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

the hole on a bluebird day when they kept seeing flight after flight of ducks circling the area, dropping down into it, and not coming back up. Pa was also hunting with them that day.
    Tommy and Jimmy Frank decided to investigate, although they were having a pretty fair shoot from the floating blind they were in, which was in open water about a quarter mile from where all the other ducks were going. Pa stayed in the blind.
    My brothers got in their boat and motored straight at the area until they ran aground on a submerged ridge covered with buck brush. Deciding the day was warm enough, although the water was ice-cold, they tied the boat and started wading. They were without waders and just in their hunting boots, but this was the way we hunted back then.
    The water was only about knee-deep on the ridge, but then quickly dropped off and rose almost to their waists as they progressed toward where the ducks were still spiraling down. They were soon among the trees and witnessed an amazing sight. It was like something out of primeval times. There must have been five thousand ducks in the opening, probably only thirty yards wide, surrounded by the trees! The entire surface of the open water was completely covered with ducks—so many that they crowdedshoulder-to-shoulder, like a giant raft made of ducks. It was a year when the male-female ratio was out of balance, and most were mallard drakes, their green heads standing out sharply in the dark mass. Ducks continued to spiral down from above as my brothers watched in amazement.
    Jimmy Frank got tangled in a dead tree underneath the water, but Tommy kept moving forward. The ducks spotted him. They stirred but didn’t fly. When he felt he was close enough, Tommy shot them on the water, surprisingly downing only two ducks. Still the ducks didn’t fly away but continued to mill around, dodging in and out among the trees. And more ducks kept spiraling down from above the hole.
    By the time it was over, my brothers downed a total of ten ducks.
    As amazing as the number of ducks on the water was, even more impressive was the old cypress. It was nearly twenty feet wide at the base and hollow from water level to about thirty feet up. The opening was wide enough for a man to easily pass through, and it was there that Tommy and I, along with our friend Maurice Greer, built a blind with a porch from which eleven men could shoot.
    The big hollow at the water level was so large that a pirogue could be pulled into it (a larger boat was used to reach the area and was hidden some one hundred yards away, beneath somebuck brush). After sinking the pirogue to conceal it, we made our way to the blind above by climbing up through the hollow on several boards that we’d nailed on the inside to form a ladder. When we got to the shooting porch, ducks that circled to look at the decoys often flew right in front of us. At times, we actually shot down at the ducks.
    The old cypress tree was one of the Almighty’s great creations, and it’s where we spent many glorious mornings together as a family. But during my rompin’ and stompin’ days, I never embraced its beauty and rarely cherished the time I spent with my father and brothers.

    The old cypress tree was one of the Almighty’s great creations, and it’s where we spent many glorious mornings together.

    The only things I seemed to be worried about were how many ducks I could kill and when my next drink was coming.
    By then, I had a growing family at home. Our sons Jase and Willie had been born, and Kay was at the end of her rope with me. I was always out, partying with my buddies, leaving her alone to raise our three sons. I was growing more distant from everything I had known and been taught and was pulling even farther away from the people who loved me the most. Kay felt her entire life was in ruins and that she had failed as a wife. After a while, the school where I was teaching couldno longer ignore my public conduct. Students and their parents were beginning to notice my boorish behavior, and my days as a teacher and coach were numbered.
    Sadly, even as my life continued to spiral out of control, like a downed duck falling from the sky, I failed to realize that “callous” also described me as a man.

HONKY-TONK
    Rule No. 6 for Living Happy, Happy, Happy
    Put the Bottle Down (You’ll Thank Me in the Morning)
    A fter I resigned from my teaching position (before the school board could fire me), I made one of the biggest mistakes