Swamp Thing
The only thing I can think of happened years ago. This was back when it was ok to build permanent tree stands nailed into trees. I had scouted out a new area and settled on an area where an oak flat joined a big thick swamp.
It was pretty open except one grove of head high palmetto's and brush that came from behind my stand and went into the swamp. I was able to climb into a fork of an oak tree by climbing a small dogwood next to it.
After hoisting up my wood and nailing up a very stable platform and seat about 15-20' up, I dumped out some corn and left. This was in the summer as I was hog hunting. It was two weeks before I made it back to hunt.
Everything was fine as I walked in before daylight and got settled in. I noticed the corn was gone and lots of fresh hog sign that I could see by my small light. After everything got quieted back down, as i sat in the dark, I kept having that feeling of being watched.
Now i have hunted, camped, and grew up in the woods and am completely at home day or night in the darkest deepest swamps, and never felt this feeling. I wasn't scared cause I didn't know to be. I just couldn't put my finger on it.
The feeling never changed but I couldn't get used to it, I was just on edge i guessed. I never saw or heard any animals that morning that I can remember till I was climbing down about mid morning.
I had lowered my rifle, and was in the process of slithering from the oak to the little dogwood when I saw something out of the corner of my eye about the same time I heard it! I heard the crash and just BARELY caught sight of something running through the palmettos parallel to me.
Now I say barely cause it looked like a huge, (man high), brown dog. Honestly I thought buffalo instantly! How crazy is that?? It crashed through the thicket and I heard it hit water. Sounded like a heard of hogs plowing thru!
I wrote it off as a deer that jumped and in me glimpsing it, made it look different. Well i thought about that sight and the feeling I had had all morning as I drove back home to do a little work before hunting again that evening.
Around 2 or so that afternoon I was again walking back into that stand still thinking about the oddness of the morning. It was only a 1/4 mile or so walk and I was there and settled in quick enough. Again, everything was oddly quiet.
I had been sitting maybe an hour or so when I heard the faint splash of hogs I assumed, across the thicket in the swamp. As it got louder, instead of that excited, eager feeling you would normally get, I was getting nervous. It was so weird cause I had never felt that way before.
Well what I thought were a bunch of hogs turned out to be one single critter. When it was within a hundred yards, I could hear it so plain and clear. Whatever it was, was in no hurry and stayed out of sight on my blind side across the thicket.
I had scouted all this out and i knew the water that it was in was waist deep on me and this thing was picking its feet or legs clear of the water as it walked. I could hear the "splash, drip...drip...drip...splash" as it put one foot in front of the other real slow like it was trying to be quiet.
I thought it might be another person till i thought about how deep that water was.
I would never point a gun at a noise or anything I wasn't planning to kill dead, but as that noise got louder and got to the edge of the thicket, I was looking down the barrel! Still on safe and finger off the trigger but still, you gotta know me to know how serious this must have been. I was actually shaking.
Well it got to the edge of the water with about 40 yards of thicket before the open ground between us. It crashed about 10 or 15 yards and then went quiet. Deathly quiet. no sound, no frogs, no crickets, no birds, no nothing. I might have imagined it but I thought I could hear something every now and then like it was slippin' in on me.
It was getting dark by then and to say i was shaking would be an understatement. I never saw or heard anything else that evening but I walked out backwards right before dark! I was so put off by it, I had forgotten my bag (fanny pack today) hanging on a nail in the stand. I realized that while i was driving home.
I told my grand daddy about it that night and he of course made fun of me. If all that wasn't bad enough, here is the crazy part most folks don't believe.
It was two days later before i got the nerve up to go back after my bag. I carried a shotgun this time as I felt more secure with it though I doubt I could have hit anything at this point. It was an old rabbit ear and I kept my thumb on the hammer the whole walk in. And of course I went in in mid day! I kept my eyes peeled as I slipped in toward my stand.
Like I said it was pretty open except the thicket which would be on the other side of my stand from where I was coming in. I got about 35 yards or so from my stand and glanced up. It was gone!
I don't remember seeing it piled on the ground below, but it was not in the tree. I could see white all around where it was like the bark had been scratched and clawed all to hell! And my bag was still hanging on that nail! I never looked back and to this day, i have not been back to that swamp.
A few years after my little incident, it was all clear cut and part of that swamp was filled in. There are houses there now. I have told a few people about it, but i usually have to drink a few to talk