Ishkitini

This article was first published in the Autumn 2025 issue of Feathers and Whiskey magazine.

Work took me east and into the city for a few years, but I knew before I’d crossed the Mississippi that it was only a matter of time before I returned to my roots and moved home to my native Oklahoma. I was excited when that time finally came, of course, excited to be closer to my family and old friends, but I was also excited to be able to turkey hunt again. I had done some deer hunting back east, but it had been far too long since I’d heard a bird gobble. And I’d been itching to take a tom with the fancy shotgun in the corner of my gun safe. I’d won the twelve gauge at the last National Wild Turkey Federation banquet I’d been to, but it hadn’t even been shot, much less hunted with. I could have paid for that gun twice over with the amount of money I’d spent on raffle tickets through the years, but then I wouldn’t have been able to tell my wife how lucky we’d been to win it. With its figured wood and ornate scrollwork, the shotgun was prettier than it was practical, but even pretty guns aren’t meant to sit in safes.

Problem was, I didn’t have any access to hunt turkey on private land in Oklahoma. So I was forced to strike out onto public. I didn’t mind, though, not really. Honestly, I was just excited to be in the woods again. Besides, I’d been out of the game so long that my hunting skills had dulled. Chasing longbeards on public land was just what I needed to sharpen them.

I pored over topographic maps of Wildlife Management Areas all winter looking for a spot close enough to home to hunt and eventually settled on one I thought might hold some birds. On an early spring Saturday, I hiked in to do some scouting, and two miles in, I found a classic roost tree and a community dusting bowl. There were wing feathers and j-shaped droppings everywhere. I couldn’t wait for Opening Day.

Determined to hear a tom gobbling on the limb, I left the house early that morning, but then I missed my turn off the highway and wound up running late anyway. I switched on my headlamp as I walked under a canopy of cottonwoods and glanced down at my watch. If I was going to be sitting down when I heard that roost gobble, I had to hurry.

I was making good time when I walked right into what I thought was a spiderweb, drenched in dew and stretched across the two-track. Spitting and sputtering, I dropped my decoy and leaned my fancy shotgun against the trunk of the closest tree so that I could use both hands to wipe the web from my face. When I did, my hands came away bloody. I was feeling for a cut or a scratch, trying to locate the source of the blood flow, when the smell hit me. Death. I turned back to the tree and was horrified when my headlamp fell not on a spiderweb, but on a loop of large intestine, draped over a branch, still wet and dripping with gore.

My first thought was that a mountain lion had killed a deer and hung it in a tree to finish later. I pulled the 9mm from my hip and double checked for a round in the chamber. Then I holstered the handgun, fished a flashlight out of my backpack, and shined my light higher up into the tree. Whatever had been killed and gutted, it was big. Bigger than a deer. A cow, maybe.

I followed the trail of carnage from limb to limb, higher and higher into the tree, trying to make out a hoof or a horn, and when I did, I saw a shadow in the darkness just beyond my flashlight’s beam launch itself from the very top of the tree, blotting out the stars as it flew. Instinctively, I ducked my head and covered my face. I was trying to work out what it was I’d seen when I heard a scream. My first thought was that I’d been right about my mountain lion hypothesis, but then I heard the noise again. It was more a screech than a scream, birdlike instead of big cat, and it triggered a long buried memory from my youth.

I grew up with Native Americans, citizens of the Creek and Choctaw and Seminole tribes. We were classmates and teammates and good friends, and I benefitted greatly from the association. Some of the best athletes and most beautiful girls I knew were Native. And besides that, fry bread tacos were served every other Friday in the school cafeteria.

I picked up words and phrases in their languages, mostly the kinds of things that would’ve gotten my mouth washed out with soap if my momma had understood what I was saying. I also learned some of my favorite folklore from my native friends. Every now and again, I’d catch snatches of conversation referencing their legends, but when I asked for details, my questions were met with blank stares and stony silence. Over time, though, and with a bit of careful eavesdropping, I managed to piece together the legend of Ishkitini.

At home in Florida’s cypress swamps, the Ishkitini, or depending on the tribe, Stikini or Stigini, were forced to walk the Trail of Tears with the rest of their tribes to settle on the plains of Oklahoma. Though the word translates simply as ‘horned owl,’ Ishkitini is the name given to malevolent, shapeshifting witches who have learned to vomit up their internal organs, along with their mortal souls, in order to transform themselves into owl-like monsters that feed on human hearts, ripped from the throats of their victims. Ishkitini then hang their regurgitated organs high in the tops of trees to keep them from being molested by man or animal, because the only way an Ishkitni can be killed is to have its organs discovered, then salted and burned.

I remembered that horrifying legend of the Ishkitini as I stood there alone in the darkness, the monster’s cry still echoing through the timber. I wiped my face once more and then turned for the truck while my quivering legs could still carry me. I was home and changed and sitting at the breakfast table sipping my second cup of coffee before anybody else got out of bed. When my wife walked through the kitchen and asked me why I hadn’t gone hunting, I mumbled something about there being rain in the forecast. There was no way I was going to admit, even to her, that I’d been chased out of the woods by a legend. I was rinsing out my cup at the sink when I realized that I’d left my shotgun in the woods, leaning against the Ishkitini’s tree. I spent the rest of that Saturday beating myself up about it and trying to forget that gun.

I never would have guessed it, but desire actually proved stronger than fear. I spent a week wrestling with it before I finally decided that I needed that fancy shotgun more than I needed to stay out of the Ishkitini’s woods. So, the following weekend I loaded up for another hunt, though this one would take place in the full daylight of early afternoon. No more moonlit hikes for me. But I didn’t make it to the end of that hunt, either. From the moment I stepped out of the truck, I felt like someone or something was watching me. The woods were stock still. Stagnant, even. No birds called. No leaves fluttered. I turned back for the truck before I’d made it a hundred yards.

The next two weeks were spent questioning first my manhood and then my sanity. Eventually, I decided I must have dreamed the whole thing up. Determined to pick up my shotgun and get in at least one sit before the spring turkey season closed, I planned for another morning hunt. While getting my gear together the night before that hunt, I made sure the batteries in my headlamp and flashlight were fully charged, as well as the magazine in my pistol.

I was awake that Saturday morning long before my alarm went off, and my heart was already racing by the time I’d backed out of the driveway and pulled onto the highway. I’d just set the cruise when I slammed on the brakes. A huge horned owl was standing in the middle of the road, facing away from me and forcing me to a stop. Even over the hood of my jacked up, four wheel drive pickup, the owl’s head and shoulders were clearly visible. Dead leaves and broken twigs were matted in its crown. I could see mottled flesh at the nape of its neck where feathers were either molting or missing. I honked, but the bird didn’t budge. I flashed my high beams at it and got no response. Finally, I rolled down my window to yell at the thing. I rolled it right back up, though, as soon as the familiar smell of death made its way into my nostrils. That’s when the bird turned its head.

The owl’s unblinking eyes caught and reflected my high beams, turning bright, yellow light a dark, jaundiced orange. As if in slow motion, the bird rotated its body, inch by inch, shifting its feet but not its eyes, to realign itself with its head. The owl then took a step towards my truck, raking a clawed talon through the asphalt like a rutting buck making a scrape. Its second step carried the bird into the air where it hung suspended for a moment, defying the law of gravity, before it spread its wings to glide over the hood of my truck. The owl swept up again at my windshield, skimming the glass and obscuring my vision. I ducked my head, just as I had that first morning in the woods, but not before I noticed something in the bird’s talons. I heard that something drop onto the cab of my pickup and then clatter onto the road beside me. Then I heard the screech I had hoped I would never hear again. I huddled there in the middle of the highway, panting and praying, before I finally summoned the courage to switch on my headlamp, pull the pistol from my hip, and slide out of the truck. My eyes trained upwards, scanning the sky for that familiar shadow, I felt around with the toe of my boot for whatever it was the owl had dropped onto the cab of my pickup and kicked something that skidded across the pavement. Chancing a glance at the ground, I swallowed the lump in my throat. Then I reached down and picked up what was left of my shotgun.