For Bo Ezell, skipping breakfast to go squirrel hunting is a no-brainer. Swapping a fork for a deer rifle, however, is a tough call.
The 13-year-old was staying with his grandparents last December when forced to choose between staying indoors and eating and accompanying a neighbor who’d reported seeing a really big buck in her pasture. He reluctantly chose the latter, a decision that would earn him celebrity status in Tennessee.
Bo awoke early on the morning of Dec. 28, and he went outside to look for his AWOL Labrador retriever, Sadie. When he returned with the dog, only his grandfather was awake.
The boy wanted to go squirrel hunting, but his granddad gave a thumbs-down.
Later in the morning, a neighbor called Bo’s grandma to see if he wanted to hunt the big buck she’d just seen on her land. With stomach growling, he did.
He and the landowner rode out on a four-wheeler.
They were side by side when Bo took the shot – make that shots – at the buck, which was on the opposite creek bank 40 yards away, working a scrape.
The first of five shots broke the 25-pointer’s shoulder. The last anchored it.
When the thoroughly rattled young hunter approached the finally unmoving whitetail, his jaw dropped. The enormous rack looked even bigger on the 165-pound, rut-worn deer.
“I said, ‘I’m going to get it mounted!’ and immediately called my dad,” Bo told Gita Smith, who’s writing the story for Rack magazine. “He was at work, and the only words I could get out were, ‘I killed a monster!’”
With a score of 217 2/8 inches, the buck’s antlers are the largest ever recorded from Benton County. It’s also the BTR’s No. 1 Rocky Top whitetail from the 2018 season.
— Read Recent Blog! Squirrel, Squirrel, Deer: Austin Gaines learned an important lesson last deer season: Never assume the thing you heard is the same thing you heard before that.