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

to hunt and fish shortly after I learned to walk. If you couldn’t shoot and kill something, chances were you weren’t going to eat. If a hurricane had hit my boyhood home and wiped out everything, I would have found a way to survive—even when I was only five years old! I’m trying to teach those same lessons of survival to my grandchildren, because the last thing I want is for them to grow up to be nerds.
    Let me tell you one thing: I don’t see the inherent value in the video games that kids are playing today. But that’s all these kids seem to want to do. Kids in America today are overweight and lazy, and it’s their parents’ fault for letting it happen. Kidssit around playing video games and eating junk food all day, and when they’re not doing that, they’re texting on their cell phones. It’s only their fingers that are moving; they’re not getting out and about. Have you ever seen a macho man walking around with a cell phone, mashing it with his fingers and yakking on it all day? That’s too much talking. By the time these kids are young adults, they’re going to have to go to Walmart to buy a personality. Kids need to be out with nature, learning what it takes to survive in this world.

    By the time these kids are young adults, they’re going to have to go to Walmart to buy a personality.

    When I was a very young boy, much of our food and sustenance came from the land around us. While living in Vivian, Louisiana, immediately following World War II and before we moved into the log cabin where I spent my formative years, Granny often told us, “If we have another depression, we could live off this acre.” The Great Depression was never far from my parents’ thoughts; they suffered through the worst economic depression to ever hit the United States when they were younger.
    In those days, living off the land surrounding our house sounded feasible. Even on our limited acreage, we had a milk cow that was pastured on half the land and staked out alongside the road when grass was scarce. We had several fruit trees, which we’dplanted, along with a large truck garden (it was called a “truck garden” because the overflow of what we raised in it was put on a truck and taken to town to sell), that provided abundantly from spring to fall. The garden yielded such food as turnips and greens far into the mild Louisiana winters. My great-aunt Willie Mae Irvins, who lived next door to us, kept a flock of chickens, and we purchased eggs and occasional young fryers and roasting hens from her.
    As a boy, living off the land influenced my outlook on life probably more than anything else, especially after I discovered an abundance of wild game and fish that was there for the taking in the area where we lived. I always had a conviction that I could survive off the land without being tied to a regular job. As I grew older, that belief influenced many of my decisions.

    I always had a conviction that I could survive off the land without being tied to a regular job.

    I killed my first duck—actually, two of them—when I was eleven years old. I was hunting on the bank of a small slough when three teal and a pintail flew close enough for me to shoot. I fired three times, bringing down the pintail and one teal. To this day, I can show you the exact spot where I shot those ducks. Remember what I said about being prepared? If I ever go back there, I’ll be sure totake my dog or a boat, or at least some good waders. My first kill taught me a valuable lesson—sometimes shooting the ducks isn’t nearly as hard as retrieving them!
    With no retriever and no boat, the only way I could recover the birds was to take off my blue jeans and tattered shirt and wade into the icy water. I returned home with them and proudly announced to my father, “I have struck!” (As you might have noticed, I sometimes speak in dramatic terms if the occasion warrants it.) It turned out the event was momentous: it shaped the rest of my life and absolutely convinced me I could live off the land.
    My father always lived by that philosophy and passed it on to my brothers and me. The son of Judge Euan Robertson, longtime Vivian justice of the peace, Pa grew up a farm boy outside of town, with two brothers and four sisters. He gravitated early to a career in the oil industry, which was booming with the fabulous East Texas and Pine Island discoveries, both classified as giant oil fields, practically at his doorstep.
    Pa served in the U.S.