It was November in rural Virginia, solidly into whitetail season. Well south of Richmond, with a respectful nod to musician Oliver Anthony.
I was on a huge farm, owned by a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel who had become a key mentor to me. I had no idea going in that this hunt would end up being the most surreal experience of my hunting life.
Most of that farm had been in his family—incredibly—since the year 1650. The main house wasn’t so much a residence as it was a live-in museum. In fairness, he, and all those generations who had preceded him, would probably agree that they never really owned the place; they were all merely generational caretakers. They all had held it in trust for the next genetic wave, even if a particular segment of half a century doesn’t particularly feel that way.
The Colonel, which was how we addressed him, had maintained cavalry spurs on his mantelpiece that were worn by his great-great-grandaddy when that man was “cut down by Union forces at th’ county courthouse.” There were paintings of Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson hanging in the main hall, painted from life. The dining room table had nailed to its underside the customs document from when it had come in through the Port of Scotland, Virginia.
In 1750.
I’ve had dinner at that table. Two and half centuries later, it was still put to regular use. The Colonel’s farm was that kind of place.
His spread was more than a thousand acres, and despite the large open areas for dairy cows, he’d ensured that other extensive parts remained heavily wooded, which of course provided ideal deer habitat. As for hundreds of years, each autumn was a whitetail hunting paradise.
The middle of the day was always organized with radio-collared dogs on a driven line and the rest of us up in treestands. But usually, the early morning and late afternoon were dedicated to individual efforts. The Colonel, consistent with his decades of command, told who to set up where at the end of the day.
To me: “You go up o’ there, behind the ol’ Johnson place. That stand’s about 50 in.” No geographic reference on the entire farm was known by any name that it hadn’t already had for at least a century, and some of them much longer, one dating to the 1680s.
As I pulled up—the farm was big enough that we often drove rather than hiked—it hit me that the ol’ Johnson Place had likely not been habitable since, maybe, the Coolidge administration. But the remaining hulk of the house still served an admirable function as an identifiable landmark visible from the road, its primary utility now simply for direction to the dense woods to its north.
I parked in front and took a few moments to cobble up a sling out of 550 paracord for my borrowed Mossberg 500 12-gauge. It was plain but solid, and I felt glad to have it. And, indeed, glad to be there at all. At the time, I was the comparatively new guy; good enough for an invite but still proving myself. And I knew it.
OK, into the tree line. The sun was already low, its rays much closer to horizontal than vertical, that incomplete light informed my path to the stand with heavy contrasts of bright orange beams and opaque black shadow, treading across like the pattern of a Bengal tiger hide.
I expected a ladder and a platform, but instead I was blindsided to find a climbing treestand. I’d never used one before, and had never even been briefed on how to, although I’d heard of them. For a long moment, I was none too happy about that. But then, there was zero chance in hell that I was going back as the new guy who couldn’t figure out how to run the damn thing. It took me a couple of abrupt false starts, but I finally got it. It worked far better than I thought it might.
Most of the fixed stands on the farm were about 15 feet up, but I thought a little higher was a little mo’ better. Better out of view, better for scent dispersion. On this particular tree, no branches nor trunk diameter issues blocked that higher climb, so I made it to maybe 20 feet. It was a hell of a view.
I slowly and quietly chambered a round of 2 3/4-inch 9-pellet unplated 00 Buck, which was all that we used. That load was utterly conclusive inside about 25 yards. As to the stand, there was a nylon monkey strap, and I clipped into it not because I thought I needed it, but because I could envision the Colonel blowing my windows in for not doing it.
Then, I experimented with a little leaning side to side, to see the shadow effect. If I sat more or less straight and kept the shotgun pretty close to east-west, I cast no shadow and, to the extent I pushed it, the shadow was nevertheless pretty well broken up by falling on other trees or gaps to the east, rather than down to any sort of clear background.
Of course, I was worried about legal shooting light. At the time, that limit was a half hour after sunset. After a long wait, I finally I heard something.
It was the crush of the thick layer of fallen and now dried leaves, unmistakable. It was a single sound. One step.
Something was moving with stealthy intent. The sound came from behind me.
Another step. Pause.
What instantly struck me is that it didn’t sound like something with four legs. It sounded like whatever it was had only two. And whatever it was, it didn’t want to be heard.
Crunch.
WTF, over?
Nobody in the hunting party would be out ground-stalking—everybody knew that there were armed men in trees everywhere from here to Peoria and back again. Maybe a poacher? There had been a continuing history of them on the property. Worse, this county, despite being rural and beautiful, had an unfortunate element that cooked up drugs, and there had been drug deals on the main road through the farm.
Crunch.
It took everything I had not to lean out to my left and take a look.
I further resisted the visceral urge to do a press-check, but did put my thumb on the Mossberg’s tang safety.
Crunch.
Close.
Eight or ten more of those.
My head was turned about as far to the left as it would go without my cervical spine dislocating.
Visual movement.
What I saw threw me into a concrete bridge abutment of utter, blazing disbelief.
I watched a footprint happen.
Just a footprint. With no corporeal being to create it.
Although that print was in the hard contrast of dark shadow rather than the brilliant orange shafts of light, I could still make it out clearly. And then, there was another one. A stepping pace ahead.
Something I could not see was stealthily walking in my direction.
Assess.
The footprints were foot sized, offset side-to-side by the usual width and with a man-sized pace. I heard the leaves crunch simultaneously with my very own eyeball observation.
Surreal. It was game on, even though I didn’t know what the game was. I knocked off the safety.
The very first thought to flash through my Brain Housing Group was that of the alien creature from the movie “Predator.” For those unacquainted, that titular antagonist thing was wearing some sort of light pass-through armor, making it damn near impossible to see.
I could mentally hear Arnold (before he tragically alienated many of his fans) yelling “Get to the choppa!”
That thought lasted only a second and was replaced with this—groups of high testosterone guys love pulling practical jokes on one another, particularly on the newer members, and that was what this must be. Safety back on.
But then, a countercurrent of doubt. How could they possibly pull off this kind of illusion? And would you want to do that to a guy holding a loaded 12-gauge?
Crunch.
The good news was that, whatever it was, it had started to move past me. I watched in goggling amazement as the footprints slowly moved past my position to the east, and then slowly shifted north.
With several more steps, the invisible threat broke out of the dark shadow and into one of the brilliant orange shafts of light.
In an instant, I was coursed with radically competing thoughts:
Understanding.
Relief.
Hilarity.
And, finally, Humility.
It wasn’t one creature, it was two.
To my slamdunk humiliation, they were a pair of enormous toads.
One toad would jump, then after a moment, the other one would do the same; a slow cadence that had sounded to my ear like stealth. Their natural coloring made them all but invisible against the shadowed forest floor until they’d hopped into the bright light.
I’ll confess that, upon returning to camp that night, I didn’t open my damn mouth.
It took me several years, after I was established, before I told that one. But on a much later trip there, around an end-of-day campfire, I finally explained my idiocy. The to-be-expected storm of good-natured abuse followed, in wonderfully epic form.
While I didn’t land us any venison that long-ago night, I did land a story that has given us years of hilarity.
It took me years of hindsight to understand that that was the far better outcome.