The Duck Commander Family

by Robertson, Willie

  WILLIE WOULD ALWAYS RAISE A TON OF MONEY, BUT I COULD NEVER GET ANYONE TO DONATE.

  Willie also worked as a janitor—he likes to say he was a maintenance supervisor—for a real estate agency, and he went around fixing broken windows, trash disposals, and things like that at the company’s rental properties. Willie also worked at an ice cream plant and had to spend most of the day in the freezer. He hated it. He never has liked to be cold.

  When I was working at the ice cream plant, Phil came through Arkansas on his way to a speaking engagement. It was the first time Phil had been to Harding University, so he hadn’t even seen our new house. I was really pumped that my dad was coming to town because I had a club basketball game that night, and Phil had never seen me play while I was in high school. I went and asked my supervisor at the ice cream plant if I could have the night off since Phil was coming to town. He told me no. I was like, “Screw it. I quit.” I hated that job anyway.

  It was the only time Phil ever saw me play basketball, and I scored thirty points in the game. It was worth losing the job over. I had a lot of fun playing in the intramural leagues at Harding University. I was the athletic director of my fraternity, so I was allowed to play on every one of our teams if we didn’t have enough players. I always played on the A team, but I could play on the lower teams, too. Once I scored seventy-four points on the D team because no one else on the team could really play, so I took just about every shot in the game. I kept begging the coach at Harding University to put me on the school’s basketball team. The coach was in his first season, and he was also my badminton teacher. I made a deal with him: If I beat him in a badminton match, he had to put me on the basketball team. I beat him like a drum, but he still didn’t put me on the team. I’m still mad at the guy for not holding up his end of the bargain.

  Korie: Of course, Willie and I never had any money as married college students. At one point we had to borrow some friends of ours’ washer and dryer to do our laundry. To thank them for letting us use their washer and dryer, we took them out to Shoney’s one night for dinner. Willie and I cooked in every night; we rarely went out to dinner because we were on such a tight budget. The waiter brought us our bill that night and it was like forty dollars. I didn’t even know you could spend forty dollars at Shoney’s! Daddy had worked with Willie and me on keeping a budget. He taught us to write down all of our expenses so we could see how we were spending our money. If we ever had to borrow any money from Dad, he always wanted to see a plan for how we were going to pay him back. Daddy really taught us some valuable lessons about money. We budgeted about sixty dollars a week for food. After paying the bill at Shoney’s, we had about twenty dollars left for the entire week!

  Whenever Willie and I went to the grocery store to buy food for the week, there was always a big argument at the checkout lane. If we had any money left in our budget, Willie would want to buy baseball cards or a Star Trek book. He has always been a big collector. I wanted to buy a magazine like People or Entertainment Weekly, and we never had enough money to buy both. We’d fight over who was going to get to spend our disposable income, which ended up being about three or four dollars a week. These are some of the things you fight over when you get married at eighteen and nineteen!

  When we were newlyweds, our favorite meal was chicken strips and macaroni and cheese. We would buy a big bag of frozen Tyson chicken strips and fry them in a Fry Daddy. When they came out we would season them, then dip them in butter. Willie would make these special sauces for the chicken strips and we’d always have a box of Kraft macaroni and cheese with them. We rotated the chicken strips with chili dogs and, of course, fried bologna sandwiches, and that would be our meals for the week. Sometimes we would even splurge on thick-cut bologna. Willie tried to get me to eat fish sticks, but I’d never eaten them in my life. I just couldn’t stomach eating frozen fish out of a box.

  WHEN WE WERE NEWLYWEDS, OUR FAVORITE MEAL WAS CHICKEN STRIPS AND MACARONI AND CHEESE.

  When we were taking classes, we’d come home between classes and eat lunch together every day. We would cook lunch and then watch Matlock together and see who could guess the killer. Willie bought a little white truck from one of our professors for seven hundred dollars. The best part about the truck was it still had a faculty parking sticker on the wind-shield. We were so excited we could park the truck in the faculty lots when we went to class. Because we were married, we could even write excuses for each other when we were sick. Willie always seemed to catch a cold during March Madness and on the opening day of baseball season.

  During our last year at Harding University, we spent the summer in a study-abroad program in Florence, Italy. It was an unbelievable experience and was our first time really being away together. We traveled all over Europe on a Eurail pass. We didn’t have any money for hotel rooms, so we would just sleep on trains and wake up the next morning in a new country. It was so exciting. As part of our studies, we had to visit certain museums and write essays on the art we saw. I was an art education major, so I loved every bit of this part of our trip, but it was a totally new experience for Willie. By the end of the trip, he said he had more culture than the yogurt section of the grocery store!

  Willie and I are both pretty directionally challenged, so we spent most of our time lost. We would jump in a bus that seemed to be going in the right direction and end up having to walk for miles to get back to town. We were both super skinny from all the walking when we got back, despite the good Italian food we ate while we were there.

  We had the best time, but there were a few scary moments, as well. One night we were sleeping on the train heading to Barcelona, Spain. We were traveling through the south of France and a group of thieves were on the train. Willie was sleeping with his feet on the door, so every time they would try to open the door he would wake up and they would run off. One time, he didn’t feel the door open and the thieves grabbed the backpack of one of the girls who was traveling with us. Willie jumped up and started chasing them through the train! They dropped the backpack, but Willie kept chasing them through a couple of cars. I was standing there thinking, “What’s going to happen if he catches them!” Luckily, Willie had that same thought, gave up the chase, and came back to our car. He didn’t sleep the rest of the night; he just sat up and protected us. What a man!

  Another exciting but scary adventure happened in Salzburg, Austria, where we were staying at a youth hostel named Stadtalm Naturfreundehaus. It was at the top of a mountain that surrounded the city and had the most beautiful view. It had bunk beds in the rooms and only had one bathroom that everyone shared. You had to put coins in the shower for the water to come out. It only gave you like two minutes of water. I remember calling down the hall to Willie to bring more coins. Two minutes wasn’t quite long enough.

  The way you got to the hostel was on an elevator through the middle of the mountain. One night, we got back to the elevator about eleven thirty P.M., after exploring the city, only to find that the elevator closed at eleven P.M. We had no idea what to do. We certainly didn’t have enough money to get another hotel room for the night, so we went back into the town and asked around to see if there was any other way to get up there. We found out there was a staircase that would get you there eventually, but it was a long walk up the mountain. We didn’t have any other choice. We walked what seemed like forever. At one point, we passed a guy in a trench coat, just sitting by himself on a bench on the trail. We were totally freaked out. Well, I was, at least. We finally got to the top about two A.M. We ended up sitting outside under the stars and talking once we got there, and we thanked God for keeping us safe. It ended up being really fun and romantic, but I was scared to death walking in a foreign city up a creepy trail in the middle of the night.

  When I finished school at Harding University in 1995, we moved back to West Monroe. Willie still had a year left of school, so he enrolled at Northeast Louisiana University (which is now the University of Louisiana at Monroe) and he took a job working at Cam
p Ch-Yo-Ca. Willie probably could have gone to work part-time for Duck Commander, but he’d helped Phil make duck calls when he was a child, so at this point he really wasn’t interested in doing it again. Duck Commander was still pretty small, and Jase and their friend Bill “Red Dawg” Phillips were already working there. Duck Commander couldn’t afford to take on another full-time employee, but Willie still helped out at Duck Commander from time to time, especially during hunting season, and we would always go to SHOT Show—the big hunting-industry trade show—with the whole family every January. Willie would drive a seventeen-passenger van to SHOT Show and would work as their driver.

  WILLIE WAS DETERMINED TO MAKE SURE THE CAMP AT LEAST BROKE EVEN FINANCIALLY EVERY YEAR.

  Willie really did some unbelievable things with Camp Ch-Yo-Ca, which was a nonprofit and seemed to lose a lot of money every year. Willie was determined to make sure the camp at least broke even financially every year. He studied kinesiology at Harding University and then went into the health and human performance program at Northeast Louisiana. The program required him to take some business courses. Willie took the camp’s deficit from about $150,000 to $5,000 in a couple of years. The kids would come to camp for about six weeks during the summer, but Willie started renting the camp’s facilities to churches and youth groups during the off-season. He started a program for schools to bring their classes to the camp for nature hikes, and he even added tennis courts, hiking trails, and other amenities. He was very creative in finding ways to create new revenue for the camp. Willie learned how to operate a business on a budget and the camp proved to be a good training ground for him.

  Another man helped out at the camp who made a big impact on Willie during this time. His name was Dewie Kirby. He was the dad of my uncle on my mom’s side. He was retired and moved across the street from us at the camp to help do maintenance and help Willie take care of the camp. Willie and Dewie worked together on many projects, and Willie grew to love Dewie as another father figure who taught him about work and family.

  I was pregnant with our first child when we moved back to Monroe. Our oldest son, John Luke, was born in October 1995, and then Sadie came along not long after in June 1997. To help make ends meet, Willie started working as a youth minister at our church in addition to keeping his job at Camp Ch-Yo-Ca. He was great with teenagers and college-aged students and always had a few teens working with him at camp. He remembered how important it was that Mac gave him a job as a teenager and took the time to teach him how to work. He tried to do the same for others.

  During this time, the pull to get more involved in the family business of Duck Commander was coming over us. Since the camp business was seasonal and everything pretty much shut down in the wintertime—which was the busy time for Duck Commander—we were able to help out some and do several things from our home. We were fortunate to be able to do this as a family and spent quite a bit of time together with our babies.

  I tried to find ways to help us financially during this time. After John Luke was born, I was a stay-at-home mom but still found ways to utilize my art degree. I started making hand-painted duck calls. I numbered them and had Phil autograph cards saying they were limited editions of five hundred each. I painted sitting mallard, flying drake, and wood duck editions. They ended up selling in stores like Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s. While the babies were sleeping, I would paint the duck calls, put them in a package with moss and a card, and ship them out the door.

  I really think the first few years of our marriage were Willie’s formative years. He still wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his life, whether he wanted to preach, work for the family business, or do something entirely on his own. I knew that whatever he decided he would do it with all his heart and be successful at it. This was a time for him to test out and find what he really wanted to do. We were eating frozen chicken strips, but we were eating them together and finding ways to make them delicious.

  CHICKEN STRIPS

  I can’t hunt chicken. Well, I guess I could, but I don’t think it would be much fun, but I do like to eat it from time to time. This is one of those popular dishes that kids love. Can’t go wrong here.

  2 pounds chicken tenderloins

  1 egg

  1/2 cup buttermilk

  1 cup all-purpose flour

  11/2 teaspoons garlic powder

  1/2 teaspoon paprika

  1 tablespoon Phil Robertson’s Cajun Style Seasoning

  1 teaspoon salt

  1 teaspoon pepper

  Peanut oil (about 3 inches in pan)

  1 cup butter, melted

  1. Whisk egg and buttermilk in a small bowl.

  2. Combine flour, garlic powder, paprika, Cajun Style Seasoning, salt, and pepper in separate bowl.

  3. Dip chicken tenderloins in egg mixture and then flour mixture.

  4. Heat oil in skillet to 375 degrees.

  5. Cook tenderloins for three minutes on each side or until no longer pink.

  6. Drain chicken strips on paper towels.

  9

  DUCK GUMBO

  “FOR I KNOW THE PLANS I HAVE FOR YOU,” DECLARES THE LORD, “PLANS TO PROSPER YOU AND NOT TO HARM YOU, PLANS TO GIVE YOU HOPE AND A FUTURE.”

  —JEREMIAH 29:11

  Phil’s duck gumbo takes a long time to make. It starts at four A.M. on a wet, cold Louisiana morning during duck season. Well, it actually starts a long time before that day, sometime in the heat of summer, when he’s out on the land pumping water into the hole in front of the blind or repairing a torn-down blind. But let’s take all of that for granted for a moment and start with the day he actually kills the ducks for the gumbo.

  Phil wakes up in the early-morning hours of a cold December day and pulls on his hunting gear. He walks out of his bedroom to find Jase, Uncle Si, Godwin, Martin, and me walking through the door to drink black coffee and discuss our plan for the day. Phil guzzles his coffee and then loads up the truck with decoys, shotgun shells, and his favorite gun. He puts his duck calls around his neck and his black Lab, Trace, happily jumps into the truck. Phil then drives to the land, loads up on the boat, and climbs into a blind to sit and to wait. He waits until the sun comes up for the legal shooting time to begin, and then waits some more for ducks to fly by. And when they do, Phil blows his calls, with Jase calling along beside him, helping to replicate the exact sound of the ducks for the decoys in the spread. Phil watches and listens for the familiar sound of the ducks turning, locking their wings, and changing their patterns to check out what is below. His heart starts pumping when he realizes the ducks have heard them and are coming his way, then he waits some more. He waits until the ducks are right in front of the blind and then calls out, “Cut ’em!” Phil and the rest of the hunters in the blind raise their shotguns and shoot. Trace takes off through the water, excited for the opportunity to do his job, bringing the bounty back to the blind. Now Phil has his ducks for the gumbo.

  Next, Phil brings the ducks back to the house and picks their feathers clean. Then he carefully cuts them into pieces for the gumbo, cautious not to lose any of the precious meat. Now Phil can finally begin to make the roux. Building a successful family business is a lot like making a great gumbo.

  Phil started duck hunting when he was a kid. He used a P. S. Olt duck call, which was very popular among duck hunters at the time. In the late 1880s, Philip Olt converted a chicken coop on his family’s farm into a wood shop and started making duck calls. Olt’s D-2 Duck Call and A-50 Goose Call were some of the first manufactured duck calls in the world, which is why he is often called the “father” of the manufactured call.

  Phil had a gift for making his calls sound better, and his hunting buddies always insisted that he tune their calls, too. When Phil was hunting with his friend Al Bolen in1972, Big Al watched him make a long-hailing call as he was trying to turn a flock of mallard ducks within shooting range.

  “Man, you weren’t calling those ducks,” Big Al told him. “You were commanding them!”

 
; And so . . . Duck Commander was born.

  On the day Phil officially announced he was starting Duck Commander, he told Kay, Granny, and Pa that he was going to sell one million dollars’ worth of duck calls. Of course, they all thought he was crazy and went back to eating dinner. It took many years for Duck Commander to get off the ground. Phil always likes to say he’s a low-tech man living in a high-tech world, and he didn’t know very much about woodworking, marketing, or manufacturing when he started. But Phil had a dream, and his veins were filled with determination and patience, which is probably more valuable than anything else.

  “MAN, YOU WEREN’T CALLING THOSE DUCKS. YOU WERE COMMANDING THEM!”

  When Phil was getting started with his company, he enlisted the help of Tommy Powell, who went to church with us at White’s Ferry Road Church. Tommy’s father, John Spurgeon Powell, made duck calls in a small wood shop, and Phil took him his drawings for the world’s first double-reed duck call. John Powell looked at Phil’s specifications and told him it wouldn’t work.

  “It’s too small,” Powell told him.

  But Powell told Phil if he could get a block of wood properly bored, he was willing to give his duck call a try on his lathe. Phil took a block of wood that was about three inches thick and six inches long to West Monroe High School’s woodworking shop, where he worked out a swap with the shop teacher. In exchange for four dressed mallard ducks, the shop teacher drilled a hole in Phil’s block of wood. Phil took the wood block to Powell, who turned on his lathe and produced the first Duck Commander duck call.