CANAL FULTON ‒ If Tim Valentine is not in the woods, he’s prepping to hunt — targeting property, watching camera footage, taking any piece of information he can to prepare.
“It’s kind of hard to explain, but I want to say it’s like my church. That’s where I do my best reflecting,” said Valentine, 31-year-old wealth adviser. “There’s just something about being immersed in the outdoors that just gets me to my core.”
On Sept. 28, he got a whitetail deer so large it placed him in the Stark County Buckmasters’ record book and possibly the Buckeye Big Buck Club standings.
Stark County hunter bags big buck
The hunt for this deer started a year earlier when Valentine saw it on opening weekend in 2024, no more than 20 yards away sparring with another whitetail in the Canton-Massillon area.
“He was a trophy then, but I knew that he was on the younger side. I knew he hadn’t reached his potential,” Valentine said.
He doesn’t pursue the majority of the deer he crosses paths with. But this one was special.
“As he grew, I was admiring the heck out of him. I would go with my daughter, and the twins, who were 1 at that time, would be in the backseat. But we would all drive out there in the evenings and I’d have my video camera … and it was really cool,” he recalled.
In a perfect world, Valentine would have let the deer grow another year, but as the 2025 season was approaching, the pressure was mounting.
Local hunters started to murmur about seeing a monarch, an animal with 16 points or more, in the area. On top of that, the landowner planned to sell the property and Valentine wouldn’t be allowed to hunt there anymore.
With opening day for the hunting season expecting inconsistent winds, he feared that wind would expose him so he waited patiently.
The day he finally pulled the bow back and tagged the buck was “surreal.”
CJ Miller, Valentine’s friend, helped recover the deer that night. Even though they had spent the offseason discussing the deer, the sheer size was still surprising.
“I had seen it on camera before, but nothing prepares you for in person,” said Miller, 31, of Massillon.
The deer ended up bigger than either had expected with antlers measuring 186 1/8 inches, the ninth biggest deer in Stark County that was hunted with a compound bow, according to Buckmasters.
The Buckeye Big Buck Club, where Valentine also works as a scorer, uses the Boone and Crockett scoring system. There have been 22,000 deer recorded in the club’s record book and 165 in Stark County, only 21 have recorded 180-inch antlers or longer.
At Buckeye, Valentine’s harvest measured at 177 1/8 inches due to a drying requirement. Assuming there’s not a bigger entry, he will be in the top 20 all time in Buckeye’s Stark standings regardless of weapon type when they finally post last season’s data in February 2027.
“I showed the deer to as many people that wanted to see it cause … I was like, ‘Oh, this is the ninth biggest ever,'” Valentine said. “I’m very proud of it, you know.”
“It’s pretty cool because we’re still young guys. It doesn’t seem real that he’s accomplishing that,” Miller said.
Lindsay Thomas Jr., chief communications officer for the National Deer Association, agreed. For a typical deer, a mature buck is going to have four to six antler points on each side. But when hunters find a non-typical deer — like Valentine’s — that’s when you find the less common 16 points, he said.
“That’s a pretty good deer, really outstanding deer in terms of the record book,” he said.
Scott Peters, a wildlife management supervisor with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Wildlife, said he sees only see a couple of 16-point deer on an average year based on his years of working checkpoint stations.
“It’s a deer of a lifetime for most people, but not off the charts,” Peters said. “It’s really arbitrary how people count their points.”
ODNR deer program administrator John McCoy said in an emailed statement: “We had roughly 96,000 antlered deer harvested in the 2025 season. During the game check process, hunters that harvest an antlered deer are asked to input the number of points so we can actually put a number to the rarity of a 16-point deer. As predicted, most (60%) were reported to have 8-10 points. Just 484 harvests were recorded last season with 16 points or more — that’s 0.05%.”
‘It’s a rush’
“Family, career and hunting” is a motto that defines Valentine’s character.
Valentine comes from a hunting family. His dad, Dave Valentine, introduced the sport to him and his sister at a young age. He recalled his father training him on gun safety and deer concealment, asking property owners for permission to hunt and teaching him to get out of his comfort zone.
“I always looked up to my dad, and he was a big hunter, and I thought that was really cool. He always gave me the opportunity to go whenever I wanted to. And I took it every time,” Valentine said.
Dave Valentine, 60, of Canton said his son has always shared his love for hunting.
“We get excited. I think when you stop getting excited, it’s probably time to move on to a different hobby,” said the senior Valentine, a former Stark County Ducks Unlimited chairman.
The two have even competed in the two-member Quest Hunt Co. competition, placing fourth in the state, thanks to Tim’s recent catch.
“Every year we try to get bigger deer over and over and the bar seems to keep raising all the time,” he said. “It’s a rush.”
Tim Valentine has felt the rush several times throughout his hunting career.
“It’s like an absolute release of emotions,” he said. “Like everything just kind of comes and that’s when the shakes really start coming in, the adrenaline. The deer I got in 2024, I broke down and cried. It was an awesome video. Like I cried on film because I had twins coming. They were born four days later. I knew I’d have one crack at it, and it would probably be my only chance. You usually get one chance at the deer, and it just came together and it was just a culmination of emotions.”
Spreading the love of hunting
Now, the Valentines are spreading their passion to the next generation.
He has taken his daughter, Meadow Valentine, 5, on several scouting trips. Though she hasn’t hunted yet, she has already shown a strong interest in the sport just like her father did at that age.
“I love it. I love it. She’s going to be a great hunter. She’s already shooting a bow right now,” Dave Valentine said of his granddaughter.
“I think she’s going to hunt, but you know Tim has the same mindset I have. We’re not ever going to force anything. If they want to do it, they want to do it.”
This experience doesn’t stop at family. Tim Valentine has guided several entry-level hunters in the past, even at college when he attended Ohio University.
“A passion of mine has always been taking kids out or people who haven’t hunted before. I just want to represent hunting in the best, most responsible way,” he said.
“This kid that I took out, it makes me emotional, he literally jumped up. It reminded me of my first year with my dad I did the same thing, he jumped up and hugged (his father), wrapped his legs around his dad and cried.”
At the end of the day Valentine hopes that people are able to enjoy the outdoors responsibly like himself. Whether that be hunting, jogging or just enjoying coffee, he hopes everyone can find their own “church” outdoors.
Reach Aaron at 330-580-8428 or ahhughes@usatodayco.com. On X: @AaronHughe2
This article originally appeared on The Repository: Canal Fulton man makes Stark County deer hunting record book
Reporting by Aaron Hughes, Canton Repository / The Repository
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By Aaron Hughes, Canton Repository | USA TODAY Network
