Discovered in the bowels of the Minnesota Historical Society, a grainy photograph using the quaint digital technology of the era, shows one of the last duck hunters and his prey -- a mallard. Historians and naturalists believe this may have been a staged photo but was likely one of the last wild ducks ever taken in the state.

Notes on the back of the image give clues as to the location of the final hunt. It was a wetland in the western part of Minnesota, 10 miles northwest of Morris. The property there is now home to the sprawling NASA production plant where corn and the last-known gallons of clean ground water are combined to make rocket fuel.

DNR historians who have studied the photograph noted the rubber waders the hunter was wearing and deduce the photo must have been taken during the second decade of the 21st century, a few years before Dupont introduced their spray-on boots marketed as NoLeakia. Hunters of that era, as clearly evidenced in the picture, made crude attempts to hide from their prey by dressing in camouflage clothing. This places the date of the photo near 2015, a year before Apple Computer introduced iInvisible.

The Minnesota DNR, now known as the SSR (Silent Sports Resources), said the hunter in the photograph was likely one of seven who bought waterfowl licenses in 2015. They encourage readers interested in mallard ducks to visit the Minnesota Zoo.