Avid bowhunter Clint Casper turned heads in Ohio earlier this month when he killed a massive whitetail he’s been targeting since last season. Casper tells Field & Stream that he shot the giant buck on the evening of October 2 on his own farm during a lunar cycle that some deer hunters refer to as a “red moon.”
Casper and his father grain farm together in Ohio and have about 600 acres on the farm where they live. He first spotted the buck on that home farm last year and judged him as a 3-and-half year old. “He was probably in the mid-160s, but I knew if he had another year, he could absolutely blow up,” he says. “I rolled the dice and decided to let him walk.”
After November 2025, the deer completely disappeared from Casper’s farm. “He was wintering somewhere else where I didn’t have permission to hunt,” he says. “Then he showed up again this summer in the exact same spot.”
Casper and his two young boys started getting regular pictures of the buck on his cell cams in July. By September 11, it completely shed its velvet and was staying put on the farm. “I knew right then he was going to be a huntable buck again this year,” Casper says.
He says he waited for the front side of a red moon phase to hunt the deer, which finally arrived on October 2. According to the red moon theory, deer tend to daylight more often when the moon exerts its peak gravitational pull on the earth. This happens twice a month when the moon is either directly overhead in the sky or on the exact opposite side of the planet.
“It just so happens that a major cold front lined up perfectly with the red moon,” he says. “The wind shifted from the south to the north-northeast. This buck was a fan of everything except a straight west wind, and I had plenty of daylight pictures of him moving on those north and south winds. I knew this was the time to push the limits.”
He got in the stand around 4 P.M. and caught the buck working a scrape line down below him two hours later. “He was on edge because here were two groundhogs fighting and growling in a secluded food plot right in front of me,” Casper says. “They kept making that high-pitched mad whistle and chasing each other around. It put all the deer on high alert. He didn’t like it at all.”
The buck kept coming despite the ruckus and eventually gave Casper a clean quartering-away shot at 32 yards. “That’s not my favorite angle, but I’m confident in my setup,” he says. “I held the pin right off his front shoulder, knowing it would exit in front of the opposite hip and take out the back lungs and the liver.”
Casper took the shot and watched the arrow sink all the way to the fletchings right behind the shoulder. “With that specific entry angle, I decided to give him overnight to ensure we did it right,” he says. “The next morning, my oldest son, my dad, and I went in to track him. He was lying perfectly dead in his very first bed, only 150 to 160 yards away.”
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Casper’s decision to pass on the buck last year paid off big. By his estimates, it put on 30 inches of antler growth in the off season. With 15 scoreable points and one kicker just under an inch, Casper’s rough green score came in right at 201 inches B&C. “Those 15 points averaged almost 6.5 inches each,” he says. “Both G2s were over 11 inches long, his G3s were over 10 inches, and his G4s and G5s were around 6 and 7 inches. He had a ton of mass with two tiers of tines branching off his main beams, so he would definitely rank as a non-typical.”
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