Mud Duck Derivation

From a subscriber named 'muddy buddy' comes this: an article (reprinted here) from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune describing the etymology of the term 'mud duck'. (I mistakenly called it a mud hen, which is another name for the bird, coot--not to be confused with me.) Here is what Marc, errr, muddy buddy sent:

What's in that name? Nothing ducky
David Peterson, Star Tribune

Lee Wright doesn't remember ever hearing it, growing up in central Wisconsin. But now that he runs a sportsman's lodge near the Minnesota border, he hears it all the time.

Mud duck -- meaning Minnesotan.

It sounds ugly. And at least some of those who use it mean it in an ugly way.

The use of the term in the clash involving Chai Vang, the Minnesota hunter found guilty Friday of killing six Wisconsin hunters, has raised questions for Minnesotans.

Is it a racial term, as one witness in the trial maintained? And if it's not -- if it's strictly a term for a Minnesotan, as others countered -- then what's the story behind that?

Interviews in recent days with lifelong Wisconsinites, together with a plunge into the written record, suggest that the truth is something like this:

The term has been around for decades. It is to be found, though only rarely, in Star Tribune clippings dating to the late 1980s. It does not necessarily carry any racial connotation.

It is better known along the Minnesota border than in the rest of Wisconsin, but it's news even to some people along the border. It seems most common among hunters and anglers, who find themselves competing with Minnesota interlopers for fish and game.

The origin of the term is fuzzy -- it might have something to do with Minnesota lakes, or with the loon, Minnesota's state bird. Or it might just mean a loser.

In popular usage, "a 'mud duck' is a bottom feeder, eating a lot of mucky stuff from the bottom of the lake," said Jim Leary, co-director of the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

That doesn't sound good. But some insist it's all in good fun. "It's not derogatory any more than 'cheesehead,' " said Wright, who owns the Pine Drive Resort in Holcombe, Wis. "Most times I hear it, it's over football."

But all kinds of postings to the Internet reveal it being used by people in a high lather over something or other Minnesotans have done -- often in the woods and lakes. People complain about ATVs from Minnesota chewing up the land, or Minnesota anglers taking over Wisconsin rivers before their own seasons begin.

Even in high school

In an example suggesting that the term crosses at least generational divides, the Octagon, a weekly newspaper produced by students at Northwestern High School in Maple, Wis., an enormous, sparsely settled area east of Duluth-Superior, carried a piece this spring under the headline "Mud ducks invade the Brule."

"It's not that I despise mud ducks fully, but there are some that have given me a bad perspective of themselves," wrote the student-author, who goes on to complain there are far too many of them on the river, acting like they own the place.

"Once you leave a spot on the river," he adds, "they run in like preschoolers fighting over a bag of fruit snacks."

(The full story can be found at www.startribune.com/386.)

But if all this suggests some below-the-radar hatred -- racial or otherwise -- of which Minnesotans have been oblivious, Leary is reassuring.

"The idea that northern Wisconsin is rife with racist rednecks is totally false," said Madison Prof. Leary, who happens to have grown up in Rice Lake and knows some of those involved in the Vang case quite well. "But there is racism among some in the region, as there is anywhere else. Whether it came into play in this instance, I have no idea."

Not affectionate

And compared with Illinois, he said, another major source of visitors to the Badger State, "there's far more affection in the Minnesota/Wisconsin relationship. There's more commonality. Illinois people are much likelier to be big-city Chicagoans, urban and obnoxious, feeling like superior beings in the provinces."

The highest form of proof: "One term for them here is FIBs," an acronym in which only the middle word, Illinois, can be printed in a family newspaper.

Indeed some folks living within a stone's throw of Minnesota say this is the first they've ever heard of the term "mud duck."

"I grew up in Wisconsin and have lived here 50 years," said Janet Krokson, publisher of the Spooner Advocate. "This is the first time I've ever heard it."

David Peterson is at dapeterson@startribune.com.