Happy Hunter

Jackson looks out at the pond on the right side of the fairway.

"Rat," he says, pointing. A muskrat nose plows the surface, creating a ripple. The animal is carrying plant stalks in its mouth. There are V's behind it.

"Two," says the golfer. "Three. Four of them. Building."

Bo has always liked wild critters. Likes to hunt them and fish them and eat them. One of his great joys is being the owner with 12 other men of a private, 700-acre hunting preserve in northern Indiana, where, as he says, "I can sit with the guys and cuss, drink, scratch and fart, and nobody cares." Has he ever eaten muskrat?

"Nope," he says. "Possum. As a kid."

Squirrel?

"Oh, yeah."

Rabbit?

"Hell, yeah. Rabbit, deer, turkey, alligator, elk, wild pig, pheasant, ducks, geese, all of it. I'll eat anything, if it don't eat me."

A rifle and shotgun aficionado, Jackson begins a hunting story, then interrupts himself to say, "I'm gonna do one thing I don't like to do—look for a ball." In all the chatter he has mashed one that could be anywhere. He looks for no more than eight seconds. "That's it," he says. He drops a new ball. "So these raccoons, it's a constant war at my house. But lately I believe I have eradicated their asses. I shot one down the throat, he was hissing at me. Shot a mom right between the eyes. With my .22 pellet pistol. Back when I was playing for the White Sox, I came home after a night game, and Linda couldn't get to the garbage can because one was hissing at her. I ran upstairs, got my gun, cracked the window and peeked out and made a noise like"—and here Jackson makes a sound that is impossible to put into letters, but mimics, for those who are raccoon savvy, the throaty, hungry noise the masked animals make on summer nights when they fearlessly roam suburbia—"and he came around the corner and put his head right in the crosshairs. I shot him, and he did one of those Moe, Larry and Curly circle things."