Crossbow hunter from Illinois stalks a 50-yard buck through a cornfield

After 25 years of deer hunting, Luke Perzee of Danforth, Illinois, tagged the buck of a lifetime this fall. Pezee, who works for an electric company, was hunting for farmland in Iroquois County, south of Chicago, on the Indiana state line.

“I've been watching this buck for a few years and I saw him in the same spots in a mile square of corn and soybeans,” Perzee said. Outdoor living. “I have seen the deer four times this year, mostly with my family while driving past farms looking for deer.”

He usually saw the deer in standing corn or tall grass. There were deep ditches full of tangled cover and brush, but no trees around to hang a stand on. So Perzee, normally a dedicated bowhunter, borrowed a friend's crossbow for the potentially tricky conditions of stalking standing corn.

Perzee was browsing along the ditch edges and corn on October 15 when he saw the buck, but could not make a connection. On October 17, he drove along country roads until late in the morning, but never saw him. So at 11 a.m. he parked and started sliding through rows of corn where he had seen the buck earlier.

“I slipped six meters further, stopped and glassed and looked for deer,” says Perzee, 40. “Then I continue slowly.”

He hunted that way for 2 hours and never saw a deer. Conditions, he says, were ideal for stalking corn: the weather was sunny and mild, with a 10-mph wind that helped conceal his noise and movement.

“Finally I saw it [a buck] 75 meters further, sprinkled with some CRP at the edge of the corn,” says Perzee. “I could only see a few inches of his antler tips, so I wasn't entirely sure this was the big buck I wanted.”

The buck was alert, looking around and examining his surroundings. Over the next 30 minutes, Perzee crept closer and closer to the buck until he was only 20 yards away.

“I sat down and rested my crossbow on a corn stalk. Then I growled a few times. It felt like an eternity, but after that [the last] Grunting, he stood up and turned around. I took aim and shot.”

The arrow went completely through the ribcage. The buck jumped, then ran 40 yards, licking his side, before dropping dead a few seconds later.

“I just couldn't believe what just happened,” Perzee says. “I called my wife and then my brother. Then I called my 19-year-old nephew CJ Perzee and told him I needed help loading a giant buck I had just shot.

“When I met him, [C.J.] joked, 'What's the matter, old man, can't you load that deer alone?'” Perzee said. “But when CJ saw the buck, he shouted, 'Holy crap!'”

The two loaded the buck and drove it home to show his wife Megan and their daughters Karleigh and Kyrah.

“They were all with me and had seen that buck so many times. It was a real family celebration when they finally got their hands on that deer.”

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A processor weighed the field-dressed buck at 205 pounds and estimated him to be 5.5 years old. His taxidermist scored green at 195 3/8s inches with 16 points.

“I borrowed my friend Alex Hubert's crossbow, and I can't thank him enough for letting me use it,” says Perzee. “This whole thing was just amazing. I am so very happy with this money and everything that comes with it.”