My first encounter was something that couldn't be explained happened to me back in 1987.

I was a 16 year old boy and I wasn't afraid of anything at least while my dad and uncles were nearby

It was a family tradition at the time for all of us to wake up at 3 a.m. and travel the hour and a half to our favorite hunting spot the a Oak Mughley, Oak Mugh G E wildlife area in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

Once we arrived to the general area, it was a mile hike back to where we would set up camp.

On this particular morning we were running late

and as we arrived just before sunup

the coyotes were already sounding off in the distance.

They made me feel a little unsettled since I was walking into the deep dark forest with just a flashlight.

But my dad and my uncles were there to reassure reassure me or at least poke fun of me, making me forget

any of my fears about the woods.

We had been hunting together for years and, like family family we knew each other pretty well.

For whatever reason, the rest of them decided to venture off into the woods, leaving me and

my rifle to occupy an old deer stand.

To me, it looked like an old outhouse with a small window on either side.

And after sweeping the cobwebs out of it with my hands, I closed the door behind me.

I looked out the windows and I scanned the woods for coyotes.

And around 7 a.m. I noticed a young dough off to my right. She was probably 70 yards away.

According to the laws at the time you could only take a dough on selected days.

And I raised my rifle.

The dough was laboring to breathe, and it staggered toward the stand and then it collapsed.

Deer run from humans, yet the dough was just lying there most. collapsed. in the bushes behind the stand. And I pointed my rifle in the same direction and I waited a few seconds, but nothing emerged.

The dough struggled to her feet and disappeared over the ridge ahead of me, and the bushes rustled again, but the noise

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