Unless you’ve been sleeping under a pile of deerskins, you already know NFL legend Brett Favre has retired.  So why is this beat-to-death news appearing in Buck Tracker? Because the man is a whitetail freak.

Oh, I loved Favre for the same reasons everyone else did. He was tough, he played with the zeal of a teenager, and he conducted himself like a gentleman. And, of course, he was a Packer. As a Wisconsin native who grew up in the Lombardi era, I didn’t so much choose to be a Packer fan as I had it bottle-fed to me. So Favre kept the fun in cheering for the Green & Gold…though I’ll have to admit I never missed a Sunday afternoon in the deer woods to do that.

And now Favre won’t have to, either. While most folks concentrate on Favre’s on-field stats, Wisconsin’s 700,000 deer hunters recognized something equally important - he was one of them. If there was time after a Sunday home game, or if the team had a Monday off, Brett was in a tree stand with a bow in his hands.

Coincidentally, the central Wisconsin farm Favre hunted lies not far from the Bestul family homestead. In fact, an area game warden was the guy who registered Favre’s deer when he was successful. It did my heart good to know that one of the NFL’s biggest guns loved deer hunting in the same woods that taught me to love the whitetail.

So No. 4 will now chase deer in the woods of his native Mississippi. We’re gonna miss him here up north next fall - though probably for different reasons than the rest of the nation. And though I’m sure Brett will have his share of Sundays when he misses his old job, I’m betting the deer woods will provide sufficient therapy.