Happy, Happy, Happy: My Life and Legacy as the Duck Commander

with a book to get past some difficulty, but I only spent about 30 percent of my time on college. To get better than a C average would have taken too much time and would have interfered with my hunting.
    Word quickly spread around campus that I had fish. Even a prominent former Louisiana legislator, who wanted to help me while I was in school, was one of my clients. When the politician paid me, he insisted that he was not buying the fish (selling game fish in Louisiana is illegal) but only paying for me to clean and dress them—to which I readily agreed.
    Not everyone on campus was fond of my hobbies. After football practice one day, one of my coaches informed me that the dean of men wanted to see me. I wasn’t sure what I had donewrong, but I knew they had me on something. I walked into his office, and he asked me to close the door.
    “We have a problem,” he said. “Do you know what street you live on? Do you know the name of it?”
    “Vetville?” I asked him.
    “Let me refresh your memory,” he said. “You live on Scholar Drive.”
    Apparently, the president of Louisiana Tech had given members of the board of trustees a tour of campus the day before.
    “When he went to where you live, it wasn’t very scholarly,” the dean told me. “There were old boats, motors, duck decoys, and fishnets littering your front yard. He was embarrassed. This is an institution of higher learning.”
    “That’s my equipment,” I told him.
    “But everybody’s yard is mowed—except yours,” he replied.
    “At least the frost will get it,” I said. “It will lay down flat as a pancake when the frost gets it.”
    “It’s July,” the dean said. “Cut your grass.”
    One summer the Louisiana Tech football coaches got me a job in Lincoln, Nebraska, as a tester on a pipeline that was being built. Kay loved it and thought it was the biggest adventure of her life, but I missed being in the woods and lakes back home. I could hardly stand it. We only had a company car, which I drove to work, and we lived in a tiny apartment and didn’t have a TV, soKay woke up every morning and walked miles and miles all over town. I feared Kay was about to die of boredom, so I brought her a little white kitten I found in a cornfield. We named it Snowball, and it was a lot of company for her. When we flew back to Louisiana at the end of the summer, we hid Snowball in a basket packed with sandwiches and travel necessities that we carried on the plane. That cat stayed with us in Louisiana for the next several years and became the first of her many pets.
    By then, my interest in playing football was really beginning to wane. My game plan was to hunt and fish full-time and get a college education while doing it—putting as little effort into school as possible. The reason I went into education (I wound up getting bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education, with a concentration in English) is because you have the summers off, as well as Christmas and Thanksgiving holidays. Consequently, I would have more time to hunt and fish. The only reason I wanted a college degree was so that when people thought I was dumb, I could whip out the sheepskins. Unfortunately, Louisiana Tech didn’t offer a degree in ducks.

    Unfortunately, Louisiana Tech didn’t offer a degree in ducks.

    My interest in football was secondary to ducks, but it was paying for my education. I remember riding on a bus going to ball games and scoping out the woods we passed as to hunting possibilities.I just didn’t have my mind on football. As a result, I had a checkered playing career. In spite of my God-given talent, I was never fully devoted to the game. Even in junior high, it was merely a social event. When I was playing defensive halfback, I would lightheartedly wave to people in the crowd and grin at things shouted.
    I had in my mind that football was a game, something you did solely for entertainment. You go out there and win or lose, but it’s certainly not life or death. If you did well, you won. If you didn’t do too well, you didn’t win. But as far as making a career of football, that never entered my mind—I didn’t see the worth of it. I couldn’t make much sense out of making a living from work that entailed large, violent men chasing me around—men who are paid for one reason: to run me down and stomp me into the dirt. I just didn’t see it.
    Despite football not being my primary interest, I still had a decent career at Louisiana Tech. I played