Sometimes it isn't what we see in the woods. It matters. I've hunted
all my life. I'll probably keep right on honting until I'm too old and
crippled to get myself out there. To be honest, I have never seen
anything that I couldn't explain. I can't say the same for the things I've
heard. There are always going to be dead trees that fall over, And
then there are the smaller critters that make noises outside of their own chatter.
Squirrels drop nuts, and raccoons and rabbits scurry around and make scratching sounds.
Even deer can make a lot of noises. I know that every hunter knows
that, and anyone who knows anything about the woods knows what silence means.
Usually that means a predator is nearby. It could be any kind of predator,
depending on where you are. In my neck of the woods, it
means bears. So I can explain most of the sounds I hear when I'm
sitting twenty five feet up a tree in my deer stand. The first time
I began to think there might be something out there in the woods that I
didn't know about was years ago, during a shotgun season. It was one
of those frosty late fall mornings when every step I took walking out to my
stand was accompanied by the crunch of frozen grass and sticks and acorn shells and
leaves. It was take a step and wait all the way in. Stalking
in is generally the best policy, but when there's frost on the ground,
it always sounds twice as loud, no matter how nimble footage you try to
be. I got up in my stand just as the sun was breaking over
the horizon and I took a long, deep breath of cool air. There's
nothing quite like being alone in the woods. At least I thought I was
alone. I was looking out over a meadow, waiting for that trophy book
that I knew was going to step out give me a perfect shot, when
I happened to notice this tree in the woods on the other side that looked
like it was rocking back and forth. It was a tall tree, and
I couldn't swear to it, but judging by its height, I'm guessing it
must have had at least a little girth to it. But that thing was
rocking back and forth like it was nothing more than a sapling. And then
I heard it crack, And there's a sound that a dead tree makes when
it snaps. It's different from a healthy, live tree. This wasn't that
sound. The tree I watched sway back and forth, then topple over like
it was nothing, was green and alive. I had a lot of questions
running through my mind at that moment. I've since come up with a lot
of answers. Time does things to our memories. You forget things, you
remember things wrong. Sometimes you add things that weren't there. And the farther
you move from that moment, the more likely your memory is to be unreliable.
And this was a good thirty years ago. So I can't say,
or I won't say, what pushed that tree over. All I know is
it left me with a lot of questions. A year later, I was
sitting in that same stand when I heard a loud grunt from somewhere below me
that I also couldn't explain. It wasn't a deer snorting or any other animal
that I knew. For one thing, it sounded larger than anything I'd ever
heard before. I wriggled around in my stand and tried to see as far
around the tree as possible from both sides. I was limited on how far
I could see, but I still managed to look quite a ways around.
There was nothing out of the ordinary that I could see. But it was
at that moment that I recognized a dead silence that comes with a predator's presence.
Not even the bugs were chirping. That was followed by footstep through the
leaf matter that littered the forest floor. I could tell it was on two
feet, so I immediately thought that maybe another hunter was coming through. That
didn't make sense because I was on my uncle's property and I knew darn good
and well that I was the only person who had permission to be there,
and if it was another hunter, he was trespassing. So I called out,
Hey, you down there, you got permission to be out here.
I didn't get an answer, and the footsteps stopped. Hey, I yelled
again. Still I didn't get a reply. I said as quiet and as
still as I could for several long minutes, waiting for someone to acknowledge me
and hoping it was my uncle. After what must have been five minutes or
more, I heard the footsteps again. They were moving away from me now,
and I figured whoever it was, they must have thought they'd been caught.
They decided to move out and avoid a confrontation. I settled back into
watching the meadow and had almost forgotten about that person when three distinct knocks that
I recognized as being wood on wood echoed through the woods from somewhere behind me.
What the hell, I mumble to myself as I swiveled around and tried
to get a look in the direction of those knocks. What kind of game
was this guy playing with me? Anyway? But before I could even finish
the thought, another distinct set of knocks came from the other side of the
meadow, and I spun my head around so fast it almost made me dizzy,
and for a minute I expected to look over at a tree line across
the way and see a horde of marauders pouring out. Another round of knocks
from my side of the meadow had me spinning around again, and then another,
and then another, and this went on for a good half hour.
I don't know if it was because I couldn't identify who or what was doing
it, or if it was something else altogether. I only know that I
began to feel sick right about then things quieted down a bit, and I
stayed up in the stand for a while to get a grip on myself before
climbing down and packing up and heading out. I didn't finish hunting that day,
and I never hunted that spot again. Years later, I was squirrel
hunting on another fall day. It was earlier in the year and it was
a lot warmer. Squirrel hunting hadn't been on my agenda that morning when I
got up, but I managed to get done with all my honey dews a
little early, and it was such a pretty day I couldn't help myself.
The sun was already beginning to set in the west when I began to feel
like someone was watching me. I stopped at my tracks, and I felt
the skin on the back of my neck crawl and prickle, and my heart
began to beat a little faster from the increased adrenaline flow. I looked around
me, scanning cli to see if maybe a deer had snuck up on me
and was checking me out, or maybe a coyote or some other critter.
Late afternoon shadows cut deep into the foliage, forming a million pockets for curious
eyes to look out from, and I couldn't see anything unusual, so after
a minute, I started walking again. This time I heard footsteps that didn't
belong to me. They were so nearly perfectly timed to my own steps that
at first I thought it was an echo, but there was always one more
step that I hadn't taken. When I stopped, I listened carefully. I
was able to pinpoint the sound as coming from somewhere to my left, and
I stopped and I scanned the forest. But night was moving in, and
the shadows were getting darker, and the undergrowth was too dense to make out
anything. I decided that it would be a good idea not to take my
time. I didn't want to run and trigger any kind of predator instinct,
but I didn't want to lose any of the quickly fading daylight either, and
I cursed myself for not grabbing a flashlight or a headlamp before I left the
house. The steps continued, with me speeding up as I sped up,
slowing down as I slowed down. Now I looked at my watch, and
I calculated that I had maybe fifteen minutes of daylight left if I hurried,
and I'd be at the edge of the pasture leading to the house in ten
minutes. I just needed to keep calm and keep walking. When I started
seeing bits and pieces of the field between the woods and my house, I
began to feel easier. I even slowed my pace. I figured if whatever
was following me had not attacked me yet, it wasn't going to. And
I stepped into what was left of that daylight with a huge sigh of relief.
And I glanced one time over my shoulder, ten feet from the tree
light, and at that moment I was hit by a loud scream that radiated
through me like a shock wave. Logic and reason left me as I broke
into a dead run across that field. I don't even remember stopping to open
the gate to the fence that surrounded the house. Maybe I jumped over it,
I don't know. I took the steps up into the porch too at
a time and slammed so hard into the front door that I thought I cracked
the glass in the windowpane. I had shut the door, and I was
leaning hard against it, trying to catch my breath when I looked down at
my dog. And maybe it was my imagination, and maybe I was projecting
my own emotions on that dog. I'll never know for sure, but when
he looked up at me, I was certain that he was as scared as
I was. Looking back. It may have been a panther, the biggest
damn panther that ever walked on two feet. But it might have been or
it could have been some other animal that naturally lives in those woods. I
never saw anything to indicate one way or the other. There's a reason God
gave us five senses. If we had to rely solely on our eyesight,
we might already be extinct as a species. I've hunted a million times on
that land since that day, and I've never had another issue. I've heard
tree knocks and tree falls, and occasional footsteps that sound by peedle, and
an occasional loud huff. And when I do, I quietly leave the woods
and let whatever is out there do whatever it does. I don't need to
see it. I don't think I want to, yah,