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

wetlands, I observed all of the water leaving through one low drainage area on the edge of our land. The water dumped into a creek before emptying into the Ouachita River. To control the water depth on our land, I built a low levee across the area. I marked the highest level the water reached on trees, which allowed me to determine how high and long to make the levee. As I was building it, I installed a forty-eight-inch culvert through it at the lowest spot, and then put a weir, or gate, across it to control the water depth. I can adjust the water depth of the wetlands six inches at a time simply by adding or taking out a top board from the weir.
    I regulate the flooding of my land in accordance with what crawfish require—which, coincidentally, meets the needs of migratingducks as well. The crawfish normally hatch in October, when the rains return. They grow through the winter, reaching adulthood in March. Hopefully, enough rain will fall to refill the area. If the area isn’t filled naturally, I use a big pump to draw water from the river. Normally, I have to do some pumping to ensure that most of my land is covered with water to a depth of twelve to eighteen inches—ideal for both the crawfish and duck populations. The depth is determined by how far a duck can stretch its neck to feed when it bobs underwater. After duck season is over, I drain the land to promote the growth of grasses and trees.
    After we purchased the wetlands, a Louisiana Fish and Wildlife Department survey showed that 65 percent of the timber in the area was bitter pecan trees, which can grow as tall as one hundred feet. The wood is not as desirable as hickory or regular pecan, but it is resilient and is used to make such things as axe and hammer handles. The worst thing about bitter pecan trees is that they drop pignuts, which taste so bad that most wildlife won’t eat them. I set out to eliminate the bitter pecan trees and replace them with oak trees that would produce more palatable fare for a wider variety of wildlife—including both squirrels and deer, which love acorns.
    It turned out to be a formidable task. After the bitter pecan trees were cut and sold, the following year suckers began to sproutfrom all the stumps. Left alone, multiple tree trunks would grow from the stumps, and the area would be reforested with bitter pecan trees, thicker than before. So I got a lawn trimmer, the kind with a blade, and went from stump to stump, one at a time, and mangled off all the sprouts. Then I treated the stumps with poison to finish killing them off. It took me three years to clear them all.
    Then I was thinking about how to get the area seeded with oaks. I had planted and seeded many oaks and cypress trees but was still working on it when the Almighty stepped in and flooded everything in the area in 1991. The water picked up acorns and deposited them over all the area I’d cleared. When spring came, there were thousands and thousands of oaks of all kinds, sprouting every foot or so. It was a blessing from above, and while the flood destroyed the home where Pa and Granny were living and its water rose to the front steps of our house, the floodwaters provided us the now heavily wooded areas where we hunt today.
    About 90 percent of your success in duck hunting is determined by the location of your duck blind, and we’ve made major improvements to water conditions, soil conditions, and how natural feed gets to the holes we’re hunting. I’ve kept detailed records of every one of the hunts on our land for more than two decades, including specifics about weather, wind direction, types of duckswe saw, and the position of the sun. It’s amazing to look back and see how much better the hunting has been over the last few years after the improvements were made.

    I’ve kept detailed records of every one of the hunts on our land for more than two decades.

    For instance, on opening day of the 1995 duck season, we hunted Dog Bayou, a blind on my land, and we killed one mallard, seven teals, and one ring-necked. A few days later, we hunted the Dog Bayou and didn’t even fire our guns. Good night; we stayed until two o’clock in the afternoon and didn’t kill a duck! During the 1995 season, we killed 266 ducks in 60 days. Now we try to average twenty ducks per day between four or five of us in the blinds. During the first split in 2012, we killed more than two hundred ducks in the first ten days. We’ve gone from two hundred ducks in 1995 to