Robert Polito has spent years on the Kenner police force learning how to bring his weapon to bear in a pinch, and all of that training came together Saturday when he saw a huge buck pop out of the woods on his St. Helena Parish lease.
“I was sitting (a box stand) just inside the woods of a food plot, and he came out at a little trot right by my bow stand,” said Polito, known online as ROB213. “I probably had a window of about 40 yards to get a shot.”
Polito knew the buck was in the area, having caught glimpses of the deer last season.
“I saw him twice last year during bow season,” he said. “I didn’t get a good look at him, but I knew he was a big buck.”
So he spent the entire early bow season this year trying to ambush the animal, but never saw it until it trotted onto the 40-yard-wide food plot during the opening morning of rifle season.
“He came out in a light trot like he was on a mission,” Polito said. “I was lucky to get a shot. I guess you go back to that police training.”
Everything happened so fast that the hunter didn’t even have time to try and stop the deer.
“I probably didn’t have more than 5 seconds to get a shot,” he said. “I didn’t have time to get nervous.”
Polito simply grabbed his rifle, jammed the barrel out the stand’s window and picked a hole in the trees on the far side of the plot.
“When it hit that space in the trees, I shot,” he said. “When I shot, it just disappeared.
“I thought, ‘Lord, did I miss him?’”
He waited a few minutes, and then climbed out of the stand to go check for blood.
“When I got over there, he was laying right where I shot him,” Polito said.
He was stunned with what the piney woods around Pine Grove had produced.
“I’ve heard of ground shrinkage, but this was ground growage,” Polito said. “It was almost like it had been dropped from an alien ship.”
The 12-point was monstrous, later weighing 230 pounds at a nearby feed store. However, the body size wasn’t the only impressive thing – the rack also was huge.
“I was dumbfounded,” Polito said.
The buck has yet to be green scored, but Polito said the taxidermist working on the mount said it should top 160 inches Boone & Crockett.
“I’m 50 years old, and I told my wife I was going to Illinois and kill one of those big bucks, but with the economy like it is I can’t afford to go up there,” Polito said. “And then I kill a deer like that in a place is wasn’t supposed to be.
“Sometimes the good Lord smiles on you.”