Bo Jackson:
From the End Zone to the Kill Zone
By Chris Avena
Our feature guest is without question, the greatest athlete of our generation. His Athletic abilities are legendary. He is the only athlete to be an all-star in both the NFL and Major League Baseball. But more importantly, he is a very passionate Hunter and outdoorsman. Will you please welcome Mr. Bo Jackson.
Chris: Bo, Is it safe to say that athletics was your job, and hunting was your passion?
Bo: Absolutely. I worked during the summer with baseball, but the few days that I would have off, I would be out fishing, which is a passion. During the winter, football was my job. But when I had time off, I was in a deer stand. Or somewhere in the ground blind hunting. Now that I’m retired from both Baseball and Football. It is a full-time passion for me. Fishing, hunting, I own three boats. They are not social boats or party boats to go out for the weekend and just hang out. They are fishing boats. I have one boat for the lake and two boats for the river. I spend a lot of time whenever I have time on the water. Besides that, besides my fishing, and my hunting. All of my friends, well, most of my friends. They are not ex ballplayers or anything like that. They are everyday work in Joe’s, doctors, businessmen, you name it, they love to hunt, they love to fish, love to bird hunt, and so forth and so on. So that’s what I do now. I’m so busy with my work once again because I am supposed to be retired, but they say when you retire, you work three times as hard as you did when you worked when you actually had a job. So all of my time now is spent trying to balance my food companies, my multiple companies that I have. And my hunting and fishing. I got my boat sitting in my driveway right now. It’s been sitting there for five days. And I haven’t had time to get out on the river because of my food company and traveling and doing this and so forth and so on. But it’s fun. It’s good to know that it’s there. And with me being the boss, I can walk out this office anytime I get ready. Go get that boat and go to the river and don’t have to bother with anybody.
“During the winter, football was my job. But when I had time off, I was in a deer stand”
Chris: Have a cell phone you can work anywhere.
Bo: I can work anywhere. Right now my buddies and I have planned to go to Southern Texas next week for an archery hunt. And I can’t wait.
Chris: What’s on the menu?
Bo: We are going to a friend’s ranch. That is a high fence. He has some exotics there. And I think the animal that I’m going after with my bow is a Nilgai. That’s a big body animal.
Chris: It is, they are very durable. They are tough animals.
Bo: I have never had Nilgai meat before. I have had all the other types of wild game so I am looking forward to trying some of it. I am looking forward to taking it with my bow but they want me to take it with the rifle. But I am hell bent on doing it with my bow.
“I’m no longer Bo Jackson. I’m that outdoors person that the country barely knows”
Chris: It is going to be very difficult to do with a bow, I will tell you that.
Bo: I tell you what, if I can get him within 70 to 80 yards, and with him not knowing that I am there. I think I’m a pretty good shot. I do all my own adjusting and torquing on all my hunting equipment, my golf equipment. I do it all I get in my man cave and I unhook the smoke detector and I go to work. So I do all my own fletching, building my arrows and tune in my bows to where they shoot like a Dart. Now, I just didn’t read this in a book. I have a lot of friends that’s in the outdoor business. Vicki and Ralph from Archers Choice. Tim Wells out of Peoria, Jackie Bushman, Michael Waddell, all of these guys and ladies are good friends of mine. So I’ve learned from them over the years and I take it home and I get in my man cave. That’s where once I went downstairs in my basement into my man cave where I got a sign saying no trespassers. I’m no longer Bo Jackson. I’m that outdoors person that the country barely knows. That has a passion to be in that area, that has a passion, to want to get out in nature and just be a part of nature.
Chris: When you played for the Royals, you had a very unusual way to zone yourself in for the game.
Bo: I just shot my bow and arrow in the locker room a lot. The players weren’t there. I get there early and just to relax. I would do the “William Tell” thing, where I go get an apple and set it on something and put an arrow through the apple and Bret Saberhagen and other team mates would try to pull my bow back, and they couldn’t pull it back. The bow was set at 90 pounds. And they couldn’t pull it back at the time. But now with me being an old man. And with the artificial shoulder, I’m only pulling about 60 pounds now, which is way more than enough. If you’re shooting the proper equipment, if you got it set up proper with a heavy enough arrow that can carry the kinetic energy behind it to get the penetration of a big size animal you have nothing to worry about.
Chris: I heard a story that at one point you would be shooting the apple out of your team mates hand?
Bo: I have only done that once.
Chris: How in God’s name, did you talk somebody into holding an apple while you shot it out of their hand?
“In the locker room, it’s like a daycare center. Everybody’s playing pranks on each other”
Bo: Look, the thing that you have to realize, baseball players are a bunch of kids. It doesn’t matter how old you are. Everybody in the locker room. The only part that you all get to see is us out on the field where we are being serious and playing. But in the locker room. It’s like a daycare center. Everybody’s doing things. Everybody’s playing pranks on each other. Everybody’s pulling jokes on each other. Everybody’s pissing each other off. And we’re having fun. So yeah, we do crazy things. We play jokes on each other. And every now and then you can talk one of your teammates into doing something dangerous, like hold an apple while the other teammates shoot an arrow through the apple out of his hand. So that’s just an everyday occurrence in a major league locker room.
Chris: That’s wild. Now taking a step back, at what age were you introduced to hunting, and what was your impression of the sport before you actually went out of the hunt?
Bo: Well, I was introduced to hunting when I was five or six years old. The first time I ever went hunting was with my grandfather. I had to be three or four years old. My grandfather had a smokehouse. This was before anybody had a freezer or could afford a deep freezer. Everybody had a smokehouse, you would smoke your meat to keep it, and he had a smokehouse outback. He had his farm animals, but he would go hunting and he would hunt raccoon, possum, deer if he could. We went up to coon hunt one night and he got his hound dog, his coon dog. We left his house because over the weekends I just spent the night at his house, which was only a block up the street. And we woke up one morning and it’s just as plain as night he woke me up. I got up. Got me dressed. He got his shotgun, got his hound dog. My grandfather was an iron ore miner. So he got his hat and it had the light on it with the battery pack on it.
Got his shotgun and he had a rope and the rope clipped on his belt and he tied it around my waist so we wouldn’t have to hold my hand and he said follow me. So he had the rope on me and I’m just following my granddad as we go up on the mountain. We sat on a log and he unleashes his hound dog and lets him go. So we sat there and I’m wondering why he let his dog go in the dark because it’s 3:30 in the morning, and we sat down and we wait till we hear that dog start baying and yelping. So, we go down and look and he turned his light on his mining cap and up in a tree I see these two little lights looking back at us. It’s a raccoon. He took a shotgun and boom! Leaves and bark and the raccoon hits the ground, and it bounces. Before it hits the ground again, that hound dog got him and shook it. That was my first experience with hunting. Like I said, he hunted for the food.
Archery, as far as I’m concerned, my cousin Jason and I, we built our own bow and arrows. We built our own slingshots. We build our own bow and arrows out of just sticks. We go get a limb from a tree that we could bend, get some nylon cord around one end and bend it around the other end. We go out in the field and find twigs that are straight about the size of a pencil. Then we get the bottle caps off of a Coca Cola or something and bend it around the tip with a hammer, to put a point. Then we would get a chicken feather, split down the back of the arrow, stick it down, get some thread, and tie it around. That feather would stabilize our arrow and we would hunt my uncle’s chickens. Well, not hunt but shoot at them because we could’nt hurt them. We would bruise them or wound them. Once my uncle found out, he beat the crap out of both of us. Period. He whooped the crap out of both of us out in the yard in front of the neighbors. But that was life. As a kid, we had to make our own fun.
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