So, a few weeks ago me and my dad went on a hunting trip to the same spot we’ve been going to since I was a little kid. It started off like every other hunt that time of year, early in the morning, light snowfall, freezing to death in the blind, etc. The day was going by slowly while music quietly played in a single earbud, and yeah, I’ve heard the “that’s not real hunting!” argument before. Regardless, the sun was slowly setting behind the trees when a nice buck started to walk to the few sliced up apples that were definitely not supposed to be there. I hunt for food and I know how a venison can taste when it’s eaten from a buck in the middle of a rut, so I passed on him, hoping a doe would cross my path instead.
At first I thought the buck didn’t notice the apples, but then I realized I was the one he noticed. I’ve had a buck notice me before and start stomping the ground to try and scare me away, but this was different. It walked towards me slowly, the closer it got, the more I realized that it was shaking. I squinted to get a better look, the sun had just started setting, so there was still a while before it got too dark. When I got a better look, I could see the whites of its eyes.
That was the problem, I’ve never seen that in a deer before. It got even closer before I could really see the eyes. They looked like the eyes of a person and its body was shaking like mad. When it exhaled, I couldn’t see the condensation of its breaths. I got scared and clicked the safety off on my crossbow before aiming. Once the safety clicked, it slowly began to back off, but it was walking backwards, eyeing me the whole time. When it faded into the thicket, I pulled out my phone and messaged my dad about what had just happened. He told me it was just that “chronic wasting disease” that was going around. Still, I couldn’t help but look over my shoulder on the way back to the truck.
On the drive back, we talked back and forth about what we saw throughout the day, hoping for better luck next time. I kept staring into the woodline on either side of the truck as we made our way down a narrow dirt road until he finally dropped me off at my apartment. I stayed awake for a few hours, ordered some pizza, and passed out.
We went hunting again a few more times throughout that week and I actually ended up shooting a nice doe that I took to his place for him to process. It was that next time I went out to that same blind that it really started. The sun was setting again, this time it was pretty dark and I was about to pack it in when I heard snorting getting closer to the blind. The sound got so close that I could see the blind moving from the force of the breaths on my right side. At first, I just thought maybe a deer was checking out the blind, so I stayed dead still. I watched as its snout slowly appeared from the window until I could see its face. It was facing forward, but its eyes were angled so hard that it was looking directly at me, it were those same human-like eyes from before while drool poured from its mouth. I freaked out and threw myself backwards while death-gripping my crossbow. When I managed to crawl out of the blind, it was completely gone without a sound, I didn’t even bother looking for tracks.
I pulled out my phone and tried calling my dad, but my battery was completely dead to the point where it wouldn’t even tell me it was at zero when I pressed the power button. I wasted no time running for my life the moment I could get to my feet. I started running to the trail that led back to the truck. I’m not the most active person, so I was pretty winded after my first few seconds of running, but I still managed to run every step of the way back to the truck. I didn’t have any keys, so I just sat in the passenger seat until he came back. When he finally opened the door, I scared the life from his face when I shot up and immediately started,
“We gotta go now!”
He jumped a bit before he looked at me with a worried look, “Why? Are you alright?”
“No, I’m not alright! That weird deer was back and it almost got into the blind!”
He tossed his bag in the back and started the truck, “Alright, alright, just calm down and we’ll be outta here.”
On the drive back, I explained exactly what happened, but he was still sure it was the disease. I knew there was something wrong with it, obviously, but when it stared at me with those eyes, it was like they were crazed, like it was about to do something to me. They were opened so wide that it looked like they were about to fall out of the sockets. He dropped me off at my apartment again. I was on edge the whole night, and didn’t plan on heading out again any time soon. I left the lights on and sat in my bed while watching youtube until I couldn’t keep my eyes open and slowly drifted to sleep.
Another couple of days went by and I hadn’t gone back out since, but every night I felt like I wasn’t alone in that apartment. I assumed it was just the fact that I was still spooked from what happened the other day.
But one night, two days ago, a loud bang shook my room from where my kitchen is. It sounded like someone dropping a big sack of potatoes onto the floor with force. I was spooked as hell, but decided to check it anyways, flipping every lightswitch on my way there. When I got to the kitchen, I didn’t notice anything at first until I started looking around at the floor. There were a few apples, sliced in halves in a small pile in the center of the kitchen floor. My brain was rolling through what it could’ve possibly been when I realized those were the exact apples that I cut up a week ago and tossed in front of my blind.
The moment I realized what it was, I heard a scratching noise behind me, like when a dog runs around on a hard floor. I turned around, expecting something to be running at me, causing me to fall backwards and into the counter. There was nothing there, but I knew something was in there with me. I was way too scared to sleep, so I called David, a friend of mine, then asked him if I could stay at his place for the night since my parents lived pretty far away.
I explained everything that happened and understood why I was so spooked. He let me sleep on his couch for the night, and instead of going home the next day, we hung out and played some Playstation until later in the night when we were ready for bed again. We shut the lights off and were about to call it a night before he walked back out, pale as a ghost, and said,
“Bro, please tell me this is just a big joke.” while holding a few sliced apples in his hands. This was only a few hours ago and we have no Idea what the hell is going on.