Someone came here searching for the Excel formula to calculate the date of Easter.  It led them to a post that is nearly two years old.  That surprised me.

Someone else was looking for information on a High Standard revolver with a 13-round cylinder.  I've never heard of such a thing.  That would be a bulky cylinder, even for a .22.

I remember that it was uncomfortably cold that day, and I had put on a couple of extra layers to try and stay more or less warm.  I was hunting in one of my usual spots.  It was a small, roughly oval clearing less than 100 yards long and 60 or 70 yards wide at its widest.  The old road ran through the north end of the oval, and  on the southeastern edge was a huge, ancient live oak.  It leaned, aiming its top toward the west.  The first several feet of the trunk was an easy slope that we had nailed a couple of two-by-four pieces on to make climbing even easier.  Then the trunk was almost perfectly horizontal.  There was a nice spot where a big limb came out of the trunk and made an excellent backrest.  I usually just walked up into this tree and sat right on the trunk.  It was quite comfortable.  There was a feeder beyond the east edge of the clearing, back in the trees.

However, this position only worked when the wind was blowing from the north.  On this day, for some odd reason, the wind had a more southerly origin, so I was sitting in an alternate position.  Another ground blind made of fallen dead trees, limbs, and natural ground clutter on the north end of the clearing on the other side of the road.  Sitting on the ground was actually less comfortable than sitting in the tree.  I knew it was going to be cold and tiresome before we went out, but I went anyway.  On days like this I went out just to make my dad happy.  If it had only been myself I would have just stayed home.

So I sat there trying to think warm thoughts and waiting for the day to end.  There was no activity.  Not an armadillo, not a doe, not even a wandering cow came through to break the monotony.  The sunset brought mixed feelings.  On the one hand, I knew it was that much closer to the time I'd go home and get warm.  On the other hand, I knew from previous experience that my dad wouldn't leave his stand until it was almost too dark to see and by the time he got to me, I would be seriously cold.  The sun finally dipped below the horizon, somewhere back behind the western trees, and for a few minutes the clearing was caught in that magic time between day and night, after sunset but before full dark.  In the shadowy stillness, someone walked out of the trees on the opposite end of the clearning.

I was startled to see anyone there.  I knew sometimes my dad would prowl around instead of just sitting still, but I also knew that I was too far away from him and that he shouldn't have been here.  He also shouldn't have been walking around in my clearing.  Whoever it was, he had stepped out from the edge of the trees and just stood there, looking around.

Maybe it was a trespassing poacher.  We knew people came into the property illegally because we sometimes found evidence of them being there.  But the people who hunted there illegally didn't do it during daylight, or even at the end of the day.  They waited until the small hours of the night so they could sneak in to spotlight deer and pop them in the head with a .22.  I was running these thoughts over in my head but remaining still, behind my little wall of brush.  I knew as long as I sat there he would never be able to see me and I could just wait and see what transpired.

I then noticed something that disturbed me.  Whoever it was, he wasn't carrying a rifle.  It may seem odd that him not carrying a rifle disturbed me, but I can explain it.  If he had been trespassing to hunt deer, he should have been armed.  I couldn't understand why anyone would be stomping around that pasture without a rifle.  It just didn't make sense.

It was too dark for me to see any of his facial features or anything else.  He looked like someone bundled up in a thick, heavy coat just standing there looking back and forth.  The whole time that I watched him was probably no more than a minute.  Then he turned and went back into the trees, ducking his head under a low-slung tree branch as he disappeared.

Now that I could no longer see him, I started feeling a little spooked so I stood up and leaned against a tree trunk.  I would still be very hard to see in the shadowy light but on my feet I would have more mobility.  And, I kept reminding myself, I was carrying a deer rifle (a Savage Model 99 in .243 Winchester, for those who care about such details).  It wasn't like I was totally defenseless or anything.

As I expected, it was totally and completely dark by the time my dad showed up.  I unloaded the gun and climbed into the welcome warmth of the old Datsun pick-up.  I asked my dad if he had been walking around down there, but of course he hadn't.

We made one trip back into the woods during the following week to replenish the corn feeders.  The next Saturday morning I was back in my usual spot up in the live oak tree.

It was a much nicer day and once the sun came up it warmed up nicely and I was very comfortable in the tree.  But again, nothing was moving so about 10:00 I climbed down to have a look around.

I went over to where I thought I had seen the person standing.  I didn't see any tracks, but I hadn't really expected any.  Tracks don't last long in the sandhills, especially tracks left by the broad, flat feet of a human, also especially if the human is walking or standing where a layer of wild grass, weeds and dead leaves would prevent his feet from coming into actual contact with the sand.  I poked around in the brush in the direction I thought I had seen him walk.  One trick I had learned was to check gopher hills for animal sign.  Even varmints like coyotes and raccons aren't stupid, and they know that if they walk on a gopher hill, that will be at least one step they take that they don't have to worry about stepping on a grassburr.  So I tried looking for some gopher hills just to see if I could find a stray track, but had no luck.

I walked all the way back to the ground blind and sat down behind it again to make sure I was looking in the right place.  Then I stood back up and walked straight to the spot where he had been standing.  I was standing there looking around when I finally noticed something else that creeped me out again.

If I was looking at the right place, and I'm pretty sure I was, then the limb he had ducked under when he walked back into the brush was about three feet above my head.  Someone would have had to have been about eight feet tall to have to duck under that limb.

So...maybe my eyes had been playing tricks on me in the twilit darkness.  But something had certainly walked out of the woods, stood there for a minute, then turned and walked away.  If it was a person, it was someone who didn't belong there and shouldn't have been there.  If it wasn't a person, well...I've always just thought of it as an anomaly.

Whatever it was, I never saw anything like it again.