Rustlin' ...

Boo! A doe gets busted ...

     Happy Halloween, y’all!  Not everything that goes bump in the night is scary ... even in the deepest, darkest woods.  Now, I ain't one of them "Bigfoot" researchers that are goin’ to claim that every friggin' shape & shadow caught on my cams could possibly be a wood ape.  Nope!  As a matter of fact, since my son and I had Our Encounter … we’ve come up zero as far as findin’ any definitive evidence of the animal that we saw waltzin' away from us back in Smith’s Slough.  The followin’ images are cropped from several trail-cam photos that our cameras caught at night out in the Caddo Lake Wildlife Management Area.  And out of the thousands of images & videos I’ve reviewed on our SD cards, these are just a few that might explain what makes some of that rustlin’ folks tend to hear out there in them woods at night.

 

     From coons to coyotes, I've caught all kinds of critters on film that have triggered my trail-cams.  Since it's Halloween, I'll quote Bela Lugosi from Universal Studio's 1931 classic film, Dracula; "Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make."  While the character Count Dracula was referrin' to wolves, this reminds me of similar sounds I hear at night on a regular basis.  Most folks who camp, hunt or live in rural (or now, even urban) areas are used to hearin' coyotes.  I've actually even had them come right into our camp site on occasion.  Though they yip, howl and growl they are actually pretty stealthy while movin' through the leaf-litter at night.  Foxes make some pretty eerie sounds at night as well; but like the coyote, they creep around undetected.  Other critters aren't so quiet ... such as hogs or armadillos.  The mink in the montage below obviously wasn't bein' quiet, as it seemed to be attackin' another critter!

 

A coon, a coyote, a mink, an armadillo and a buck in velvet in caught on trail-cams in the Caddo WMA ...

 

     I've read on some sites where researchers were abso-friggin'-lutely fascinated with eye-shine.  I've spent a bunch of time out there in them woods at night; and in my experience, the only eye-shine I've seen was caused by a light-source illuminatin' an animals eyes.  I'm pretty sure that if I ever came across a critter who's eyes glowed without me shinin' a light on it ... I might just squirt a friggin' grape!  Here is a great example of eye-shine that was caught by one of my game-cams through time-lapse on several frames, from dark 'til light.  This buck was bedded-down in thick foliage, while you can see the antlers of another buck in the daylight shot, which was right in front of my 5th trail-cam "Mini-Thing".  By the way, this model of Moultrie trail-cam was supposed to be infra-red.

 

 

     As cooler weather approaches, I'll hopefully be doin' a bunch more campin' and huntin' out there in them woods.  I'm sure that I'll hear some pretty peculiar things while I'm out there on a few of them brisk, fall nights.  But, unless I hear an animal doin' somethin' a little more substantial than just rustlin' ... I'll be sure to keep the safety on.  Y'all be safe out there, and have a Happy Halloween!