The Canoer's Sighting

I was visitng my cousins down in Jersey during the summer. It was getting somewhat dark, around like 8:00. I was hanging out by the edge of the river on a canoe just floating, when something on the opposite shore caught my eye. Across the river, maybe 100 feet wide, was a marsh and long grass field that faded into a dead part of forest, then the pines started and a big fire tower loomed overhead. Anyway, I looked across and saw what looked like a small deer drinking from the edge of the river, a sort of darker shaded deer with no white on it. I looked at it and watched it with curiosity, and up to this point I was completely convinced that this animal was a deer. Then that changed when the creature picked up its head and looked down stream. I now saw that this was definitely no deer! I jumped up, maybe too quickly. My feet sloshed in the muddy brackish water and I pulled myself onto dry land. When I stood and turned, the creature was gone, but looking past the marsh, I just noticed a shadow disappearing into the pines. The creature seemed about 3 or 4 feet tall, its head was that of a horse and seemed to have some type of blackish wings on its back. It walked upright with two backward bent legs, and that was all I could pretty much see.