A year ago, Calvin Cloud didn’t consider antlers the measure of a successful deer season. He’s always been more than happy just to put meat in the family freezer. If a 2 1/2-year-old buck came into range, it was toast.
That was then.
The college quarterback’s mindset changed in late 2023.
Two nights before Christmas, his parents (Dwight and Laura) called him at the gym to say their house was on fire. By the time he got there, firetrucks and ambulances were at the scene, and all the neighbors were in the streets, watching the spectacle.
Calvin’s childhood home wasn’t destroyed, but it was rendered uninhabitable. The family would later have to strip it down to the studs and rebuild. They also lost three dachshunds.
The Clouds lived in a motel for a week until they found a two-bedroom cottage outside the town of Loveland, Ohio, which they were able to rent for 15 months. The owner lived next door, and he told them they could bowhunt the small property.
Twenty-two-year-old Calvin rented an apartment about 10 minutes away.
A couple of days after Dwight and Laura moved in, Calvin saw the biggest whitetail he’d ever seen in the wild, feeding in a 2-acre field next to his parents’ temporary home.
“I’m used to shooting 120-inchers, mainly for meat,” he said. “That buck was huge, a mainframe 8-pointer with droptines on each side. I almost wet my britches.
“I wasn’t all that interested when the landowner said we could hunt. I just said thanks, and then I put it out of mind. After seeing that buck, though, I told my parents: ‘We have a new distraction,’” he said.
Calvin’s first thought was to seek permission from the owner of the adjacent 75 acres, but he learned the woman would not let anyone hunt anything there.
“Those 75 acres (in Warren County) were a deer heaven,” he said. “It was pasture, wooded draws and bean fields.”
Calvin was despondent at first, but then he realized having no hunters there might actually be better.
In two weeks of hunting that year, he had one 50-yard opportunity at the buck, but he passed. The deer was moving in some brush.
That spring, Calvin went to Southwest Oklahoma State. He shared photos of the deer with a friend, who’s a taxidermist, and the guy thought it would score in the high 170s or low 180s.
When he returned to Ohio in May, job one was to set out trail cameras. The next month, his father was walking a dog and spotted the deer. He even got some video footage of it.
“Man, that thing looked like it had a chandelier on its head,” Calvin said. “It had to be the same deer. While there were a whole lot more points — and still time to grow additional ones — it still had the basic characteristics, including the drops. That’s why I called him Hang Time.”
Calvin collected numerous trail camera images in August and September, but they stopped on Sept. 29. The next one came in mid-November, the week he was hunting in Oklahoma.
With renewed fervor, Calvin hunted hard when he returned home. He kept track of the wind and moon phases. He had three stands, a buddy stand in the middle of the property and climbers at both ends. By December, when the images again ceased, he’d sat in one or the other 30 times.
On Dec. 12, his mom called him at the golf course to say Hang Time was in the neighbor’s 10-acre field. He left work right away and parked up the street from his parents’ cottage.
When he mounted a stalk, however, the buck winded him and circled a lake. Calvin, understandably, took the next day off from work.
While he was sliding into his camo the next morning, his mother called and said Hang Time — or some other big buck — was out there. The wind was perfect!
When Calvin arrived at the cottage, he discussed the options with his father. Rather than go to one of the stands, he opted to remain on the ground.
The buck eventually came to within 30 yards of Calvin’s hiding place, but then it saw another buck and some does approaching from the field. Calvin, worried the approaching deer might smell him and ruin everything, took the quartering-away shot.
“I’ve never had buck fever like that,” he said. “Before making the shot, however, I somehow calmed down, took a breath and drew.
“I heard the thud, and then the deer took two steps and face-planted right there,” he continued. “That was a good thing, too, because its rack was only inches away from the lady’s fence. The arrow had gone through the deer and buried in the ground right under it.
“It was a blessing,” he added. “It was definitely a God thing.”
Moments later, his dad came around the corner. He’d witnessed the encounter.
Calvin found out later that the deer he’d been so careful not to mention to anyone but his boss, who doesn’t hunt, wasn’t the well kept secret he thought it was. Three or four other hunters had even bestowed their own nicknames for it.
His taxidermist told him it was either 5 1/2 or 6 1/2 years old.
Buckmasters measurer Rob Meade taped the 24-pointer — a mainframe 3x4 — at 228 3/8 inches, nearly 76 of which are irregular growth.