CONWAY — David St. John of Conway didn’t let nerves get to him, and he won the World’s Championship Duck Calling Contest in November at the 79th annual Wings Over the Prairie Festival in Stuttgart after qualifying for the contest 12 years in a row and previously almost winning twice.
“After finishing second two years in a row, you tell yourself you’ve got to do the same thing, but if it’s your time, it’s your time. You’ve got to say a little prayer to wash out all the nerves,” the 44-year-old said. “I told myself, ‘I’ve got to blow one routine at a time.’”
St. John said the judges listen but don’t watch.
“It’s kind of like The Voice. [The judges are] behind a curtain on the stage directly behind you, and there’s five judges. What they do, it’s like Olympic scoring,” St. John said.
He said judges throw out the highest and lowest scores and combine the remaining scores for a total.
Successful callers advance for a total of three rounds. St. John’s mentor and boss is Rick Dunn, owner of Echo Calls in Beebe. St. John works in sales and shipping for the company and, of course, used an Echo call in the contest. Dunn won the World Championship in 1997 with an Echo call, too.
“Competition calling is something you’ll not ever do in the woods, or when you’re out hunting like that,” St. John said. He said it is a more “upscale” call. “The way Rick has always explained it, it’s like playing a musical
instrument. You have to have the right tone and clarity and smoothness and be aggressive altogether,” he said.
St. John bested 67 other competitors.
Born and raised in Lonoke, St. John said he started duck hunting when he was 8 or 9 with his grandfather Joe Barnes, who died a year ago in August.
“I’ve loved duck hunting — hunting period. I duck hunt, deer hunt,” St. John said. “They used to send me out in the woods with a .410 to shoot squirrels.”
His first trip to the Wings Over the Prairie Festival was in 1987, when he was 17.
“I enjoyed it, but it was several years later, I was almost 30 years old,” when he started competing, he said. Rob Watts of Cabot encouraged St. John to try blowing in competitions and introduced him to Dunn in 1999.
St. John went to a practice for the upcoming festival that year.
“Rick handed me a call and asked me if I wanted to try that. … I was just seeing what it was all about,” St. John said. He practiced, and a couple of months later he called Dunn.
“I said, ‘You probably don’t remember me, but I’d like to come over and show you what I practiced on and see what you think,’” St. John said.
Dunn did better than that — he blew a routine and recorded it for St. John to take home to practice. St. John started coming to Beebe for practices after that. To qualify for the championship contest at the Wings Over the Prairie Festival, a contestant must win another contest sanctioned by the Stuttgart Chamber of Commerce.
In 2000, St. John went to a contest in Memphis. When he told Dunn he was nervous, St. John said Dunn responded by telling him, “You’re probably not going to win, but you’ve got to get your feet wet sometime.”
St. John made it through the first round.
“I got so excited about it the second round, I had a mistake and ended up getting cut,” he said. However, St. John saw that he was tied for second before he was cut.
He said Dunn was impressed, and St. John knew then he had the chops to make it in the competition world.
“That’s when I told myself, ‘I can do this,’ and Rick’s been pretty much my mentor this whole time,” St. John said. He said he has been blowing duck calls with Dunn for 15 years and working for him six or seven.
St. John won his first contest in 2003 in the Show Me Regional in Kansas City, Kansas. St. John said that in the 12 years he’s been competing in the Wings Over the Prairie Festival, he has been in the top 10 eight or nine times and in the top five several times. He has placed second behind “one of my best friends,” Brad Allen of Judsonia, a three-time world champion. Allen was a judge this year.
St. John bested 67 other contestants to win $8,000, a boat, a ring and a watch — a package he said is worth about $17,000.
A person is limited to winning three world championships, and St. John said he will try for that. “Lord willing,” he said.
After winning the World’s Championship Duck Calling Contest, a contestant doesn’t have to attend sanctioned events before entering.
“I’ll definitely be blowing in next year’s as well,” St. John said.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.