Hunting Season - A Halloween tale

As many of you may know hunting season starts, at least for bows, in October in Wisconsin. There are gun hunts for deer that are eating up the farmer crops, but the real gun season is in November. People put out small amounts of corn, apples, and mineral or salt blocks for the deer, and they set up game cameras to see how many are in the area where they plan to hunt. I am one who sets up a camera. And if one is going to set up a ground blind, which essentially is just a tent with a printed camouflage design, it needs to be done about the same time as the game camera so the deer get used to it being there. I, for one, have no use for tree stands or anything up in the air because I hate heights, so I have a large blind. I check the camera frequently to see how many, if any, deer are coming to my mineral block. It's my first year putting one out. The pictures are...let say, creepy sometimes for the infrared night shots. If you look in the picture below you'll see something between the trees just above the deer's ear. There literally is nothing there that should account for that. NOTHING! It gave me the idea for "Hunting Season". Be prepared. It IS Halloween season too after all. Seriously, I may have a hard time going out there before daylight now. Just sayin'.

 

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!

 

Dirt to Run My Fingers Through

It's been thirty-six years since I've been to Macon. I do hope things will be better there in Georgia than here. The newspapers say we're surely on our way out of the 'depression', whatever that is. I guess we were never rich enough to notice when banks went broke, we never had a dime in one, but we also had a hard time making a dime on our farm.

I was eight years old the summer of 1899 when Papa decided to move the family to Kansas for a fresh start. He said the earth was played out and he couldn't get anything to grow anymore. It was a small parcel to begin with; only twenty acres and he share cropped another fifteen, but when the farmer died who owned the fifteen his son sold the place and they wouldn't let us share crop anymore.

 "Papa, are you going to sell this place?" I asked.

"No child," he answered. "One of you younguns might want to come back some day. It'll be waiting for you."

We loaded our big wagon, hitched up the horses and headed to Kansas. Our poor cow, tied to the back, lost so much weight from the walk she quit giving milk. Papa traded her in Missouri for a heifer due to drop her calf in a couple of months. It wouldn't have been a fair trade but she got bred to the wrong bull and they figured the calf would be too big and maybe kill 'em both when it was born. The farmer was willing to fatten out our older cow and see if she could be a good cow again, or he could eat her; either way he figured to win.

We arrived in the dead heat of the summer. Mama was about to have her own baby and the travel was real hard on her. The man in town that sold Papa the 'new' farm had told him the roof blowed off the house in a twister earlier in the year. But there was an old soddie that might work 'til he could put on a new roof. I found out quick just what a soddie really was; a hole dug into the side the hillside with a dirt floor and a dirt roof. The front was made of layers of sod. It looked more like a glorified cave to me. Papa said it would be a good root cellar when the house was fixed.

Papa and me cleared a field and dragged the cottonwood trees back to the house. He made what he called rafters to support the roof. Then he cut shingles out of other trees and nailed them to the rafters. We were real tired after so many weeks of working dawn to dark, but we got it done and Mama said she was real proud of us

.

Mama had a baby boy, Adam, just after we got moved into the new house. She prayed every night for him to stay healthy. She had already lost three children to a bad influenza back in Georgia. We never did figure out how come I was spared.

I had to go get Papa out of the field he was plowing to plant hard winter wheat when the heifer tried to have her calf. She was having considerable trouble. Mama didn't want me to watch because she said it wasn't fitting for a young girl to see such things, but Papa told her it was nonsense. I lived on a farm and that's just what happened on farms. He managed to save them both and that was the biggest, prettiest calf I ever saw.

We planted a fall garden, but an early frost got some of it. Papa's winter wheat made it through all right though. I helped with loading fire wood onto the wagon for Papa when I wasn't helping Mama clean the house and watching my little brother.

I remember that one day a couple of years later I heard a knock at the door and when I opened it there stood two men with reddish skin, dark eyes, and long, black hair dressed in buckskins with a rifle over one shoulder and a pack of some sort over the other. All I could do was stare. We had never had Indian visitors before and I thought they were all on the reservation.

Mama finally pushed me to one side so she could talk to them. They were traveling north and one of their party took sick and they had stopped a few days to let him rest. They'd already gone through most of their provisions, which would have lasted the entire trip had they not stopped. They were nearly out of food and had almost no ammunition. Mama gave then some flour and corn meal and a few potatoes. She said she couldn't spare anymore than that with her family to feed. They said they understood and thanked her. Then one of them took off his pack and gave Mama a few animal skins and a pouch of little colored beads. Mama accepted the gift and they were on their way. She said she had heard they would trade for anything they got because they didn't like to have things just given to them. She didn't want to offend their pride so she took what they offered. Come Christmas my brother got a small fur hat and a coat and shoes made from the hide after the hair had been removed, and I got a beautiful crocheted broach with the little colored beads woven into the pattern. I was very proud of it. 

The winters were cold but we kept warm with comforters and quilts Mama had made. I lost count of the birds I had to pluck to get the fill for those comforters, but they sure were warm.

After we planted the garden we all got a pouch tied around our waists full of seed corn saved from the year before and we planted a row at a time until the field was done. Papa marked the rows and made sure we didn't run out of seed as we poked a stick in the dirt and dropped in the seeds. It us a full week, but we got it done and had a real nice crop too. We had enough put away for us for the winter, to feed the animals, and even to sell some. Papa said he was proud of us for working so hard to bring in a good crop.

Mama made me go to school in the fall. She said I was old enough to learn reading, writing, and figuring my sums. I couldn't go all the time, but often enough to learn something. I had a sister, Belle, and another brother, Jessie, by then and she said we would all go, but as my brothers got older the more of my previous jobs they seemed to get. I got stuck in school learning and at home learning how to cook and sew. My sister Bell didn't mind, but I did. I wanted to be outside working in the dirt, barefoot. Mama did have a time getting me to wear shoes.

It was up to the children to get in the last of the vegetables from the garden before the snow hit. We could see it coming for days. We just barely got them all in, but at least the canning kept us all too busy to worry about all that snow.

A late season twister came through and Papa had to plant the wheat all over again. It was beginning to be a pretty regular thing, so Papa started planting it later. It was barely up when everybody else's was all pulled up and ruined. He still had his crop though.

I'll never forget the excitement when one day Papa found that old hollow tree full of honey. He was scouting for trees to cut for firewood for the stove and for winter and came across a swarm of bees. He said that tree fairly dripped of honey. He donned a long-sleeved shirt and gloves and a big hat. Mama wanted to cover his hat with cloth to keep the bees out but he said he couldn't see what he was doing. He took an old can of oil and stuffed a piece of burlap feed sack in it and then lit it on fire. He said he was going to smoke the bees out and take their honey, but not all of it on account of they had to eat too. He brought home two big wooden barrels of it and said there was lots more, but he wouldn't be greedy about it, especially since they seemed to be getting mad at him. He got stung several times but he didn't seem to mind. He said it was worth it, and that honey sure was good. Mama was forever shooing us younguns out of it. 

There were a couple of years of drought and no matter what we did that corn just would not grow much more than we could eat or the animals could eat. We hauled water up from the creek for the garden, but not as much as we would have liked. Papa was afraid it would dry up too. We used as little as possible ourselves.

In 1905 a twister hit. It tore off part of the roof and a good many of the boards on the front of the house. Papa salvaged as many of the shingles as he could and put them back on but it still leaked so he patched it with pitch and tar. The boards were only good for kindling and he couldn’t afford lumber. Our trees weren't big enough to cut for the boards either, so he made a deal in town for some thick black stuff he called tar paper and some nails. He said that would have to do for walls until he could afford the boards. The house seemed harder to heat and drafty after that.

By 1906 there were eight of us kids in the house, two of which were twins. The house was very full. Papa and Mama talked about making the house bigger, even though there wasn't even enough money to replace the tar paper on the walls. 

Papa had barely got the garden plowed for Mama's spring garden when she told him about number nine.

A few weeks later an epidemic of the influenza made its way to the area. People were dying everywhere. Mama had her hands full for sure. Papa coughed more every day and finally took the fever and chills. If Mama hadn't threatened to tie him down to the bed, he'd have gone out even then

.

A neighbor boy whose family had already been through it came to milk the cow and feed the animals for Mama.

We got weaker every day because we couldn't keep anything down and we couldn't stay awake long enough to figure out what might settle good and eat it. When the children started dying off Mama sent for the doctor to come back. We lost John, he was six, Chester, he was three, and Jessie. The neighbor boy helped Mama bury them. She was so tired she couldn't even cry.

The doctor gave Mama the last of his quinine and said he didn't know what else he could do for our family. He was worried about Mama too. She hadn't gotten sick and neither of them could figure out why. They were worried her baby could get hurt by it though. She was exhausted but kept on going, and he was afraid she'd collapse at any moment. She thanked him for his concern, but wouldn't slow down for a minute.

 She gave us the quinine and tried to feed us toast and chamomile tea when we were awake. She prayed a lot too. When four year old Ruth died Mama became more desperate than ever. She said she wasn't losing anymore of her babies. She kept a big pot of tea always made on the stove to keep hot and a big stack of toast next to it. She started waking us up every thirty minutes or so one at a time to feed us just one or two bites and a sip of tea. She only stopped long enough to put a fresh cool cloth on our fevered heads. At night she dozed in her rocking chair by the fire, but awoke at every sound or groan from one of us. 

When I finally got where I could sit up without getting dizzy and hold down food better, I helped Mama. I sat in the bed replacing cloths on the heads of my sisters and fed then the toast, though Mama always insisted she do the tea because she wanted it to stay hot and she was afraid I wasn't strong enough yet not to spill it on them. I guess I was still pretty weak because I did my share of sleeping. Mama said that was all right because I needed sleep to get better.

Papa was down for nearly a month and it was too late to plant the corn when he was able to get out of the bed. Mama made him stay inside and regain his strength. That took another week or so. He felt bad because he said we might actually get rain and the crop would produce like it was supposed to. Mama just told him not to worry about it and grinned to herself like she had a secret that no one else knew about. And she did.

 Mama made Papa promise not to overdo it trying to catch up on things before she'd let him out of the house. Imagine his, and our, surprise to find that our neighbors had gotten together and planted our corn. They took turns making the rows and got it all done in less than a day. They did ours first because Papa already had the field plowed. Then they'd move on to the next neighbor, plowing and planting until everybody's was done. Papa shared his corn with them when it was ready. It was our best crop ever and Mama said it was because it was sowed with love and human kindness. Through the years we all tried to remember that lesson.

When it was all done and over and everyone was back on their feet, Mama took to her bed and we waited on her for a while. She surely did deserve it. She cried for her lost children but said she couldn't stay down for long. Life had to go on even though she'd miss each of them terribly every single day for the rest of her life. She still missed the three she had lost in Georgia so she knew what she was talking about. The dark circles under her eyes eventually did go away and somehow she managed to have healthy twin boys, Charles and Jefferson.

 We didn't lose any more family members after that and Mama had three more children, Sara, Virginia, and Andrew.

 We all learned to read and write and figure like Mama wanted us to. It was just as well; between the droughts and the high winds, and the constant replanting in the same place over and over, the top soil is gone. Now they call this area The Dust Bowl. You can't grow a thing. The children are all grown with families of their own and like the topsoil, they have scattered across the country with the wind.

 I don't feel bad about leaving because I guess Mama and Papa are together in heaven watching over all of us. Mama passed two years ago and Papa a year later. He said he just couldn't live without her anymore.

 In 1908 I married that neighbor boy who helped Mama during the influenza outbreak. We had five children and even they have grown and moved off with their families; the youngest was married just six months ago. In spite of this 'depression' we are supposed to be in the old family homestead in Georgia is still in the family and waiting for me. At least there I'll have dirt to run my fingers through once more and it might actually grow something. Tired as I am, I can hardly wait.