01:02:22):
ducks, and they would go in foranalysis, and the results would
always come back in like 88%,92%, 94%, whatever.
It would not get to that 100%pure threshold, and ultimately,
it got to a point where we weretalking with you about this, and
we're like, that's just kind ofweird. Let's double check that.

(01:02:43):
And so you took all of thosesamples that had been had some
model duck ancestry in them, mayhave had I don't you can tell us
if you did Mexican duck ancestrytoo, but I know it was the ones
that had the model duckancestry, and you reran those
because you were curious aboutsomething, so tell us what
happened, and I'm gonna go pullup that PowerPoint while you're
talking.

Yeah. If you can. Yeah. So this was, again,
one of those situations where Iget email being like, this is
kinda curious. And then Mike'sbeing like, yeah, they're all 88
something.
And then I was like, Mike,you're right. Something is odd.
So when we start seeing multipleindividuals independently
getting almost the sameassignment, there's some

(01:03:24):
ancestry in there. We call itghost population, where the
analysis can't quite figure itout because something's changed
in the genetics of that group,that when I compare it to
Florida model ducks, what Iconsidered my reference set, but
sampled from 02/2010 huntingseason, I assumed anything that

(01:03:49):
is a pure model duck today wouldhave been the same thing, you
know, fifteen years ago now, butwhat's occurred is not that.
Something has shifted in thatpopulation.
And so what I needed to do waspull in every model duck,
Florida model duck that we'vegot access to, and then do a

(01:04:10):
single analysis, not just wherethere's one or two samples in
that analysis, but all of themtogether. So if there is a
change in their genetics forwhatever reason, I would be able
to find that. And that's exactlywhat happened. So once we pulled
it, stopped seeing the weirdassignments of Florida Model

(01:04:32):
Duck by something and somethingelse or something else. Like we
had talked about early, likesometimes it would be against
the Khaki Campbell, which is oursort of park duck
representative, against GameFarm, against Wilds, against
others.
And when it's switching aroundlike this, where it's 88%
Florida model duck and 12%something else, there is

(01:04:52):
something wrong there. Itdoesn't know what to do with
that 12% is what it was tellingme. But once I put it all
together, then it resolveditself because we finally got
enough samples of Florida ModelDucks for it to work. Are we
gonna pull that thing up?

I think I have it on my screen. I don't know. Are
you gonna be able to see it?Will he be able to see it,
Chris?

Yeah.

We'll be working on it.

Yeah, So whoever's watching this on
YouTube or wherever this is,then you'll be able to see what
I'm talking about. I'll try toexplain it as best as I can to
the audience that's listening tothis at three in the morning
when you're driving to your duckspot. The first part, so what
you're looking at, what I'mgonna show you is a bunch of

(01:05:39):
cluster analyses. So each ballrepresents a sample, and where
they cluster tells me somethingabout their genetics. The closer
they cluster, the more similartheir genetics is.
The further away they cluster,the more dissimilar their
genetics is. So, for example,what we're showcasing right now
are just the referencepopulation sets that we compare

(01:06:04):
everything against. In thiscase, it's Mexican duck, wild
mallard, Western Gulf Coastmodel duck, Florida model duck,
Game Farm mallards, and KhakiCampbell. And in this
clustering, the first thing youshould see is that both model
ducks are very different. Andthey're very different from wild
mallards.

(01:06:24):
And all of them are extremelydifferent from Game Farm
Mallards and Kaki Campbell. Soyou could see how different
those domestic birds are fromwild birds. But you could also
see that Mexican ducks and wildmallards are extremely similar,
much more similar to one anotherthan either of the model ducks
are to the wild mallard.

Hey, Phil? Yeah. Where would black ducks be in
this space?

I didn't wanna put them because they would
cluster very, very it it wouldbe, the top, it would be, like,
right but offset of Mexicanduck, wild mallard, black duck.
It'd be this triple clusterthere. Really? Yeah. It'd be
offset, and if I zoomed into it,you'll see the differences.
It just it looks like they'reoverlapping just because the

(01:07:09):
size of the of the balls and howzoomed out they are, but they
they do they do separate out.

And so just briefly, if people are
wondering, so the separationthat is occurring here, we don't
need to get into the statisticalanalysis or whatever, but it's
grouping based on a variety ofmeasures from the portion of the
genome that you're analyzing,right, and it's finding degrees
of similarity or elements ofsimilarity across all the

(01:07:38):
different old measurements thatyou're taking from the genome,
right?

Exactly. It goes variant by variant, or the
single nucleotide polymorphism,so SNP, and we have 30,000 of
them, and for every single SNP,it asks the question, are you
similar or dissimilar, and itclusters them this Okay.

Alright. Good. So that's what this space is on
these two

axes. Exactly. Then what you'll see here, but
in general, a hybrid would besome sort of intermediate space
between whatever parentshybridized, right? And so this
is just a way to visualize thepopulation structure and the
differences. And this reallyshowcases how different model

(01:08:22):
ducks are, how similar Mexicanducks are, but in particular,
how different Game Farm Mallardsand Kaki Campbell are from wild
mallards.

You tell me when you want me to to the next
slide.

Next slide.

Okay, got it.

So when I reanalyzed all this with all the
model ducks that we got fromDuck DNA against those samples
from 2010, I immediately saw wasthat there really is a genetic
shift. And it clusters overFlorida monteleduct, but they're

(01:08:55):
shifting. Click one more time.So when we blow it up, you can
actually see that shift. So whatthis is telling me is the
genetics of the population overthe last fifteen years has
randomly changed, and they'veshifted their ancestry by random
processes that we call geneticdrift.

And they've gone farther away from any of the
others. I don't

know if

that's the right way

Right, to talk it's about it's that's the
shift. Right, so you imagine thediversity of a population is
some sort of normaldistribution, and what's
happening is that for whateverreason, frequencies of the left
side of that distributions werepicked or favored, and so that
population shifts. Now, the onlytime we see a shift like this in

(01:09:47):
population, is when we'redealing with very small
populations where the loss ofone or two or a few individuals
is actually quite significant.We don't see this kind of shift.
When I looked at Western GulfCoast model ducks collected at
the same exact time in 2010versus today, you don't see that

(01:10:08):
shift.
They just completely overlay inthe same genetic space. But
these guys have shifted, andthis now explains why all those
birds that you're seeing rightthere are now a 100% true wild
Florida monolux, which is greatto know great to see. But why
all of them initially had this88 plus something is because

(01:10:28):
that plus something is thatshift that the program could not
figure out when it was just oneor two samples. It was like,
yeah, it's mostly Floridamottleduck, but there's
something different about them.

So then And

now we know that.

And so how do we know it's not just, like, some
product of increasedhybridization with game farm
mallards or something like that?

Well, now that we have these samples, I can
actually identify those hybrids.So if you click one more time,
we can overlay the rest ofthose, duct DNA samples, and we
can start actually seeing thosehybrids. So the Florida game
farm mallards, so the ones inthere's a bunch of birds in
blue, blue boxes. So all theboxes are hybrids. So those are

(01:11:08):
Florida game farm mallards, andyou could see they encompass
some sort of intermediate spacebetween today's Florida Model
Duck and Game Farm Mallards,right?
So we can see that shift. And infact, those pink boxes that is a
Game Farm Wild Mallard hybridthat bred with a Florida Model
Duck, you could see that shifttowards wild mallard as well,

(01:11:30):
right, in that space. And thenon top of it, we have those two
Florida Western Gulf Coast wildmallard. That was a bird out of,
I think, Eastern Texas. But youcan actually see that green box
sort of being in that shift.
And when I look at the trueancestry, it's mostly Florida

(01:11:52):
model duck. That's why it'sclustering there, but it's away
from those orange boxes andtowards sort of this
intermediate space of WesternGulf Coast and Wild Mallard.
Right? So, anyways, so now we'vesort of figured the situation
out. We have samples that allowus to actually identify what's

(01:12:14):
happening today in our Floridamodel duck, and we recovered a
potential issue or conservationconcern that might be occurring
for Florida Model Ducks that wewould otherwise be, that would
otherwise be left unknown rightnow.
So, yeah.

So Phil, if we go back one slide and we look at
that genetic drift you'retalking about from 2010 to now,
our current day samples of duckDNA.

You're talking about this stuff here?

Yes. Yes.

Yellow to the Yep.

The yellow to the brown slash orange, whatever
color you think that

is. Yeah.

I think it's orange because that may be
orange.

Yeah. Get them. So we talk about that genetic
drift.

Burnt's orange for the Texas because you're from
Texas. Right? So

Well, Auburn is gonna be the way I lean there,
but okay. What is theimplication here of this genetic
drift over such a short periodof time?

Yeah, so what this is telling us is that the
only way for this to occur isthat the breeding population of
Florida model ducks has gone toa small enough level that there
are significant implications onegeneration to the next. So this
is something that we see inendangered species, in small

(01:13:32):
population sizes, where thenumber of breeding So I need to
take one step back. Yourpopulation could be quite large,
but the number of individualscontributing every generation is
called your effective populationsize. And if your effective
population size declines to acertain level, then the

(01:13:54):
randomness of life, like whosurvives and breeds, actually
has an impact on geneticdiversity. And at that point, if
it does, that's when we seeactual changes in that diversity
from one generation the next,and if you do see that, then you

(01:14:14):
need to start asking thequestion, what is happening to
my population?

Can you calculate effective population size from a
sample, from genetic samplesover time? From these samples,
yeah. You can. And so as you goforward, in theory, if you had a
large enough sample year to yearperiodically from the same
geography, you could measure,you could see what the trend in
that effective population sizeis.

Yeah, so in fact, as you were saying that,
I'm like, oh, I should've donethis for this podcast. But we
can analyze the yellow dots, sotwenty ten, and the auburn.
Orange. Orange.

Let's just go with orange.

No, no. Orange box ones, and actually see, has
that changed, right? So why isare we seeing a decline in the
last fifteen years in theeffective population size? And
that essentially translates tothe number of breeding pairs
that are on the landscape andcontributing effectively,
contributing from one generationto the next. And now with Duck

(01:15:13):
DNA, we could do this year inand year out if we have at least
10 to 20.
25 is always our magical number.25 good Florida model ducks.
Then we can get really goodestimates from the data that we
already have. And that's thebeauty of this project is now we
can start asking these kinds ofmeaningful questions without

(01:15:35):
having to go get more data. Thedata's already there.
We just need to plug it intosome models and get some numbers
out of them.

It's a fascinating discovery. I think one of the
things that listeners need to beaware of is that if you hunt in
Florida, you know, you there'sprobably what will probably be I
mean, I think there'sjustification for us trying to
enroll a few more hunters fromFlorida this year, maybe Western
Gulf Coast as well because of toget a little bit more
information, make sure we getenough information on this

(01:16:05):
particular issue. So that is, asas Phil said, sort of the way
that we can leverage what we'redoing to inform very specific
scientific questions. Thoughts?

I think too, just a reminder, like, you'll
hear us request certain speciesof ducks, and part of this is
for what we call our referencelibrary that we keep bringing
up. Right? This is so that wecan grow a more robust set of
genetic datasets for thesespecies so that we can do these
comparisons and we can ask thesequestions and we can kind of dig

(01:16:41):
deeper into some of thesescientific inquiries that we'll
find as we go along the way. Andthat's the exciting and
beautiful part of Duck DNAgrowing and getting a large
enough sample size that we cando these things.

Phil, I have Ty, did you have anything? No. You
got it. So I we're gonna startwrapping this up here. Before we
do, I have two other things.
One is we continue to getquestions this time of year
about whether people from Canadacan participate in in this. I
just wanna wanna clarify. Thechallenge with that is our

(01:17:14):
ability to or the ability ofparticipants in Canada to ship
those samples back. Whenever youtake I mean, you have to have a
special permit to ship a tissuesample back to The US, so you're
dealing with sort ofinternational border laws and
regulations there, and so wedon't want to expose people to

(01:17:37):
all of the issues that kind ofcome along with that. We thought
we were gonna be able to wethought we would have time this
year to find a partner in Canadato where people could send
samples, and then we could shipthem back in bulk under the
proper permitting and all thattype of stuff.
We didn't get to that, and soit's not easy for us to collect

(01:17:58):
samples, to enroll participantsthat would be collecting samples
from Canada, so we haven'tgotten that figured out yet, so
stay tuned, we might in asubsequent year. The other, I
have several other questionsthat we routinely get from our
Instagram post or Facebook postor hybrid of the week that we're

(01:18:19):
doing, and I only wanted tofocus on one of them here
because it's probably the onethat is most frequently asked,
and that is when we have a firstgeneration hybrid where the
parents are pure species a andpure species b, and the result
comes back with, 48% species 52%species two, we ask people will

(01:18:48):
comment often, why isn't itfifty fifty? If it's a first
generation, two species, why 40eightfifty two or 40 sevenfifty
three? I'm gonna find one ofthose while you're talking,
Phil.

Yeah. So the simple math of it is that that's
a point estimate, so it's likean average across the genome.
And what we really need to lookat is the standard error that is
provided when I do theseanalyses. Obviously, nobody else
really sees them, but I do. Sotypically, our standard error is

(01:19:22):
plusminus 3%.
So in fact, something likesomething like what you just put
up, this fifty two forty eight,both of them just overlap 50% if
you put the standard error. Butwe report the point estimate,
that that single number. Now,there's also another reason for
some of these things, and that'sbecause a lot of the genome in

(01:19:44):
waterfowl is pretty wellconserved. It just says duck or
goose, right? And so a lot ofthat is also that random
stochastic, events that occur,that may sway it one way or the
other, but again, it getsresolved within the standard

(01:20:05):
error.
That error will go up and down,actually, the more conserved
just ancestral duck or waterfowlan individual has. So that's the
easy way of answering it. Now,you've shown a lot of
interesting stuff here. I willtell you that I am a couple
steps away that people are goingto not only get a certificate,

(01:20:26):
but they're actually gonna getthe chromosomes of their ducts
painted. And they can startlooking at it, and I could
better answer this questionsoon, but through those
visualizations, because whatwe're gonna map is not only
whether what parts of thechromosome is pintail and
mallard, but also what parts areconserved and what parts we keep

(01:20:48):
seeing as conserved, right?
And so we could start actuallyasking or answering the question
folks are asking. Why are wegetting that fifty two forty
eight? Is that simply just amath thing? You know, with
missing data, not everything'scomplete, and so you just have
to take the standard error intoit, or is there biological
meaning behind that? And sowe're hoping to get to that, and

(01:21:10):
I'm sort of hoping to roll itout this year, but we'll see how
this goes.

And here, I was hoping you were gonna give us an
easy answer. And you held youwere kinda holding something,
had something up your sleevetoo. You kinda felt like you
felt left out. Right?

That you didn't left out.

Yeah. Had any evolution to drop Everybody on

was dropping all this awesome stuff, and I'm
like, oh, man.

Yep. And shout out to, again, to Evan Barefoot. If
we get this one on the screenhere, this is the Mallard
pintail hybrid that is featuredon that green hat. Thank you,
Evan, for allowing us to usethat. So alright.
What else do we need to talkabout?

I I wanna I wanted to say, because this
reminded me of something. Sowe're finally getting to some
numbers on the hybrid side. Ihave a I have a brand new
student that we're in additionto this whole mapping thing,
we're hoping to map plumagetraits that we're finally
figuring out onto that map tostart understanding why certain

(01:22:15):
traits in a, let's say, apintail mallard, Gadwell
pintail, Gadwell mallard,whatever it is, show up. Is
there some predictability tothat, or is it simply randomness
of who mom and dad were and whatthey had? You're talking

about some of the facial patterns that show up,
it's like this doesn't look likethe genetics, say it's these two
species, but neither of thoseparent species have that defined
trait or doesn't express thattrait as a pure individual.
Yeah, that'd be awesome.

I have lots of questions, but I won't go down
that rabbit hole right now. Sowhen we're in Texas, I've got
questions for you.

Yeah. Yeah. Have any questions.

Yeah. Our team is finally gonna go out after,
like, two and a half years ormaybe three years of doing this.
We're finally gonna get togetheras a team and discuss and and go
over certain things. It's beenan exciting ride so far, Phil,
just to kinda think how far thisentire effort has come in in
that period of time. And and,again, it it doesn't happen
without without the hunters thatare so enthusiastic about

(01:23:15):
participating.
So thank you all for that.Spread the word about the
availability of the of theproject. You now have a way to
directly support the project,and so, again, you know, Mosseo
Waterfowl Conservation Stamp,thank them so much for their
support of Ducks Unlimited,UTEP, and Duck DNA. We yeah. Go

(01:23:38):
to duckdna.com and apply if youhaven't.
Am I missing anything? Thinkwe're

Check out our social medias too for more posts for
TealTember.

That's right. We are active we right now,
recording this, we are activelyin what we are referring to as
TealTember, paying payingtribute to the the early teal
season and the opening of ofhunting seasons across across
North America right now. And,again, stay tuned for October.
Can we Katie, can I give them ahint? Do I need to want me to

(01:24:11):
use the name?
Okay.

Do the mic drop full.

Mic drop. What's it gonna you need to do it. Are
you

guys ready for this?

Yeah. We're ready for this.

Next month, we will officially launch our
Goosetoberfest. Oh.

Spooky is

it it's a spooky goose

Spooky Goosetoberfest.

Fest. That's right.

Whatever that means to And

to be fair, hybrid geese are are spooky
looking, so

That is what we will be featuring. Each of our
Hybrid of the Week posts duringthe month of October will
highlight some of the geese,hybrid geese, that have been
submitted, and we're gonnacontinue to welcome in those
hybrid geese for analysis thisyear. Selections. By the time we
don't know when this episode isgoing to be released by the time
this episode is out, the firstround of selections will

(01:25:01):
probably have already been made.We are going to try to enroll up
to a thousand participants forour standard kits this year with
up to two fifty or so hybridkits issued.
We're pretty confident we willhave a waiting list for the
hybrid kits the same way we dowith the standard kits now.

(01:25:21):
We're working to figure out howwe're gonna make those decisions
and and what options might beavailable for I mean, how we're
gonna make decisions on who toenroll. Stay tuned. Stay tuned
for more on our social mediachannels. Check out duckdna.com
the check the results out andyeah, engage with us if you have
questions on on our Instagram,Facebook, or send us an email.

(01:25:45):
Thanks, folks, for joining us.Phil, thank you so much for all
the work that you continue todo. Thanks to Virgie. Thanks to
Victoria, all the other folksthat are influential and very
critical in your lab. Casey,thank you for joining us here in
studio.

Glad to be here. Glad to help.

And Ty, thank you for making your first appearance
on the Ducks Unlimited podcastand for all that you're doing
with Duck DNA.

Thank you. It was fun.

And then thank you to Katie Tucker, who's been
minding us over there and makingsure we stay on track, over
there in the corner. And soyou'll be hearing from Katie
Tucker later on in some futureepisode about some future topic.
And as always, we thank, wethank Chris Isaac for the great
work he does, Rachel Jarrett aswell for her effort on all
these, on all these episodes. Wethank you for your support of

(01:26:26):
wetlands and waterfowlconservation, dunk DNA, and
science.

VO (01:26:33):
Thank you for listening to the DU podcast sponsored by
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(01:26:55):
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Ep. 718 - duckDNA, Mossy Oak Waterfowl Conservation Stamp, and New Discoveries

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. 718 - duckDNA, Mossy Oak Waterfowl Conservation Stamp, and New Discoveries