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,