Trevor Higgins was starting to panic. Even if his dad had shot a deer, he should have reached the trailhead by now. Or, if he’d fallen and broken a leg, Trevor was sure his dad would have belly-crawled to the road. He wasn’t the kind of guy to depend on someone else for help, to sit and wait for rescue. But two and a half hours had passed since his dad, Shawn Higgins, had entered the woods. Maybe more. Trevor wasn’t sure anymore. But he knew that his dad should have come back to the truck already.

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Their plan was simple: Shawn, 41, would hike down the narrow footpath, looking for a blacktail. Meanwhile, Trevor, 21—who had killed a buck the day before—would wait with the truck at the next trailhead, 2 miles up Burnt Ridge Road in the Siskiyou Mountains of southwest Oregon. After a couple of hours, they’d meet and drive to get Will Chandler, Trevor’s uncle, whom they’d dropped off earlier. They did this sort of thing often. There was no reason for Shawn to have taken more than an hour or so to make the hike. Now, a storm began to bear down on the mountain, which further unsettled Trevor. He watched as the October sky grayed. He could see a darkness coming.