The most frightened I have ever been.

When I first started college, I went to a small college in Wilson, NC.  I had not fully recovered from the injuries I had received in an automobile accident when I was 18 years old.  I needed a campus that was compact and not spread out all over the place.  I had a large brace on my leg and used crutches and a cane.  During the course of my attendance there, I met a good friend.  We used to hunt together, fish together and scuba dive together (it was under his tutelage that I learned to scuba dive).  The first time I ever went deer hunting it was with him and some friends of his who were also students at the same college but were from the same local area he was. On that first deer hunt, they were all telling me what to do and I kept questioning it.  They finally got frustrated with me and told me to sit any where I pleased but not to move out of the area that I was in so that they would know where I was and didn’t have to worry about accidentally shooting me.  They told me to stay where I was until they came back to get me.  I looked around and found a place that seemed to suit me.  Because of the injuries to my leg and hip I was unable to climb a tree so had to sit on the ground.  The type of hunting we were doing was called still hunting.  You find a likely spot where the deer might be traveling and position yourself where you think you can get a good shot and then stay absolutely motionless so that the deer do not see you. We always wore camouflage and had our faces blacked out with burnt cork.  A preferred spot is above the ground in a tree or deer stand.  Deer do not look up all that much and you might get away with a little movement.  We’ll, because of my hip, I had to stay on the ground and not move a muscle.  If a mosquito lit on my nose to fill up, I let him.  I did not move.  I always tried to find a spot that I could lean my back up against a tree and be as comfortable as possible but yet ready to quickly raise the gun and fire.  I normally sat with my bad right leg stretched out straight on the ground and my left leg bent up so I could rest the gun on my knee.  Well on that very first deer hunt they were trying to tell me where to set up.  I could see that if I did what they were suggesting, I was not going to be comfortable.  Yes, the spot they suggested was very good for spotting deer. But it was not good for sitting on the ground for a long period of time.  I found a spot that suited me and sat down to wait.  I made a lot of rookie errors.  I was deep in the woods but when I sat down, I was facing the field instead of deeper into the woods.  This is a mistake.  The deer come from out of the woods to the fields to eat.  I was in effect sitting with my back to the deer.  And I realized this because after sitting absolutely still for a while, I heard deer moving behind me as they made their way to the field.  I could not see them because I was looking the wrong way.  But I must have had the guardian angel of first time deer hunters with me that day because one finally walked past me to my left.  That was the direction that my gun was pointed.  He was about 25 yards away from where I was sitting and I was afraid that he would hear my beating heart.  I was caught up in the excitement of buck fever.  My heart was pounding in my chest.  No matter how much I tried to talk to my heart and myself to relax, settle down, it didn’t do any good.  I was sure that deer was going to hear my pounding heart and spook.  I continued to watch the deer without moving.  Finally he stepped behind a large tree where I was out of his line of sight.  I quickly raised the gun to my shoulder and when he stepped back into sight from behind the tree, I shot him and he dropped right there.  My friends had told me to be very careful approaching a downed deer.  That many a hunter had been hurt badly by a wildly kicking wounded deer that they had approached carelessly.  With this caution in mind, I got up and very carefully approached the fallen deer making sure that I kept the large tree that had shielded my movement between us.  Standing safely behind this tree, I hollered out to the deer.  Hey!  Hey! Watching carefully for any sign of movement.  When after several noisy attempts to spook the deer I decided that it was safe to approach him, I sat down with my back against the tree and reached out my hand and patted the deer.  I was excited.  My first deer hunt and I had bagged a deer.  YEE HAH!  Later, when my friends came out of the woods, they were basically disgusted that a first time deer hunter got a deer.

             My friend and I hunted on this farm over in Gates County many times.  It belonged to some friends of his father.  On one occasion, I do not remember the date; I decided to go down into a different part of the woods that I had never hunted.  My friend knew where I might be going and was not going to be anywhere near this location.  I walked into the woods and looked around trying to find a likely spot to set up.  I found a tree that looked like it would be comfortable to lean against and was close by two intersecting deer trails.  I was very relaxed as I sat there and very optimistic that I might get a deer.  This spot was in a perfect location for deer.  I was using my friends fathers Browning 12 gauge automatic shotgun.  I had this gun loaded with 5 rounds of number one buckshot.  I was ready.  After sitting there for a while, I was suddenly terrified.  And I do mean terrified.  I have never been as frightened before or since.  And of nothing. Nothing visible that is.  I got to my feet as rapidly as I could and was looking all around trying to determine if there was anything there.  I could not see anything that might be the source of my fear.  But I knew I wasn’t going to stay down in those woods by myself. If I was by myself.  I started walking out of the woods toward the field.  The entire time I was walking out of the woods I kept looking all around me and clicking the safety on the gun on and off, on and off, on and off.  I have never been so terrified in my life.  If someone had jumped out from behind a tree and said boo!  I would have blown them in half, I was that frightened.  When I left the darkness of the woods and reached the edge of the field, I began to settle down a little bit.  It was still quite early with quite a bit of time left to hunt that evening so I just waited until my friend finally left his spot and came out into the field and whistled.  When we met up he asked me if I had seen any deer I answered truthfully no, I had not seen any deer.  And I did not tell him how frightened I had been while I was down in the woods.  When you are in your 20’s, hunting with a fully loaded automatic shotgun, you do not tell people that you got scared when you were down in the woods.  Particularly not other college aged guy people.   Or you are likely to be reminded of it at particularly embarrassing times. So I just let the matter drop, not knowing what else to do about it.  Months and months later, it could even have been years later, I was with my friend and some others in a tavern off campus.  We were drinking beer and talking and somehow the subject of ghost stories came up.  In this atmosphere, I decided to tell about the incident when I became so frightened back in the woods in Gates County.  I had only just begun to tell the story when my friend stopped me and told me exactly where in the woods I had been.  The same thing had happened to him at the same spot, except that he was up in the tree not leaning against it.  He said he almost fell out of the tree because he was so frightened and had to get out of there quickly.  Neither one of us had an explanation for why we were so frightened.  Neither one of us had seen or heard anything.  We decided that perhaps in some past time something very frightening and horrifying had happened to someone at that spot.  Perhaps there was a lynching or someone tortured to death of something horrible that had happened to someone there and it had left a very negative imprint in the energy around that tree.  Whatever it was, it still had a very powerful influence years later.  Many years later, I was again hunting in the woods near where this had happened to me.  I tried to find the same spot but the timber had been logged off and everything was changed and I could not determine the exact spot with any degree of certainty.  Perhaps the same thing is still happening to anyone unlucky enough to stumble upon this spot in the woods.  If so, they have my sympathy, it was not pleasant.