Listening to your channel has given me the courage to get this off of my chest.

It happened in 2003.

I was living in a small town in the central Piedmont of North Carolina.

There was a modest brick home in a somewhat secluded area

and a heavily wooded part of Eyredale County. My nearest neighbor was 200 yards away through a small

patch of pine trees. Aside from two cornfields directly across the road, everywhere else was a mess of older hardwood trees.

Whitetail deer were abundant,

but most every evening they would come and eat at the edge of the fields.

I made it a habit to sit on my porch and watch the deer before dark whenever I could.

Twice I remember seeing them getting spooked and scramble across the field after hearing an

extremely loud sound that I can only describe as part moan and part scream.

At the time, I wondered if the mountain lines were in this part of the country.

My neighbor was a few years older than me. He lived in a beautiful 100-year-old Victorian-style farmhouse that was

situated on 15 acres adjacent to my land. His name was James. He was ex-military, having been

discharged in 1999.

We were pretty good friends. When he was away, I'd take care of his animals and property,

and he'd returned the favor when I had to leave town for work.

One Saturday afternoon, James called and asked if I wanted to do some shooting with my new air rifle.

Of course, I replied. It was early October and the squirrel season was coming up.

It was five o'clock that Saturday evening when I walked over to his house. James had an old barn that sat across the road in approximately 70 yards from his porch.

He hung an old cast iron frying pan from a tree that overhung a four-wheeler trail beside the barn that we normally used for 22 rifles,

but we thought it might be fun to use it with the air rifle.

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