The Blooding Rite

The NFL is full of avid outdoorsmen. This list includes previous and current quarterback, including Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz, who last year made national headlines after buying his offensive line shotguns toward the end of the season.

What could be this year’s most notable story of an NFL player hunting during a bye week came last week, when Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Hundley joined wide receiver Jeff Janis on Janis’ property in hopes of harvesting his first deer.

Long story short, Hundley killed a 2-year-old doe, the USA Today reports.

Hundley confirmed any speculation on November 2, when reporters asked how he spent the Packers bye week.

“I got to study a lot more, but I also got to take a breath and get away from football,” he told the USA Today. “If you guys didn’t see, I went hunting in Jeff Janis’ backyard. I shot my first deer.”

The lone picture (thus far) from the hunt came via Jeff Janis’ Instagram account on October 26, which is below.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BauHNP-HczO/?taken-by=jrjanis

Brett Hundley — quarterback and hunter

According to Sports Illustrated, Hundley and Janis’ bowhunting adventures started last winter, when Hundley was a rookie and backup to Aaron Rodgers.

The story follows Hundley’s role as being No. 2 behind one of the league’s best QBs, but it also dissects what led the Chandler, Arizona, native to the Wisconsin woods that are Janis’ backyard.

To keep it simple: Hundley wanted to start hunting because he had the opportunity.

The fifth-round 2015 draftee out of UCLA said he didn’t have the opportunity to chase whitetail in Chandler, Arizona, and obviously didn’t have the chance in Los Angeles. But once joining the Packers, Hundley told SI he’d like to take every opportunity to discover “because when in Rome.”

Related: 5 NFL players who hunt

According to the story, Hundley and Janis went hunting several times, but Hundley, equipped with a Mathews bow, never got the chance to harvest his first deer. That is, until October 25.

“I always said I want to shoot with my Mathews bow first. Not a crossbow, just my regular bow first,” Hundley said in a YouTube video. “And I got one yesterday. It was a mom, walking around about 2 years old and we actually have video of it. We were out there for about 2 or 3 hours, she came in and I put it on her.”

“This deer was walking yesterday … now it’s in the pan.”

“Chef Hundley’s getting to work,” as the quarterback says in the 3-minute video of him cooking and eating venison for the first time, is certainly accurate.

After harvesting the buck, Hundley went through the entire processing steps, including de-hiding and de-boning.

“The experience of cutting the deer, I had never done it before, so thank you, Nick, for helping me out. Crazy experience. Just the breakdown of the hide to the trimming of the tenderloin and the back straps, you know, what we’re using for sausage, and just to see this stuff coming together it’s just unbelievable.”

Here’s the video of Hundley talking about his kill while cooking the venison:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=19&v=X77Anognn-s

Featured image: Keith Allison (Flickr)