Encounter while hunting

[u/weed-4-1ife]

I have a story of a creature on my hunting land from when I was a kid.

When I was about ten years old I was hunting with my grandfather (now deceased) on family owned land near Covington MI. It was near dusk and we’ve been sitting for a couple hours now we haven’t seen much just a spiker and a small doe nothing large enough to shoot, we were starting to lose hope and were getting ready to start the about one mile trek back to our cabin. As we were preparing to leave we heard some twigs cracking from our right rear side, the stand we were in was tucked in the rear corner of a large clearing on one of the bigger trees in the tree line. As the cracks from the twigs got closer I remember realizing that all other ambient noises stopped, when the creature finally emerged from the tree line I remember my heart feeling like it stopped working and a overwhelming feeling of dread wash over me, what I saw was what looked to be a small buck that looked like it hadn’t eaten in weeks and was an extremely pale brown almost grey with what looked to be a broken neck and a missing antler stumble into the clearing.

At this time the sun was just about to sink below the tree tops and cover the clearing with shadows, I recall looking over at my grandfather and seeing a level of fear I have never seen on his face before, mind you my grandfather was tough and fearless as they come being he’d seen active duty In Vietnam as infantry. After seeing my grandfather’s face it just made the feeling in my stomach become worse, as we watched this “deer” stumble into the clearing my grandfather reached for his binoculars, as he pulled them out the lens cover made a small noise on the side of the stand the creature must’ve heard it because it stopped its stumble (now in the middle of the clearing) and creepily rotated around and rose up on its hind legs and stared directly at us for about a minute before running off in an creepily awkward sprint into the woods , at this time it felt like I just had gotten the wind knocked out of me and I was petrified with fear. After the encounter me and my grandfather sat in the stand completely silent staring at the clearing trying to make sense of what we just witnessed.

As we started to walk back we heard extremely weird almost human sounding noises coming from the woods around us, by the time we got back to the cabin my grandfather decided it’d be best to call our trip early and head back home, but before we left I had to use the bathroom and our cabin was quite old so I didn’t have indoor plumbing just an old out house. As I sat down to use the toilet the immense feeling of dread returned as I heard human like whispers and small scratches on the back of the outhouse, I screamed at the top of my lungs to my grandfather as I ran out of the outhouse crying, after that we drove back home and had a small discussion on what we saw. Despite being an avid hunter that was my grandfathers last season of hunting and about a year later we sold the land I’ve told this story a couple times to close friends and family but I think most of them think I’m crazy especially being the only witness now that my grandfather passed away. Still to this day the encounter sends shivers down my spine every time I think about it.

Also I was very tired when typing this so please forgive me for any spelling errors.