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There are weird, spooky and unusual things out in the field. And it makes sense that hunters, especially upland hunters who tend to cover large amounts of ground while following their dogs, would find these unexplained things.

The dogs and I once stumbled across what appeared to be the contents of a lady’s purse in the middle of a huge swath of prairie, miles from the nearest town, road or footpath. How did it get here, in this utterly lonely and isolated spot that was rarely, if ever visited by anyone other than the occasional quail or deer hunter? Who knows?

But as I looked down at the weathered, dirt-covered items, I recalled an infamous local case about a young boy who simply vanished one day, never to be seen again. The boy’s mother was the prime suspect, and was later convicted of his murder, but a body was never found. I was a newspaper reporter back in those days, and covered the case from the time the boy went missing all the way through his mother’s trial and conviction.

There was much speculation, of course, about where she had murdered her son and hidden his body, and much of it swirled around the very public hunting area on which I was now standing, staring down at the contents of a lady’s purse. My mind raced. Could this somehow be connected? Did she drop her purse, stumbling in the dark, and didn’t gather everything that had fallen out before resuming her gruesome task? Probably not. There were numerous searches in the area, and nothing had ever been found to suggest such a scenario. But I still think about it every time I hunt that piece of ground.

What about you? Have you and your dogs ever stumbled across something strange, unusual or unexplained while out hunting?