Y. fund-rasing efforts going outdoors

Ty Detmer has played Daniel Boone and Davey Crockett his whole life. His dad introduced him to that role, a lover of outdoors, a keeper of the hunt, a man with a fishing rod in hand. And he isn't too shabby with a football either.

There are guys like Detmer, who've had hunting in their blood for generations and BYU's athletic department is trying to marry them up with a fund-raising project. Detmer is onboard — offering up for bid, hunts on his private ranch outside of Austin, Texas.

I've known guys like Detmer, who found his way up the Provo River to fish as soon as he landed in Provo. He'd escape to hunt up East Canyon or other spots in Utah whenever he could and his college apartment had an old freezer loaded with venison and elk meat. As a freshman, he once drove to Scofield Reservoir, just to speak to some Boy Scouts and have some dutch-oven cooking.

Detmer pulled a 20-pound lake trout out of Fish Lake the first time he ever saw the place. In high school he won a Texas state trophy contest for the biggest deer taken. The guy's got 20-15 vision and can drop a white tail deer at 600 yards.

People wonder when and why Detmer doesn't get into college coaching.

Well, he's drawing a big NFL check right now. But come autumn, Detmer is also seriously drawn to the woods and the hunt. He's been balancing football and the hunt all his life. He might want a break to fiddle with his inborn passion. He can trace his roots back to the "old 300" and Zaddock Woods, who built Woods Fort near St. Louis, a place where Daniel Boone himself strolled through. Detmer's distant cousins died fighting in the Alamo. Woods was in business with Moses Austin, the father of Stephen F. Austin. You get the idea.

Karl Malone is this kind of guy, a woodsman.

I know lots of people like this, but my own outdoor prowess, when it comes to hunting, is nothing to brag about and is certainly an embarrassment to my Comanche ancestors. Fishing, now that's another story. I do fish. Hunting always got in the way of fall golf and football.

The man who fixes my cars, Eric Patten, is a huge hunter. He goes for elk in Wyoming or Colorado. Drawing a permit is serious political business in his family. It's as exciting as Christmas and as somber as tax day. Former banker Bob Underwood, who goes on safari in Africa, Spain and other places, just to experience the stalk and the hunt.

It's in their blood.