The Devil's Tramping Ground

There are three paranormal legends in North Carolina that have stood out in my mind since I was a child. One was the Brown's Mountain Lights.  Another was the Maco Lights.  The third, the Devil's Tramping Ground (also called the Devil's Stomping Ground).

The legend is there is a spot in the woods outside of Siler City where no vegetation has ever grown.  Even the United State Geological Service has surveyed the land and composition and cannot determine why nothing grows there.  Supposedly, the Devil makes an earthly appearance there nightly, and as he 'tramps' around, any vegetation dies.

In the late 80's, a boy scout troop was said to have camped there.  When they awoke the next morning, their tent was moved to the other side of the opening-with the scouts still in it.  Other strange occurences include items disappearing if left there overnight.

This last weekend, my family visited the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro.  This is an annual trip in which all of the cousins' families attend the zoo together.  Usually this is the last time we see each other until Christmas.  Since the spot of the Devil's Tramping Ground is not far away, I made a detour on the way home and...

We knew we were headed the right way when:

After driving a few miles on Devils Tramping Ground Road we came across this:

This is where the entrance to the path that would lead to the tramping grounds was located.  A closer look at the painting on the road:

So of course, my wife, kids and mother got out of the vehicle and proceeded to search the site where the Devil is said to romp around:

We could see something ahead in the clearing.  As we entered the site:

No vehicle was parked on the side of the road where you could enter the site other than ours.  Yet here was an empty tent.  Yes, completely empty; no sleeping bags, chairs,  NOTHING.  The fire in the circle was still smoldering and smoking.  The tent looked as though it had been exited quickly:

I do not know who was there, but we did not hang around to meet the Devil or to see if anyone came back to get their empty tent...

Happy Halloween!

PS, this is an entirely true story.   A couple of other notes about the trip to the Devil's Tramping Ground.  I set the navigation to head home when we left.  It took us in a circle of about 6 miles and brought us right back by the street sign marking the Devils Tramping Ground Rd.  Yep, that was highly unusual.  Then, while downloading the pictures from the email I sent to myself from the phone, the pictures of the path and of the actual sight did not download all the way.  Only the top portions (about 25% of the picture) would download.  After several attempts in downloading each did I finally get the full picture.  Each of the other photos downloaded on the first try.  Does this mean anything?  Probably not, but it is interesting at least.  At first we did not think much of the empty tent, except on further evaluation, notice how it looks as though it was exited very quickly.  Yes, truth is stranger than fiction sometimes.

Bill Howard writes a weekly outdoors column for the Wilson Times and Yancey County News and the bowhunting blog site GiveEmTheShaft.com. He is a Hunter Education and International Bowhunter Education instructor, lifetime member of the North Carolina Bowhunters Association, Bowhunter Certification Referral Service Chairman, member and official measurer of Pope and Young, and a regular contributor to North Carolina Bowhunter Magazine.

Let's Go Scouting!



Troi Shade, Matthew Edmundson,
and Cooper Howard (back to front)
 during the hike to High Rock.

I promise to do my best to do my duty to God and my country, to help other people, and to obey the Law of the Pack.

As a child, that promise really meant something.  It fit right in with the Pledge of Allegiance and The Star Spangled Banner.  It built character, pride, values and achievement.  It was an exciting time.

At least once a week, we would see the Cub Scouts and the Brownies dressed in uniforms at school on the day of our den meetings.  We were all proud to be scouts.  We followed our promise, always trying to do the right thing.  We studied what electives and achievements we could accomplish so we could get new belt loops, badges or beads.

Daddy and son with their Camp Charles

Family Camp badges. (Yes I am happy,

it is just very difficult to press that dang

button on the camera with one hand and

hold the badge with the other!)

When camp came around, we learned things that we otherwise would have never been exposed to, and we usually did it with our parents there as well.  We were happy our parents were participating with us.  It was one of the few times we wanted our parents around.

My youngest son Cooper is a member of Pack 89.  We went on our first Cub Scout Family Campout a couple of weekends ago.  Me and Cooper and several hundred other young Cub Scouts and their parents and leaders.  Recipe for a migraine?  Quite the contrary.  Everyone had an absolute blast.

The scouts were able to participate in such activities as shooting bb guns, archery, slingshots, fishing and hiking.  We watched a great movie under the stars about the pinewood derby (Down and Derby) and finished off the evening roasting s’mores over the campfire.  We settled in to the tents shortly after.  Even with the cool weather in the 40’s everyone followed another scouting motto: Be Prepared.



S'mores over the campfire, a true scouting tradition!



Scouting often provides our first real taste of the outdoors.  Remarkably, with all the people at the camp, no one ever had a cross word, an altercation, or got mad about anything.  Sometimes the lines for some of the activities were long, but even with the young age groups, patience prevailed.  Patience was tested mind you, but yes, in the end, it prevailed.

Maybe us adults should look back on those days of our youth and remember the joy we had sharing the outdoors, sharing our relationships with our friends and our elders, and experiencing life.  You know that pledge at the beginning…even as adults, even if you were never in scouts, is not a bad thing to follow.

To learn more about scouting and if it is right for you, visit www.scouting.org.

Bill Howard writes a weekly outdoors column for the Wilson Times and Yancey County News and the bowhunting blog site GiveEmTheShaft.com. He is a Hunter Education and International Bowhunter Education instructor, lifetime member of the North Carolina Bowhunters Association, Bowhunter Certification Referral Service Chairman, member and official measurer of Pope and Young, and a regular contributor to North Carolina Bowhunter Magazine.

LifeStraw Water Filtration System Winners

Thom Rauch of Ashland, Wisconsin and Moose McLaughlin of Raleigh, NC are the winners of the LifeStraw water filtration system.  Congratulations!

If you didn't win, don't fret.  Visit Eartheasy.com and you can purchase one for under $20!

Read the review here:  LifeStraw Gear Review

Gear Review: ScoutLookWeather

So, here I am, 4:26pm on a Sunday, sitting in a climbing stand on the edge of the woods.  Typing on a netbook.  Crazy right?  Well, I should have about an hour before the first deer sneaks her way out of the darkened tree canopy and finds her way into shooting range for my quick and silent compound bow.

The reason I am working on this now is twofold.  One, I need to get this product review done, and two; this is the perfect time to write about what is going on with this particular hunt.

GPS systems became a great tool for the outdoors person several years ago.  Utilizing the array of satellites put in orbit by the government in order to help one find his position globally protected the hiker, hunter, or fisher from getting lost.  They developed from a display showing longitude and latitude so you could find yourself on a map, to displaying satellite and terrain images.  Along the way, the more bells and whistles the GPS system had, the more expensive the unit would cost.  Downloadable maps, some ranging several hundred dollars in cost, were neat features, but unless you were a diehard outdoorsman that traveled to exotic and unfamiliar locations, they were questionable as to whether they were worth it.

Now I like to have the tools necessary for me to be successful and safe, but I do not want to carry around a small army’s worth of supplies on my excursions.  With the GPS functions of the current smart phones, I quickly adapted to several applications available on it instead of carrying around excessive amounts of electronics.   Free mapping and weather programs were great, as I could not only pinpoint my location, but I could see weather as it developed so as not to get caught off guard on an approaching rain shower or storm.



Screen shot from ScoutLookWeather.com indicating
stand locations, expected deer movement, and scent cone.
The orange arrows were added by me to show movement.

A couple of weeks ago, I was offered the opportunity to test and review a website and smart phone application called ScoutLookWeather.  It seemed interesting enough, so I agreed.  Before downloading it on my Android based phone, I checked the website: ScoutLookWeather.com.  The website was easy enough to get a grasp of without a lot of instruction.  After the download, the application worked the same way as the website.  Also, I noticed it had immediately synced between the website and the phone application.

There she is!

After checking the app, according to my scent cone (a green cone that indicates where your scent will travel based on current conditions) I should hunt the northern stand on the property.  My scent would travel right into the path the deer usually take to the field from the southern stand.  So, that is where I am hunting.

(LONG PAUSE AS THE HUNT TIME BEGINS, THEN FAST FORWARD)

Sure enough, I had a deer come out to my left about 6pm.  After the deer paused and offered a broadside shot just 15 yards from the stand, I released the arrow for the kill.  While waiting in the stand, 10 minutes later 3 more deer came out to my right but came no closer than 40 yards from the stand.  I also noticed looking back at the southern stand, several deer in the field where I expected them to come out also.  If I had hunted the southern stand, those deer would likely have caught my scent in the slight breeze.

Blood soaked arrow does
not mean easy to trail!

Hard to follow at night with only this much sign spaced
several yards apart.



While the shot was true, the deer retreated hard into the woods.  I had a hard time finding bloodshed, but after a 20 minute or so search, I spotted small drops of blood.  The track was on.  I used the way marker feature on the ScoutLook app, using the GPS from the phone to indicate the blood trail.  I proceeded to do this each time I lost the trail so I would have a reference point to come back to.  This was extremely handy as I was in the thick brush and swamp, and light was non-existent except from my LED Lenser headlamp.  After following the trail approximately 150 yards, I lost the blood.  It was now around 9pm and I was crawling on all fours in order to track the blood I did find for the last 30 minutes.  I decided to resume the search in the morning, as the shadows from the brush limited my site lines.  Using the satellite imagery feature of ScoutLook, I made my way back out.  If not for that, this could have easily been one of those cases where the hunter gets stuck in the woods overnight.  Again, limited vision, a low concealing canopy of trees, and not so much as a single star shining through offered no help in keeping my bearings.



Blood trail way markers set
on ScoutLook.

The next day, I worked my way back into the woods, following the blood trail markers I had placed on ScoutLook.  This worked well, and I found the trail I needed to find.  After a couple of more hours, I finally found the deer.  This would never have taken place if I had not used ScoutLook for way markers the evening before.

  



Decoy set-up for incoming waterfowl
as indicated by ScoutLook.

ScoutLook is not only good for the application I tested it for, but it offers a set-up style map for waterfowl hunting, it can be used for hiking and other outdoor activities, it has a drift-point for fishing, and even has a golf mode to help with wind direction on the links.  It provides a cache for photos while in the outdoors, and it will have a log book style feature in the future.  One feature I did not have to use on ScoutLook is a radar map of your area.  This is great for when inclement weather is in the forecast.  It will allow you the opportunity to enjoy your activity until the very last moment.

This result would never had happened without ScoutLook.
Your results may vary!

Screen shot of inclement weather on ScoutLook.

Overall, ScoutLook appears to be a winner.  ScoutLook is easy to use and figure out how to use (no manual-just help screens), is cheap ($1.99 over Android Marketplace, but is available on IOS also), and syncs automatically with the regular website so you can check your locations online and on your phone.  Again, $1.99 for what some GPS systems would charge $199.00 for.  The only thing I could not test, and could not find a direct answer on, was if ScoutLook will save your location maps in areas where only GPS (no cellular) service worked on the smart phone.  I know it will save your markers, just not sure if the maps must download through the cell service each time.  I will continue to use ScoutLook and I look forward to using the log book feature in the future.

Another review of ScoutLookWeather can be found HERE on SoCalBowhunter.

 Want to read more reviews?  Bill Howard's Outdoors Reviews and GiveEmTheShaft Reviews

Bill Howard writes a weekly outdoors column for the Wilson Times and Yancey County News and the bowhunting blog site GiveEmTheShaft.com. He is a Hunter Education and International Bowhunter Education instructor, lifetime member of the North Carolina Bowhunters Association, Bowhunter Certification Referral Service Chairman, member and official measurer of Pope and Young, and a regular contributor to North Carolina Bowhunter Magazine.