Bo Jackson is the greatest athlete that ever lived. And one hell of a great human.
I've never been one to claim "the greatest ever" for anything, because there are so many variables that go into that title. However, anyone that doesn't believe that Bo Jackson was one of the most phenomenal athletes of our time has rocks in his head. As an AU grad about 10 years ahead of him, I have followed his career and life from day one at Auburn. He even played high school ball across the road from the cemetery where most of my ancestors (dating back to before the War of the Northern Aggression) are buried, although I didn't know that until his Auburn years.
His archery mentor was an Opelika businessman named George Mann. I've never met Bo but spent some time with Mr. Mann at his home/wildlife museum on the outskirts of Auburn. He related many stories of archery hunting with Bo around the South, Alaska, and Canada. Some were quite humorous, but they all proved that his athletic expertise extended over to his archery skills.
Mr. Mann stopped using firearms in 1973 and bowhunted the world after that. One entire wall in his office was covered with P&Y certificates of his record book kills. I wish now I had counted them, but there had to have been dozens! The full-sized mounts in his museum were awe inspiring. The museum was moved to the Montgomery Zoo a while back. I need to go over there to see those animals again. I got to meet him because he invited my son over to hunt with him. He loved to take kids out to kill their first deer on his place. Nathan killed a doe and an 8 point hunting with him that day. Nate later got a certificate from him to that effect and his certificate was number 214! George told me that day that the 'oldest kid' he'd taken to kill their first deer was 73. BTW, I wasn't allowed in the shooting house with him....just Nate and Mr. Mann.
Charles Kelly, longtime director of Alabama's Game and Fish Department, was on a hunt with Bo and watched him trying to field dress a deer he'd killed. Bo was having a real problem trying to split the deer's sternum and Charles said, "Bo, that's got to be an awfully dull knife. With your upper body strength, you should be able to split that rib cage with a boat paddle"! Then he handed Bo his knife which zipped right through the sternum. Chares told Bo just to keep the knife and Bo promptly threw his old knife as far down into the woods as he could.
