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

bring back our big TV. The next day, the boys and I left to go to the grocery store. When we returned home, I found a note from Phil, telling us to come to White’s Ferry Road Church. When I walked into the back door of the church, Phil was already in the baptistry. He’s so impatient, he couldn’t wait for me to get there! Smith had taken Phil’s confession and was in the process of baptizing him. I looked down at our boys and they were crying. Alan looked at me and said, “I guess that devil is going to be gone now.” Phil was twenty-eight years old, and our lives were starting over.
    Once I make a decision, I’m all in and there’s no second-guessing. After I was baptized, I attended regular church services three times a week (twice on Sunday). I also studied the Bible with someone or a group the other five nights of the week. I went back to teaching and worked for Ouachita Christian School, which had just opened in Ouachita Parish. I felt like I needed time with Christian people to get me back on my feet spiritually, so I didthat for about two years. Because everything was in Kay’s maiden name, my old friends couldn’t find me. When they finally tracked us down after about three or four months, I told them never to come back. It was about five years after I was baptized before the pull of sin finally stopped.
    Although I was healing spiritually and was beginning to earn the trust of my wife and children again, there still seemed to be something missing in my life. It’s funny how things work sometimes. Even during my romping, stomping, and ripping days, when I was at my lowest point, the hunting and fishing were actually a training ground for what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. It was in my blood, and I spent as much time as I could doing it. When I was partying, we would go from the beer joint to the woods or lakes and back. Yet out of all that heathen activity came my expertise for duck hunting and catching fish, as well as my dream to one day build my own duck calls. Even as I sank deeper into that wild lifestyle and as my values and sense of worth were severely battered, there was a core of resilience inside that kept me going.

    Out of all that heathen activity came my expertise for duck hunting and catching fish, as well as my dream to one day build my own duck calls.

    I wasn’t entirely sure where it was going to lead me—until one day Kay found something in the back of a newspaper.

SPORTSMAN’S PARADISE
    Rule No. 7 for Living Happy, Happy, Happy
    Buy a House Near Water (It’s a Lot More Fun)
    W hen I started my Christian walk, I began a very intensive study of the Bible. Like I said, I don’t do anything halfway; it’s my personality to become immersed in something once I set my mind to it. I attended services at White’s Ferry Road Church at least twice a week and spent the other five days of the week studying God’s Word with groups of friends or alone. I was determined to become a scholar of the Bible, to understand the true meaning of every verse of Scripture, so I might one day be able to spread His word to other people who found themselves in the predicament I once struggled through.
    After a couple of years, I regained my confidence and had a new outlook on life. But in the back of my mind, I still wanted toreturn to hunting and fishing, which was always my consuming passion. Kay understood my struggle and was sympathetic when I told her that I could make more money as a commercial fisherman than at my teaching job. It was something I had been thinking about for a few years, as I still yearned to be in the woods, lakes, and rivers, where I was most happy and at peace.
    With a lot of faith in me, as always, Kay encouraged me, saying she thought it was a good plan. Together we made a life-changing decision. We decided I would quit my teaching job at Ouachita Christian School and begin fishing. We planned to adopt a lifestyle that would involve virtually living off the land, just like my family had done when I was a child. I told Kay to search for land with water that eventually flowed into the sea. I was gambling that by doing what I wanted to do, I could make a living for my family—which was still growing. Eventually Kay and I would have four sons; Jeptha, our last, was born in 1978.
    Kay found six and a half acres of land just off the Ouachita River at the mouth of Cypress Creek outside of West Monroe, Louisiana. It was at the end of a dirt road in one of the most