Had Dominic Polombo been flipping through social media posts when he stumbled across the buck photo purportedly taken less than 5 miles from his suburban Pittsburgh home, he’d probably have dismissed it as a hoax.
The 30-year-old law enforcement officer might wear a badge made of tin, but his cap most certainly isn’t. Chances of seeing such a whitetail where he lives and hunts are slimmer than encountering a Chupacabra dancing among headstones in a local cemetery.
But this big buck photo was shared by Justin Brantner, a friend he’d met in a chat group, serious-minded folk who live and breathe deer hunting.
Although Dominic admits he was still skeptical, he closely monitored a 2-mile stretch of road almost every evening for three weeks.
At 8:20 p.m. on Aug. 30, however, just when was ready to declare the exercise a complete waste of time and gasoline, he drove past a field and saw the unmistakable buck only 30 yards off the road. He stopped and ogled the deer and its velvet-covered rack and even got some video footage of it.
“I remember thinking, This might be possible. I might pull this off,” he said. “The very next day, I began knocking on doors.”
Dominic learned the area was home to lots of anti-hunters, but he managed to get permission to at least put out 10 trail cameras on three properties.
He collected the first image of the buck on Sept. 6, followed by three or four more per week. The timing and location of the images helped Dominic determine the buck’s core area. Still, it took yet another week for him to find someone who’d let him hunt, and the closest he could get was 3/4 mile.
Understandably, he was thrilled when cameras at the new site began yielding photographs of his target buck.
“I figured out, from images on the original camera and another, that when the deer took a certain path, it was always whenever a northeast wind was blowing,” he said.
Such a breeze was supposed to come through on Saturday, Sept. 20.
Although the temperature was supposed to be in the 80s that day, Dominic was out there for a hang-and-hunt, 20 yards off the main trail and 50 yards from one of the cameras that had yielded photos of the buck. The day was a bust, but he left his stand and climbing sticks in place, determined to return with his bow even if the expected southeast wind would greet him.
A couple of hours after settling in at 5 p.m., he saw a small 6-pointer at 200 yards. While watching it through binoculars, he caught a glimpse of another deer — the big one.
“My face got super hot, and my throat dropped into my stomach,” he said. “I was very pumped, and I even got tunnel vision.”
He watched the two bucks, as well as a big mainframe 4x4, as they eased toward him. The big one and the 8-pointer sparred a little en route. The 4x4 was in the lead, followed by the 6-pointer; the big one was bringing up the rear.
As far as Dominic was concerned, there was only one deer out there he wanted. He completely lost track of the other two.
When the big one came into range, Dominic tried numerous times to stop it by mouth-grunting.
“I’m thinking, How can this deer not hear me?” he said.
After his seventh or eighth string of mehs, the big whitetail finally stopped at only 20 yards, and Dominic released his arrow. He saw it hit, heard the thwack, and even saw the arrow bury in the ground beyond the skewered animal.
Half an hour later, he plucked the blood-soaked arrow from the ground. There was no blood trail the first 30 yards, but then the sign became obvious. After connecting the red dots for 40 more yards, Dominic looked over and saw the expired animal’s white belly.
“I just cried like a baby,” he said. “The camera pics don’t do justice to this animal.”
After delivering the news to his wife and mom, he began the arduous 185-yard drag to his truck.
“I was a one-man team that evening,” he said. “I stopped every 10 or 15 yards to catch my breath. That was the heaviest deer I’d ever dragged, and I’ve dragged a lot of them.
“By the time it was over, I was more than a bucket of sweat,” Dominic said.
“Loading was even tougher. I just dragged the deer so that its rack was right at the tailgate, and then I sort of deadlifted the deer’s head onto it and began backing up and pulling.
“A neighbor watched the whole thing,” he added.
Will Leonard scored the 18-pointer, a mainframe 5x5, for Buckmasters, arriving at 181 5/8 inches. The antlers fell into the record book’s Irregular category.
Dominic is dedicating the buck to his late grandfather, Michael Delano Conti Sr.