Congrats to Logan Wibeski, World Champion Jr Caller!

[Scott M]

Calling ducks 'sweet' for 12 year old champ

by Dennis Anderson

Star Tribune

The first time Logan Wilebski blew a duck call, he was 5 years old. His dad, Todd, was driving his pickup near their home in northwest Minnesota, with young Logan riding shotgun, when the boy reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a call.

"When I first heard Logan blow, I thought, 'Whoa. What's going on here?' and pulled to the side of the road,'' Todd Wilebski said.

Now that he's 12 years old, Logan has shown that he's the best young duck caller in the country by winning the prestigious World Junior Championship Duck Calling Contest.

"Pretty sweet,'' Logan said by phone Thursday from his sixth-grade classroom in tiny Fertile, Minn.

The oversized championship trophy he won last weekend in Stutgaart, Ark., represents a sort of Holy Grail for those who consider camouflage more a lifestyle than a type of clothing.

To enter the big contest, Logan, his mom, Carla, and dad drove 19 hours to Arkansas from Fertile, a journey likely viewed as quixotic by some of the other 21 contestants: No one from so far north of the Mason-Dixon line had ever won the world junior calling title.

But Logan was confident. He has won three Minnesota Junior Duck Calling Championships and a like number of junior state goose calling titles. Butch Richenback, founder of Rich-N-Tone Calls in Stuttgart, had earlier declared Logan a calling prodigy and for some time has counseled him over the phone during marathon blowing sessions.

"I'll call Butch up and blow for him every week or so,'' Logan said. "I'll hold the call about a foot or so from the phone, and he tells me how I could improve this or that.''

Richenback knows one kid caller from another. He's taught duck calling to youngsters in grades one through five for 40 years. "This year I had over 100 in my fall class here in Stuttgart,'' he said. "We'd meet in the Baptist church.'

Logan needed only refinement to become a top caller, Richenback said. "The boy can blow a call,'' he said. "You tell him what to do, and he picks up on it real quick.''

Each fall in Stuttgart, the World Championship Duck Calling Contest is the centerpiece of a celebration that also features a duck gumbo cook-off, the "Great Duck Race'' (actually a marathon for people) and the crowning of "Queen Mallard'' and her court.

All of which is in good fun. Except, arguably, the duck calling contest, which is serious business. It's not so much the $1,000 prize money that top callers from throughout the nation seek, but the prestige.

Which to many waterfowlers is priceless.

From school on Thursday, Logan said that no one else in his class blows a duck call. "They all think I'm crazy,'' he said.

Maybe. But he's also a world champion.

And the $1,000?''

"I bought a PlayStation 3, two games and an iPod Touch,'' he said.

[Stringerless!]

Nice ! Congrats !