Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Backpack Hunting Big Foot, Yeti, and other woodland haints..........

Personally... somebody is seeing something, maybe not all of them, but some are.

The question is what, exactly!

Most are probably a mis-identification.

Some fraud, to be sure. But charging around the NA woods in a monkey suit is probably more dangerous than hunting Grizz in sandles with a sharp stick...


BFRO! LOL, LMAO... we haven't photoed one, shot one, tracked one, got hair off one and yet they have the ballzz to say 'this is CLASSIC BF habitat' or that is 'Classic BF behavior'

For the record, I have never seen/heard one.... that I know of.

Me and DD did work with a gal a while back that everyone called 'the Wildebeast'....

not to her face of course!

In an era where virtually everyone man, woman, and child has a smart phone on them 24/7 with photo and video capabilities I find it interesting that no one can seem to take a clear picture of Bigfoot.

If someone wants to be taken seriously about this subject, they need to offer some serious evidence to back up their claim.

Ditto.

Agreed... Dont understand the hesitation now?

This actually, originally, had the makings of an interesting thread. Now? Not so much.

Anyone have any good recipes?

Hi Vek - what would you like to know?

I don't refer to them as "stories", that suggests something made up. To me they're kind of ... just part of what is. Y' live them, ponder them, and pretty soon the "edge" wears out. Not new and shiny anymore. I could tell you about a whole spectrum of stuff from definite sights sliding down the scale to "maybe, I doubt it, but I can't completely discount it" incidents. I could tell you about the why and why not, the characteristics that suggest bigfoot, the characteristics that point other directions, the details I plain can't explain that leave me scratching my head. I could tell you about the state of the research, the science, what we have, what we don't have, what we don't have but we think we should, some thoughts on the why behind that. I could tell you what I think they are ... which addresses that why. I could also tell you what parts of the whole bigfoot mythos that I'm damned skeptical of ... and why.

But I get the idea that isn't really what people are looking for, they're just looking for something to laugh at. I don't really feel like participating.

Side thought: another forum I'm allows people to start threads and manage who is allowed to respond. Others can read, but they can't shut down a discussion through distractions. It's kind of like watching football on TV ... no matter how many pretzels you throw at the screen, the ref ignores you. It's too bad we don't have something like that here for certain kinds of discussion.

Tom

I've always wondered...was Chewbacca a Sasquatch or a Yeti? Or are they the same thing other than environment?

I'm interested in personal experiences - either firsthand or from persons close to the one(s) with experience. If that experience informs other opinions, then fire away.

My interest largely stems from the copy of the John Green book that my brothers had when I was growing up - it made an impression on a wee lad.

By chance....did you support Obama's 'net neutrality regulations?

Vek -

The first thing that I found was a track line. I was 10 or so. I'd read up on bigfoot via some materials I found on my great grandfather's porch. That he had them is pretty incredible given his personal circumstances ... that he would risk his reputation even having them around was entirely out of character unless he had some kind of experience that he never shared with family. That might well be, there are a couple of pointers in that direction.

The tracks were located on a wide muddy area on the riverbank. Ever make chocolate pudding on the stove? Know how it has that glazed surface you can't touch without leaving unavoidable marks .. you can't just smooth it out because you've changed the surface texture? Same situation. There was no way anyone or anything walked within 30 feet of those tracks 'til I showed up. Whatever made them walked in them. "Period." The track line came out of deep water onto the shelf. The shelf had been underwater 'til only a couple hours before. The tracks were laid down after the water receded. The first 4-5 were in a pretty thin layer of "mud" .. sort of a sandy, silty, scunge with some moss in it with that glazed surface look overlaying the rock shelf. They went clear to rock of course. The next 1-2 were in the damp red clay where the shelf transitioned to a very steep bank. From the depth, I think whatever made them was upwards of 1000 pounds. The clay bank above was dry, the tracks weren't clear tracks, just scuff marks.

The river was dropping fast. I don't think that shelf was exposed at daylight that day. The tracks showed no sign of water muting the edges, they were sharp. The sun hadn't hit the mud yet. In that bend of the river, sun hits about 11:00 to 11:30, and I think it was about 10:30 when I found them though that's somewhat guesswork. I would say they were less than 4 hours old with good confidence.

The tracks were 5-toed, no claws, 24-1/2 inches long, 8-1/2 inches across the ball of the foot, 6 inches across the heel, very slightly curved, but no arch was visible. Right heel to left heel, consecutive steps, was 6-1/2 feet and it didn't seem to break stride going up the bank, it just ... went up. The bank was about 20 ... ish? ... feet high, flattened fairly abruptly at the top, and was topped by an impenetrable (by me) evergreen huckleberry jungle with blackberry vines mixed in.

I took those measurement using my fly rod and the 8" notch filed in the cork handle as a gauge so they're not off by much. I measured, then decided I needed to be somewhere else pronto. Great grandpa was picking huckleberries a quarter mile or so downstream up a side creek. I rowed out to mid river, chucked the anchor, and fished 'til I saw him come out on the bank. I knew exactly what I was looking at and there was no way I wanted to be in the brush with "that."

Tom

I ain't gonna call you a liar...If you got more, I'm all ears. Thanks.

I'd like to hear more too.

Yep, I just have to break stuff up into manageable chunks.

The next thing that happened was about 2 years later. That was a full on, fairly long duration sighting. It was not dark, but dusk-ish, light wasn't great, but not horrible either. I can't be sure of the exact date. I know I was not old enough to drive but my cousin, who is 3-1/2 years older, was. I can guestimate based on my great grandfather's health. And it was deer season. Lets say October 1976, best calculated guess. Could maybe have been 77, but no earlier or later.

We have an old traditional family deer hunt. We drop someone off on a particular logging road and they hike down the mountain to the river, then then come out. We'd dropped my aunt off and my cuz drove the truck home. Even if someone is coming out pretty fast, there's a big oak patch a quarter mile past the end of the road so they'll "hang up" 'til it's getting dark. We took the truck to the landing area along the river to wait for her.

We were sitting there BSing about whatever teen boys BS about (he was probably trying to impress me with his knowledge of sci fi or girls or something). We noticed something in the river, upstream, to our left. 150 to 200 yards. It looked like a great big man walking right down the middle of the river. That section is not very deep, maybe 4-6 feet, but runs fairly fast. He passed about 75 yards away in front of us, then went over a shallow gravel ridge and dropped into deep water. Where he passed in front of us, the water is never less than 4-1/2 feet, generally 5 ish, some years even over 6, just depends on how heavy the river current is at the time the side creeks are dumping gravel. We couldn't see the guy REAL well so as he went in front of us, my cuz hit the headlights. Now, that's mid 70s, incandescent lights, not halogens, and the engine was off, so not super bright, but ... bright enough. This "guy" was a solid charcoal-ish color top to bottom. No hat, no reflective skin, no reflective clothing, no apparent fishing implements. Looked like almost black hair top to bottom. He was only settled into the water about crotch / hip joint deep based.

The general number cited is a human male's legs are about 45% of their total height. Bigfoots seem to have slightly shorter legs, proportionally, based on the report data. One way or the other, 45% of this "guys" height was at least 4-1/2 feet. You do the math, I don't really even want to say that number. Egad.

However, if you look at Fahrenbach's chart, those tracks I found in '74 are a pretty good match to that height. The two "events" were only 3/4ths of a mile apart. My guess is it was the same one.

Anyway, he went out of the headlights just before going over the shallow bar into the deeper water. By the time my cuz got the engine fired up and the truck jockeyed around to put the lights back on him, he was a couple hundred yards away. We never got a real good look at him when he was in the shallowest water.

At that point, he was sort of out of headlight range but the river had curved and he was heading due west. There, where the water was deeper, it was fairly still-looking and the surface was real reflective. The sun had gone down but there was a pretty bright spot to the west back-lighting him giving us a real good silhouette view as he swam away. You know how a dog or bear swims, settled low in the water with their chin often dragging so they'll even kind of choke on occasional small waves? This guy swam high. His arms stayed under water, not an overhead stroke, but the water surface hit him mid shoulder, about armpit level.

He was about 350 yards from us where he went out of sight around a bend. I don't know if he got out of the river or swam the next rapids.

My cousin and I told the family what we'd seen when we got back to the house. My father told us we absolutely had NOT seen what we saw and threatened to hurt us, not just a whipping, but permanent injury. He was mad, scared, something. It scared my cousin so bad he changed his story to agree with what dad said we saw .. even though dad wasn't there to see whatever we saw. I pushed that under the mental carpet, didn't think about it much, 'til a few years ago another cousin from another side of the family asked about it. I'd forgotten she was there. She laid out what we'd said exactly the way I just told it to you ... she wasn't there to see what we saw but she remember the story as I remembered the story. She added a few things I'd forgotten 'bout the dogs acting up around the house that night and such. (We only lived about 400 yards from the river where the thing went around the bend.)

Those are the only real concrete things I remember from right there at the house. There are a couple of more ... subjective ... things that MIGHT have been bigfoot related. If you read up on habituation, one of the things that comes up in many accounts is horse mane braiding. We had 2 horses. I remember my father and one sister talking about the manes being braided. Dad attributed that to an old "Indian" guy who lived down the road about a mile. I asked the other sister a couple years ago if they'd ever seen the "Indian" or if it was just an assumption. You know the answer: assumption. Now I wish I'd paid attention, actually looked at those braids myself, 'cause the pictures of braids I've seen are not quite like how gals braid their hair. I'll never know. The people who do know are people who've proven untrustworthy on other things so .. the story is what it is, but the truth ... out of reach.

There's one other but I want to come back to that later. There's some weird [bleep] happens and if I'm going to dive into that, I want to do it sort of together.

More later ...

Tom

Couple times in high school, in the hills above our house, we had something follow us. "We" is me 'n' my buddy Pat. I'm pretty average height, a little heavier maybe. Pat is 6' 4" / 6' 5". We lived about 8 miles apart. When our parents would let us borrow one of the cars we'd meet up and get into trouble. Didn't drink, didn't smoke, but ... "idle hands." "Hey, I wonder what would happen if we ..." etc. If we were of merely normal intelligence we'd be long dead. (You can think I'm bragging ... I don't care enough to brag.)

Anyways, one time I drove down to his house early in the morning to do a cross country climb / hike up a series of bluffs to look for a cave that was supposed to have some Native American artifacts of some sort in them. Others who'd been there said there was a really neat rope swing which you could swing out over a bluff top ... if you had the cajones. This bluff was broken into sections an between them were areas of talus, often with trees on them, and those were usually angled so we didn't have any technical climbing to do, just a real steep walk up a hillside with game trails if we did it right.

We got to the top. Never did find the cave. Never did find the rope swing. We DID find a rock about 4 x 3 x 2 feet, sort of rectangular, near the bluff top, got down on our butts, put our legs against it, and sent it over the edge. one thousand one, one thousand two, one thou .. we got to one thousand six before the crash. Lotsa vertical. We were up on top walking along looking for a different way down, I was in the lead, looking back talking over my shoulder, stepped between two bushes, and for some reason I grabbed a bush before I put my foot down. When I looked down I was hanging half off a 1000 foot drop by a handful of brush. There were rocks down there poking out of the timber bigger than houses. Close call.

We found another route down eventually. Part way down we found a ledge too high to jump up onto far enough to get up that was polished smooth by feet going up and down. Looked to be a cave on top. Cougar den, probably? We didn't have a gun with us. We found where the rock we'd launched had hit a big fir tree and blown it to tooth picks. There was a deep gouge into the ground where the rock had hit, then a trail on down the hill where it'd trashed the brush and a groove maybe 6 inches deep and a couple feet wide. As we were admiring our handiwork we noticed the sounds of something approaching from behind us on the path we'd taken around the bluff base. We decided to use that gouge as our path.

We'd walk, it'd walk .. but a little faster. We ran ... it ran .. a little faster. Always closing the distance. Never saw it. Finally ran out of gouge at the top of another bluff. We had a good open area on both sides and behind us but we couldn't go down and we couldn't go around or up without going back into the brush where "it" was. I still don't know what it was. Cougar, maybe? I'm not jumping to the bigfoot conclusion. We'd drank all our water so Pat filled his metal canteen with rocks and I put one big rock in my day pack so we could swing them like clubs. "It" was going back and forth above us like a guard on duty but staying in the brush out of sight. We screwed up our nerve and when it was at the farthest point on it's arc, we made a run up the hill into the brush and took off the other direction along the bluff top. We hit an open spot of talus where we could see. "It" stayed back in the brush. We had time to look around a bit. We found our trail up the hill across that talus only instead of two sets of bipedal tracks, there were three. Mine were pretty obvious, short legs. Pat's were pretty obvious, longer legs. That third set ... took steps 2 feet longer than Pat's step length. It was loose talus, sort of mudstone flakes, not soil, so there was nothin' but depressions where we'd stepped, so we can't be sure what left those, but since Pat was the tallest guy in our area by a couple inches, I have my suspicions.

I'm still not sure what was behind us though. I kinda assume cougar. When we took out of that open talus area, we were running downhill like hell was gaining on us. Somewhere there both my hamstrings cramped up and I went to frog hops. That hill was so steep that I could sorta squat and two-legged hop, despite the cramps, and land 15-20 feet farther down the mountain each time. I bet it was funny lookin' but I was hauling major ass for someone in that state. Eventually we hit the graveled road and collapsed. "It" stopped a ways above us. We laid there a long time. It must have gotten tired of us 'cause we never had any sign of it once we hit that road.

I wouldn't really think much of that in terms of bigfoot except that extra set of bipedal tracks. Something on two feet followed us up that hill. It was either a guy over 7 feet tall or ... y' know. Something.

Tom

Wow, now that's a good read ! Best I've ever seen on here for sure. Thanks for taking the time.

It wasn't long after that I went off to college, took 5 years to get that 4 year degree (oops), got married, moved away from home. It was a long time before anything else happened ... with one exception.

About a year after graduation, my now ex and I left our daughter with my ex's dad and step-mom overnight for an overnight backpacking trip. It was either her birthday our our anniversary, I don't remember which, and they were real close together. It was a weird feeling day. My ex doesn't like guns but on the way up to the trailhead she wanted to stop and shoot to familiarize herself with the two I'd brought. I had a 6" blued half-lug GP100 and a 7-1/2" blued super blackhawk. We shot some halfway up the mountain at a rock quarry, then drove up, parked, grabbed our packs, and hiked just over a mile, almost flat, into a small lake in a glacial cirque.

We set up camp, had a bite to eat, then I walked 50 feet or so over to the lake shore to make a couple casts. As I was fishing I could hear something coming towards us. Facing the back wall of the cirque, it was high right, slowly moving down and left, not very fast, just hear rocks rolling now and then. It wouldn't have been odd to have that many rocks rolling but they were coming from a focus point which was moving steadily, not just random rocks rolling. The cirque wall was behind a stand of trees so we couldn't see up there.

For some reason we got the willies. We waffled ... stay vs go. We decided there was enough light to pack up and haul ass for the trailhead. We didn't really pack, we just shoved stuff in the packs. We were wrong about how much daylight we had. The trail left to the left out of the bowl the lake was in climbing steeply to the ridge, then leveled out. Whatever was up there, we heard it come down that ridge we had to cross. It stopped a ways above the trail. We assumed it left. Wrong. As soon as we rounded the corner and started the more gradual, closer to level section, it dropped in behind us. It never came down in the trail, it stayed up in the brush above and behind us.

The brush there is big rhododendron, maybe 12-15 feet tall, and Saddlers Oak which is pretty similar looking. That "thing" sounded like it was walking on two feet. We never saw it, we just saw the tops of that brush being plowed aside as it walked, and it didn't seem to encounter any more resistance from the brush than one of us would walking through grass the same height. It was big, heavy, strong, and on two feet.

A time or two we lost sound of it. We thought maybe we left it behind. Then it'd appear behind us again. It seemed to occasionally leap-frog us, then, rather than ambush us as we passed, it'd wait for us to pass, then keep herding us along. .. 'cause whatever it was, that's exactly what it was doing, herding us out of there. Mostly it was 50 yards or so away, a couple times it was within 30-40 feet.

As we approached the parking lot the brush thinned out. It quit following us when the brush got thin enough we'd have seen it. We threw the packs in the truck and headed back to town.

My ex does not believe in bigfoot but she remembers that night and she has no better explanation ... oh, and she's got a master's degree in biology.

So, that was it for quite a long time. But .. since I decided to open my damn fool mouth, I'll add s' more pretty soon.

Tom

So what next? That was July of 1988. Wound up divorced not long after, then a new job, 7 years there with nothing I can think of. Another new job. I was focused on varmint shooting and four wheeling, didn't spend much time hiking and not that much time hunting. When I did, it was mostly in an area that I don't think has regular bigfoot activity.

Family politics happen, though. To get away from them, I had to expand my horizons into new areas to hunt and fish. I apparently stumbled into two locations that are at least seasonally very active.

The first one ... it's ok if you roll your eyes. I've only had one possible sighting there. It's not far from here on a ridge off the side of a bigger mountain that has one elevated knob protruding upwards. There's an old dirt two track towards the top of the knob. The road leaves a decent gravel going uphill, swings right around a little gully, then left over a small ridge onto a flat. At the back edge of the flat a car-sized boulder has been placed to block the road on up the hill. If the gate at the main road is open I park there, otherwise I park on the shoulder and walk the extra few hundred yards. Passing the boulder the ridge is on the left. The road goes up and swings right rounding another big gully. It's a few hundred yards across. On the uphill side of the gully, the road goes left and continues upwards maybe a quarter mile, crosses the main ridge, and goes out into a steep meadow with a lot of elderberry bushes where it peters out.

The first time I was conscious of something weird going on was about the 3rd or 4th year I hunted there to stay away from family problems. The grass was knee high except in the tracks themselves. There were some fallen trees someone had cut out of the road with a chainsaw but left the ends from the uphill side hanging out almost to the tire tracks. I was just starting into that upper canyon area when I smelled an incredibly intense smell of dog s h i t. It was awful, sharp, like having your nose rammed up a dog's ass. I picked up a twig, leaned one arm against one of those log ends, and lifted my foot to scrape the crap I was sure was there off my shoe. Clean shoe. Ok, must be the other foot. Changed sides ... clean shoe. I had a simultaneous "WTF" and deja vu moment, both not understanding what was happening AND realizing I'd done the same thing in the same spot leaning against the same tree end a couple other times in previous years.

That area there is pretty brushy other than the road. It's almost 6000 feet elevation with the thicker / denser true firs, not douglas firs. Lot of brush, too. The gully itself is too wet for the firs so it is open with grass and sedges. The ground has running water over a gravelly substrate that holds some rotting leaf materials and protecting the soil under it from eroding. In it there are patches of willows and what we call ocean spray which is a real woody shrub that can be a little higher than your head, bushy, with small clusters of tiny white flowers.

For several years after finally noticing oddness, I paid more attention. At the upper edge of that gully where the road goes back into the timber, and odd thing happened a lot regarding that smell. I'd get hit by a wall of it. I could sometimes take 2 steps and be clear out of it so I only smelled the clean mountain smell .. slight decaying wood, plants that'd died back, stuff like that. Take two steps forward and I'd be back in the stink. The weird thing is that if the wind switched and blew downhill instead of uphill, the same thing would happen so it seemed like the source was moving and it was real real close to me because it wasn't mixing into the air moving through the trees evenly. This has only happened from about 2:00 pm on towards dusk, never in the morning, never after dark. With few exceptions, it only happens in mid september into mid october. I have caught a whiff of it twice in august now.

I've searched that mountainside high and low looking for what it is and where it comes from with no luck.

About 6-7 years ago I drew a different tag so I couldn't hunt it but I'd gone for a long hike and decided an afternoon slow walk to work out the kinks would be a good thing. I ran into a family of 4 up there hunting: a couple that seemed to be in their early 50s, their mid-late 20s son, and his early teens step-son. The parents were hunting but letting their son lead. The step son was bored, no gun, listening to his walkman not paying a bit of attention. I got close enough to talk to the mom for a couple minutes, told them what I was doing, told them to go ahead and hunt, I'd hold back and stay out of their hair. The son took off up over the hill, went over the head of that bigger gully, and came back down to the road. I met him there.

He was in full bore freak out mode. He said a bigfoot followed him most of the way around. He was trying to get his family rounded up, back to their truck, and get the hell out of there. We stood shoulder to shoulder, 2 inches apart, sniffing the air, smelling the same thing. I insisted it was fecal, he insisted it was incredibly rank B.O. His mom was walking along grabbing handfulls of plants, shoving them up her nose, and sniffing trying to convince her son it was just a plant he was smelling. They left. I wish I'd gotten their names.

Some time in there the vibe o' the place changed. I don't know how else to say it. The first time I noticed it was on the back side of the main ridge muzzleloader hunting. Just had an unwelcome feeling I couldn't shake several trips in a row. The next year it got worse. I was fine 'til mid afternoon and I was fine if I was gone a couple hours before dark, but start crowding into evening ... it was bad. No real reason. Spidey sense. Having the attention of a predator sense. One day I screwed up, lost track of time up in that upper meadow, and had to come through the "danger zone" near dusk. It was bad, real bad.

That finally pissed me off. I'm not puttin' up with being chased off my mountain. I went back mid-afternoon, passed the back meadow, up the ridge, out into a manzanita patch, climbed up on top of a boulder, and sat there watching the moon rise to the east and the sun set to the west 'til it was full friggin' dark. I left my flashlight in my pocket and walked down the trail feeling my way by foot. Nothing happened. The sense of immanent doom has not occurred again.

It might be just in my head but a year or two later I was up there, mid morning, walking back out ... scouting, maybe, I forget ... and "something" hurled a chunk of dead log that looked to be more than 50 pounds up out of a clump of brush, across an opening in the trees, where it hit the side of a big fir going so fast that it bounced horizontally off that tree trunk 30-40 y ards before it hit the ground, again behind brush. I've watch the Olympics, I've watched strongman competitions ... there is no human alive who could do that. It's not possible. Bears don't have hands, that's not possible either.

About 3, maybe 4 years ago, I was talking to a friend who investigates bigfoot reports. He asked for my input on one. He wasn't supposed to share it because he's under contract with a non-disclosure agreement, but I promised not to notice the witness name. The report described someone driving through an open green gate, then up to a little flat where the road was blocked by a giant white boulder. The one and only. The hunter was sitting up against a tree waiting for his buddy when something started bouncing rocks off the tree trunk by his head. His buddy, when he finally arrived, came from the other direction. They haven't been back. I heard one other similar story which sounds like it's in the same place.

So that friend and I decided to drive up there so I could show him around. It was mid-late summer, not the "busy" season. We were headed back toward the truck, right about where I'd been when I first had to stop and check my shoes for "dog crap", looking downhill down the road. We saw two people coming up the hill at the far end of the short straight section. Ridge to our right, canyon to the left , going that direction. The grass in the middle between the tracks and on both shoulders was a little over knee high. Something black and hairy rolled out of the grass left of the road and headed down the hill below us. It appeared to stand up and run away upright. We couldn't see it real well but we could see glimpses of it running through the leaves of the trees along the road. By that time I was pretty involved in bigfoot research myself so we booked down to where it'd been laying in the grass for a better look.

There was a big fir tree about 75 yards below the road. The trunk was bare for for the bottom 40-50 feet. From behind that tree, I saw a shoulder emerge briefly. Bears front shoulders are such that the legs are sort of under the body. This was different. It had broad shoulders like ours that put the legs along side the upper torso. We decided to walk down there. It was real steep. I fell on my ass .. while I was getting back up, my buddy said he saw a head protrude around the tree. I slipped one more time. When we got down there, there was nothing there to see. When we got down there I was able to compare a spot on the tree to where the shoulder had been. The shoulder, never mind the top of the head, was 7 feet above the ground,.

Now, I didn't actually see enough of the thing at the same time to say 100% sure that it was a bigfoot, but I can back into that eliminating the things that can't fit that description. I'm not concerned about saying, by process of elimination, that I'm 98-99 percent sure it was, thought. For now, I label it "probably." That's different than that first one in the river or the one I saw later.

Tom

So .. backtrack.

Somewhere in the late 1990s, before I was involved, that investigator I mentioned was just a normal guy, sort of a redneck / conservative blue collar type raised hunting, fishing, and camping. There's a basin in the mountains with some lakes. He, family, friends, etc would hike in fairly often for extended stays fishing. He said occasionally they'd hear odd, out of place noises but didn't really worry about it. Knocks, trees pushed over, rock clacks, but all at a distance such that he didn't think the makers of the sounds were aware of him, they were intended for others. Then he and a buddy camped at an unmaintained site near one of the lakes. Some time in the middle of the night, 4-5 "things" came through camp from the direction of the lake outlet where there's an easy creek crossing, but left the trail and clipped the edge of their campsite. Most of the "things" stayed on the edge of camp but one really big one walked up on two feet, dragged they could see the impression of from the inside across the tent fabric, poked at it, and was "talking" back and forth with the others on the edge of camp. The language was unknown and my buddy described it as tonal, asian-sounding, but lower pitch. It was 2 guys in sleeping bags in a pup tent. They had a hunting dog with them they used to chase bears. The dog freaked and crawled down into one of the sleeping bags and could not be coaxed out 'til mid morning the next day. They said the dog was useless after that, broke it's spirit ... it wouldn't even go out into it's own back yard in town to pee after dark. They said they didn't have a gun, didn't really know what to do, so they just stayed quiet 'til "they" left.

My buddy didn't go back. We met in 2010 on a web site for bigfoot enthusiasts. There was a gal he called "sis", that he and his wife were incredibly protective of, who I was sort of interested in meeting, so when he suggested we go backpacking, I figured it might be a chance to get past the guard, learn a bit about her, and if nothing else, spend a couple days camping and fishing BSing with someone with similar interests. It was very clear to me as he shared his story that he was suffering from PTSD from the experience and wanted me to be "security blanket" even if he wouldn't say it outright. Since you just don't go looking for bigfoot and find them, I took that angle of the trip as a total joke. NO expectation of anything happening.

We packed our packs and made our plans. I hadn't backpacked much since the mid 80s so I was really in old-school mode still using my old gear. He works nights. I picked him up after his shift ended and we hauled for the mountains. It was a long hike in with too-heavy packs. We hit the 2nd lake and found a camp site right by the trail and within spitting distance of the water's edge. Wasn't much to it, just a flat patch of bare ground with a rotting log separating it from the trail. Set up camp. It's under fairly thick, but not very tall, alpine fir ... maybe shasta red fir, with a lot of huckleberry and snowberry brush. As we set up camp, boiled water, choked down Mountain House, etc, a modest 3x3 blacktail buck still in velvet kept cruising around our camp. It was making a half-circle arc back and forth staying 30 feet or so out, not getting close to us, but acting as if we were providing a safety buffer between it and something else out there. Not certain, but a little ... concerning. We took off over to the outlet creek to filter water. Maybe 100 yards? The deer followed us, well out of reach, but still staying in our "shadow", and returned with us, too. Eventually it got dark, he hung his pack with our food, and I took the garbage a ways outside camp and hung it. We went to bed. My buddy had been up 25 hours straight at that point and was whupped.

So ... we were in a basin, under fairly heavy fir timber, and the moon was a couple hours from rising. I fell asleep .. best guess about 9:45. I have low back problems. I woke up .. again, only a guess, I didn't check my watch ... about an hour later. I could not breath ... at all. Sinuses completely blocked. I could hear myself hyperventilating. I was having trouble moving. All the muscles in my face were spasming and twitching uncontrollably ... like being tazed in the face. I could feel pressure points in the fluids in my eye sockets but it was so dark I couldn't see anyway. I was in full throttle panic and assumed I was dying, not sure from what, but medical emergency, couldn't breath, 5 miles into a wilderness ... that's dead. It wasn't merely scared, I was [bleep] terrified, I was recognizing and accepting the inevitability of my impending death.

I discovered I could breath through my mouth. It was HARD, labored, but I could get air. There as a little relief. I could get out of full panic and think a little bit. Something seemed odd about that hyperventilating sound. It seemed out of sync with my chest and it seemed like it came from a foot or two away even though I couldn't locate the direction. I decided to perform an experiment ... I put my arms across my chest so I could be sure that I was really not moving ... and held my breath. Sure enough, the hyperventilating sound continued.

Brief break to describe that breathing. It was truly huge volumes of air ... horse lungs or bigger. It was not wheezing or whistling, so it was large nasal passages. It was FAST despite the seeming depth of the breathing. You know the sounds of a dog snuffing along a scent trail? Not quite that fast, but close, and there were no breaks, it was just nonstop, no changes in cadence. It went on and on and on the whole 45 minutes or so without any change.

I was laying there trying to figure out what to do, what the HELL was going on, when there was a loud knock ... wood on wood ... from about 50 yards above camp in the woods. (Oh, there was a game trail going that direction, FWIW.) That was mushy, like hitting a little bit punky tree. A few seconds later, off to the south at a little different angle and another 25 yards away, there was a second knock. That one was sharp, hard wood on hard wood.

The thing about those knocks ... you can tell how fast wood is moving when it hits stuff by the pitch of the impact. Those knocks were wood hitting wood at a velocity that wood falling from the available trees couldn't reach accelerated by gravity because the trees were too short. The only option, there, then, was a stick or club swung by something with hands.

I immediately knew what the hell was going on, I just wasn't sure what to do about it. All I had to do was not screw up, not set "them" off, and outlast them ... they'd leave.

What woke me up in the first place was low back pain. I had to roll over but I sure didn't want to set anything off outside. I rolled several times in 45 minutes or so. Once I got a tickle in the back of my throat and manage to unzip my tent, reach out, grab a canteen, and take a drink. I confirmed it wasn't sleep paralysis because that canteen , which had been full, was half empty the next morning.

So ... what happened there? I know WHO it was, but why, for what purpose? My best guess given the overall picture is there was at least on adult in camp (breathing) and 1 or 2 outside camp (breathing continued when the knocks happened) ... probably there was an infant or juvenile there, too ... show and tell, maybe? And I wasn't supposed to wake up. The breathing is suggestive of infrasound generation and the symptoms I experience seemed to fit.

My buddy slept through the whole thing. I know it wasn't him because I heard him moving in his tent a time or two.

The next morning we got up, made breakfast, and moved camp across the creek to a little better site but only 200 or so yards away. It was an old horse camp that had a bunch of nice big flat rocks to sit on instead of that termite infested log.

Hung out the next day ...

During the day we hung out, shot the [bleep], ate way too much, swam a little, napped, etc. The horse camp was nice. He was able to put his tent 30-40 feet from mine. (Snores .. of course **I** would never snore, right?) He'd mentioned a dream of wanting to catch and eat a brook trout there from one of the lakes. About dusk I caught a decent one so while I gutted it he ran back and fired up his camp stove. He cooked it, we split it, and while he cleaned up, I packed the garbage bag back out into the woods again and tied it to a branch. By then it was full on DARK. We were still in that basin bottom, still under timber, the moon hadn't come up, and this time, though we hadn't gotten rained on, some t-storms had passed nearby and the sky was about 50% cloudy. It was so friggin' dark I could not see my hand .. I could hold it up, block out some of the few stars, but I couldn't actually see the hand.

We decided to call it a night. My "tent" was a Cabela's north star bivy, pretty damned small. I'd hit my shoulder on the top when I rolled over. I got in ... seemed pretty hot so instead of putting on shorts I just stripped to my drawers. I didn't climb in the bag, I opened it up to lay on top. The little lantern had been off less than 3 minutes, I was still squirming around getting comfortable, when I heard the footsteps coming. There was something out there, coming our way, from my end of camp. It was clearly walking on two feet. It wasn't just the foot steps in sync, the swishes of the knee-high snowberry were also "two-stroke" as it came in. It was heavy ... the ground did not actually shake but it seemed like it should have. 900 pounds? The ground was broken granite mostly. Our shoes, and the deer hooves, crunched and ground as we walked in camp. This didn't, it had soft-bottomed feet. It was coming fast, not hurried, just motoring along. Despite the weight, it was nimble. It could **see** even though I couldn't. It was negotiating tree trunks at high speed without hitting them. As it got real close, I grew afraid of being stepped on. The last couple steps slowed and it stopped about 4-5 feet from me.

My assumption is, because it came into camp so quickly after lights out, that it'd been out there watching us and waiting.

I laid there. Nothing happened. I was going down the mental checklist of what it could possibly be. My buddy going out into the dark to pee on MY side of camp? No, no light, he couldn't see either, and he wouldn't risk getting gut shot. I had my short Ruger Super Blackhawk, he was carrying a 1911 ... 4 mags ... and a 50 round box ... idiot. I don't need that much ballast to slow me down on the trail. Anyway, that's another story. No way he'd risk coming in unannounced, no way he could do that in the dark, either. Feral humans? Thought about Paulides discussing them in the context of disappearances around the national park system ... but they still have to be able to see. Ishi! Maybe. Mocassins would be quiet, not crunch broken rock / gravel.

So lets see, I either have a feral indian with a 700 pound pack jogging nimbly through the forest in his moccasins wearing night vision goggles ... or that's a bigfoot out there. Occam says ... it's not an indian.

Things were quiet for a few minutes. It thought it might have left without me hearing it. After a bit, the damned fir needles started to fall on my tent from the tree overhead. You know how, after dark, in high mountain valleys, a light breeze will sort of come and go? It had that pattern. Well, maybe it'll stop, but why did I set up under a dead tree? Idiot!! Uh .. y' know, I don't hear a breeze, I just hear needles in the pattern of a breeze. Gol DAMNED squirrels!! What the hell is that GOL DAMNED squirrel doing running up and down that branch knocking needles on me? Do I have to move my tent ... now? Do I want to go out there? Is "IT" really gone? Needle stopped falling after a few minutes. Whew. Right?

Now, I don't remember, something else happened for a while, same sort of thought process. Then quiet again.

All o' the sudden, right by my head, there's this loud scritching sound. The rain fly was made of some sort of cloth covered over with a layer of rubbery plastic. It still had texture sort of like a pair of jeans. It sounded like little rodent toenails sliding down the rain fly. Got to the bottom, paused, and repeated. Seemed to be 2 of them thar rodents 'cause the scritching spot was about a foot wide, maybe 14 inches wide. That got me thinkin' about my old pack out there, it's been a lot of miles and has a lot of salts from sweat in the nylon and ... those rodents might have buddies out there chewing my pack straps .. .I could have to carry that freakin' pack in my arms 5 miles or more if they eat the straps off. So ... I poked my head out to check things out. I have a little flashlight that uses 4 hearing aid batteries and projects a green beam. I used that to look around my pack. Nada. The scritching stopped. I zipped the tent back up. The scritching started again. Driving me nuts. After while the thought of rodents was still bugging me plus I needed to pee so I unzipped ... scritching stopped ... I got out with my little light, walked my underwear-clad ass around a tree, took a whiz, then headed back for the tent.

What's the obvious thing to do? What's the one thing I could not do, could not even think to do? Yeah .. couldn't even LOOK past the tent to see what was happening with those "rodents."

Climbed back in. zipped up, stretched out. Scriiiiiitch ... dammit. I tried shining the light out under the edge of the tent hoping to see the rodents. It was very obvious they were jumping in tandem, sliding down the fly dragging their toenails, then falling to the ground, and doing it again ... right?

I finally lost my temper. I was layin' there with the back of one hand on the butt of my .44. With the other hand I slapped the tent fly from the inside .. hard. I expected to launch those damn friggin' rodents halfway across the camp .. but I never heard them land. A few seconds later ... scritch.

Eventually I fell asleep.

I try to keep a real tidy campsite. As few rocks, sticks, pine cones, etc as possible. The next morning as we were breaking camp I found a dead fir frond about a foot across with all the dried needles pointing the same direction ... sort of like a giant hair brush. The branch on the tree overhead was not dead, there were no dead needles except on the ground beyond where my bivy/tent had been.

It wasn't wind, it wasn't a squirrel .. whatever was out there had been dribbling handfulls of dry needles on me, probably trying to test my reaction. When I didn't react, it escalated. The reason I couldn't detect a "plop" sound as the rodents fell from the rain fly to the ground, and I couldn't detect a "plop" as they landed on the rain fly to slide again, is it wasn't rodents at all, it was something out there stroking my rain fly with the pointy end of all those fir needles on that branch. My visitor hadn't left at all, he was out there messin' with me to see what I'd do.

Kind of an interesting night.

One of the reasons I'm not particularly scared of them now is they've had a number of opportunities to twist my head off if they'd chosen ... but they haven't. I"m gambling that they're not inclined to. They bluff like mother f**kers but when push comes to shove, they stand down.

Well, that's it for tonight.

Tom