Editor’s Notes

by CHESTER MOORE, JR. :: TF&GEditor-in-Chief

Caution in the Dark Outdoors

‘HEY CHESTER, WHAT’S the most dangerous thing in the woods?” A few years ago, I conducted a seminar on hog hunting and mentioned hog a acks. is was the rst question, and the man asking later told me he assumed my answer would be boars and bears.

My answer however was quite di erent.

“People,” I said. “People by far are the most dangerous thing in the woods.”

You could hear a pin drop in the room as the reality of that sank in. en people started raising their hands to share stories of dangerous human encounters in the great outdoors.

It’s a topic I addressed in this column in 2019 and something that has become an area of deep investigation. e things happening in the great outdoors involving people rarely get mentioned beyond local news coverage, and it’s seemingly a nontopic for outdoor media. I’m not sure why but you would think stories like those I’m about to share would get a ention among the media covering those who hunt, sh, camp, and hike.

Check out these examples:

DECAPITATION LINES: Biking trails in the Sam Houston National Forest have been hit up with razor wire decapitation lines set to take out mountain bikers and anyone else who comes through the area. I’ve seen the photos and spoken with people in the area.

Also, there is a history of John and Jane Doe nds in the forest as well as a bizarre connection of more than 40 missing people in and around that area in Montgomery and San Jacinto Counties. Jerrie Dean founded the “Missing Texas 40” to examine these disappearances. METH LABS & MORE DEBAUCHERY: Wildlands of our state are o en used for drugrelated activities. Check out this statement from the National Drug Intelligence Center.

“Drug tra cking organizations, criminal groups, and independent tra ckers frequently produce and transport illicit drugs, particularly marijuana and methamphetamine, in or through federal lands. Consequently, several hundred thousand cannabis plants are eradicated and hundreds of methamphetamine laboratories are seized each year from National Forest System lands managed by the Forest Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and lands managed by the U.S. Department of the Interior.”

Texas is certainly not immune to these issues,and in fact, I have found two bizarre shacks in di erent areas over the years. I immediately le and assumed they were used for these purposes. Either that or Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th lived there.

Either way, I didn’t want to nd out.

TEXAS KILLING FIELDS: In 1997, my wife Lisa and I drove over to my friend Clint Starling’s place in Pasadena. On the way down Spencer Highway, we came across the largest police barricade I have seen to date. Probably 20 to 30 police cars, dogs, and even a helicopter. We knew something terrible had happened.

When we got to Clint’s house, we told him, and it had already hit the local news there. Twelve-year-old Laura Smither’s body had been found, 20 days a er she went missing while jogging in Friendswood.

“It’s the killing elds,” Clint said in a very somber tone.

“ ey always nd murdered young girls between here and Galveston.”

I would learn more about this dark area as stories of missing girls popped up every few years in this area. e actual “killing elds” is a remote tract in Texas City, but the killings have all occurred along that corridor, near areas many of us love to sh.

At 23 years old, that shook me to think we had just been 100 yards from the lifeless body of a precious li le girl who had been brutalized by, no doubt, a monster.

In June, DNA evidence shows that a monster named William Reece, already incarcerated for other crimes against humanity, killed her and another young woman in the Houston area in 1997. Laura was simply going out to jog and then ran into the real-life boogeyman.

FLORIDA FISHING MASSACRE: In July 2020, three people were murdered while on a shing trip in Polk County. Sheri Grady Judd, who has worked at the department since 1972, described the killings as a “massacre.”

“ is is one of the worst crime scenes I have ever seen,” Judd told me in an interview a week a er the killings. ree friends had gathered to go sh at a remote location and had been friends for years. e victims had been savagely beaten and shot.

I’m not telling you these stories to scare you, but to raise awareness. ese stories are real, and they are only a tiny fraction of the things going on out there.

I produced a documentary that my friend Paul Fuzinksi of Aptitude Outdoors edited called Dark Outdoors. It’s a look at this issue. It also spawned special Dark Outdoors podcast episodes. You can watch the documentary at darkoutdoors.com.

My mission is to make people think before heading outdoors and to be prepared for what they might encounter. But I need your help.

If you’ve had a crazy encounter with people in the outdoors, email me at cmoore@ shgame. com. I’d love to hear the stories. Sharing them might just help save someone’s life.

In the week leading up to Halloween, we will do a special series on this topic at shgame.com and in the Texas Fish & Game e-newsle er, and on social media, sharing these stories.

Over the last few years, I’ve developed a simple, but e ective routine before I enter the woods or hit the water. My advice is to pray, prepare and pack heat. If that sounds a li le wild, so be it. It’s kept me alive through some dangerous situations. « Email Chester Moore at cmoore@fi shgame.com