“Northeast Nebraska was right at the top in the state cornhusking contest last Thursday when two of her favorite sons of the soil tossed the Indian maize against the bangboard . . . to claim first and second places in the Midwest’s greatest rural athletic event.”
So said the Pierce County Leader, Nov. 4, 1937, in praise of winner Louis Korte of Stanton County and runner up Harold Korth of Cedar County. Korte shucked 27.79 bushels to Korth’s 27.54 bushels. Both men qualified for the National Cornhusk ing Contest to be held in Missouri the next week. Third place went to Sherman Henriksen of Lincoln, who won the national contest in 1933.
The Nebraska contest, held on the C. R. Arbuckle irrigated farm northeast of Kearney on Oct. 28, drew 29 competitors. It also drew a crowd estimated at from 25,000 to 30,000, based on an aerial survey made during the event. The winner was determined by weighing the corn shucked by each competitor during an 80-minute period and assessing penalties based on the amount of corn left in the rows each man had worked and the amount of shucks and stalks that remained on the ears thrown into the wagon.
Korte noted afterwards, “I left too much corn in the field," but "I sure do like this hybrid corn to shuck in.” In addition to being eligible for the national contest, Korte won $100 and Korth received $50. Later newspaper reports noted that Korte had failed to place in the national contest, which was held in a pouring rain.
The 1937 contest prompted the Norfolk Daily News to editorialize about Nebraska Cornhuskers, in the cornfield and on the football field, under the title, “Huskers and Huskers”: “The 25,000 or 30,000 people who traveled to Kearney Thursday to watch the state cornhusking contest had something more important on their minds than the similar number who journey to Lincoln to see the big football games.
“For much as we all thrill at the gridiron spectacle, the sight of 29 men testing their skill at garnering the golden ears was more in line with the substantial interests of the state. Football is all right, and it has a recognized place as a wholesome sport, but after all it is of the froth of the cup, while the gathering of Nebraska’s greatest crop is the real liquid that nourishes the business of the state and keeps it healthy.
“Louis Korte of Stanton should be as big a man in the eyes of Nebraska as the youngster who happens to be able to kick a football between two goal posts, or who can dodge tacklers on his way to the end zone. More people will know the name of the football star, but submitted to a vote it is probable the overwhelming majority would say that a good cornhusker is of greater value to Nebraska than a half dozen Cornhuskers.”
The national cornhusking contests were suspended with the outbreak of World War II. In the postwar period, mechanical corn-picking rapidly replaced the work once done by hand. Hand corn-picking contests are still held in many agricultural states, but are no longer the spectacles they once were. The 2016 Nebraska State Hand Cornhusking Contest is scheduled to be held near Gothenburg on Sept. 17.
