The Secret of the Dark Woods is Under Jeff's Nose -- or Up It!

Once more, the A.I.M.S. team finds themselves up against weirdness in The Dark Forest. Buck is still hunting for the Little Girl, while the rest of the team has their own mystery to pick -- specifically the mystery of Jeff's nose and why it keeps bleeding so often.

Of course, whenever anything is encountered, these brave woodsmen, armed with their rifles and pistols and their cunning traps, respond with immediate flight. I can see running from a ten-foot Bigfoot -- but running from one woman, or even a group of other hunters?

I find myself wondering sometimes if the crew from MOUNTAIN MONSTERS ever goes hunting together -- traditional hunting, that is. Let's say, squirrel hunting:

Buck: We're here in the woods behind my house looking for gray squirrels. So far we've seen a ton of evidence that this place is the home to several of the creatures.

Huckleberry: Willy, what have you and Wild Bill set up to catch these critters?

Willy: For these gray squirrels, I'm going with your standard "Bird Feeder Trap." We put a full ear of corn at the top of a post on a nail. Then we grease the pole with vaseline, and set it atop a spring loaded platform. When the gray squirrel tries to get to the corn, it slides down the pole, puts pressure on the platform, and the springs trigger a net in that tree yonder that falls on the squirrel, immobilizing him.

Wild Bill: Oh yeah! Let's seem him get outta that! Wooo!

Jeff: Legend has it that the gray squirrels like to eat acorns and pine nuts. But this corn should make a great bait.

Squirrel: chirrup

Buck: Shh! ... Did you all hear that?

Huckleberry: Look there!

Wild Bill: Ho-ly... Them acorns plumb half eaten!

Huckleberry: He's a hungry critter.

Willy: Now we know what they eat.

Jeff: I told you guys, but you just don't listen.

Squirrel: chirp chirp chitter chirp

Buck: Oh...My...God!

Huckleberry: We'd best be getting out of here!

Willy: Let's go! Let's go! Let's go!

Wild Bill: Go! Go! (falls down)

Jeff: (pees himself)

Squirrel: chirp? (jumps to the top of the post and eats the corn)

In this season finale episode, Buck returns to West Virginia at Trapper's behest, to re-investigate the cabin where they found Trapper wounded earlier in the season. The cabin was filled with photographs, and the other half of some GPS coordinates, but Trapper thinks they may have missed something, so we are almost sure they must have. After much sleuthing, Buck finds that the Little Girl is appearing in the shadows of many of the pictures, and begins to take them down for closer examination. When he does so, he exposes a message painted on the walls behind the pictures, leading him straight back to the Dark Forest!

Meanwhile, the rest of the A.I.M.S. team is investigating yet another abandoned shed used as a meeting place for the Rogue Team -- although it's such a rat's nest one wonders how they meet in it. Inside, they find the one room Jeff told them to find -- a room where the walls are covered floor to ceiling with printouts of different drawings of skulls, and a topographical map of the Dark Forest marked up with X's. The skulls are important, because Buck just got a clue that the key to finding the Woman of the Woods (remember her, the whole reason they're supposed to be out here?) is by first finding the Blood Skull. It's readily apparent that the Rogue Team is looking for the same thing.

Buck returns to the Dark Forest and retraces his steps from the episode where he lost time. He sees familiar landmarks which trigger his memories, including the secret of why Jeff's nose bleeds, which it's been doing pretty much non-stop this entire episode. With the others on the run from the Rogue Team and taking shelter in yet another abandoned cabin (seriously, there was a town here at one time where M. Night Shyamalan's "The Happening" actually happened), Buck gives Huckleberry a call and explains to him that he has to look up Jeff's nose and take out whatever's up there causing the bleeding.

The abandoned shed is full of tin cans, rusty tools, trash -- oh, and a shiny, sterile pair of stainless steel forceps! What luck that the cabin once belonged to a dentist! With Willy and Wild Bill hodling Jeff down (with his consent), Huckleberry proceeds to straddle him and pick his nose with the forceps -- and if you can guess what he pulls out before it comes out, join the club because I did too.

Deeper in the Dark Forest, Buck finds himself suddenly surrounded by grape vine wreaths and stick structures. He feels trapped, like he can't get out, like there's no place he can run to, no avenue of escape. I've been in Hobby Lobby before too, so I can relate. But as he spins in circles in a panic, he comes across not one, but two things he's been looking for -- which means it's time to leave them all behind and run like hell!

This episode is the season finale of MOUNTAIN MONSTERS...but it does not wrap the mystery. In fact, we're left with a cliffhanger! Which means we're going to continue our sojourn in the Dark Forest next season!

Y'all come back now, y'hear?