A listener writes “Hey Wes, a while back I had emailed you about an incident that happened to me in Minnesota in 2008.
I had another experience that I wanted to run by you. If you could, let me know what you think. I usually bowhunt alone but am considering changing this after hearing some of your shows.
In October 2013, I was sitting in a treestand on a piece of state land in Southeast Minnesota. The stand I was in was in a large cottonwood tree on the edge of a bank with a creek on one side and an old overgrown field on the other side. Deer often cross from the field to the creek/bedding area or vice versa at dawn and dusk.
It was warm and sunny and late afternoon when I heard (400 yards away?) a really loud scream. It sounded like a man with a deep voice had been hurt badly or was very angry. It was only one scream and then silence. I considered going towards the sound in case someone had gotten hurt but then I realized the sound was coming from a thick brushy area and I had no further reference as to how to find the source of the sound.
About that time I saw a doe running away from the general area of the sound, towards me. It made a big ¾ circle in the field so that it was facing the way it had come and was clearly looking at the trail. I was less than 200 yards from this deer and could observe it easily with my binoculars. Nothing further happened until dusk. The doe appeared to bed down where it was.
At dusk I suddenly heard (voices?) and brush moving as something walked from the brushy area to my right, across the creek and into the forest behind me. At the closest they were probably 50 yards from me. The voices sounded like 2 children giggling with each other and there were clearly 2 sources of sound. I could tell because they would sort of talk over each other. This was really creepy because I was on about a square mile of state land, surrounded by other forests, brushland and crop fields, not anywhere near a town where children would be. I saw nobody else at the parking area and did not see/hear any other hunters that day. I heard the same giggling sound 3 times, about 10 seconds apart as the voices first crossed the creek then 2 more times as they moved farther back into the forest.”