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

ducks for sixty days each year. This past season, the first split of duck season started on November 17, 2012, and lasted sixteen days. After a two-week hiatus, duck hunting commenced again on December 15, 2012, and lasted forty-four days, until January 27. The government also tells me how many ducks I can kill—no more than six per day. But I also have to know what species of ducks I kill—I can’t shoot more than four mallards, two pintails, three wood ducks, etc.—and I have to know the sex of the ducks whose lives I’ve ended. If I wing a duck—shoot it down and cripple it, but don’t kill it—I have to make a reasonable attempt to find it or I’m in violation of federal law. I’m telling you: it’s the rule book of all rule books when it comes to duck hunting. Unborn babies don’t have as much protection in this country!
    Here’s the government’s most silly rule: if I have a good dayin the blind and want to give my buddy or a neighbor a few ducks to eat for dinner, I can’t do it without documenting what I gave them. I have to write down my hunting license number, date of birth, legal name, physical address, and telephone number, and then specify how many ducks I’m giving them, what kind of ducks I’m giving them, and what sex of ducks I’m giving away. It’s just one thing after the other when it comes to duck hunting.
    Here’s another dilemma: the law says I can kill six ducks per day for sixty days in the Mississippi Flyway. I was never very good in math, but I believe that comes out to three hundred and sixty ducks per season. But another federal law says I can only have a maximum of twelve ducks in my possession at once. Okay, let’s see now, one law says if I start on opening day and kill six every day, I can shoot down three hundred and sixty ducks in a season. But the other law says I can’t have more than twelve in my deep freezer, so the government apparently wants me to eat ’em as soon as I shoot ’em. Now, we like to eat duck more than most people, but the average duck weighs about one pound when it’s dressed. The government expects me to eat three hundred sixty pounds of duck in sixty days? What am I supposed to do with the ducks that I can’t eat? Feed them to my dogs?
    If I’m ever elected president of the United States—and you never know—the first thing I’m going to do is downsize the Department of the Interior. I don’t know of any politician who hasever said he would do that. I’d also make sure we have plenty of nesting ground for ducks, so I’d work with our friends in Canada, where most of the ducks are born. I’d take all the money we’re sending to the Middle East, where we’re trying to pay people to be our friends, and divert it to Canada and earmark it to help raise ducks. We don’t need to be sending money to the Middle East; too many of those people are mean. The Canadians are already our friends, and Canada would be number one on my list for foreign aid. So when I’m elected president, we’re going to lower taxes and make sure we give the Canadians truckloads of cash to raise mallard ducks. The American people are tired of pork-barrel spending; let’s spend some money on ducks!

    If I’m ever elected president of the United States—and you never know—the first thing I’m going to do is downsize the Department of the Interior.

    The bottom line is the U.S. government doesn’t have to be so strict about duck hunting. In my opinion, it only needs to educate people about what you can shoot and what you can’t shoot. It’s a great sport, but it would be even greater if there weren’t so many rules and regulations.
    Of course, I’ve always been of the opinion that I’ve been given permission from headquarters to shoot and kill whatever animals I want. According to Genesis, God instructed Noah to build an ark to save himself, his family, and a remnant of all theworld’s animals after God decided to destroy the world because of mankind’s evil deeds. God instructed Noah to build the “ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out.” God told Noah to “bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive.”
    After Noah did what God told him to do, the floodgates of the heavens opened on the seventeenth day of the second