A Different Sort of Experience in the Woods

Archery season opens in our zone on October 25^th … two weeks later than it used to but the biological and planning folks that make the big decisions made some changes to the opening and closing dates of deer season last year. I don’t mind it opening later. It offers a better chance for some cooler weather in this hot part of the country. Maybe even a good frost to decelerate the activity of the mosquitoes that make sitting still for long periods of time practically impossible in these woods.

I always have hopes of being in the woods on opening day.

It rarely works out.

Life has a way of running interference.

I got my ladder stand set up late and it was well into the season before I finally got to the woods with what I call my gunbow. I used to draw a bow before the shoulder injury and was reluctant to switch to a crossbow. An inherent need to be in the woods during archery season, and the fact that the two of us under this roof prefer deer over store bought cuts of who-knows-what-from-who-knows-where, put reluctance in its place a few years ago.

I looked at a lot of different offerings in the crossbow department. Part of the looking involved what I considered a reasonable price range. I had a ballpark figure in mind and over time saved up the figure plus a little over the top. The big stores (names withheld) that most people are familiar with, and online outlets, that do a lot of business sell things at an inviting price that is offset by the volume of their sales. I pretty well settled on a brand and model. Partly because that was the brand and model a friend had. I don’t think he ever killed a deer with it. The last time I saw it the thing was hanging up in a barn.

One of the things about ordering online or going to a big store is that if or when (more likely when) something goes wrong with one of these high powered mechanical contraptions your best option is to find a good bow shop to work on the thing. I know one, and the archer that operates it. He did a major overhaul on my last compound. So I figured before doing anything it would be in my best interest to talk with him before going off halfcocked on a whim. I’m glad I did because the make and model that I was initially interested in is one that he spends a lot of time working on. He told me what he had in his shop.

I dug out my stash, headed over to see him, and drove home with the Parker Bushwacker. It is not, at its 150 pound draw weight and 285 fps, the strongest and fastest bowgun on the market but it definitely gets the job done. Its 7-pound weight makes it easy to carry to and from and not once have I felt the need to grumble about its weight after holding it in a stand for hours on end.

We were several weeks into archery season when I was finally able to break away. I drove up to a place that I refer to only as Somewhere In The Woods, USA that morning, spent some time getting camp set up and rounding up firewood for the night, then, around 2:00 climbed into my stand where I sat until it was almost dark. I wasn’t able to sit my ladder. The wind was out of the wrong direction so I hung an old climbing stand on a tree and shimmied up.

A nice doe came within 10 or 12 yards of me but there was some scrub between us that could have easily deflected the arrow. (1) I refuse to let go with a shot that has the potential of hitting badly resulting in a long slow death of an animal. (2) I am not fond of the idea of losing an arrow. Lost arrows cost money to replace and this thing does not shoot off-the-shelf Walmart variety arrows that cost $3.00 apiece.

 Even though I was up in the air a good ways the doe was catching little whiffs of me. She never looked up but she kept looking around obviously smelling the air. She hung around a few minutes, well long enough to make a shot if it was a clear one, then slowly turned and casually walked off into the thick bottom.

It was going on dark-thirty when I walked up the hill to my camp for the night. The plan was to overnight, be in my stand early, then sit until midday. I sat by the fire until around 9:00 then crawled into my bedroll on back of my truck.

I laid there thinking about the day … the drive up … the doe in the woods … the nice fire that I had sat by for a few hours and how its light still illuminated the space inside my camper shell. Sleep wasn’t far away. It didn’t take long before it found me.

Sleep didn’t last long.

I don’t know if it was from the extra work my legs weren’t used to shimmying up and down that tree, or if I had some potassium deficiency, or a combination of the two but I wasn’t asleep long before the calves of both legs started cramping like crazy. They would knot up and set me to moaning and groaning. I would moan and groan and stretch and work them out. Several rounds of that business with naps in between.

Then, middle of the night, that nature thing snuck up on me. I had already been shorted on sleep and decided I could get through the night without getting up. I was wrong. I got up at 3:00, took care of what needed taking care of, and decided to stir up the fire, make some coffee, and sit there tending the fire, looking at the star lit night, and enjoy listening to the sounds of nature serenading me.

It was beautiful.

The wind direction changed overnight and allowed me to sit my ladder stand. Must have been about an hour after getting situated that I heard the steps in the leaves. Slight. Barely detectable at first. Coming from behind me and from the worst possible direction considering the wind was carrying my scent with it. It got in really close, let out a grunt, then turned and ran. I never saw what it was but had it taken a few more steps it would have walked right beside my ladder stand. That's the kind of stuff that sets the heart pounding!

So I’m about a quarter of the way home that afternoon. Just driving along thinking about the previous 24 plus hours when something that I had heard at 4:00 that morning came to my attention beckoning consideration. I didn’t pay it much mind at the time, other than to look at my watch to make a mental note of it. It was, during the playback on the road home, that it stood out.

Bear in mind, in telling the rest of this factual account, that the closest house to the East of my overnight camp is over a mile away. The closest house to the West is over 2 miles away. Over 3 miles of distance. Between these houses it is mostly dense woods and a wide swampy Lower Alabama creek bottom that is practically impenetrable. It’s serious business down in there. It’s not the kind of place the faint of heart wander. It’s not the kind of place that most modern hunters want to labor to get into then labor to get out of with a deer sized animal. It’s not the kind of place for novice woods-goers to cut their eye teeth.

Me? I love it.

So it’s 4:00 in the morning. There’s not much to do at that time of the morning except what I’ve already mentioned that I was doing. It’s quiet. The closest paved road is over a mile away and there can be heard the occasional sound of traffic on that road. Other than that occasional sound there are no other motorized sounds to be heard … far away or close in.

Down on the creek. A quarter of a mile South from me. A half mile at the most. I distinctly and clearly heard it.

Rap. Rap. Rap. Rap.

4 times. Equally as loud. Evenly spaced. It sounded like a fencepost sized piece of wood being struck hard against a large sized tree.

I spent most of the rest of the drive home, and ever since, trying to rationalize and reason it into something other than what it appears. For the life of me, though, I cannot come up with a reasonable other no matter how many times I hit the playback button. Not there. Not down in there where people just simply do not go. Not on a good day. Let alone on a bad day. And what seasoned and brave bow hunter would go down in there that long before the crack of dawn and make that kind of noise at that hour of the morning?

Any bow hunter, even a green novice, knows that archery is an up close game and you exercise as much stealth as humanly possible.

I am, no matter how many times I replay it, convinced that what I heard was the signaling sound made by … (Dare I move from skeptic to believer and take the chance of being called a crazy fella with an overactive imagination?) … the Bigfoot or, as it is more commonly called in this region, the Skunk Ape?

I’ll take that chance. And I will always consider myself to be one of the few that are privileged to hear it. Who knows? Maybe it saw the early morning fire of my camp, came close to investigate, intuitively knew that I would never hunt it or attempt it harm, then slipped off into the creek bottom where it let me know that it had been there.

Oh. By the way. Other than the pitiful few trusted souls that I've personally told this story and are familiar with my personal goings and doings, the whereabouts of this encounter will forever remain undisclosed to protect the innocent and elusive creature.