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

it up while they were using it, they received three licks. I always wanted my boys to have access to my guns to hunt, just like I had access to Pa’s guns when I was growing up. When I was young, I knew if I broke a gun, we probably weren’t goingto eat that night because we were so dependent on wild game for food. But since my boys knew there was going to be a meal on the table every night, they weren’t always as respectful of my equipment. When Alan was about fourteen, he and a few of his buddies borrowed all of my Browning shotguns to go bird-hunting. They were hunting on a muddy track and because they were careless and immature, mud got into a few of the shotgun barrels. They were very fortunate the guns still fired and didn’t blow up in their faces! When Alan returned home, he was so scared to tell me what happened to my Browning shotguns—my Holy Grails—that he enlisted Kay’s help to break the news. I’m sure Alan thought I was going to beat him on the spot, but I simply told him to go outside. I was afraid to whip him right then because I was so angry. After cooling off, I pulled Alan and his buddies together and gave them a stern lecture about gun safety and respecting other people’s property. I also told Alan—after I gave him three licks—that he was on probation from using my guns for a long time.
    There was another time when I discovered that one of my boat paddles was broken. None of my boys would fess up to doing it, so I gave each of them three licks. It was kind of a military-style group punishment. It turned out that one of their buddies actually broke it, but he didn’t confess to the crime until several years later. I’m sure he realized that if he’d confessed when the boys were younger, they all would have whipped him!
    As hard as Kay and I worked to instill morals, principles, and a belief in what’s right and wrong in each of our sons, it wasn’t always easy. People might watch Duck Dynasty and sometimes think we’re the perfect family. They see how much we love and respect each other. But the reality is that it wasn’t always easy. We had our trials and tribulations like every other family out there, and there were actually times when Kay and I believed we would lose more than one of our sons. They were the scariest times of our lives.

    As hard as Kay and I worked to instill morals, principles, and a belief in what’s right and wrong in each of our sons, it wasn’t always easy.

    Alan, our oldest son, probably had the roughest childhood because he was the oldest boy when I was having all of my problems. Kay was essentially a single mother for a long time, so Alan was given a lot of responsibility when he was only a young boy. When Kay started working at Howard Brothers Discount Stores, Alan was only seven but was left at home to care for Jase and Willie. Alan had to grow up really fast and didn’t get to enjoy his childhood or play baseball and other sports like his brothers did, at least not until I turned my life around. Alan also attended four or five different schools because we moved around so much, which I’m sure wasn’t very easy for him either.
    Alan was a very popular kid in high school, and before long he was hanging out with the wrong crowd. I can remember one time when he and some buddies were camping at a spot down the road from our house. They were drinking beer and did some foolish things, like knocking down mailboxes along the road. Some neighbors came to our house the next morning to complain about it, and I jumped in my truck to find them. I brought Alan and his buddies back to our house and lined them up against my truck. I gave each of them three licks. There was one boy I didn’t even recognize, but I told him if he ever wanted to come back to the Robertson house, he was getting three licks like the rest of them!
    After Alan graduated from high school, his behavior was so wild and out of control that Kay and I didn’t want him around his younger brothers anymore. He was the oldest boy and his brothers looked up to him, but he wasn’t setting much of an example for them. So we threw Alan out of our house, which certainly wasn’t an easy thing to do. My sister Judy was living in New Orleans at the time, and Alan moved there to live with her. You want to talk about going from the frying pan to the fire!
    Alan lived in New Orleans for about two years, and he started dating a woman. She told Alan she was divorced, but she was really only