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The phrase would bog a duck, also could bog a duck, is used of waterlogged land.
This phrase occurs, for example, in the following from Australia’s return ticket to the railway age, a correspondence from Mataranka, Northern Territory, Australia, by David Fickling, published in The Guardian (London and Manchester, England) of Saturday 7th December 2002 [page 23, column 5]:
Mike Harding herds 4,500 head of cattle on Gorrie station, a property the size of Berkshire which straddles the tracks south of Mataranka. Like many of those living along its route through the Northern Territory, he has little good to say about the line.
[…]
[…] He is adamant that the first serious wet season’s flooding will put the track out of action.
“You could bog a duck out there, come the wet,” he says.
The earliest occurrences of the phrase would bog a duck, also could bog a duck, that I have found are as follows, in chronological order:
—Note: Although now chiefly used in Australia, this phrase seems to have originated in the USA:
1-: From a letter to the Editor, by ‘Red Lick’, published in the Daily Southern Reveille (Port Gibson, Mississippi, USA) of Tuesday 19th April 1859 [page 2, column 2]:
I had a wet, marshy piece of ground of an acre or more in extent, that would almost have bogged a duck, which was fed by springs making out from under a bluff.
2-: From Improving land in South Carolina, published in the Fayetteville Observer (Fayetteville, North Carolina, USA) of Thursday 29th September 1859 [page 2, column 5]—reprinted from the Colleton Sun (South Carolina):
Dr. M. T. Appleby […] took me to land—lately drained—through which a cow had never passed, and would have “bogged” a duck, before draining.
3-: From The Freshet in the Pee Dee River, published in The Charleston Daily Courier (Charleston, South Carolina, USA) of Tuesday 20th February 1872 [page 1, column 4]—reprinted from the Marlboro’ Times (South Carolina):
It is rumored that above here, in the edge of North Carolina, all the milldams are broken. Strange to say we have heard, as yet, of nothing of the kind in this county, as the whole county is afloat. It is said that any portion of our flat woods would bog a duck.
4-: From The Evening News (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) of Tuesday 27th January 1874 [page 2, column 4]—reprinted from the Dubbo Dispatch and Wellington Independent (Dubbo, New South Wales, Australia):
On the East Bogan, matters are in a cheerful state. Our correspondent writes: “We have fine rains now; forty-eight hours’ downpour, and every appearance of a long continuance. The country is inundated, and would bog a duck. We have not holes of water, but plains of it—in fact, too much.”
5-: From a correspondence from Millicent, South Australia, published in The Border Watch, and South-Eastern District Advocate (Mount Gambier, South Australia, Australia) of Wednesday 6th May 1874 [page 3, column 3]:
The weather has been unusually dry for this season of the year, which has so far benefited our farmers by enabling them to plough and sow lands that last year, or if rains had set in, would have bogged a duck. A few showers would be now very acceptable, although we still can put up with dry weather as our soil is well saturated with water at no great depth.
6-: From a correspondence from Millicent, South Australia, published in The Border Watch (Mount Gambier, South Australia, Australia) of Saturday 2nd June 1877 [page 3, column 1]:
The present position is about one of the best that could be chosen, comprising as it does, within a limited area, a large variety of soils and high and low lands. For instance, to show the necessity of choosing some portion of it, the peaty bog, which lies towards one side of the farm, was perfectly dry on the day of our visit last week, when we rode over it, but now there is fully a foot of water on it, and it would bog a duck.
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