This painting of a common goldeneye will be on the 2013 federal Duck Stamp. (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service photo)

Duluth wildlife photographer, filmmaker and author Dudley Edmondson helped select the design of the 2013 federal Duck Stamp last week in Ogden, Utah. The contest, conducted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, was won by Robert Steiner, an artist from San Francisco. This is Steiner’s second federal Duck Stamp Contest win.

Dudley Edmondson

This year’s contest had 192 entries, and judging took place over two days.

“The first round wasn’t terribly difficult,” Edmondson said. “We quickly whittled the 192 down to 70 in a couple of hours. Of course, it got more and more difficult as the contest went on. You get down to the final 17, and that was challenging. There were a lot of questions to the experts, the biologists, making sure the habitat was correct and the plumage was correct. Those kinds of things narrow it down pretty quickly.”

Edmondson has been working with the Fish and Wildlife Service on other projects for about six years, he said.

Look for Edmondson’s first-person account of his duck-stamp judging experience in Sunday’s Duluth Budgeteer News.