Camp Fire Tales (and more)

Firstly, I am of German and Irish heritage, but I am all-American. But, as I am of German and Irish descent as I already said, I grew up hearing fairy tale. My grandmother read me the complete Brothers Grimm stories, and not the sanitized Disney versions - Hell no! I was told the bloody and bawdy cautionary tales that they were meant to be, and when my grandmother told me to stay out of the woods at night, I stayed the hell out of the woods.

However, I can’t stay out of the woods now because as a hunter and conservationist I have a deep love for nature and a respect for all the creatures in the woods. That said, I also have respect for my well-being and you won’t find me in the woods at night without a bang-stick in my hand.

But, anyhow, moving on. I have always loved stories, though for a good part of my life I could not read them very well, shockingly enough. When I was born, I was an emergency caesarean birth because my umbilical cord was wrapped around my neck, and collapsed one of my lungs and I damn near died before I even got started in this world. So, having gotten a second chance at my life at a very early age of a little more than zero, it’s amazing to me how well I have wasted my second chance.

However, my point is due to oxygen deprivation. It’s possible that I sustained slight brain damage resulting in Attention Deficit Disorder, meaning that, although I was a gifted child - or at least my teachers said so - if you ask Jon, he will tell you I am very modest. But, although I was a gifted child I had a slight learning disability in that I could hardly sit still, let alone concentrate long enough to learn to read. I was always looking and investigating. So I had trouble learning to read. And that is why I learned to love stories my mother would read to me, and I learned by ear.

Growing up I was read,aside from the normal childhood classics, rather lofty literature, such as Count of Monte Cristo, The Lost World, Hound of the Baskervilles - which, might I add, makes a wonderful bed time story - and other works. What I am getting at is that I learned by listening because I could hardly read. However, since I was able to learn to read I have never stopped and I have never lost my thirst for knowledge. And because I learned by listening to the written word and fairy tales it should come as no shock that I would listen to old campfire stories.

These American folk tales and deer camp lies of aged hunters were heard in the coffee shop where my grandfather would take me while he saw his friends from the Korean War. These local stories can prove to be quite interesting, and a bit frightening, and although they may have been embellished along the way, I am trying to sort out the wheat from the chaff. One thing that I always said about my political science class was, I know it’s all bureaucratic rubbish, and it would be alright if you didn’t have to sift through so much horse manure to get there.

As for what I have picked up in the oral tradition tales of strange creatures, Some of them bordered on the supernatural, but for the sake of professionalism and keeping my commentary for the most part secular, I will keep to purely natural animal stories of mysterious origin.

Years back, my neighbor - who is a respected physicians’ assistant - told me of being outside on his hunting cabin porch, overlooking his back yard, enjoying a cigar and waiting for his dinner to be ready when he noticed something large and brown in the field about 100 yards away. Leaving his cigar in the ashtray, he went inside to get his field glasses and when he returned he found the shape again.

It was, what he says, a mountain lion in the field among the stalks of dead corn, and every now and then he could see its tail flick back and forth as it lay. If had not been for the flicking tail he would not have seen it at all, as the cat was so well camouflaged. He tells me of an eerie feeling that came over him when he looked at its eyes through the field glasses and saw that it was looking at him and had possibly been stalking him as he smoked. But once the cat knew it had been spotted it got up and trotted away parallel to the man’s house and disappeared into the trees, of what form a large patch of forest ground filled with game in that area. I am currently trying to contact him to check the credibility of this story to ensure he was not just telling it to see my eyes go wide as dinner plates. So take this sighting with a grain of salt and a lime - and while we are at it - a healthy shot of tequila, because a grain of salt is no good on its own.

I also know of a local gravel pit. Well to be plain, a rock quarry, where I have heard tell of large cats being sighted. In some stories they are black and in some stories they are the normal tan mountain lion coloration. But nonetheless, they are said to possibly dwell nearby this spot which is very full of game and accessible water. I also am currently trying to track down this set of stories as well and check the facts to see if it is more than just campfire lore of Woodford county.

As I said before, I am just trying to recount tales I heard in my youth, and I will be later - once I have had time to research the facts - updating the facts once I check them, but for the time being they are just stories, though thought-provoking they are at that.

My grandfather on my mother’s side told of a pack of wolves that once roamed the forests of rural Marshal county and told me of being attacked while checking his trap-line and breaking the butt stock off of a small-bore rifle across the head of one of the beasts. However, I am unsure of whether this pack ever existed, if it was populated by wolves, or whether it is more likely that they might have been coy-dogs (a coyote-dog mix which is a very dangerous beast indeed because of its unnatural lack of fear of man and its wild cunning). The Native Americans did not give koy-o-tae (coyote) the name of trickster for nothing.

However, because this is also the area where a wolf was recently shot, I do not find it impossible that there could have been a displaced population of great lake wolves that may have ended up in the area and survived. But, due to the lack of fresh genetics, it’s a bit unlikely that the pack mentioned in the story would still exist today. It’s more likely that the population is very small and split up into breeding pairs, or interbred with feral dogs. So, that is uncertain. But, as I said, it is not impossible, with wolves coming through the state regularly that new genetics could not have found the Marshal county pack, though competition for the coyote might contribute to it being small. But they definitely know how to stay hidden. So I just do not know, it is not impossible that it could be a displaced population of breeding pairs but, as I said I just don’t know. But, I think it is very likely that the pack that attacked my grandfather in his youth was more than likely coydogs. And, like all of these stories, I will be fact checking and you will know more when I do.

Ironically enough, bears haunted my dreams as a child. I would dream myself on my father’s parents’ farm where I did much of my childhood play, and I would find myself confronted by bears. I would run for my life as fast as my young legs would carry me, and slam the farmhouse gate behind me only to remember with horror that the other side of the yard was unfenced and the fence was only there to keep the chickens out of the yard. It was entirely open on the other side that overlooked the country road, and there would be a bear on this side as well. I would run for my life towards the house, and I never remember how the dreams ended, but I would awake in a cold sweat.

However, these dreams could have been fostered by stories of the bears my grandfather saw on fishing trips to Minnesota that I heard sitting on his knee as a very young man in the smoky air of a coffee shop. That is when you could still smoke in a coffee shop, imagine ashtrays at Starbucks, on a cold day in hell, what is the world coming to? However, I also heard stories of bears being kept captive in old grain silos. It’s not impossible that some may have been released or escaped, but I do think - as the reporter I spoke with before, Jeff Lampe, thinks as well - that it is highly unlikely that captive bears that have escaped could start a breeding population. And, I believe that the bear currently seen in Illinois is a displaced bear from another state. However, expanding populations may see Illinois as home to more wild black bears as time moves on.

As for other possible mystery animals that might turn up in Illinois, we move along back in time to the days of the great rail road cattle cars. Full with cattle driven by cowboys up to the Red River in Oklahoma from Texas and loaded into cattle cars headed for Chicago. Now these cattle cars coming from the south west to Chicago - the great slaughterhouse of the world for a time - might have had more than just mooing beef in them. It’s entirely likely that in the underbellies of these iron snakes that real snakes might have found shelter and unknowingly hitched a ride northward to drop off along the way. And, most railroad tracks are bedded with sand and rock so what better place for hitch hiking rattle snakes to start a den and breed.

However, I have very little proof of these stories, but the theory is very sound and I would not at all be shocked if in time it is proven right by expanding population or unfortunate human victims of snakebite.

Another possible source of mystery reptiles in Illinois, though unlikely to start a population, is still in the days of the great rail roads and the circus trains that could, and would, occasionally wreck along the tracks. My great grandfather on my mother’s side told me the story of one such wreck; however he has since died long years ago and the world is much poorer for the loss of such a man. But he told me of the wreck of a circus train that apparently lost its python, or boa, I cannot remember which, but it was a very large snake that apparently found its way into their chicken yard which would not be hard to do as the house is located not 300 yards from the tracks. To continue the story as best I can remember it, this large snake was busy with swallowing a chicken while the farm dogs were raising all hell, and my great grandmother came out to see what was going on. She apparently dropped a washbasin and went to get my great grandfather, who in turn went to fetch his shotgun to dispatch the snake. As interesting as this story is, I have no proof other than my memory of this event because I never did see the skin of the snake or have any proof of it ever even existing, let alone eating a chicken and being shot.
Yet, that said, it was always a very provocative story with touches of other possible truthful explanations for other mystery animals woven into it.

I doubt that the large black cats seen in Illinois are not color morphs of the mountain lion produced by isolation from genetics in a displaced or relic population, and are in fact the descendent of black leopard lost from circus train wrecks in the distant past of Illinois that may have interbred with a relic or displaced population of mountain lion. I do not know if the genetics are close enough to allow one of these crossbreed big cats to be fertile, and that is where the black coloration is coming from. I do not know, but nothing is impossible - only mathematically improbable. Though the idea of there possibly being black leopard genetics in a possible Illinois mountain lion population could explain why the carcass of the deer spoken of in my first posting was cached in a tree like a leopard would do, but unfortunately I have no idea. Both theories for the black coloration are debatable and even then, the fact of there being a population of mountain lions in Illinois is also highly debatable, at the very least. Though I believe there is.

I hope that my writing on this subject is captivating and at its very least mildly entertaining, if not at all a slightly bit educational.

I will soon be attending a wild game feed, which is a local celebration held at the end of hunting season in my area. It is where local hunters get together to drink, smoke, chew tobacco and feast on the harvest that Mother Earth provides us that was taken by the sweat of their brow and the keenness of their wit, but it goes without saying that we never mix guns and liquor - I figured I had better clarify. However, at this local wild game dinner, I will attempt to conduct interviews regarding large mysterious carnivores stalking the Illinois forest, and other interesting fauna of my home state, that is before the beer and fellowship goes to my head.

Thank you for reading, and I hope that I am making a small contribution to the Centre for Fortean Zoology, be it a meager one at that, seeing as this post is nothing but campfire and coffee shop stories from my youth as a very young outdoorsman at the time of hearing them.