Hunting Season
“Lucas! Do you see that? Randall
Slade asked his best friend. He had brought up the pictures from his game
camera on his computer in his basement family room.
“Kind of blurry,” Lucas answered.
“Maybe if you tell me what I’m looking for I’ll have a clue.”
“It’s a night shot. The infrared
isn’t great on this cheap camera, but I can see something weird between the
trees.” He pointed.
Lucas looked closer. “Well, it’s
not a deer. Could be just the moon shining on a fern leaf. You do have your
hunting camera set up in the swampy area of the back forty,” he said, referring
the back forty acres of the Slade family farm.
“I made sure to mow all that out
while it was still dry and I stomp everything down every time I go check the
camera and the salt block. So, that’s not a plant. Besides, it was overcast
last night and the moon was only a sliver. It didn’t stand a chance of shining
into the woods there,” Randall explained.
“Hmm,” Lucas sighed. “I just don’t
know what to tell you then. If there was power out there you could set up some
extra lights for the camera. Those daytime shots are awesome. There’s deer all over the place. See if there are any
other night shots.”
Randall clicked for the next few.
“There are a couple, but they’re running! See how they are in the shots in
different locations and heads are up looking around. Something has them
alerted.”
“Yeah, but there could be a coyote
out there too. You might not ever catch one of those on the camera if it sets
it off. They are tall enough to set off the motion sensor but too short to get
caught in the shot,” Lucas told him. “That might be why the pictures aren’t
showing anything other than the woods.”
“Maybe,” Randall said, “But if it
looks like that on the SD card tomorrow, I think we need to take a little
overnight camping trip out there to see what’s going on. The blind has been set
up for a couple weeks now and they are used to it, so as long as we’re quiet we
shouldn’t scare them off too much.”
“As long as you don’t fall
asleep!” Lucas said laughing. “You snore loud enough to scare a bear."
“The idea is to stay awake,
genius.” Randall said. He stood up and grabbed a can of soda out of the
mini-fridge. He handed one to Lucas and popped the top before taking a big
gulp. He belched.
“Maybe we ought to pack water. We
don’t any of that going on when we’re doing recon,” Lucas suggested.
“I might be nothing, like you
said, but I want to check the camera again just be sure before we go out
there,” Randall said. “An overnight trip might run all the deer off if we leave
too much scent around.”
“Well, I’ll check with my dad, but
I’m sure it will be fine to go. Tomorrow is Saturday, so we won’t be missing
any school or anything.” Lucas told him. “I’d better get going before my mom
calls because I’m late to supper…again.”
“Okay,” Randall said, “I have to
get to the chores too or dad will skin me! I’ll call you in the morning after I
get the cards switched out.”
The next morning Randall called
Lucas. He was still in bed. “How do you think you’re going to get up to go
hunting if you can’t even get out of bed before eight in the morning? We have
to be out around six before the sun comes up to get set up!”
“Randall? Is that you?” Lucas
said, still groggy from sleep.
“Yes! I told you I was going to
call when I got the cards switched out. I’ve already helped with morning chores
and had breakfast, and I still got out there and got the card.”
“You took the four-wheeler. That
doesn’t take long, so it doesn’t count,” Lucas complained.
“Well, get your butt over here. I
want to look at this card,” Randall insisted.
“Sure. I’ll grab a Pop Tart or
something and be there quick as I can.”
Randall stared at the pictures.
His eyes were wide with disbelief. “What the hell happened?”
“I don’t know man. That was
creepy. One minute the deer was licking that salt block and the next it was on
the ground and then it was just gone. The time stamp had it under two minutes,”
Lucas said. His face was white. “Dead of night except for the odd shining, or
glowing dots, or whatever it was. I really wish you had a better camera.”
“You still want to go?” Randall
asked apprehensively.
“Yeah, but we’re taking guns, and
our phones just in case,” Lucas said.
“It’s not gun season yet. It’s not
legal. And the cell reception is spotty.”
“I don’t care! I’m not going
without a gun in case there is something out there trying to get us. If there’s
no reception, at least I can record it. I have one of those phone that records perfectly
even in the dark,” Lucas bragged.
“Of course you do. I say about
five o’clock we go out. It’s not dark yet so we can find our way into the
woods. We’ll take the four-wheeler in case we have to clear out fast, but it
won’t be too close, so if I say run you’d better act like your feet are on
fire,” Randall told him. “The trail is mowed off but there are still a few
stubs from brush so pay attention going in to where they are.”
“Alright. I’m going to go gear up
and show my dad on the map where we’ll be in case he needs to find us and the
phones don’t work.”
“Good idea! I’ll let dad know too.
Mom will just freak out. They know we might go out there, but they don’t know
why. If I take a gun, dad definitely needs to know why,” Randall said.
The boys lit out at five. The sun
was setting pretty far by the time they got to the hunting blind and it was
harder to see than they anticipated. Using flashlights they set up camp inside
the blind, lowering the zippered windows only partially so they could see out
through small sections rather than opening the window fully so as not to scare
the deer themselves. They sat quietly for several hours communicating only
through whispers or hand signals used by flashlight under a blanket.
Around ten they started hearing noises.
Peering out through their peep holes, they watched deer wander past as the game
camera’s motion sensor flashed for the photo. After about a half an hour they
saw the strange glow. There were two about the same level at all times, but
moving. The game camera flashed and Lucas gasped, covering his mouth. The eyes
moved and the camera flashed. There was the sound of a low growl.
Lucas slowly put his phone into
position to record as Randall got a gun ready. As the game camera flashed the
boys could see it was some sort of creature. Randall quickly typed an SOS on
his phone with another word and sent the text to his dad. As it got closer their
hearts beat hard enough they were sure one another could hear it and if they
could the creature could surely hear them.
Suddenly Randall’s phone chimed as
his father sent a reply that he was on his way. His eyes grew wide as the
creature turned their direction. It only took what seemed like a second for it
to reach their blind.
“Run!” Randall whispered, nearly
falling over Lucas on the way to the door they had left unzipped in case they
needed a quick exit. He looked long enough to see Lucas right on his heels.
The creature growled more fiercely
as it ripped the blind apart, collapsing it in its wake. It was after the boys
once it tore through the thin nylon as they ran for their lives.
Mike Slade called William Tucker,
Lucas’s father, on his way to the camp. He told him to bring a gun and meet him
there. It only took ten minutes for them to meet up as William Tucker was as
familiar with the hunting area as boys were since he and Mike were friends as
well. They found no signs of the boys at the four-wheeler so they went on down
to the campsite with bright lanterns. The tent was tattered and they found a
shredded hiking boot that had been Randall’s.
After calling for twenty minutes
they decided they needed to get the sheriff’s department involved and possibly
the DNR. They called their wives and told them to hold up at Mike’s house and
wait for the sheriff’s deputies to arrive to give them directions, but whatever
they did, stay at the house and stay inside except to give the directions.
Deputies arrived and a DNR game
warden. Everyone used high powered search lights to search for the boys and
then radioed for search dogs. Some drag marks were found but they just as
quickly disappeared. Photographs were taken of the campsite and the destroyed
blind. The SD card was removed from the game camera.
At daylight the dogs were turned
loose and they hit a scent right away. First Randall’s phone was found and then
a short while later Lucas’s phone was found. There was blood on them both and
more drag marks. They searched all day and found no further sign of the boys.
The dogs had lost the trail.
Finally the sheriff’s deputy asked
if he could use Randall’s computer to read the SD card since he didn’t have an
adapter handy to use the one in his SUV. The pictures were benign at first with
a few deer and the boys and more deer. Then the shots started with the glowing
dots that kept moving around and then it looked in the direction of the blind
and then it moved fast in its direction. A few minutes later it showed the boys
being dragged off into the woods by the creature, Randall without his boot.
They looked to be already dead.
Tears ran down the parents’ faces
and the deputy and game warden stared blankly at the screen in disbelief.
William Tucker finally asked to
see his son’s phone. He was sure his son had taken footage because he was
always recording something. They gave it to him and he pressed the button on
the side and swiped at the screen, tapping on the app for the photo gallery. It
showed he had indeed recorded several minutes of footage. He wept openly as the
sound of their scared boys whispering to one another not to breathe so loud so
it wouldn’t hear them.
“Dad, if you ever get this,” Lucas
whispered. “I don’t know how we’ll get out of this. Randall is loading a gun
but I don’t think there is time to get it. It looks like a hodag. I know they
aren’t supposed to exist, but it is here.” Suddenly Randall told him to shut
the hell up before it heard them. There was the sound of Randall’s phone
chiming and a panicked, ‘oh no,” whispered low by Randall.
The creature growled and turned
toward the boys. Its full ugly and horrifying features were caught as with
lightning speed it moved up on the blind and was reaching for it when the sound
of Randall saying to run could be heard and the camera turned catching their
fumbling escape from the blind. It recorded the boys running pointing at the
ground up until Lucas was pulled to the ground, screaming and seconds later
Randall screaming as he too was brought down.
“I didn’t really believe him when
he said it was a hodag!” Mike Slade said. “I believed they were in trouble but
I thought maybe it was just a bear,” he said, crying into his wife’s hair.
Everyone was horrified. The
footage was uploaded to the deputy’s computer for a copy of the evidence of
what had happened to the boys. No traces of them existed outside of the few
that led them to the phones. They simply vanished.
No one hunts those woods anymore.
No deer are seen in the vicinity. Occasionally helicopters fly over with sharp
shooters in search of the evasive creature. No one dares to go on foot.
Everyone in Wisconsin knows hodags
are just myth made up in the eighteen hundreds as a hoax. They don’t really
exist. OR DO THEY???
I uploaded a picture someone drew of the hodag from Instagram. Looks creepy enough to me!
