Most teenagers who want a day off from school must feign an upset stomach, a sore throat, or devise a way to make a thermometer show a fever. Sixteen-year-old Austin Etherington of Piqua, Ohio, had merely to ask his mom.
His reason - and she wanted one - was because the whitetail rut was peaking. It helped that his Uncle Shane Carver was eager to go to the woods as well.
The boy's mother was leery, but she ultimately consented.
"I really wanted to get one because all my buddies had shot deer," Austin said. "So I skipped school Monday morning, Nov. 9."
He and his uncle went to a farm owned by a friend's father - 125 acres of woods in Miami County. His uncle and grandfather had hunted the place for 20 years.
Austin says he used half a bottle of Tink's #69 en route to the 15-foot-tall ladder stand he and his uncle had erected a week earlier. He squirted it on the ground, on his boots and even on the tree to which the ladder was attached.
He spent the first hour and a half glassing the terrain. He also tried rattling and grunting.
About 10 minutes after 8:00, Austin heard leaves crunching and put away his phone.
"I turned around and couldn't believe my eyes. I saw this big white rack, and I was in shock," he said. "I believe the buck, which was downwind of me, was cruising for does. It HAD to smell the Tink's.
"I stood really slowly. Not nervous yet, I was steady. I grabbed my bow, nocked an arrow and drew. When I shot, it felt like the world stopped," he said.
The buck was just 15 yards away.
Austin found his bloodied arrow and the beginnings of a blood trail during the 30- to 45-minute wait for his uncle and grandfather. The threesome found the double-lunged buck 150 yards into their search.
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