Deer and Other Critters

Today wasn't the best day for Jer so far. Managed to bag some does for venison stew, but it just wasn't a good morning. It was just... how do I put this...?

Better start from the beginning, I guess.

Had to have been just about 5:00 in the morning - right at the crack of dawn - and I had just finished setting things up in my blind for the day. I'd just readjusted my compound bow the other night, and I had a whole quiver of the brand new broadheads I bought for it. I'd been having good luck so far. No big trophy bucks yes, but I did drop a doe with some good meat on her. She'll make some good stew, maybe some jerky.

Anyway, I was camping in the blind, and I heard a rustling out in the bushes, so I peeked out into the shadowy forest below. It was pretty hard to see though; the pines up here get awful thick. Sometimes they even block out light, it's like night in some parts of the forests up here.

That's when I saw him. A big, beautiful 16-point buck, absolutely beautiful. But for some reason, he looked awful skittish. Not common behavior for bucks during rutting season, or any season for that matter. Not to the degree that he was spooked.

I was tracing him with my eye when he stopped walking just long enough to stare off towards the tree line a moment. Just... staring off into the brush, like he was on his guard. Must've seen something he didn't like in his territory. But it gave me a perfect opportunity to nail him – his folly, my opportunity.

God, this still pisses me off: I had a clear shot, perfectly lined up and everything. Right at the base of the skull; it would've dropped him instantly. But then he bolted on me, just bolted into the undergrowth like all Hell's demons were on him.


"Shit," I murmured softly under my breath, putting the bow aside. It couldn't have been worse luck. I'd have to scout some more, see if I could catch another deer coming, maybe even put down some more musk.

But as I peered out of my blind to scout, binoculars in hand, I suddenly felt… watched. You know that creepy little feeling you get when someone's in the room, but you can't see them anywhere? Yeah, I got that feeling all over, and little chills down my spine. I'd be lying if I said it didn't freak me out.

And that's when things got sort of weird. After I'd been looking around a bit, I suddenly noticed something a little… off about the distant pines. Something wrong. Looked like a whitish blur in the trees or something. At first I thought it was the markings on a bird or something, seeing as it was so high up in the branches, but it didn't have the shape of any bird I'd ever seen. Not a lot of white birds around the Upper Peninsula, after all.

So, curious, I brought my binoculars to my face and adjusted them to get a better look.

I wish to God Above I hadn't. Because what I saw…

Hell, I'm not even sure of what I did see.

It was a man. Or at least that's what it looked like. Stood like one. Was dressed in some kind of pitch-black suit and tie like he was one. But thing was, he was kinda weird-looking. For one, he was taller than any man I'd ever met. My blind's a good eight feet off the ground in a beech tree. This guy stood at least thirty feet away and still could have looked me straight in the eye.

For another, he was so thin that "emaciated" doesn't even begin to cover it, and his arms were pretty damn long. Looked like they could have reached the ground, but I'm sure that was just a trick of the light or something. At first I thought it was a scarecrow on an adjacent farm or something, but no - I felt eyes on me. Its eyes, even though I couldn't see any from where I was. No, this was something living, of that I was pretty certain.

I'm gonna gut the two does I dropped this afternoon, then head to the butcher. Maybe I can get some jerky off the smaller one for later while I'm hunting, I could use some snacks.