The Duck Commander Family by Willie Robertson, Korie Robertson Page B

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, happilyjumps 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.
     
    “M AN, YOU WEREN’T CALLING THOSE DUCKS. Y OU 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