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Patterning a whitetail who only appears on camera at night can feel like a tall order. Just ask 35-year-old Jeff Ankley, who shot a unique nontypical he nicknamed \u201cCaptain Hook\u201d on his land in northern Illinois this fall after only seeing the buck in daylight twice in three years.<\/p>\n
Ankley and his wife, Caitlin Munson, saved up and purchased 5 acres of wooded land adjacent to their half-acre home in 2020. At the time, Ankley didn\u2019t realize that the land they\u2019d bought was shaped like an hourglass, surrounded by more suburban areas and creating a small but ideal deer sanctuary. The following hunting season, Ankley set up trail cameras and started getting pictures of decent-sized bucks \u2014 including one particularly big nontypical who was almost completely nocturnal.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe piqued my interest mainly because he had hooks coming off his G2s,\u201d Ankley tells Outdoor Life<\/em>. \u201cHe was a young deer, I estimated him to be about 3.5 years old at that time. He only came around at night, and we would get pictures of him randomly. He showed up once in the daylight that year, and then he completely vanished.\u201d<\/p>\n Ankley didn\u2019t see evidence of him again until 2022, when a trail camera captured a daylight photo of the buck on Oct. 31.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThen he vanished again, and we didn\u2019t see him again for the season,\u201d Ankley says. \u201cThen, going into this deer season, we put our cameras out mid-August and didn\u2019t get any pictures of him until the second week of November. At that point I didn\u2019t even know if he was still around. We were close to some forest reserves that were getting culled, so I didn\u2019t know if he got [killed by another hunter] or moved on and found a new domain of his own. But after I got that picture I was determined.\u201d<\/p>\n On Nov. 18, Ankley set up in his stand on the south side of his property. Last light was creeping up on him. Around 4:40 p.m., Ankley heard sticks breaking behind his tree.<\/p>\n \u201cI turned around, grabbed my bow, and sure enough I see him coming down a thicket line somewhat in the open,\u201d Ankley says. \u201cThere were two different target bucks we\u2019ve been chasing this year. I knew it was either one of those bucks based on tine length.\u201d<\/p>\n The buck closed to 23 yards. Ankley predicted the deer would hop on a trail that ran parallel to Ankley\u2019s stand.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI had one shooting lane on [that trail], maybe two feet in diameter,\u201d he says. \u201cI knew if I stopped him in that spot I was going to get a shot. So when he got about three steps in there I drew my bow back. He stopped just past the opening, far enough to where I couldn\u2019t really see his head, but I knew he was a shooter. I took the shot. He reared up and kicked, ran out about thirty yards, and stopped out in some marsh grass behind a bunch of brush. I remember thinking to myself, I just killed the biggest deer of my life.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n Ankley waited about 45 minutes and climbed out of the stand to return home. He and Munson eventually went out to pick up a blood trail.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe found decent blood right off the bat where I\u2019d shot him. As we started tracking the blood trail got thinner, we saw a spot where it looked like he bedded down, so we made the decision after about an hour and a half of tracking him to pull out. I didn\u2019t sleep great that night.\u201d<\/p>\n The pair went back out the next morning right around sunrise to pick up the trail again.<\/p>\n