HOOHAWWW - True Story by Bob Gurkin

Many years ago, the Dismal Swamps covered most of eastern North Carolina. With the digging of huge drainage canals, and eventually roads and farms, the Dismal's were broken up and reduced to pockets of swamps here and there. In many areas the swamps disappeared altogether. Huge plantations were built on these dried up areas and even today very large farms occupy the same place. To give you an idea of how large some of these farms get, I hunted on the Bell Brothers Farms for many years. ON THE SMALLEST FARM AREA THEY HAD, the main road stretched about 8 or 9 miles back through what was cleared up to that time. The rows of soybeans, corn, or whatever was planted would be at a 90 degree angle to the road and would be about 2 to 3 miles long on either side of the main road.

There was one particular farm that was about 48,000 acres at that time and is even larger now. During the day, you can see herds of deer, and the occasional bear, browsing through the crops. I have a buddy that I hunted with over the years, who at that time was a police officer with the Raleigh PD and one afternoon, about 2 PM, we sat on the main road and counted over 140 deer in one herd in broad daylight. Deer are in such numbers that the Gun Club that now has hunting rights on that land, are required by the farmers to kill a minimum of 300 deer per year, and the salted hides have to be produced to prove it. But that is today. This story is about many years ago; long before bull dozers and drag lines and loggers cut and slashed the trees, and plowed up the earth to make roads and fields. Deer were not as plentiful, because the huge feed crops were not there to support them. At that time, you had better know how to hunt, if you planned to put meat on the table.

I loved to get back into the swamps. It wasn't all water. There would be places where you could go for miles and the ground would be mostly dry, and of course there were places where you placed  your life on the line to try to go through. Thick does not begin to describe how dense those woods could get. In many places you could actually hear a deer breathe and never see it. Also, deer have an odor. Many times, I would be laid up in a stand under a sweet gum tree and could smell the deer as they were feeding in the area. Of course, they can smell you even better, so your stand had better be downwind of them.

One October day I had been hunting in what at that time was called Jackson's Swamp and later became Bell Farms. I was about 2 or 3 miles back in the swamps and it had been an unsuccessful hunt for me, and I was working my way back out to the county road. We had this one particularly large black bear in Jackson's Swamp, and I had seen him twice this day and heard him grunting and cracking brush on a couple of occasions as I was working my way out of the swamps. There was a big ole full October moon hanging in the sky and it was almost light enough to read a newspaper by. Down here in the swamps we have another creature that will get your attention every once in a while. It's called a Screech Owl. I cannot begin to describe on paper the loud, deep volume of noise that is produced by a screech owl. The closest I can get to it is HOOOOOHAAAWWWW. Amplify that with a loud speaker and you will be kinda getting close.

Now I was already a little nervous and concerned about that big ole Black Bear and was some kind of glad to see the woods lightening up. At this point I knew I was about 150 yards from the county road and was walking through a grove of Live Oaks and Spanish Moss was hanging low enough to where I had to push it aside as I made my way through ( like walking through a bunch of grey, gauzy curtains). This is a spooky area, even during the daytime. About the time I got under this one particularly gnarly Live Oak, a screech owl went HOOOOOOOHAAAWWWWW about 4 feet above my head. Well son, I too made a sound something like HOOHA, and to this day I don't remember making it out to the road, but I expect my heartbeat to get back to normal any day now.