After six years before the judge, Colorado auctioneer John Korrey always felt as though he was a bridesmaid, never a bride.
This year it was different when Korrey chanted his way to grand champion at the Calgary Stampede international livestock auctioneer contest.
A panel of five judges listened for clarity, style, rhythm, repartee with the crowd and voice control as each man sold a variety of livestock.
“Today I think they’re the best judges in the world,” said a beaming Korrey, who has sold livestock in Colorado and Nebraska for 28 years. As champion he receives $5,000 in prize money, a custom-designed belt buckle, jacket and a commemorative knife designed for the show.
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Korrey works at the Colorado Livestock Exchange at Iliff and sells mostly stocker and feeder cattle when he isn’t competing in a program like this. He was named reserve world champion in 1993 and has placed second and third at Calgary several times.
“This is the premiere contest,” he said as he went against 39 auctioneers from Canada, the United States, Northern Ireland and Australia.
Second and third place went to Dan Clark of Winner, South Dakota and Dan Skeels of Rimbey, Alta.
For Australian David Watts of Moree, New South Wales, coming to the Stampede was enough prize for him. Only 22 years old, he won the trip to Canada by taking the national auctioneer championship in his country this year. The trip includes entry to the international competition plus an all-expense-paid tour of Western Canada.
Self-taught, Watts finds the livestock business in Canada similar in some ways to his home and very different in others.
There are no auctioneer schools so he learned the chants on his own, practising in the shower or as he drove down the road. Cattle are sold by the kilogram and the prices are “nowhere near as much as here,” he said.
Watts sells cattle exclusively for Elders Ltd. There’s one sale a week and his job includes selecting the sale cattle off the ranch as well as selling them at the centre.
The feeder calf run just ended for the Australians, which gave Watts a chance to travel. He will sell purebred bulls in the fall.
Cattle are sold in their pens rather than running through a sales ring and the style of the auctioneer’s chant is different. Where North American auctioneers call out the bidding price wanted, the numbers an Australian calls out indicate the amount of money he already has. As for other differences, the rapid, staccato selling style of the Canadians and Americans has him buffaloed.
“I can’t understand these fellows at all,” he said.
