From left, Si, Jase, Phil and willie say they grew their famous beards for warmth and camouflage during duck season.
If you drive the 19 miles between the single-story tan brick warehouse in West Monroe, La., that is the headquarters of the Duck Commander company to the rustic, ramshackle home of its founder, Phil Robertson, easily the most famous duck caller in the U.S. today, you will pass at least seven churches, some as big as a Holiday Inn and some barely more than a trailer. But don't stop in. Because when you get to the Robertson house, you'll hear a sermon.
More than likely, you'll also get a meal cooked by Mrs. Robertson, known as Miss Kay. If it's breakfast, Miss Kay may still be in her pajama pants, but she'll whip up biscuits and two types of meat and serve jelly made from the mayhaws the couple gathers from the swamps by their home. And there will be other guests. You might eat with the family of Lane Thomas, proprietor of the biggest manufactured-home dealership in Hammond, La. The two families met on the private jet of the company that made the Robertsons' house. Because that's where Big Business types meet.
Robertson, 67, is the patriarch of a fun-loving clan of born-again-Christian duck-call manufacturers. He, his four sons Alan, Willie, Jase and Jep and his brother Si all work for Duck Commander and its less well known deer-hunting business, Buck Commander. Some of their wives, grandkids and in-laws do too. Their calls are well regarded, but their reality show, A&E's Duck Dynasty, is what people really like. The Robertsons are the latest multigenerational family to transfix American TV viewers--like the Kardashians, only with Bibles and bullets and bushy, bushy beards.
The show's popularity has taken everyone by surprise, not least Phil. He wasn't a total TV novice; he'd appeared in hunting DVDs and a show for the Outdoor Channel before meeting with A&E execs. "They told us there would be virtually no hunting," he says, reclining on his camo-patterned La-Z-Boy wearing matching camo pants, shoes and headband. "I didn't think people would watch it. My family is--well, we're basically godly. I didn't think that would work on American television."
Yet in February the third-season premiere of Duck Dynasty drew the highest ratings A&E has ever seen, doubling the show's viewers from the previous year. It's the second most watched program on cable after The Walking Dead, pulling in 8.4 million viewers, about twice as many as those of the much-obsessed-over Game of Thrones. It was the most discussed show on Facebook in 2012. The season finale on April 25 beat American Idol in the ratings.
The show follows the antics of a family that got rich through hard labor and ingenuity and now lives the outdoorsman's version of the high life. In a typical episode, a bearded guy, usually Jase or Uncle Si, will do something meatheaded--try to turn the loading bay into a duck pond; handcuff himself to another bearded guy--before his family members join the fray. Willie, who as CEO is the designated grownup, will spend a lot of time looking exasperated. Then they'll eat.