This decoy duck was carved by Mark Whipple of Bourg, Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana. Mark registered for the draft in 1942 as Mark McCool Whipple, born July 21, 1884. The 1900 Census of Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, gives 15-year-old Mark's birth in Jul 1884. Mark died May 25, 1961, and is buried in Bourg.

Mark belongs to a third branch of Whipple immigrants: his father, Charles Frederick Whipple, born in Baden-Baden (in today's Germany) February 20, 1841, immigrated from the U.S. to Louisiana (?) in 1844. Charles' occupation appears as "hunter" in the 1900 Census.