Days before Halloween, creepy trail photo reveals deer standing on 2 legs in NC woods
Finding strange things that go bump outside in the night has long been at the heart of North Carolina’s camera trap program, but an image posted just days before Halloween may count as Candid Critter’s strangest capture to date.
The photo is of a deer on two legs in the dark, its front legs in the air like arms.
It was taken at 5:25 a.m. on Sept. 11 in Wake County and posted Oct. 24 on Facebook, with an invitation for people on social media to guess what was happening and supply a caption. Candid Critters did not offer an interpretation of the scene.
Several commenters surmised the large white-tailed deer must have been trying to eat something from a tree, though no fruit appears hanging from the branches. Others joked it was dancing, while one guessed yoga.
There’s no way to know for sure what was really going on, as is the case with many of more mysterious photos collected from camera traps set up by N.C. Candid Critters in the state’s 100 counties.
It was likely coincidental that, on the same day the photo was posted, news broke that a buck “stood up and attacked” the Arkansas hunter who assumed he’d killed it minutes earlier.
What the photo does make clear is that deer are capable standing on two feet in the dark -- making it possible to mistake them for something else, whether it be a Bigfoot, aliens or a phantom.
White-tailed deer can grow to as much as 200 pounds in the Carolinas and could appear more than 7 feet tall standing on back legs.
N.C. Candid Critters, which is a partner of the N.C. Wildlife Resources commission, has captured other strange images using camera traps, including frightening blurs, diseased animals that looked otherworldly and at least one face that social media debated as being extraterrestrial.
In some cases, animals were also seen running from something in the dark or racing up trees, as if trying to escape from something in the dark.
This story was originally published October 27, 2019 at 11:53 AM with the headline "Days before Halloween, creepy trail photo reveals deer standing on 2 legs in NC woods."