Scot Storm’s painting of a pair of hooded mergansers earned him his third win in the North Carolina Waterfowl Conservation Stamp competitions held since 2008.

Storm’s entry took the blue ribbon for the 2014 competition held Monday at the Washington Civic Center. Storm won the competitions in 2008 and 2010. Storm’s winning entry was one of 35 entries in this year’s contest, also known as the duck-stamp competition.

Second place went to George Lockwood of Santa Inez, Calif., while John Brennan of Lutz, Fla., took third place.

Storm said his entry was inspired by hooded mergansers he saw on a pond on his property near Freeport, Minn.

“The nice thing about the North Carolina waterfowl stamp program is they give you a variety to choose from. … What I do when I set up a stamp entry like that, I go through my reference files of all those species and see what stands out to me. One thing that stood out to me on the hooded this year — I had a picture off of our pond. I’ve got a pond next to the house here that had some hooded in the spring,” Storm said. “What was really dramatic about it was that golden-orange water that kind of help to contrast that hooded merganser, but at the same time it the same sorts of colors the drake had on his side panels. It kind of just clicked to dramatically show the drake but just the way it set up. It meant something a little bit more to me that I shot if off the pond next to the house here.”

Storm said he’s “about 95-percent sure” he will attend the unveiling of his winning entry and the four other ribbon-winning entries Feb. 7 to kick off the 19^th-annual East Carolina Wildlife Arts Festival and North Carolina Decoy Carving Championships which runs that weekend in downtown Washington.

Mike Helsabeck, an award-winning wildlife artist who lives in North Carolina, was one of the competition’s five judges.

“Unbelievable,” he said about the quality of entries in this year’s contest. “There is some absolutely beautiful work — crazy good.”

This year’s contest included many entries depicting swans.

“I’m sort of surprised a swan did not win,” Helsabeck said.

Of the seven entries that scored the highest, five of them depicted swans.

For taking first place in the contest, Storm receives $7,000 in prize money and a $300 travel allowance to help him attend the festival.

Selected entries from this year’s competition will be displayed at the Civic Center through the festival weekend. The N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission sponsors the competition with assistance from the East Carolina Wildfowl Guild.

Revenue from sales of duck-stamp prints and stamps go to the commission’s Waterfowl Fund, which provides money for the conservation of waterfowl habitat in North Carolina. The fund has raised more than $4.2 million since its inception.

“The money is used to help North Carolina meet its financial obligations in implementing the North American Waterfowl Management Plan, the international agreement helping restore waterfowl populations throughout the continent. In addition, funds have been used to support waterfowl research and to buy equipment used to manage wetlands,” according to the commission’s website.