I need to say this up front so you understand the rest of what I'm about to tell you.

I'm not a guy who gets scared in the woods.

I grew up in Ashland County, Wisconsin.

I've been hunting Whitetail since I was nine years old.

I've sat in stands in the dark more times than I can count.

I've had bears walk under me.

I've had wolves howl so close the sound vibrated in my chest.

None of that ever made me want to leave.

What happened on November 11th, 2021, made me sell every piece of hunting equipment I owned. I haven't been

in the woods since. The property was 640 acres of mixed hardwood and swamp in the Chequemagon

Nicolet National Forest, about 40 minutes south of Mellon. My buddy Travis had permission from the landowner, a guy named

Dale Poole who lived in O'Clair, and only came up twice a year to check on the place.

Dale didn't hunt anymore. Bad knees. He let Travis and a few other guys use the land during

gun season in exchange for keeping an eye on the place and running trail cameras in the summer.

Travis had been telling me about the property for two years. Big deer, no pressure. The kind of

timber where you could sit all day and not hear a truck or a four-wheeler. He told me there was a ladder

stand on the northeast side of the property, at the edge of a long ridge that dropped off into

a creek bottom, thick with tag alder. The deer used the bottom as a travel corridor. You could

see about 80 yards in three directions from the stand, and the wind almost always came out of the

northwest, which meant anything moving through the bottom wouldn't smell you.

He drew me a map on a napkin at the bar, told me where to park, how to get to the stand,

and where the boundaries were.

...