Location:
Leeds Point, NJ
Crew:
Laura K. Leuter, Charley Lolio, Brian Jude, Dave Morgan
After nearly 4 years of inactivity, the Devil Hunters are back!! We are very happy to announce our return to outdoor research. Hopefully this will be the start of many more!
Being that it's the 99th anniversary of Phenomenal Week, what better way to spend a Saturday evening than on a hunt with a film crew from NBC40 from Atlantic City? We decided to take reporter Phaedra Laird out to the house foundation to take a look for herself, as they plan on running a report on the Phenomenal Week anniversary.
Things started out interesting for us. No sooner did we start to take photographs of a Leeds Point cemetary, when suddenly we were all receiving low battery warnings on our cameras. It was really weird. Charley had just replaced his batteries earlier that day. Me, I'm not so sure about the age of my batteries, so at first I thought it was just a coincidence. So then I pulled out another set of batteries from my bag, and replaced them in the camera. The camera refused to turn on. It was as though the new batteries were completely dead. I pulled out a third battery, and grabbed another one from our equipment bag - the camera turned on, but gave me the "change the batteries" warning and wouldn't take pictures. So then I went back to the car, grabbed a set of batteries that I knew were good from the morning, and put them in - finally my camera started working. It was really strange.
So off we went to the house foundation. We were pretty upset with our findings. The house is basically collapsing in on itself, and it's really a sad sight. The walls are starting to fall over, and the rest of the interior is starting to rot. It's becoming more and more obvious in the area, and from what we saw today, it might not last a whole lot longer. It's a shame, but I guess there's not much we can do.
We then continued our hike throughout the Leeds Point area, returning to some of the waterways that we've hiked along in the past. We found some interesting prints that we couldn't really explain, but also couldn't really tell if they were anything out of the ordinary. Whatever made the prints was pretty heavy, as it took a lot of effort for us to duplicate the depth of the print in the dirt ourselves. It had almost a hoof-like front, with a spikey end on the back. While out here, we paused for a moment to discuss the significance of Phenomenal Week with the reporters, and to do some impromptu interviews for their segment.
We then headed over to the docks for some night shots, as they wanted to get some film of us 'in action' on the hunt. We figured it's a great place to go, since you can be so alone out there in Leeds Point, yet over the water you can see Atlantic City in the distance, which is such a dramatic contrast, in my opinion.
So whe get out of the cars, and we're walking down towards the docks... It was somewhat dusky at that point, so we could still see a bit without needing our flashlights, but it wasn't light enough for us to see everything around us. After a brief discussion with the reporter & photographer, we were ready to shoot some footage of us 'on the move'. The cameraman turned on his flood light... and suddenly we realized that we were all standing in a big pile of bloody feathers.
Now, we all admit that we don't know much about hunting, so it's possible that these feathers were the result of something a hunter had done - perhaps he de-feathered a bird that he had shot while out there in that region. Either way, the scene looked somewhat horrific to us. There were bloody chunks of the bird strewn on the ground. The feathers were mostly centrally located, but many piles were randomly distributed throughout a pretty huge span of area. It was pretty gross looking, and we were all caught a bit off-guard when we realized that we had been standing in it the whole time. It was a bit disconcerting. It just seemed like the scene was a bit violent, if that was in fact from a hunter. Not the most pleasant thing we've walked into on a hunt!
After some documentation of the feathers, we wrapped up with the film crew and headed over to a local diner for some food. We all agreed that it was awesome to get back out there, and we're really looking forward to getting back into the swing of things with our hunts. More to come!
