- Deion Sanders stated he cannot bring himself to shoot deer, which he considers like family on his Texas property.
- Sanders fishes with what he calls his ‘partner, nine,’ implied to be a handgun, for protection against snakes, coyotes, and wild hogs.
- During a recent fishing trip, Sanders said he caught a ‘huge’ turtle that ultimately ‘didn’t make it.’
Colorado football coach Deion Sanders likes to fish for bass on his lakes in Texas and recently implied he had to take out a ‘huge’ turtle during his team’s recent bye week.
He also keeps a “nine” with him in case he needs to defend himself from snakes, coyotes or wild hogs.
But he draws a line when it comes to deer.
“Only thing about it, I can’t shoot … a deer,” Sanders said on the Colorado Football Coaches Show Thursday, Oct. 23. ‘I can’t.”
Sanders said he has two families of deer on his property in Canton, Texas. “I don’t play that,” he said.
The show’s host, Mark Johnson, asked him if there’s a “differentiation between taking a fish and taking a deer.”
“Yeah,” said Sanders, whose team plays at Utah Saturday night. “Fish is in the food group, right?…”
“You can’t shoot Bambi, right?” Johnson asked.
“I can’t do it,” Sanders said.
Deion Sanders explains his partner ‘nine’
A troubled turtle is another story apparently. Sanders said he was fishing at his estate in Texas during the bye week when he felt a strong pull on his Rat-L-Trap lure. Reeling it in, he discovered it was a rather large turtle. “I mean, huge,” Sanders said.
Sanders then shared that he doesn’t fish “without the comfort of my partner, nine.”
“Nine” is sometimes used as slang for a 9mm handgun, though Sanders didn’t specifically say it was a gun.
“His name is nine, OK,” Sanders said. “I don’t fish without the comfort of that because, you know, where I am, it’s snakes. It’s coyotes. It’s wild hogs. It’s everything. And let’s just say the turtle didn’t make it.”
Sanders, 58, also revealed he’s considering getting a couple of horses for the ranch.
“But I want comfortable,” Sanders said. “I don’t … Nobody’s going to win the Kentucky Derby with me on the back.”
Follow reporter Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. Email: bschrotenb@usatoday.com