Although my buddies Cole and Jeff knew I was headed to Ohio they knew I wanted to get a critique from another amazing whitetail taxidermist whose work I admire and am inspired by. Well Cole told me that when I came to the Missouri Duck seminar by Bruce Owens that I could just bring a deer with me and he would take it to Iowa for me. I thought that was pretty cool of him. Jeff put me on the right track for sending in my fees and registration. Low and behold I was walking (wobbling/ crawling) out to the truck on my 2nd day in Ohio and my phone rings. It was one of the neatest critiques I have ever received. Rick got my phone number from Jeff and called me to let me know what I needed to do to make my deer better. Now if that isn't going out of his way to help someone then I don't know what is. Obviously some of you that know Rick won't be at all surprised by that because you know what kind of a man he is. Not only a great asset to the industry and WASCO but he is someone that "gets it" in the industry and tells it how it is just like another one of my favorite whitetail judges. Theres no blowing smoke, if they think you should stick to your day job then they'll tell you. I just like their honesty. Rick if you happen to read this, Thank You for the great critique! Cole, well sorry for making you carry that thing with you when it wasn't the color your use to, you Blue Ribbon special award receiving hog!
Thank you guys. Dan
Oh one more thing. Just my opinion but....this is for the presidents and board members for the state associations.... I think if more shows had judges like Rick Carter and Bill Yox and they listed the shows that they were going to be judging on here well in advance, there would be more people attending those shows. Hell I went to all the shows I have so far because they had a judge or two there whose work is inspiring and they give awesome critiques. Thy don't just tell you that you screwed something up and you need to fix it but they make you understand why you screwed it up and they can back up everything they say with KNOWLEDGE...
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