From left, Si, Jase, Phil and willie say they grew their famous beards for warmth and camouflage during duck season.
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Part of the show's appeal is the family's irresistible backstory, detailed in Phil's new book, Happy, Happy, Happy: My Life and Legacy as the Duck Commander. His childhood was, by any measure, primitive. "If you saw a picture of my family in the 1950s, it would've looked like the 1850s," he says. His home had no running water or electricity, and his brothers all slept in the same bed, which made it tough to figure out who was the bed wetter (turned out to be Si). Phil enjoys discomfiting folks he deems less hardy, which is everyone, with details of his early years. "We had no commode, just a hole 200 feet behind the cabin," he says. "Our tissue was an old Sears Roebuck catalog."
Phil got a football scholarship to Louisiana Tech and made starting quarterback but decided he'd rather be hunting. "Throwing a touchdown pass was a certain amount of fun," he says, "but not nearly as satisfying as sitting in the woods with my family coaxing the wily mallard to come in so we can have some supper." He handed off to the college's second-string QB, one Terry Bradshaw, whom he recently ran into at an airport. "I hadn't seen him in 44 years. He said, 'Robertson, you rascal. The only difference I can see between you and me is, I've had three wives,'" says Phil. "And I said, 'Well, Terry, if you have another, people might start to think it's you.'"
It's a classic Robertson joke, cutting but affectionate. Miss Kay and Phil married when she was 16 and he was 17; she was pregnant in her senior year of high school. Their sons had a similar upbringing to Phil's; they too shared a large bed until Alan moved into the laundry room. Phil ran a bar, taught school and fished for a living before he got into the duck-call business. Three of the four boys helped make calls in the backyard whenever they weren't in school. "Jase and Willie's fingers were always stained from tung oil," says Alan, the only clean-shaven brother, who joined the company in June after 24 years in the ministry. He calls himself the "chief beard wrangler" or, if he's among believers, "Jacob in a family of Esaus."
Initially, Duck Commander's success was due to a neat little technological advance: the dimpled double reed. Spittle can make the reeds stick together or to the shaft, so Phil put a little bump in his reeds to keep them separated. In 2006 Willie, the third son, took over the business and brought in partners, including A&E. Suffice it to say, Phil's grandchildren do not share a bedroom. Jase, who is the best caller and hunter after Phil, is in charge of design and quality control. Jep works the camera on the hunting DVDs. Si, a Vietnam vet, appears to have no specific responsibilities. He carries a blue cup of iced tea and speaks in locutions that sometimes require subtitles. According to Alan, Si has had 20 marriage proposals since the show started, "mostly from Alabama." (He's already married.)