Bob Knight: Your Ideal Hunting Partner

Turkey hunting and Bob Knight were made to go hand-in-hand. (Maybe with Ron Swanson from Parks and Recreation.) So while I’m not a hunter, hearing about a hunting experience with Knight is totally up my alley, particularly when the lead of the story has this quote:↵↵⇥“Jerry [McKinnis], you don’t know jack$&@% about turkey hunting, and you are a rank novice,” Knight whispered, while leaning against an oak tree in Arkansas’ Ozark Mountains. “I only know half of jack$&@% and I’m half a novice. But we both got to see a really good turkey hunter screw up.”↵↵↵ESPN Outdoors has a piece up on Knight today and a hunting experience the writer probably won’t soon forget. Before they get into the hunting, we get the “humanizing” element of Knight, where he once wouldn’t let wheelchair-bound Landon Turner sit front-and-center at an IU game because he was wearing an earring. Or there was that time he told a depressed friend the following:↵

↵↵⇥It went something like this (edited, of course): “If you are just going to lie around and act like a piece of dog doo, then go lay out in the yard and do it right.”↵↵↵And, mind you, these two anecdotes were supposed to soften the image of Knight. But alas, I was particularly impressed by one story of the former coach’s hunting acumen. ↵

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↵↵⇥The box call switched hands and every call went unanswered until Knight took it back and once again, he got the hoped-for response of gobbling turkeys. The turkeys were marching straight at him, and as they walked down into a dip in the landscape, he got his gun up and pulled the trigger on the first head popped out.↵⇥↵⇥When he reached the dip, all three turkeys were dead -- from the one shot. An uncommon feat, but it didn’t mean near as much to him as the fact he had made a call and a turkey had responded.↵⇥

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↵↵But seriously, tell me Knight wouldn’t be a great hunting companion. So long as you didn’t agitate him to the point where he’d go all Dick Cheney on you, he’d probably have stories for days while you waited for turkeys, plus watching Knight operate a turkey call might be a high point in anyone’s life.↵

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