Winning the World's Championship Duck Calling Contest is a big deal, but it's an even bigger deal to win it twice.
Logan Hancock, 31, of Monticello, won the prestigious event for the second time in three years last Sunday, becoming only the 15th person to win multiple titles in 81 years.
You have to be very good to qualify for the championship. To win, you have to be great for one night.
Winning twice means you're unquestionably great.
Winning thrice makes you immortal. Only a few have done that, including John Stephens of Stuttgart, who won his third title in 2005.
To people unfamiliar with the world of competitive calling, the World's Championship might seem like a quaint tradition, but for competitive callers, it is the pinnacle of the art. It's as important to them as football, basketball and baseball are to traditional athletes.
Hancock, who began calling competitively in 2005, said he devoted a lot of time traveling to duck calling competitions around the Midwest. His father was his companion, so they experienced all the highs and lows together. He qualified for his first World's Championship in 2009 and won it for the first time in 2015.
One thing that almost every former champion from Arkansas share in common was the mentorship of the late Butch Richenback, winner of the 1972 World's Championship and founder of Rich-N-Tone calls. Richenback knew what it took to "blow" a winning routine, and he coached many of the best, including Hancock. When Hancock accidentally broke his duck call before an earlier World's Championship, Richenback opened his shop in the middle of the night and made Hancock a new one. It was so true to the original that it sounded perfect with the reed from the old caller.
"How much you think that call would bring on Ebay?" I asked.
Hancock laughed and said, "Probably not very much. It's not much to look at."
To his regret, Hancock did ask Richenback to sign the call.
"If I had video of him actually making it and all that, there's no telling how much it would be worth," Hancock said. "Otherwise, it doesn't look like anything special."
Duck hunters often say that competition calling is nothing like calling to real ducks in the woods. Hancock disagrees, with one exception. The high, ringing hail call to start the routine is something you might do occasionally in a rice field, Hancock said, but you'd never make that sound in flooded timber.
"All the low end stuff, though, translates directly to what you'd do in the field."
A stage routine tells a hunting story, Hancock explained. You get a flock's attention with the hail call, and then you finesse the birds to your decoy spread. They flare, and you have to bring them back. Finally, you light the spread.
The entire story lasts no more than 90 seconds. If you go 91, you're disqualified. A caller's internal clock must be precise so that all elements of the "story" are properly proportioned. Judges notice if one part of the sequence is too long or too short.
At the same time, Hancock said, you walk a thin line between making forceful tones and squawking. A duck call is a reed instrument with its own sweet spot. One sour note will cost enough points to take a caller out of the running.
Fewer callers enter the World's Championship every year. It's a trickling decline, but Hancock said it's not due to lack of interest. He said the Internet is partly to blame.
"Everybody is on YouTube," Hancock said. "I think a lot of people listen to some of these callers and say, 'There's no way I can beat that guy,' and they get discouraged."
Except for the Junior World's Championship, callers from other states dominated the other competitions this year. To my memory, that might be a first.
Again, the Internet is the great equalizer, Hancock said. A caller anywhere in the world can listen to champions like John Stephens and Brad Allen online and become proficient without being immersed in the culture.
"Every one of those juniors is almost as good as I am," Hancock said. "Of course, you don't know how they'd react to the pressure of being onstage in the 'World,' but I bet the top four juniors could make it at least to the third or fourth round."
Sports on 12/03/2017