Recalling ‘Duck Dynasty’ patriarch Phil Robertson’s first duck hunt near Shreveport as a boy

At age 11, Phil Robertson bagged his first ducks near Shreveport on Moon Lake.
He shot two ducks with his father’s Browning shotgun while standing near Moon Lake.
Robertson swam naked to retrieve the birds and ran home excitedly to show his father.
This experience ignited a lifelong passion for duck hunting for Robertson.

Editor’s note: “Duck Dynasty” patriarch Phil Robertson’s first successful duck came in 1957 near Shreveport before he was a teenager, a momentous occasion he recalled in a 2013 interview with USA Today Network. After Robertson’s death was reported this past weekend, USA Today Network is reprinting Robertson’s recollection of that first fateful hunt.

Phil Robertson remembered his first successful duck hunt as if it was yesterday.

In 1957, he was living with his parents in Vivian in Caddo Parish near Shreveport.

“I had my daddy’s old Browning shotgun, and I was 11 years old,” he recalled. “I walked about two miles from the house and was standing on the edge of Moon Lake.”

It was cold that day, about 35 degrees, and Phil said he was wearing blue jeans and tennis shoes. “We didn’t have warm clothes or hip boots or waders or anything like that,” he said.

Soon three teal and a pintail hen swung out to his left.

“I raised up and that Browning barked three times,” he said. “As amazing as it sounds, I got two out of three on my first volley.”

The ducks fell about 40 yards away into the lake, so he stripped off his clothes and dog-paddled out to retrieve them. “I was as naked as a jaybird,” he said.

Back on dry land, Robertson quickly pulled on his clothes, oblivious to the cold, and ran the entire two miles back to the house.

“I said, ‘Dad, I’ve got two ducks for us to eat; what kind are they?’” His dad identified a “pretty fat” teal and pintail and “told me to pick (pluck) them and give them to Momma to cook for dinner.

“I felt like a grown man. I’ve been after ducks ever since.”