This is my recollection of an event that occurred during a duck hunt in January, 2005 when a FTF encounter took place.
We (WW, OC & me) were hunting springfed watersheds on this particular place during a rainy and heavy fog morning with the fog so thick visibility was down to ~25 yards and a NNE breeze moving the fog/rain at ~15 knots. We were in the SW portion of the ~900 acre tract where all but two of the six watersheds were located. Approximately an hour after shooting time we started hearing canada geese calling from the north of our position. I took off in that direction with the idea of either jump shooting them of running the birds back to the other guys' position. The first of the north ponds was ~1/2 mile away but with the wind direction and low cloud ceiling apparently the sound carried well from that distance. Arriving at the first pond (smallest of the six) I found no birds but kept hearing the geese and continued NNE as the northern most pond was still ~800 yards away. About halfway there I came up on a slight mesa type outcropping that stood over the main part of the tract. Suddenly, I heard a whoosing type sound which I immediately thought was heavier rain falling into the tallgrass prairie. However, the sound was moving to the NNE or in the opposite direction of the wind.
I continued to the north and by then the fog had begun to lift somewhat with visibility now at 100-150 yards and the rain had abated to a slight drizzle. As I got to within ~100 yards of the pond up on the dam (located on it's south end) there stood a B&C buck of magnificent proportions along with his harem of ~11 does. That is what I later surmised made the sound coming from the south heard ~15-20 minutes earlier when standing on the mesa. The deer took off up the east side of the pond and in the process flushed the geese in that direction as well. Hoping there were still birds on the water I crept low up over the dam and observed a nice bunch of ducks at the north end ~100 yards away. I looped around to the west but the grass cover played out before I could get into range and wound up simply flushing them in hopes they would head southward to the boys ~one mile SSW from there.
As I knelt in the shin high grass something caught my attention in the direction of the dam. It was a large animal creeping over the dam at the exact spot where I had done so only a few minutes earlier. At first, I thought it was another deer and then a cat but when it picked up my scent and glared straight at me for ~10 seconds I knew it was no deer or cat. It the wheeled around and disappeared back over the dam's south side. I estimated it's prone body length (head to flank) at ~6 feet. Although I was ~75-100 yards away from it, in the grey/flat light it's huge eyes had a erie pale glow to them but being color blind I'm not sure of their exact hue except to say they were a sorta pale yellowish tint. They also had the look of contempt or hatred as I guess it was PO'd at being busted out by me. Keep in mind I was wearing neoprene chest waders along with a Gore-Tex parka and gloves so my apparent lack of a scent trail probably piqued it's curosity to try and sniff the dam as that's the only place my hands had touched the ground.
At that point I figured what had occurred was I busted up his/their deer hunt as the deer (earlier) were being pressed and running through the waist-chest high grass probably into a pre-arranged ambush.
So, there I was ~1 mile away from the other guys and they didn't know about my decision to make this excursion (they were initially set up on an adjacent pond) and the cell phone didn't have a signal. I loaded the 870 with the heaviest goose loads I had and headed back south toward them and right in the direction the critter had gone as well. About halfway there I got to a high spot where the phone would work and called DG telling him of the event and where to look for the body should I not show back up at the truck.
What caught me so off guard was something like this was the last thing I expected to see out in the middle of thousands of acres of tallgrass prairie but it just goes to show the Boy Scout motto are words to live by.
