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Luke’s Pinup Buck

Luke’s Pinup Buck

By Mike Handley

From the 1940s through the 1980s, guys and gals taped or pinned posters on their walls to gaze at and fantasize about their hearts’ desires. The practice pushed the word “pinup” into dictionaries.

Now, computer wallpaper has pretty much replaced paper versions. And soon, smart phones and tablets could replace desktop computers.

It has already started.

For nearly a year, Luke Polzin had only to awaken his cell phone to gaze at his heart’s desire. The hunter from Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, actually met it in 2019.

Eight years earlier, Luke joined his father and uncle in leasing a Jefferson County farm with 20 wooded acres that are like an oasis in a desert of cropland. In November 2018, a real stud visited a scrape monitored by a trail camera.

“I saved the pictures to my phone and set the best one as my screensaver,” he told Josh Honeycutt, who’s writing the story for Rack magazine. “I looked at that picture every day.”

Luke usually burns a week of vacation the last week of October. The pinup buck passed in front of the lens on the morning of the 30th.

That same breezy afternoon, Luke took a buck decoy and some doe pee to the woods, a tactic that has worked for him multiple times. He doesn’t attach the antlers to it.

The mercury was falling dramatically as he climbed into place. Bucks were chasing does, and he was pumped.

It was nearing 5:00 when he spotted an enormous buck rise from its bed on the neighboring property. Forty-five minutes later, the deer began walking toward the pond Luke was watching.

When it saw the decoy, it came to within 25 yards and stopped. That was close enough for a bow shot, but Luke held off, waiting for it to take one more step.

That step was quick and in the wrong direction.

Fortunately for Luke, however, the beefy whitetail returned and gave him a 20-yard shot.

“I watched the buck take off, stumble, stagger and go down about 80 yards,” Luke said. “That’s when I started to hyperventilate. I couldn’t believe it. The buck that I had looked at on my phone every day for nearly a year was down in front of me!”

The estimated 4- to 5 1/2-year-old 16-pointer has a BTR score of 198 7/8 inches.

— Read Recent Blog! Click Your Boots Together Three Times ... The fifth time Harold Jones drove from Shreveport, Louisiana, to Kansas, he wasn’t headed for public land or to hunt with an outfitter.

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