--- title: Beards of Paradise description: How a tight-knit family of godly duck hunters shot to reality-TV fame canonical: https://time.com/archive/6643463/beards-of-paradise/ author: Belinda Luscombe article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2013-05-13T04:00:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-26T16:32:47.832Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: Beards of Paradise og:description: How a tight-knit family of godly duck hunters shot to reality-TV fame og:url: https://time.com/archive/6643463/beards-of-paradise/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb4e7f748aa6e524b/698a4544db2987b89d269df6/360_culduck_0513.jpg?branch=production&width=360&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 360 og:image:height: 203 og:image:alt: 360_culduck_0513.jpg og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Beards of Paradise twitter:description: How a tight-knit family of godly duck hunters shot to reality-TV fame twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb4e7f748aa6e524b/698a4544db2987b89d269df6/360_culduck_0513.jpg?branch=production&width=360&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) # Beards of Paradise > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account. by [Belinda Luscombe](https://time.com/author/belinda-luscombe/) May 13, 2013 4:00 AM UTC  From left, Si, Jase, Phil and willie say they grew their famous beards for warmth and camouflage during duck season. From left, Si, Jase, Phil and willie say they grew their famous beards for warmth and camouflage during duck season. Brady Fontenot for TIME by [Belinda Luscombe](https://time.com/author/belinda-luscombe/) May 13, 2013 4:00 AM UTC 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. 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.) The family still goes hunting and fishing together–for food and for souls. The night before our breakfast, the whole clan assembled for a fundraiser for a local Christian school. They piled into a church bus and headed across Monroe (pop. 50,000), accompanied by seven police cars, to the swank Bayou DeSiard Country Club, where guests paid $250 each to stand in line for an hour and get a photo with a bearded guy in camo. After that, the entourage put on a rousing variety show–revival meeting, topped off by a sermon from Phil. He talks about Jesus whether he’s in a church, in a casino or at a gun expo. “To \[the producers\] my faith is amusing,” he says with a smile. “I’m enough of a realist to know it’s not going on the show.” The Robertsons may look like hillbillies, but they are no fools. Phil has a patent on his duck call. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, there are 2.6 million waterfowl hunters in the U.S. Last year, Duck Commander sold 185,000 duck calls. The outlet store that adjoins the factory is so busy that on Fridays and Saturdays, an off-duty deputy sheriff swings by to keep things orderly. And Phil is not the only would-be best-selling author in the family: Willie and his wife Korie have written a book, and Si and Miss Kay have titles coming out, all published by a company started by Korie’s parents, the Howards, that is now owned by Simon & Schuster. This is a family that prays together and gets paid together. They’re holding out for more money for next season. A&E’s chances of prevailing are about the same as a duck’s over West Monroe in December. In person, the Robertsons are more devout and sophisticated than on TV. For a hunter who sleeps with a shotgun in reach, Phil has a surprisingly nuanced view of gun control. He believes that any attempt to limit weapons limits basic freedoms and that “it’s the hearts of human beings that are the problem,” not guns. But he does note quietly, almost as an aside, that “it just seems to me that a man wouldn’t quite need the firepower people possess.” The gun cupboard in his living room is empty. Too many guests, Alan explains. The family’s biggest challenge is retaining the appealing down-to-earth togetherness it forged through thick and thin now that times are lusciously thick. Their weapons against the beguilements of Mammon include church, family occasions like the Christian-school fundraiser and lots of hunting. “We have nicer camo and nicer shotguns now, but hunting is hunting,” Alan says. “That hasn’t changed in 100 years.” Phil is more wary. His second-favorite group of authors, the Founding Fathers, worried about the corruptive power of wealth, and so does he. “My own children in some ways are a culture shock,” he says. “Miss Kay and I, there’s not but two of us. We don’t need a bigger house. But I notice my kids–they built bigger houses. Why would you need that much floor space and that many bathrooms? They probably didn’t take the advice of the old patriarch.” Not until hunting season at least. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6643463/beards-of-paradise/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6643463/beards-of-paradise/"},"headline":"Beards of Paradise","datePublished":"2013-05-13T04:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-26T16:32:47.832Z","description":"How a tight-knit family of godly duck hunters shot to reality-TV fame","url":"https://time.com/archive/6643463/beards-of-paradise/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb4e7f748aa6e524b/698a4544db2987b89d269df6/360_culduck_0513.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Belinda Luscombe","url":"https://time.com/author/belinda-luscombe/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb4e7f748aa6e524b/698a4544db2987b89d269df6/360_culduck_0513.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"360_culduck_0513.jpg","caption":"From left, Si, Jase, Phil and willie say they grew their famous beards for warmth and camouflage during duck season.","creditText":"Brady Fontenot for TIME","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/6643463/beards-of-paradise/","name":"Beards of Paradise"}}]}] ```