Written By: Hannah Riggs
Professional duck calling is a feat that many people can not accomplish. David St. John, 2014 World Champion Duck Caller, has been able to secure that title as his own. St. John began professionally calling ducks at the age of 29 after being persuaded to try it by a friend.
“In ’98 I ran into my buddy Rob Watson. He tried to convince me to start blowing competitively. Now mind you, I was 28 years old. And I said, ‘Man, I’m a little too old for that. You know, there’s a lot of young guys out there.’ And he said ‘Well, you love to duck hunt. You should try competition calling.’ And I said,’ Mmm, I don’t know.’ Well in ’99 I decided to follow him to Rick Dunn’s house, and that’s kinda where it all started for me,” St. John said.
St. John was given a call by Rick Dunn that night to practice with, and from then on St. John not only stuck with his professional calling but was also able to continue to grow his relationship with Dunn. “Eventually, Rick took me on full time. I’ve been working there for close to eight or nine years now. The rest is kind of history,” St. John said. Rick Dunn was able to take St. John under his wing and began helping him along the road of professional calling.
“In 2001, Rick Dunn told me ‘I’m just going to tell you, David. It’s going to take you three years to get competitive. And that’s not a guarantee that you are going to win a contest. Cause it’s going to take a lot of work.’ And you know, I still hold that train of thought with a lot of guys I work with today. Rick’s taught me a lot,” St. John said.
In 2003, he was finally able to break his way into being eligible for The World competition through winning first place at the Kansas City Show Me Regional.
“I’ll never forget it. When you are standing up there on this stage, back in the old school days, you’re standing there with some pretty big time callers. I’m just standing around just going ‘Oh my gosh!’ because you’re with top ten guys,” St. John said.
St. John was still able to score first place at the Show-Me Regional even though he had what seemed to be very tough competition. “They started announcing tenth through second places. I leaned forward and looked down the row at the competition and said ‘Well, I guess I didn’t win this one’, but I did. I’m thinking, there’s me and one other guy there, and he’s good. But then they said ‘Your 2003 Show-Me Regional Champion is David St. John’! I’m gonna tell you what, that was a blessing,” St. John said.
St. John was able to use his win in that regional to enter the World Duck Calling Championship. It was still a long road to be a world champion. Before St. John’s championship in 2014, he placed in the top five spots in the World Championship Competition multiple times.
“Man, it seemed like every contest I blew in, they would go ‘We have a tie.’ I’d just stand by the door and wait for them to draw the number. Cause you know, it got to that point where I felt like I was out of air and I’d have to go ‘You’re gonna have to reach deeper than that buddy.’ It just seemed like I was always in that call line,” St. John said.
However, after steadily climbing the spots in the championship, he was finally able to take home first place in 2014. Despite all of the wins, that is not his favorite part of the competition.
“It’s meeting and talking to people that I never met before. I love going around and meeting new faces and making new friendships. It’s the friendships you meet along the way that makes the whole thing great,” St. John said.
