Hancock’s dream comes true, leads to retirement

STUTTGART — Logan Hancock had two versions of the same dream in recent weeks.

Hancock said he once dreamed that he and a rival, Phil Green, were competing as the last two standing in the Worlds Championship Duck Calling Contest. Green won.

In the second dream, Hancock won.

The second version came true Saturday when Hancock outpointed Green to win his third Worlds Championship Duck Calling Contest since 2015. His reward was $10,000, a gold and garnet ring valued at $5,000, a giant trophy and additional prizes.

“I told Phil about it backstage,” Hancock said. “It was weird that dream came to pass.”

Hancock, 32 — a geographic information systems, aerial photography and computerized mapping engineer for EFS GeoTechnologies — is only the eighth person to win three Worlds Championships. That’s bittersweet, he said, because the contest requires champions to retire after winning a third title.

“It’s very weird,” Hancock said. “This has been a huge part of my life since 2005, trying get to this stage, and once get to the stage, trying to do well and hopefully win. You retire. You don’t have to go anymore. That’s just weird.”

As he spoke, Hancock extracted a wad of $2 bills from his wallet. They were gifts from friends and family that supported him in his pursuit, which began in 2005.

“I use them to clean the saliva out of my call,” Hancock said. “Every one of these bills has a special meaning to me.”

Hancock said he doesn’t use the phrase “best friend” casually, but he said his duck calling competitors hold that distinction. The competitions are friendly but intense, and

the stakes are high.

“I feel all kinds of emotions,” Hancock said. “I’m happy, but sad I won’t be able compete against those guys anymore.”

Robert Strong, a Washington state native who finished eighth, asked Hancock to sign his trophy.

“It’ll be good to get him out of the way,” Strong said, laughing.

In the first round, Hancock said he blew his duck call so poorly that he feared he wouldn’t advance to the second round.

He did advance, and in the second round he began to find the right tone and rhythm. He got better in the third round, and when he got to the tiebreaker, he said he felt very confident.

Winning never gets old, but Hancock said his response to winning changed with repeated success.

“The first time, it was one of my life goals to win this thing,” Hancock said. “That happened. The first thing I did was run to hug my mom, dad, sister, wife and everybody. Tears of joy everywhere.

“The second one was, ‘Really? This is happening again?’ I never thought it would happen once.

“I remember thinking that only seven people every won this thing three times, and I could be the eighth. I just had a feeling this was going to happen.”

One of Hancock’s biggest motivators was losing a duck calling contest badly in October in Memphis. The winner of that contest was Phil Green.

“Phil is a tremendous competitor,” Hancock said.