Great American Duck Race

McKinley Duck Downs

Each August, Luna County Courthouse Park in Deming fills with bleachers, a carnival fairway, and racing lanes for ducks. The festival calls the grounds McKinley Duck Downs. The 1910 courthouse stands at the edge of them. W.B. Corwin designed it with a clock tower and a Greek portico, and its jail is built of decorative brick. Racers crouch at starting gates of yellow fencing, each holding a duck in place, while a crowd presses against the fence behind them. On the wet track the gates are filled with water, and the ducks paddle down long flooded lanes. On the dry track they run.

Nobody brings a duck. The festival supplies them, and elimination heats on both tracks narrow the field toward Sunday’s finals. In 2026 racing ran Saturday, August 22, from noon to 4 p.m. and again from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. It resumed Sunday at noon, and the finals began at 3 p.m. Emery Bencomo, seven years old and racing for the first time, won the dry track. Anthony Almanza won the wet track after more than 20 years of trying. Each took home $1,500. “It feels good,” Bencomo told the Deming Headlight. Almanza said, “Finally! I’ve been racing for over 20 years, and I finally won. I’m so happy.”

The ducks come out of a small stable. In 2018 the Headlight visited the Von Tress family, who had just taken over as duck wranglers. Larry Von Tress taught vocational agriculture at Deming High School. He took the job from Billie Smith, who had overseen the wrangling for more than two decades while her husband, Steve Smith, did the handling. The ducklings spend two to three weeks under warming lamps and are fed twice a day. Raising one to racing form takes about five months. The traditional Deming racer is a hybrid brown duck. “Could be some Mallard in them,” Von Tress said. That year the stables held 130 birds. Their workouts were feeding time, “when they circle like sharks,” and they had a pool with a running hose to splash in. Asked which duck was fastest, Von Tress said, “There’s no way to tell. They all look the same.”

By the Monday after a race weekend, the Headlight wrote in 2023, most of Duck Downs “had already disappeared, tents folded up, rides carted away.”

Waddles, tortillas, and outhouses

The 2026 festival, the 47th, ran August 20 through 23 under the theme “Racing to the Great Outdoors.” The city tourism page puts attendance at some 10,000 people. A board of directors runs the event; BJ Trejo was its 2026 president. In 2026 a Corre Caminos park-and-ride carried visitors in from the soccer field at Florida Street and Raymond Reed Boulevard.

The weekend opens Thursday night with the Duck Royalty Pageant in the Deming Public Schools Auditorium. The pageant is “open to anyone who has ever had the desire to waddle in public.” Judges score the costume, the duck waddle, and a two-minute duck routine. Candidates for King and Queen also sit an interview on “general fowl knowledge” and “anything the judges may ‘Quack’ up.” Glitter, confetti, and bubble machines are barred. Contestants enter by age, from Just Hatched (up to one year) through Little Waddler, Downey Duckling, and Darling Duckling to Duck Queen or King for those 13 and up. The 2021 visitors’ guide says contestants are invited to ride the pageant float in the parade. That same Thursday evening, skaters met at the Starmax Skate Park for the eighth annual Great American Skateboard Competition.

Saturday starts at 7 a.m. at the youth soccer fields on Raymond Reed Boulevard, where hot-air balloons go up, weather permitting, and glow again that evening. At 10 a.m. the Tournament of Ducks Parade steps off on East Pine Street and runs west to South Gold Avenue, ending at Courthouse Park. The visitors’ guide lists classic cars, tractors, and police and fire vehicles among its entries. A cornhole tournament follows in front of the courthouse on Ash Street. At 2 p.m. comes the Great American Tortilla Toss, held near the beer and wine garden and the entertainment pavilion and hosted by Team Savage. Its divisions run from Tosserita (7 and under) to Tossero (55 and older). Each tosser gets two throws of the Official Tortilla, and more than half of it must land on the measured spot. The rules add: “Any left-over tossed tortilla, (under 50%), even if it lands in the next county, is only valued as duck feed.” Frisbee, prayer, overhand, underhand, and backhand styles are allowed. “Propellers, antigravity devices, transporter beams, and carrier ducks” are not.

The Great American Outhouse Race ran on historic Silver Avenue on the 2018 schedule, and the city tourism page also lists a Great American Horseshoe Tournament. Live music plays all weekend at the Courthouse Pavilion. A refreshment tent pours Coca-Cola, and the Lazy Lizard Lounge runs a full bar there. The organizers advertise food and arts and crafts vendors, and in 2023 they counted 140 vendors on site. On Sunday morning, August 23, 2026, the balloon ascension was canceled for high winds.

Talk at the Grand Motor Inn Lounge

The organizers trace the race to conversations among friends at the Grand Motor Inn Lounge in Deming. Joe “Butter” Milo and Jim Reedy were in that group, and local farms had ponds full of ducks. The Headlight’s version holds that the idea, as local legend has it, “was hatched in a room full of cigars and drinks.” There, business and civic leaders were asking how to bring tourists to Deming. One of them was former Headlight editor Harold Cousland, whom the organizers’ account names as Harel Cosland “from the local newspaper.” The organizers’ founding team also includes Steve Marlow, an ex-police officer and promoter; the artist Bill McKinley; Bernie Green; and Jim Worthen, who handled the barbecue.

Milo owned a print shop and printed the first promotional materials. The group chose the last weekend of August to avoid school schedules, holidays, and the county fair. Reedy built the track with help from the local railroad: 17 feet long, with 16 feet of racing. The founders expected six entries and got more than 50 ducks. Reedy also judged. He recalled expecting the birds to waddle down the track and watching them bolt instead.

The inaugural Great American Duck Race, singular, was held August 23 and 24, 1980. It was billed as the “world’s richest duck race.” The Headlight explains that the billing, and the name Duck Downs, were a dig at the Great American Futurity in Ruidoso, then the world’s richest horse race. The Associated Press reported that the city had gone “quackers,” with interest “from New York to Los Angeles and from Boston to Mexico.” Mike Hofacket, a member of the first race board, spent the day before the race hunting for more bleachers.

Sixteen feet in 1.791 seconds

In 1980 people brought their own ducks, though the state warned against importing them from the wild. The ducks carried names, as racehorses do. Their trainers crawled along the tops of the “duckways” to urge them on. According to the Headlight, the fastest time was 1.791 seconds over 16 feet, run by Stratacaster, a duck from Las Cruces. The final went to Duc Andra, raced by Tommy Brdecko of Deming. Among the other finalists was Robert Duck of Bosque Farms, who later became a recurring champion. The organizers say that one year Duck found himself short a participant and offered to teach Reedy how to race a duck properly. After that he trained ducks and showed others how to win. By 2023, the Headlight reported, he was organizing “Great American Duck Races” in other states.

The accounts differ on what came first. The Headlight writes that the 1980 debut already had a Duck Queen contest, a parade, and cash prizes. The organizers’ account says founders’ wives staged the first pageant at the fairgrounds, and that the parade and balloons were added as the years went on. In the third year Milo started the Outhouse Races downtown, with Mainstreet director Dona Irwin, to draw people into the business district after the duck races. He ran them for 33 years. He also started the Tortilla Toss. Reedy remembered calls about the race from as far as China and Japan.

Lost years and a count

The 2020 race was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. That year the community was invited to adopt the ducklings already being raised, with donations going to the Deming Luna County Humane Society. The Headlight reports that the race was not held in 2021 either. That left the 2023 race billed as the 44th, though by the paper’s count it was the 43rd. The paper suggested readers might “call it 44 since that rhymes with ‘more.’” In 2024 Milo and Reedy rode as grand marshals of the Tournament of Ducks Parade. Reedy and his wife, Barbara, still attend every year. “For me,” Milo said, “I can marvel and thank all the committees that contributed to the duck race.”

The city tourism page lists the 48th race for August 19 through 22, 2027.