Bobby Worthington takes spectacular photographs of wildlife and nature scenes. He writes books and provides seminar instruction, and he does graphic design and has dabbled in website creation.
He's internationally recognized in two fields: bowhunting trophy whitetail deer and target archery. He's had seven of his big bucks featured in North American Whitetail magazine - more than any other hunter - and all seven were taken with a bow.
He's considered an expert on the philosophies as well as techniques of bowhunting whitetails. One of his books on the subject, "Passion Quest for Phantoms of the Forest," sells for $135. It and others are available at www.bobbyworthington.com.
And the 61-year-old Worthington is a record-setting world champion archer, having just dominated the International Bowhunters Organization traditional world meet last month at the Twin Oaks range at Chapmansboro, Tenn. The IBO is the other major outdoor, 3D competition group in the United States besides the Archery Shooters Association, and the National Field Archery Association governs most major indoor meets.
Worthington, a lifelong Pikeville, Tenn., resident and 21-year employee of the state prison there, won the NFAA indoor nationals this year in Louisville, Ky. He followed with his seventh state championship, breaking a state record for the fourth time.
Having returned to traditional archery competition four years ago, he's won three of the last four prestigious Tennessee Classics at Twin Oaks - with national and even international participation - and finished second the other year, when he was coping with a devastating family tragedy.
Worthington oversees the recreation department at the Bledsoe County Corrections Complex, where his son Clay, then 20, also worked until drowning in a flash flood in front of the family's home in April 2013. And although their deep Christian faith and friends' support have sustained Bobby and his wife and their other son since then, Clay's memory continues to propel them forward as well.
"This world championship was for Clay," Worthington said this week.
Appropriately so, apparently, as the world-beater with a bow has known no one who was more of a proverbial straight arrow than his departed son.
"During the 20 years I had the privilege to know him, he never drank any alcoholic beverage, smoked a cigarette, said a curse word, talked bad about anyone or told a lie. Clay was not an ordinary young man," Worthington wrote in a tribute on his website, where many responders gave supporting evidence about the son's character.
"What a fine young man he was," one wrote, "kind-hearted, bright, talented, humble, good-humored, even-keeled and wonderful to be in the company of."
Bobby Worthington began shooting a bow when he was 10 or 11.
"My dad made me a hickory recurve," he recalled.
Clay and brother A.J. both began sooner, under their father's direction, but Clay was 11 when he "arrowed" his first deer, as the website describes it.
"Archery is really growing now, probably faster than what they call the 'Golden Era of Archery' in the 1950s and '60s," Bobby Worthington said. "I think there's several reasons for that. The National Archery in the Schools Program is a big part of that, and TV shows and movies like 'The Hunger Games' have sparked interest."
In the IBO world competition July 17-18 - the first in which he competed since 1996, when he finished second - Worthington scored 580 points in three days in his Senior Recurve Unaided (finger release, no sights) category. That broke the old record by 41 points and handily beat everyone else in all categories.
And he capped the weekend in style.
"They get the top six from the previous two days together on Sunday for a Grand Slam, and I wore a pink shirt on Sunday," Worthington said.
Why? That was his son's favorite shirt color.
Only "real men" can make that work, Clay used to say. And Bobby happens to be "the real deal," according to noted deer hunter Gene Wensel. "A finely tuned woodsman extraordinaire and a very unique human being."
Contact Ron Bush at rbush@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6291.