We have the pleasure of speaking with the NFL's all-time leading scorer. He has been a member of four Super Bowl winning teams and is the proud owner of four championship Super Bowl Rings. His celebrated career spans over two decades. With a twenty-four -year career in the NFL, he has broken Multiple records. Adam Vinatieri is an All-Pro and a shoe in for the Hall of fame. He grew up an avid outdoorsman and he takes home trophy bucks as effortlessly as a last-second field goal with no time left on the clock.
Chris: Adam, I must ask you, how do you sit in a hunting stand with all those Super Bowl rings without making any noise?
Adam: I honestly don't wear them. I don't want to get them too dirty and muddy, but Football has been a blessing for me for many, many years. People always used to ask, what's the worst thing about football? They always think it's injuries and such. I always tell them it is the same season during hunting season, so I don't get to get out in the woods as much during football. But now being retired from football after 24 years in the league I'm getting a little bit more free time. I am still involved with football. I coach my sons football team. But it was definitely a blessing. It allowed me the ability to go travel around the world and do some destination type hunting. But definitely enjoying these past couple fall seasons of being out of football and watching the colors change on the trees, and watching the sunrise and sunset in a stand is a beautiful thing.
Chris: I think the best part of this season is watching the leaves on the ground change color.
Adam: Well, I tell you, this year has been a little hot one day, cold the next day, so I think we're going to get into some consistent weather, and that should hopefully keep the bucks moving around and hopefully we will get a good opportunity later this month.
Chris: You grew up in South Dakota, correct?
Adam: I did.
Chris: You must have had hunting season all year- round while living in South Dakota.
Adam: We really did. My mom's side of the family where farmers from the eastern side of the state, so we did all the upland bird hunting, pheasants, ducks, geese, all that stuff, and a little bit of deer hunting out there as well. But we lived in Rapid City which is right on the black hills, so really good deer hunting, some antelope hunting. If you're a South Dakota resident, there's elk hunting as well. So being in South Dakota, I'm not sure that there's a better state. If you're looking to hunt whitetail deer, maybe you're thinking more like Iowa or Illinois. If you're thinking elk hunting, you might be thinking, Utah, Colorado, some of New Mexico. But for us, being in South Dakota, we had the best of everything. You had deer hunting, elk hunting, bird hunting, there was a lot of great stuff out there. So, I feel like I was very blessed being from South Dakota.
Chris: Did you have a favorite season?
Adam: For me and my family opening weekend of pheasant season, which is like right about now, mid-November, the second and third week of October in South Dakota was amazing. All the relatives got together. My dad, my brothers and myself would all go out there into corn fields and walk and work the dogs and it seemed like every fall, that was the one thing that I looked the most forward too. But now I do a little bit more big game hunting now that I live in Indiana. But yeah, pheasant hunting with the family was definitely a treat because it seemed like there was 25 relatives that would get together and my uncle, who was a farmer back then, he would cut the corn fields. They would cut them in strips that we could handle and stuff. So, I mean, I got spoiled rotten growing up as a kid for sure.
Chris: Sure. You must have had all types of game all over the farm.
Adam: It was unbelievable. You don't limit out every year, obviously, but there were definite years that we kind of had it figured out. Depending on the season and depending on the weather would dictate our success a little bit. But there wasn't a single year or day that I regretted the time spent out there. Getting to spend time with the family and siblings and the dogs and watching them work and all that stuff was amazing for sure.
Chris: Have you raised your kids around hunting as well?
Adam: One-hundred percent. Yes. My two boys love it a lot. My daughter has dabbled in it. She has hunted with me a couple of times. I don't think it's necessarily her favorite thing. I think getting up early in the morning when it's cold out, she's probably feels like she would rather be sleeping. But my two boys definitely love it. My wife enjoys going out in the woods, but she doesn't want to pull the trigger or sling an arrow at anything. She enjoys being out in the outdoors, but not necessarily killing anything.
Chris: Yes, that's my son. He likes the outdoors, being out in the woods. He has no desire to shoot anything.
Adam: I tell you, for me, it was always during football season, it always was a great decompressor for me. The season's long and stressful, people around all the time. And for me to be able to get out into the woods and hear nothing other than birds waking up in the morning and the owls in the evening and turkeys gobbling in the spring. For me, just getting away from humanity, getting out in the wild was a thing that made me happy.
Chris: A lot of people don't understand that.
Adam: For sure. If they have never done it, they don't understand it. They think, why do you want to get up at four or five o'clock in the morning and sit out in the cold and do all that stuff? It's hard to explain to them until they've done it. Only then do they get it.
Chris: What traditions have you taken away from hunting, which stands out the most?
Adam: For me, it is just being around the people that I want to be around. Growing up as a kid being able to hunt with my dad and my brothers has been great. Now my brother's kids and my kids, it is just a family tradition. I think for me it is less about hanging the animal on the wall and more about spending time with your family. Non-hunters always ask, why do you have these dead animals on your wall? I tell them that every one of those animals is a memory. It represents a time in my life. I can tell you exactly where I was, who I was with, what the weather was, whatever the situation may be. So, for me, it is a snapshot in time of spending time with my family. And a lot of times it is hard to get everybody together and to go spend time. For one reason or another, the hunting season was traditionally the time where we could all get together and maybe it was twice a year you get together as a family tradition. And it seems like it was always kind of around hunting and getting together for that. So, for me, that was the tradition for me.
Chris: When you played ball did the Patriots or the Colts have anything to say about you hunting?
Adam: No. That was always one thing that I always made sure when signing contracts. Sometimes they want you to minimize risks. They do not want you taking part in extreme sports or so-called dangerous activities. No skydiving, no driving race cars etc. I always told them, “Hey, listen”, I hunt, so I'll be carrying a gun in the field, and I like to go to lots of different destinations across the world. I always told them that is non-negotiable. I told them, if you want me to play for your team, I'm going to do this stuff. I suppose more as I got older in my career. But I didn't do a lot of hunting when I was in Massachusetts, just because it's so populated that it was hard to find ground to go hunt. And if I could find it, it was a long-ways out. But here in Indiana, it is a very hunter friendly state. So, it is really easy to meet people that will let you come hunt and or, I've got a little bit of ground myself now, so yeah, no, they never got that too much. I always had a couple of teammates on every team that I played on, we had a couple of kids from Iowa or Kansas or whatever that like to hunt and enjoy that. So, they didn't mock at it too terribly much. And occasionally I got to take a teammate or two out and introduce hunting to them as well. Click the link below for the rest of the interview
Adam Vinatieri: Still Breaking Records (nxtbook.com) https://www.americanoutdoornews.com/laramy-miller-the-last-mountain-man/
