Not sure about who judges your competitions, but all scores, critiques etc are really judge dependent. So what works for one judge is a discard for another. Be that as it may when I enter photos in my camera club monthly competition, I never re-enter an image, thinking I might get a friendlier judge. I try to make better images.
So you have to ask yourself, if presented with the same subject, how would I shoot it differently? Get lower, different lighting, different BG, shallow DOF, more bracketing of exposures, DOF, wait for the Egret to sit on the Gator.......
There is always room for improvement. The good thing about camera club competitions is if there are from time to time themes that make you shoot out of your comfort level.
Your photography has improved just on Simply so the 90+s are coming! You live in a great area for nature photography so there are lots of opportunities to work the same subjects, no excuses
(Last fall I placed an UW image of a squid in our monthly CC competition. The judge said "nice shot of an octopus...out"; didn't even make it to an HM. Three months later the image won three major awards including one in Nat Geo, so go figure.)