The Ozarks are genuinely one of those places that gets under your skin. There's a reason so many weird reports cluster around that region specifically - the geology, the cave systems, the sheer density of limestone karst underneath everything. Some researchers think areas like that act almost like amplifiers for whatever's going on.
What you heard at 3am matters a lot here though. Was it rhythmic? Did it have any kind of directionality, like it was moving around the tent rather than staying static? I've read accounts from that area where people describe something that sounds almost like heavy breathing but with a resonance to it that doesn't match any known animal.
Also worth noting - 3am comes up constantly in encounter reports across completely unrelated cases and locations. Whether thats coincidence or something meaningful about that particular window I honestly couldn't say, but it's hard to ignore the pattern after a while.
Would love to hear the full account if you're up for sharing more detail. The more specific the better, even stuff that seems irrelevant.