Speaker 1: I'm fifty nine years old. I live in Springfield, Tennessee,
Speaker 1: and I've studied Bible prophecy for over thirty seven years.
Speaker 1: I believe in angels, and I believe in demons, and
Speaker 1: I pray a lot. I could write for days the
Speaker 1: things that I have learned that would blow most people's minds.
Speaker 1: I tell you these things to explain how I arrived
Speaker 1: at the conclusions you were about to read. I can't
Speaker 1: prove what I'm going to tell you, but I swear
Speaker 1: it happened, and I believe I know what I saw.
Speaker 1: One afternoon, I visited the fraternity that I belonged to
Speaker 1: at Western Kentucky University. I've always loved playing foosball since
Speaker 1: my college days in the late seventies. I spent all
Speaker 1: afternoon at the fraternity house playing foosball with the young guys.
Speaker 1: That day, I dipped a lot of snuff and some
Speaker 1: beers with the guys. I played until I felt like
Speaker 1: I needed to get home. It was after nine pm
Speaker 1: when I got on to I sixty five south, headed
Speaker 1: towards Tennessee. I picked up speed as I entered the
Speaker 1: traffic and was cruising along at seventy four miles per hour.
Speaker 1: I drove for ten minutes. I guess I was in
Speaker 1: the fast lane. I had just passed an eighteen wheeler,
Speaker 1: and I was now passing a car that was behind
Speaker 1: two other cars, and the lane in front of me
Speaker 1: was clear for at least two hundred more yards. I
Speaker 1: was enjoying the XM radio blues music and thinking about
Speaker 1: the guys I had just wept all afternoon at foos Ball.
Speaker 1: Out of nowhere, right in front of me, a jet
Speaker 1: black dog was coming towards me in my lane. He
Speaker 1: was as big as a German shepherd. When he saw
Speaker 1: that I was coming fast at him, he tried to
Speaker 1: go to his left, and he partially in front of
Speaker 1: the car that was in front of the car that
Speaker 1: I was passing. He almost got hit, but he jumped
Speaker 1: back in my lane, barely escaping that other car. He
Speaker 1: was dead centered on my grill, and all I had
Speaker 1: time to do was squeeze the steering wheel and brace
Speaker 1: for the impact. I saw him look straight at me.
Speaker 1: He had red eyes surrounded by white He had white
Speaker 1: teeth and a red tongue. I later realized that the
Speaker 1: gate he had wasn't that of a normal dog. It
Speaker 1: was a creepy gate like you would see in a
Speaker 1: horror movie or something. His front legs were taller than
Speaker 1: his back legs. Anyone who knows tractors would understand if
Speaker 1: I said he had a road crop front end. I
Speaker 1: squeezed the wheel and I tensed up, and I smacked
Speaker 1: the hell out of that thing. There was no time
Speaker 1: to do anything else. I couldn't swerve left and run
Speaker 1: off the road, and I couldn't swerve and hit the
Speaker 1: car that I was passing. There was no time to
Speaker 1: hit the brakes, so I plastered the thing at seventy
Speaker 1: four miles per hour. I felt the impact big time.
Speaker 1: It sounded like a three hundred Winchester mag went off
Speaker 1: in the front end of my truck. It went underneath
Speaker 1: the truck and it rolled under there. It sounded like
Speaker 1: it probably just tore up major stuff from the front
Speaker 1: all the way to the back. Immediately, I looked in
Speaker 1: my rear view mirror to see him come out, but
Speaker 1: he never did. The car behind me never made any
Speaker 1: kind of move, and the eighteen wheeler I had passed
Speaker 1: never made any kind of move either. Nobody but me
Speaker 1: even saw the thing. I slowed down and I got
Speaker 1: over to the right lane, and I prepared to get
Speaker 1: in the emergency lane to stop, but with the traffic
Speaker 1: like it was that night on the Interstate, I decided
Speaker 1: to see if I could make it to the Franklin exit.
Speaker 1: I didn't hear any squealing, everything sounded good, and my
Speaker 1: temperature gaze never got hot, so I just kept going. Oh,
Speaker 1: I was miserable. I just knew that my bumper and
Speaker 1: grill were all busted up. I was surprised that my
Speaker 1: radiator was even working. I was surprised that the airbags
Speaker 1: had never deployed. There was no telling how much damage
Speaker 1: was underneath my car. I pulled off the Interstate at
Speaker 1: Exit one eight, which is my exit. I kept heading
Speaker 1: towards the house I live about five miles out in
Speaker 1: the country, and when I pulled into my driveway, I
Speaker 1: had to peace so bad. I just grabbed my keys
Speaker 1: and I went into the house to use the bathroom.
Speaker 1: My neighbors were standing in their front yard, Otherwise I
Speaker 1: would have let it fly in the driveway. When I
Speaker 1: came out of the bathroom, I sat down in my recliner.
Speaker 1: I told my wife I had just torn up my truck,
Speaker 1: and I explained what happened. She asked how bad it was,
Speaker 1: and I told her I hadn't looked at it, but
Speaker 1: I knew it was bad. She told me that we
Speaker 1: would just get it fixed, and then she went on
Speaker 1: to bed. I sat there for hours, remembering how this
Speaker 1: thing happened. I realized that dogs don't have white around
Speaker 1: red pupils. I could explain the red part by the
Speaker 1: lights in his eyes. Maybe dogs have brown surrounding their pupils.
Speaker 1: The big shiny white teeth, nah, maybe the red tongue.
Speaker 1: It was the brightest red lipstick color I have ever seen,
Speaker 1: and his face planted in the front end of my truck.
Speaker 1: After studying the situation for hours, I was, and I
Speaker 1: still am, convinced it was a demon sent to try
Speaker 1: to kill me. He tried to run me off the
Speaker 1: road or into the worst wreck of my life. The
Speaker 1: next morning, my wife went to look at my truck
Speaker 1: and she came inside and she told me she couldn't
Speaker 1: find anything wrong with it. I went and looked, and
Speaker 1: I said, Praise the Lord. There wasn't a dent, a scratch,
Speaker 1: There wasn't anything broken, no blood or hair anywhere. It
Speaker 1: was as if nothing happened, but it did happen, and
Speaker 1: it should have been bad. All I know is the
Speaker 1: God that I served saved me from an evil being
Speaker 1: that tried very hard to hurt me that night. He
Speaker 1: paid dearly for it, though I busted his tail with
Speaker 1: the Honda Ridgeline doing seventy four miles an hour. I
Speaker 1: rejoice over it today and it gives me confidence to
Speaker 1: fight the good fight. The next day, I showed my
Speaker 1: sister and I explained everything, just like I have here.
Speaker 1: It really creeped her out. She didn't know what to say,
Speaker 1: and after she thought about it some, she finally said
Speaker 1: that she knew I was telling the truth and she
Speaker 1: was very glad that I was okay. Every year on
Speaker 1: Memorial my extended family would have a get together at
Speaker 1: a park near Parkersburg, West Virginia. That's my hometown. These
Speaker 1: were organized by my mother and usually drew about fifty people.
Speaker 1: The park itself is huge, amounting to about three thousand acres.
Speaker 1: We would secure the biggest spot on the grounds and
Speaker 1: my mother would prepare the grill while guests brought in
Speaker 1: tupperware items like salads and gas roles. We got there
Speaker 1: early in the morning for all the preparation ahead of
Speaker 1: the people arriving at lunchtime. It was nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 1: I was eleven. My friends and I like to explore
Speaker 1: the nearby woods. The area was so vast that sometimes
Speaker 1: we would get lost, but always managed to find our
Speaker 1: way back. I don't think it would have occurred to
Speaker 1: any of the adults to call for a search party
Speaker 1: unless we were still gone by the time it grew dark. Man,
Speaker 1: have times changed. I remember we were deep in the
Speaker 1: woods by a pond with a circumference of fifty yards.
Speaker 1: My friend and I were fast walking. He rushed past
Speaker 1: me and put a little distance between us. We were
Speaker 1: on an incline, so I aimed my eyes downward and
Speaker 1: started walking faster. And I stumbled into him a few
Speaker 1: yards up the trail, not expecting him to be standing
Speaker 1: stock still in the path. He directed my attention to
Speaker 1: something on the other side of the pond. It looked
Speaker 1: like a person, but it had a lot of hair,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't wearing any clothes. I didn't even know
Speaker 1: what to think. I'd never heard of a thing called
Speaker 1: bigfoot or sasquatch. Up until this point, I'd seen the
Speaker 1: movie Planet of the apes on cable, and that's what
Speaker 1: I was thinking as both of us stood staring at
Speaker 1: this thing that was staring back at us. It wasn't
Speaker 1: much taller than my friend, who, if I was to guess,
Speaker 1: was five foot without shoes on. This thing had light
Speaker 1: brown hair all over, with none on its face, which
Speaker 1: looked like something more like an eight but less like
Speaker 1: a human. Its eyes were brown, and it just looked
Speaker 1: at me with no expression. Then it let out a
Speaker 1: yell and bounded away from the pond. We started running
Speaker 1: for the safety of my mother and our get together,
Speaker 1: scared out of our eleven year old minds. After some
Speaker 1: hardcore sprinting, it occurred to us that we hadn't a
Speaker 1: clue which direction we were heading. We were lost. Out
Speaker 1: of fear, we started arguing, it's this way, now, it's
Speaker 1: this way. At that point, I let out an expletive
Speaker 1: and just started running. My friend reluctantly followed behind. We
Speaker 1: emerged from the woods in a totally unfamiliar part of
Speaker 1: the park. Unfortunately, there were some people picnicking there. Me
Speaker 1: being the more extroverted of the two of us, I
Speaker 1: walked over to them and told them that we were
Speaker 1: lost and asked if they could help us. It took
Speaker 1: thirty minutes of driving around the park, but we pulled
Speaker 1: up to our picnic site. We'd been gone for hours,
Speaker 1: but we hadn't been missed. My friend liked to tell
Speaker 1: the story of our encounter more than I did. No
Speaker 1: matter how serious or straight faced we were, people laughed
Speaker 1: it off, while I responded to the ridicule by dropping
Speaker 1: the matter altogether. My friend turned the whole thing into
Speaker 1: a comedy routine. If you believed his version, the thing
Speaker 1: we saw became the little brother we never had. I
Speaker 1: guess it's not an easy to believe story. I never
Speaker 1: really heard of bigfoot sightings in West Virginia up until then.
Speaker 1: Maybe in the two thousands that all changed. I guess
Speaker 1: some just keep what they know quiet because no one
Speaker 1: takes it serious. In the late nineteen nineties, the Internet
Speaker 1: wasn't a huge thing, especially for someone my age and
Speaker 1: had cell phones. Pictures and videos just weren't happening. It
Speaker 1: makes me wonder how many people saw things, but the
Speaker 1: technology didn't allow for them to record the evidence and
Speaker 1: proved that they weren't out of their minds or were
Speaker 1: just a couple of eleven year olds too stupid to
Speaker 1: find their way out of the woods. So I was
Speaker 1: raised in central Louisiana. As a kid in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: I had the typical childhood of a boy with access
Speaker 1: to miles of undeveloped land that surrounded my home, which
Speaker 1: meant I spent most of my time fishing, hunting, and
Speaker 1: exploring that land. When I was a teenager, my parents
Speaker 1: built a new house and we moved. By then, my
Speaker 1: interests were changing to the kinds of things teenage boys
Speaker 1: generally think about cars and music and bonfires and girls.
Speaker 1: I was in my twenties when my dad sought a
Speaker 1: deeper connection with his growing sons. He had a friend
Speaker 1: with a hunting camp in north central Louisiana who invited
Speaker 1: him to join, and we did as a family. It
Speaker 1: was a great place that included a thousand acres of
Speaker 1: piny hills and hardwood bottoms, and a creek along the
Speaker 1: north end of the property that would flood in the winter.
Speaker 1: It allowed me to reconnect with my first love being
Speaker 1: in the woods. The camp house featured a big porch
Speaker 1: for relaxing and cooking. We spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: out there, combing every inch of the property, building stands
Speaker 1: and brushing blinds, and planting food plots and scouting for
Speaker 1: the best hunting spots. I got familiar enough with the
Speaker 1: place that I felt comfortable on evening hunch to walk
Speaker 1: out without a flashlight, especially if there was even a
Speaker 1: hint of a moon. I bagged my share of game
Speaker 1: that way. It was late in twenty ten, during the
Speaker 1: rifle season when I decided to take my climber to
Speaker 1: the backside of the north food food plot, where a
Speaker 1: strip of hardwoods bordered a pine thicket. I sat twenty
Speaker 1: feet up in an oak tree and I watched as
Speaker 1: the sun began to set. It was quiet, and it
Speaker 1: made me uncomfortable. I scanned the area, but I didn't
Speaker 1: hear anything. I had a half hour left, but I
Speaker 1: couldn't shake this weird feeling. The next five minutes seemed
Speaker 1: like an eternity. A few leaves rippled, and then there
Speaker 1: was silence. That weird feeling was growing inside me. I
Speaker 1: started moving and looking around to the point that I
Speaker 1: knew any deer that might have been in the area
Speaker 1: were spooked. But I couldn't stay still. I just wanted
Speaker 1: to get on the ground and get out. Of there.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, I was so unnerved that I
Speaker 1: didn't want to lower my rifle to the ground, and
Speaker 1: I debated for a few minutes before finally deciding to
Speaker 1: climb down. I told myself that I was being ridiculous
Speaker 1: about that feeling, and that I had ruined the hunt
Speaker 1: with all the noise I was making. There was no
Speaker 1: point in staying anyway. Now. I lowered my rifle and
Speaker 1: climbed down as quickly as I could, and I packed
Speaker 1: up my stand. I made a lot of noise, and
Speaker 1: I didn't care. The sun was setting fast, and now
Speaker 1: I felt like I was being watched. It was getting
Speaker 1: dark in that strip of woods. I crossed the food plot,
Speaker 1: stopping three times to check behind me, and I told
Speaker 1: myself it could only be a hog or a bobcat.
Speaker 1: But I knew something was out there and it was
Speaker 1: watching me. At the other end, I used my scope
Speaker 1: to scan the tree line. I couldn't see anything. I
Speaker 1: rode the three wheeler back to camp a little faster
Speaker 1: than normal, and I breathed a deep sigh of relief
Speaker 1: when I reached the camp house. I didn't say anything
Speaker 1: to the other men. I just ate supper and my
Speaker 1: dad fixed and I loaded up my gear and I
Speaker 1: went home. I thought about those last thirty minutes in
Speaker 1: that tree stand for a long time. I had my
Speaker 1: rifle with me. I was no rookie in the woods.
Speaker 1: We'd been members of that hunting club for several years
Speaker 1: by then, and I'd hunted that same spot repeatedly, and
Speaker 1: I've hunted it since. But that day I felt insecure.
Speaker 1: I've never had that feeling since. In the summer of
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, my dad and my daughter and I went
Speaker 1: to look at our family land in north central Mississippi.
Speaker 1: My uncle, who lives nearby, met us and rode around
Speaker 1: the property with us. We rode our four wheelers over
Speaker 1: the entire eighty acres for many hours. When we got
Speaker 1: back to the trucks, I suggested we ride down to
Speaker 1: the old store and show my daughter, who was eleven
Speaker 1: at the time. It was one of those old time
Speaker 1: mercantiles where my great grandparents used to buy their goods.
Speaker 1: We poked around for a while, examining the artifacts, before
Speaker 1: heading across the road to the old house where the
Speaker 1: stor's former owned once lived. Back then, they were considered
Speaker 1: well off. The house stood back from the road, with
Speaker 1: trees and bushes growing up in front of it. It
Speaker 1: was a big, well constructed wood frame, single story that
Speaker 1: had managed to weather the years. We weren't sure of
Speaker 1: the integrity of the inside floor, so my daughter stayed
Speaker 1: at the four wheeler with my dad while my uncle
Speaker 1: and I went inside to explore. It was typical of
Speaker 1: an abandoned house. Debris littered the floor and some of
Speaker 1: the windows were broken out. We were standing in the
Speaker 1: kitchen that ran the back of the house and my
Speaker 1: uncle was explaining the cistern to me when I noticed
Speaker 1: a sound coming from a small opening on the opposite
Speaker 1: wall that went up to the attic. Neither I nor
Speaker 1: my uncle knew what the opening was for. My uncle
Speaker 1: suggested it might be a vent. I asked him what
Speaker 1: the noise was, and he didn't know. Maybe it's just
Speaker 1: the wind, he all. As we stood there and talked
Speaker 1: for a few more seconds, I noticed the noise getting louder.
Speaker 1: It was too regular to be the wind. It sounded
Speaker 1: like breathing. It sounds like something's up there. Uncle Jake said,
Speaker 1: maybe it's some kind of animal. We continued to talk
Speaker 1: until the breathing got so loud it interrupted our conversation.
Speaker 1: It was deep and harsh and getting louder by the minute.
Speaker 1: It felt aggressive, and again I asked what it was.
Speaker 1: I don't know what that is, he answered, maybe it's
Speaker 1: a panther. My uncle, Jake was a big man who'd
Speaker 1: worked hard all his life and spent a great deal
Speaker 1: of it outside. As I looked at him now, I
Speaker 1: could tell that that noise had him shook up. Let's
Speaker 1: get out of here, I said. My dad noticed immediately
Speaker 1: how disturb my uncle was, so we asked if anything
Speaker 1: was wrong. I told him something was in there and
Speaker 1: we didn't know what it was, so we were getting out.
Speaker 1: We explained everything to my dad and daughter. Once we
Speaker 1: got back to the trucks, my uncle reiterated that he
Speaker 1: didn't know what it was. He was clearly still visibly shaken.
Speaker 1: I'm not really afraid of anything, not even death, well,
Speaker 1: taxes maybe, but that was one of the most frightening
Speaker 1: experiences I've had in my life. I would never have
Speaker 1: made the connection to an animal with that lung capacity
Speaker 1: if not for listening to your channel and hearing other
Speaker 1: stories about heavy breathing and powerful vocalizations. We never saw it,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad we didn't. All I know is from
Speaker 1: the volume of the air that was coming from behind
Speaker 1: that wall. It had to be something big or supernatural
Speaker 1: or both. Whatever it was, it did not want us
Speaker 1: in there. When I married my current wife, I was
Speaker 1: blessed to have a new family who loved the outdoors
Speaker 1: as much as I did. My father in law is
Speaker 1: a life long outdoorsman and a biologist who owned several
Speaker 1: tracks of hunting land in northern Louisiana, most of it
Speaker 1: as parcels from their old family homestead. The Friday after Thanksgiving,
Speaker 1: my daughter, now twenty three, and I were on an
Speaker 1: afternoon hunt. It was a warm day, but misty and
Speaker 1: a little foggy. My father in law put us on
Speaker 1: a box stand on a power line. The lane was
Speaker 1: fifteen yards wide and two hundred yards long, and it
Speaker 1: stretched from a small rise down to a creek. Facing
Speaker 1: the crete and to our left was a twenty acre
Speaker 1: cutover with young pines, and to our right was a
Speaker 1: strip of cutover that went into hardwoods and then into
Speaker 1: the creek bottom. We were right in the middle of
Speaker 1: the lane, the perfect spot to catch a deer crossing
Speaker 1: over from feeding to bedding. It was peak rut season,
Speaker 1: so we were expecting to see something and hopefully take
Speaker 1: one home. With forty five minutes of light left, Brooke
Speaker 1: and I were intently watching the edges of the lanes
Speaker 1: for movement. Out of the bottom of the hardwoods, we
Speaker 1: heard a loud, distinct knock. It sounded like someone took
Speaker 1: an axe handle and hit an old, hollow tree with
Speaker 1: all their might. It was solid and resonant and dry
Speaker 1: and woody. The echo reverberated through the timber behind us.
Speaker 1: It was a tree knock. My daughter looked at me
Speaker 1: with a mix of surprising concern with a slight smile.
Speaker 1: She asked, did you hear that? Yep? I said, Well
Speaker 1: what was it? She whispered, is that a bigfoot? Well?
Speaker 1: How do you answer that? We had watched a lot
Speaker 1: of television shows over the years, from MythBusters and ghost
Speaker 1: Hunters to the show with the team stomping through the woods,
Speaker 1: yelling and beating on trees. It all seemed silly and
Speaker 1: it was made for TV. They all talked about wood knocks,
Speaker 1: and my daughter was fully aware of what she had heard.
Speaker 1: She put her theory together instantly. This was really happening, well,
Speaker 1: I told her I think there's a house through there.
Speaker 1: Maybe they're cutting firewood or someone missed the lit. She
Speaker 1: gave me a doubtful look that said, okay, Dad, if
Speaker 1: you say so. There was a trailer house nearby, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't in the direction we heard the knock. We
Speaker 1: returned our attention to the hunt. Two minutes later, a
Speaker 1: second loud knock came from the same place. Maybe if
Speaker 1: it is a bigfoot, it'll push them deer in our direction.
Speaker 1: I tried to joke, but my daughter was having none
Speaker 1: of it. This time. She raised her eyebrows and turned
Speaker 1: to look back down the lane. We weren't really scared,
Speaker 1: but it was just kind of unnerving. We stayed and
Speaker 1: hunted until it was too dark to see. On our
Speaker 1: way home, she asked me if I thought there was
Speaker 1: something down in those woods, and I told her I
Speaker 1: didn't know, but her inquisitive mind in shore senses told
Speaker 1: her that sound was telltale evidence of something. The next morning,
Speaker 1: my father in law directed us to a stand that
Speaker 1: was right in the middle of those hardwoods on the creek,
Speaker 1: a little east of but very close to where we
Speaker 1: heard the wood knocks. We were facing the creek with
Speaker 1: a small hill to our left and open hardwood bottom
Speaker 1: to our right. Falling oaks from the recent hurricane provided
Speaker 1: our cover. A front had moved through, so it was
Speaker 1: cool and clear, which promised deer activity. We were in
Speaker 1: the stand before daylight. At seven, the woods came alive
Speaker 1: with birds and squirrels. The light breeze was stirring the leaves,
Speaker 1: and we saw two dough run through, chased by a buck,
Speaker 1: moving too fast to shoot. My father in law was
Speaker 1: in the box stand we'd use the day before and
Speaker 1: managed to get off a couple of shots, and I
Speaker 1: made a mental note of how far his shot was.
Speaker 1: It was one hundred and fifty yards. Things settled down
Speaker 1: again by nine o'clock and at ten we were waiting
Speaker 1: for the next session of deer activity, when to our
Speaker 1: right we heard a whistle. Yes, that's right, we heard
Speaker 1: a whistle. It sounded like it was mimicking a bird,
Speaker 1: but with more air and a different tone than a
Speaker 1: bird chirp. It was too short blast, with the second
Speaker 1: one rising in pits like a quail. We were both
Speaker 1: certain that it was not a bird. We were quite
Speaker 1: familiar with the native bird sounds. Dad, that was a whistle,
Speaker 1: Brooke said, what do you think that was? I asked,
Speaker 1: and she raised her eyebrows and opened her eyes a
Speaker 1: little wider, and then we heard it again, this time
Speaker 1: a little closer, as if to make sure it was heard.
Speaker 1: We looked at each other but didn't say a word,
Speaker 1: and I raised my binoculars and Brooke looked through her
Speaker 1: scope and the whistle came from fifty yards out, but
Speaker 1: the coverage was too thick to penetrate. We sat there
Speaker 1: for another hour, looking and listening and looking some more,
Speaker 1: and we heard nothing but the breeze and rustling of
Speaker 1: dried leaves. The clouds came in and it got colder.
Speaker 1: Still nothing. There were no deer, no squirrels, just silence. Eventually,
Speaker 1: we went back to the vehicle and we headed home,
Speaker 1: and I checked behind us several times as we walked out.
Speaker 1: These stories and experiences may not seem that impressive, but
Speaker 1: when it's actually happening to you, you have some background
Speaker 1: information and it's unnerving. Fifteen years ago, I probably wouldn't
Speaker 1: have noticed a knock, a chirp, a whistle, or a
Speaker 1: broken tree in the woods. I probably wouldn't have noticed
Speaker 1: the unusual quietness. But today it's different. Have a different
Speaker 1: outlook now. On the opening day of deer season twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, my wife and I were hunting another track
Speaker 1: of family land, not far from where Brooke and Eye
Speaker 1: had the acttivity the year before. It was early morning
Speaker 1: and we were headed to another box stand. We opened
Speaker 1: the gate and crossed the clear cut to the sixty
Speaker 1: acre Northwest Corner plot, where it was still heavily wooded.
Speaker 1: The road beyond the gate followed the tree line to
Speaker 1: the west, and then it turned north. We were easing
Speaker 1: down this road when we came up on a tree
Speaker 1: that had fallen and was blocking our path. We were
Speaker 1: only forty yards from where we normally parked, so we
Speaker 1: got out, gathered our stuff, and walked the rest of
Speaker 1: the way Beyond the tree. We followed the foot path
Speaker 1: that ammeled one hundred and fifty yards down to the
Speaker 1: box stand. It was a beautiful morning. My wife and
Speaker 1: I sat and sipped coffee and enjoyed the view. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: deer hunting doesn't mean deer shooting, and by mid morning
Speaker 1: we decided nothing was going to happen until evening, so
Speaker 1: we headed back to get some lunch. We eased back
Speaker 1: down the lane to the woodline, and I stood there
Speaker 1: taking in the scene, and it occurred to me that
Speaker 1: no other trees were broken or blown over, only that
Speaker 1: one tree that stopped our progress, and it seemed strange.
Speaker 1: I looked back into the woods to see if there
Speaker 1: were any trees there that looked like they'd sustained a
Speaker 1: recent storm damage, and I didn't see any. When we
Speaker 1: got to the truck, I surveyed the fallen tree. It
Speaker 1: was lying exactly perpendicular to the road. It was broken
Speaker 1: off eight feet off the ground. The break was jagged,
Speaker 1: but the tree wasn't lying next to the trunk. It
Speaker 1: was several feet away, as if it had been dragged
Speaker 1: or thrown across the road. There was underbrush growing between
Speaker 1: the base of the tree and the bottom of the trunk.
Speaker 1: It had to have happened in late spring or early summer.
Speaker 1: The tree had leaves on it, so it happened when
Speaker 1: it was in full foliage. It didn't make sense at all.
Speaker 1: We've had a lot of hurricane and straight line wind damage,
Speaker 1: but oak trees don't have deep root systems. When they're
Speaker 1: blown over, they tend to uproot, they don't snap off.
Speaker 1: It might have been a tornado but the leaves weren't stripped,
Speaker 1: and there were no other trees down. I've heard theories
Speaker 1: of tree breaks being markers and warnings. I've seen pictures
Speaker 1: of saplings and trees broken off, and I've heard stories
Speaker 1: of rocks and even tree trunks being thrown. This tree
Speaker 1: was a foot in diameter. I went back and took
Speaker 1: pictures of it before we cut it up. It was
Speaker 1: neither dead when it broke, nor very old in tree years,
Speaker 1: and it was curious how it was placed directly across
Speaker 1: the road. I'm not saying, but I am kind of saying,
Speaker 1: keep your eyes and ears open.