Duck races come to Grant County Fair

MOSES LAKE — It’s not everybody who can find their calling simply on the basis of their last name.

But when New Mexico native and jeweler Robert Duck — yes, that’s his real name — discovered the Great American Duck Race in Deming, New Mexico, in 1980, he decided to enter.

“I thought it would be funny, since my last name is Duck, to go ahead and enter the duck race,” Duck said. “So we entered our two ducks in the race, and we wound up winning third place the first year.”

“The next year we knew how to train them, or we thought we did, so we actually won it,” he continued. “We won it the next 12 years.”

Deming takes its duck races seriously — the festival stretches over four days in late August and includes a pageant, a carnival, a parade, a classic car show, music and entertainment and, of course, duck races. During his time competing, Duck said he won over $50,000 racing ducks in Deming.

“With my name being Duck, there was a media frenzy. I got a call from The Tonight Show, from the Pat Sajak Show,” he said. “It got to be so much fun, caused such a media stir, I thought there’s got to be a way that I can make a living, make a business with it.”

So in 1998, Duck decided to take The Great American Duck Race on the road, at first to boat and sport shows, and then eventually, to county fairs.

“It’s well received,” he said. “In 1999, I sold my jewelry business in Albuquerque. This is our twentieth year doing it!”

The duck races are simple. Duck selects four children from the audience to each hold a mallard duck above a very shallow pool divided into four lanes, and then drop the duck into the pool when he blows his duck call. The winners of the fire four races face off in a final.

The 41 mallards he travels with are all bred in captivity and are well adjusted to people, Duck said.

“This year, we’re doing 23 fairs and sport shows. These are well-traveled ducks,” he said.

Duck travels nine months out of the year, and his first races this year were at indoor boat and sport shows in Wisconsin and Minnesota in February.

But this was the first time he’d been at the Grant County Fair, Duck said, and he said he was glad to be in Washington, and set to take his ducks to the Evergreen State Fair, which begins this week in Monroe.

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached via email at countygvt@columbiabasinherald.com