Jon Lester - My Most Memorable Hunting Moment
Editor’s Note: Mossy Oak is more than a camouflage, hunting, wildlife management and rural properties company. Mossy Oak is made up of some of the best people in the world. This week you’ll meet 29-year old Jon Lester from Washington State, who was drafted by the Boston Red Sox in 2002 at only age 18, and who spent 4 years in the minor leagues and then went to the big leagues in 2006. Lester is currently one of the best left-handed pitchers in the sport of baseball, is starting for the Boston Red Sox and has the best record in baseball for 2013. Lester, a Mossy Oak ProStaffer, also is a hunter, a cancer survivor and a family man.
A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to go to Missouri and hunt with Mark and Terry Drury during the rut on the backside of a large cut soybean field, facing a cedar thicket. Mark and Terry expected the bucks to be running in the cedar thicket early in the morning. Our blind was set-up, so our backs were to the soybean field. Just after first light, about 70 yards to our right, a small spike buck came out of the cedars. He started moving down the fence row behind us. Next I saw a 4 pointer, a 6-point buck 
and then a 3-1/2-year-old 8 pointer, all walking down the same scrape line on the fence row behind us. Behind those bucks, I spotted a monster-sized 8 pointer coming down the fence row and working scrapes. Right behind us on the same trail we had used to get to our blind was an opening about 15-yards away. When I spotted the buck walking toward the opening, I already had drawn my PSE Dream Season bow. The cameraman hunting with me grunted and stopped the buck in the opening. At that point, I already had my pinsight on the buck’s shoulder, and I released the arrow. When the buck took the arrow, he ran across the bean field. Just as he reached the top of the hill, he fell over. We didn’t have to blood trail him at all, because we watched him go down. The 8-point buck scored 168 on Pope & Young.
This hunt finally sealed the deal that had started several years earlier on the Drurys and me hunting together. A friend of mine, Jim Thome, had played baseball for the Indians, the Phillies, Baltimore and Chicago, and I expect him to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, since he’d hit 500 home runs in his career. Jim knew I liked to hunt, and his agent asked Mark Drury to call me. Mark and I talked back and forth for more than a year, and he invited me to come hunt with him and Terry.
A pitcher doesn’t always throw strikes and win ball games. Just like a pitcher, a hunter is often unsuccessful, regardless of who he is, and where he hunts. On my first hunt with Mark and Terry, I failed to take a deer. Then in November of 2011, Mark invited me back to hunt with him in Missouri, and that was when I took the big 8 point, while wearing Mossy Oak Obsession. I really liked that pattern. I first started shooting a bow in 2004, and started hunting only with a bow when I moved to Atlanta. I bought a 500-acre woodlot there, in 2009, and found I enjoyed bowhunting more than I did gun hunting. I got my first PSE bow in 2009. Because I mostly hunt from a tree stand, I have to say my favorite pattern is Mossy Oak Treestand.
For more information on Jon Lester, CLICK HERE.
Tomorrow: The Boston Red Sox’s Jon Lester Remembers His Most Memorable Moment in Baseball
