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

Good reading. Thanks.

I grew up in Kenny Lake. This is a farming and subsistence community about 200 miles East of Anchorage in the Copper River Basin. We didn't have boy scouts but we did have the Men's club. Young men from this area learned how to survive and understand the woods with a dose of Jesus and bible memorization mixed in. We decided that we would help a group of young men from Haines Jct build a camp and cabin site at a place called Bonnie Lake in the Yukon territory but towards Alaska in a very remote area about 25 miles off of the road. There were 4 of us from Kenny Lake and I was the youngest at the age of 13, I am 49 now so it was a while back. We also went along with the minister and two very famous backcountry trappers.
Our minister's name was Bob Clawson and he was a MACSOG Marine from Vietnam war. He was from a long line of game wardens and could move through the woods and trees without making a sound. You have to remember that while most of the people on this forum were going to prom and playing football, we were trapping, fishing, hunting and living most of the time outdoors. Bob was a woodsman supreme. He was about 6ft but he had a size 15 boot foot size and he would not make a sound.
We joined up with John Keys who was the old minister from KL. His group of young men was about 22 strong. There was one young man who was 16 years old who was black and who smelled differently. I figured out that he smelled because he smoked cigarettes and reefer. He was nice at first but got more and more troublesome with all of the other guys and refused to do work. We made our way out to the location and started clearing an area for the camp. There were logs there so we started to put in a foundation using pilings. It started raining hard and we decided to quit for a couple of days. We decided to travel as a group further inland towards a valley. We worked our way 10 miles from the camp into a high valley that had a strange red clay material as soil. We found a stream that look like it was completely covered with tracks. These were tracks from 18 inches to more than 36 inches in length and were shaped like brown bear or human tracks. Unlike Brown bears, these tracks had a big toe on the inside not like brown bears. We knew the difference. We didn't see anything. Our group made it back to the camp. That night I heard something that I will never forget.
The boy from Canada was smoking something in his tent. No body else would sleep in his tent. That night at about 2AM we were awakened to the sounds of his screams. Something had ripped into his tent and drug him off into the trees. He was screaming, "help me, help me, and then started sobbing as something was dragging him through the brush.
We were gathered at the center of the camp and it was decided that the older boys and a couple of the older men would march the majority of us out in one day. I was smaller than the other folks so it was decided that three of us who were younger would stay back with the two experienced trappers and the minister who was going get the kid back. He went out with his rifle and pack and left in the dark. The rest of the group marched from 6 AM to 9PM and made it back to the road 20 miles in that day. We made it about 6 miles carrying the camp. That evening we were woke up at about 2AM when Bob came in with the boy. Bob was carrying over his shoulder but had him tied up with 550 parachute cord. We were given the task to wash off the kid who was covered with what smelled like marten trapping bait which is female martin crap in estrus. It was a nasty job and we got it done. He would rock back and forth and whimper and make weird sounds. He had cuts and abrasions all over his body. We got him dressed and he went to sleep. About two hours later during civil twilight, we heard a screeching sound out in the brush and could make out brush breaking. Bob would just get up go out into the brush and shoot his 30-06 Husqvarna 3 times and then return. We got up at 8 AM and went another 10 miles that day before we camped. The sounds would be around camp and Bob would go out fire his rifle and then it would be quiet again. The boy was seriously screwed up. We made it out the next day. We were told not to talk about it to our parents when we got back. I talked to everybody on the trip about 15 years later and they remember the trip exactly the same. The boy continued to have mental problems into adult and moved to a mental health institution in British Columbia. The church in Haines Junction abandoned the camp. Two hunters from the area found that same high valley about 20 years later according to Prof. Brown from UAS who studies Bigfoot as well as being a professor of biology. They had almost the same kind of story and felt that they almost didn't make it out. I am sorry that I am not as articulate as I am most of the time but I lost much of the original story when my last computer hard drive failed.
Have I seen big foot. Nope. Do I believe that bigfoot exists in NA? Yep. There is a lot of recent archeological evidence that has been recently uncovered that could back this up. Have a good night.

This happened in South GA about 12-15 years ago. My wife and her ex husband were driving at night, maybe 10 miles from their house. About 100 yards or so in front of them, a black creature about 6 ft tall ran across the road in front of them. They both looked at each other and asked what the other saw. When they got up where it crossed the road she said it smelled horribly. I'm assuming that was a skunk app that are supposedly in FL. She's never told anyone but me about it because people think your nuts if you talk about this kind of stuff.

That hiking trip was in August 2011.

The next year I went back by myself. The friend / investigator who took me there the first time is a short, heavy guy who packs too heavy and I was going to do something I didn't think he could do with a pack as heavy as he carries. But first ...

The trailhead we used on those first trips is about 5 miles north of camp. It climbs slowly for just under 2 miles to a ridge crest. There's an old trail about 3/4ths of a mile down into the canyon on the other side of the ridge to an area with a bunch of artesian springs that form the head of one fork of a river. I'd read about those and, being a fisherman, decided I needed to check that out. Mid July I drove over early, hiked the trails to the springs, took a few pictures, then headed off-trail down into the canyon. It's dead-end, a few miles down there are some waterfalls where the river drops over bluffs. I fished my way along, swatted a lot of mosquitoes, and didn't even see a flicker of anything with fins. Instead of backtracking, I cut cross-country to hit the trail that goes to where we camped backpacking, then headed north on the trail, to the junction, and headed back toward the parking lot. I was a quarter mile or so inside the wilderness boundary, just before 11:00 am, walking along minding my own business, and something cut loose to my left, so NNW, with a huge loud "roar". The trail forms a notch, uphill to the left, and not far over the edge to the right was a little creek. I dropped left down into that notch going to one knee, put my left hand on the bank, and ripped the retaining strap on my .44 loose with my right. (Bianchi 1L holster with a 4-5/8" barreled blued super blackhawk on my pants-belt, if you care.) My first instinct was I'd been ambushed, I was "got". Even while I was processing that, still mid-drop to my knee, I realized that sound was from a long ways off, probably 3/4ths of a mile. It wasn't painfully loud but it definitely dominated the "soundscape". Everything went silent ... birds, bugs, etc ... except the creek beside me. There was 3-5 seconds of silence, then sounds returned to normal, not all at once, but built back up pretty quickly.

When I say I heard something and I don't know what it was, that was the first of the two times I heard it. My impression of the two instances is a little different. Maybe they were different, maybe it was just distance. Can't be sure. My impression was that sound was drawn out a little longer than the other one, and it had a rise, then fall. Still low pitched. I might even call it gravelly. There was a rattle aspect. You've probably heard a diesel truck coming down a grade under compression. Has some "pop" in exhaust sound. That's my impression.

My check-in person for that hike was pretty well known in the bigfoot research community but had investigated other paranormal stuff in the past. Like me, she grew up outside a small town and has spent a ton of time in the woods. Anything that is out of place, she's interested. I knew as soon as I got into cell phone range, I had to tell her 'bout that. Only I "forgot". Very unsettling. There's a wrongness to that forgetting:out of place, out of character. "Suggestive of outside influence." Whatever that might mean. I hit a couple other side roads on my way down from the trailhead, then called as soon as I hit pavement. She asked me if I'd seen anything, any tracks, etc. Nope. Smell anything? (I'd told her about that fecal smell a couple years earlier.) Nope. Hear anything? Nope. Blah blah ... did you hear anything? Nope. Yack yack ... did you hear anything? Nope. About the 4th time "did you hear anything" came up I started to get a little irked about having to repeat myself. I started out to vent ... "I SAID ..." only then something broke loose. I had to stop. I had a real serious "WTF just happened?" moment. And then I told her what I'd heard and the weird memory thing that was going on. She insisted that I go buy a small audio recorder and run it full time in case something like that happens. I can not only capture sounds in the woods but I can dictate / record what's going on ... a verbal record.

So, back to the hiking trip by myself ...

I took a couple extra days off leading into the labor day weekend. I drove to that trailhead, then boogied for the camp area. My plan had been to get there, camp overnight, then try to hit each of the major lakes in the area the next day. I hit "camp" at 10:00 am so I decided to try to hit the lakes that day, too. There are 5 in a cluster in the "camp" area. I'd hit the first three within a half mile of "camp". I'd been to the first 2 the previous year.

The third was new. It's off trail a couple hundred yards. I found something odd there. Out in the lake, visible, but under knee deep water, are lines of big tracks. I was in a hurry-ish, so I just took a few pictures, then returned to the trail and motored onwards.

The 4th is at the end of a dead end section of trail. Just before I got to the lake, at almost exactly noon, I heard the second of the two "roars". It's more of an "ahhhhh" sound. It came from across the river canyon above me. I was rounding a small canyon behind timber so I'm a little unsure of the exact angle. There is a raised rocky knob overlooking the far edge of the canyon which is about 2-1/4 miles from where I was hiking. Otherwise, to be above me on that side of the river, it's about 4 miles ... minimum. That knob did not seem like it's at quite the right angle, I'd have thought it was off by 30 degrees or something like that, but behind the trees, I can't be sure. I was running the audio recorder my friend had insisted I buy so I have a recording of the sound. Its just a little less loud than the crunching of the broken gravel under my feet as I hiked. It was short, a second or so, and I wasn't able to get stopped, I crunched through it.

I went on down to the lake. It also appeared to have similar tracks in the mud underwater. That lake, being at the end of a dead end trail, gets very little traffic. I'd be surprised of a half dozen people a year go there. I took a lot of pictures from the bluff top overlooking the canyon.

I backtracked about a quarter mile, then climbed over a low saddle and took off cross country for about a half mile to hit another regular USFS trail. My route took me across a spaghnum bog ... really cool. Unusual here. There was a ghost of a trail I bumped into a few places and once in a while I saw flagging ribbon .. someone else is using that route. I hit that other trail and started climbing ... a mile or so to the saddle in the main ridge where it Ts with yet another trail and from there, on uphill toward another lake which sits in a fault atop the ridge. Much of that is a blur. I should have drank more water when I was at the lake. I had 2 quarts in canteens. It wasn't enough, by the time I got to the saddle, I was out. I was cramping, falling ... in a real bad way. A quarter mile above where the trails T together, another spur trail heads off down to another trailhead on the other side. Somewhere near it, I found a possible bigfoot track. While I was out of my head a bit from dehydration, I still had enough mental "stuff" to drag out my little tape measure I use for measuring fish now, put it by the track, and take some pictures. It was 15.5x5 inches. There are a couple features I don't like about it which make me wonder about authenticity, still, it's a something and I have a record of it.

The pond I was expecting to rehydrate at was almost dry, just a little pool of black / green slimy looking stuff that looked like a nightmare out of a cow pasture. It was about 3/4ths of a mile on up to the main lake. I sucked it up and kept marching, cramping, falling. A couple times I tried to sit down but the hornets would swarm so I had to move on. I eventually got to the lake, filtered water, tanked up, and took a long rest break. I probably should have stayed there but I was down to just 2 lakes to go and it was downhill, 1.5 miles to go, so I slowly moved on. Passed the first of those two lakes.

That lake is where my buddy and the other guy were camped in the pup tent when they had the visitors come into camp.

It's a short distance, quarter mile maybe, down to the 2nd lake. I made it, completed the 2nd day of my three day trip by the end of day 1. It was only about 3/4ths of a mile from there down to where he and I had camped the prior year so I staggered down the trail through the woods to the familiar camp sites. Someone was in the spot with the rotten log where we'd camped the first night so I moved 200 yards further to the other camp site, set up camp, got more water, then crawled in the lake to wash the trail scunge off. I can't even begin to tell you how good that felt. I tried to eat dinner but food didn't want to go down, I'd pushed that hard. I couldn't eat jerky, my lips burned ... dehydration results I think. So I climbed into bed. I didn't sleep that night. My legs were on fire ... I could feel the heat coming off them from 6-8 inches away. Just laid there looking up at the stars.

The next morning, just before 8:00, I was sitting there making breakfast and pondering whether to hike out or spend a whole day just sitting. My back was hurting again and hiking out seemed to be winning. As I sat there, I heard something.

Back across the little creek, beyond the trail, up on the mountain, there were a group of somethings traveling along whooping back and forth. Not loud, not like locator "where the hell are you?" whoops, more like ... just loud enough for a loose group moving along to not get separated. My first thought was "cattle drive" because the sounds were somewhat like what I've heard locals make commanding their stock dogs. Wilderness area, though, not legal for cattle. A silly first impression I ditched quickly. I got the audio recorder going and captured 4-5 repetitions of that whoop, which came a few minutes apart. Reviewing the audio back home, I found something else in it which I don't recall hearing real-time. There's an odd two-syllable response to one of the whoops, sort of a hey-ay, with the 2nd "ay" at a higher pitch.

I hiked on out. Interesting trip. Tracks of something unknown in 2 lake bottoms, audio recording of the "ahhhhhhh" sound which I talk about off and on, pictures of a bigfoot-looking track, and recordings of those whoops.

Tom

Thanks guys for telling your experiences. Something I've thought about related to smells, if humans with certain smell or odor are more likely to attract hominids of the wild like bigfoot.. Chewing tobacco, marijuana, or women smells, or kid smells, how do these and other smell figure into an encounter. Folks who go looking for bigfoot seem to not understand, that bigfoot finds them, they don't find bigfoot. In my many years of hunting and fishing in the Rocky mountains, with some experiences I've had, I don't go" looking." I diliberately try to avoid areas of "activity", just like I avoid areas of grizzly activity. If "something" comes to me, I'll deal with it best I can. Otherwise not.. I don't camp in tents anymore.

I don't make assumptions about some big bipedal creature as being a "gentle giant". Whatever it is seems to have sentient and cognitive abilities in addition to incredible strength.
Even grizzlies come in various attitudes and dispositions. We don't really ultimately know how EVERY Grizzly will react to a situation, but we know what they're capable of.
I don't go looking for trouble.

2013 was fairly uneventful. The one thing that did happen is ... weird. I didn't go back into that area with the lakes we'd hiked into. I drew an early deer tag for September, did a backpack hunt, and tore my feet up real bad opening day. Cotton tube socks. Oops. After sitting most of the week letting the skin on my heels grow back, I decided to go explore farther north. Long drive, hopefully short walk into an off-trail lake, chance to see somewhere new.

I started up the road I thought went near the lake. It was pretty awful. It appeared to be 5-6 miles on the map. After the first half mile, there was a water bar every few hundred yards. They were just deep enough that my truck would rub going over, but not so deep they stopped me. 2 mph crawl, speed up, slow down, repeat. Tedious. The road hadn't been used in long enough the alders were growing into it and broken ends were doing a number on my paint. A couple miles in, there was a logging landing the road crossed. Usually those are down spur ridges, but not this one. It was a wide enough spot to get out and look around. I got out my maps and GPS hoping to convince myself I'd taken the wrong road so I could turn around and leave without actually giving up. No such luck. I had the map out on the truck hood trying to orient it to the peaks around me.

Backing up a little .. the road climbed along the edges of a steep forested canyon. The road cut provided the only direct light to the forest floor so the road itself was lined with a wall of fugly brush. Beyond it, if you could get beyond it, the forest opened up and was not too bad. There was no way to see past that wall of brush though. The place I parked was barely into an old clear cut, I was real close to the edge of the timber.

As I was looking at my map and pondering what to do, SOMETHING on the back edge of that wall of brush, maybe 40 feet away, was raising all manner of hell thrashing the CRAP out of some of the smaller trees. It wasn't running away. It had the whole open forest behind it, but it wasn't leaving.

It was the 2nd to last day of that special deer season. I was in a legal area for the tag. I also had bear and cougar tags in my pocket, legal to kill either. The only big game animal that could be present that I didn't have a tag for was elk. I handgun hunt a lot. I had my .44.

I remember thinking "well that's weird" before I folded my map, put stuff away, got back in the truck, and drove away ... oblivious.

In hind sight it freaks me out. I should have been concerned about that bluff / threat display. I should have been curious to see whatever it was. I should have been thinking like a hunter and gone over to see if it was something I could legally shoot, then take it home to eat it. I did none of those. Thinking about Col Cooper's "threat colors", I should have been past yellow and into orange if not red, but I was in condition white.

That freaks me out. Something weird happened there, not just poor judgment, but external influence of some sort I only became aware of after it was over. Oblivious as a bovine at the slaughter house with it's head locked in the chute, no clue 'bout the big hammer about to fall. Unsettling, spooky.

Pay attention when you're out there. When you get home, review your day and look for things that don't belong, things you've done that are out of character.

Tom

I was going to save it for later, put some more stuff down first, but since you brought it up ...

I'm not specifically looking for bigfoot. I look at the report data, talk to local people, and look for places that have a history of odd things happening. Maybe sightings or sounds, maybe less concrete. Then I go to those places, but I do my regular stuff .. scouting, hunting, fishing, taking pictures .. and just keep an eye out and ear open for tracks, unidentifiable noises, etc.

I think the risk varies by location. The behavior, "flavor" of the bigfoot reports varies regionally. I would not do the things I do here if I lived in the desert SW, Ouichita mountains, etc where the "vibe" of the reports seems more confrontational. Looking at those regions from a biological standpoint, any big thing living there is going to live by a thinner margin. Less water. Less space either because of human intrusion or limited plant cover. It couldn't be as "tolerant" there as the same thing could be here where it doesn't have to stand its ground, it can just move over to the next canyon and have the same resources available.

They're not big cuddly forest friends, they're not big teddy bears ... they're friggin' enormous, omnivorous, apex predators. The potential is scary. However, if they were merely thoughtless eating machines, many many more people would disappear and their behavior would have long ago lead to something that proved their existence. They'd have attacked one too many wrong people and there'd be dead ones in the museum. They cannot be just animals and remain unproven this long. They **think**. That makes them both more and less dangerous. In general, they're inclined to avoid, bluff if they can't, and back down when bluffing fails.

I suggest reading David Paulides' Missing 411 books. They're police cases of missing persons which seem to fit a pattern. I think he started out assuming bigfoot but has changed his mind as his investigations have continued. I think something else is behind most of them but there are a few which do suggest bigfoot. I assume that, just like us, they have their crazies, their rogues, which probably account for those instances. There IS a risk to what I'm doing. The brutal truth is, though, that I have the skill set needed and I'm expendable. My kid is 30, doesn't truly need me, I'm not abdicating some responsibility by taking a few chances, so .. might as well push the envelope a bit, try to learn something.

I started out hunting, fishing, backpacking, and bumped into bigfoot. I started tentatively looking into bigfoot and found those tracks in the lake bottom, heard the "ahhhh" sounds, and had a few of those situations where I found myself not behaving like me. I'm still not really specifically looking for bigfoot. I run a string of trail cameras in wilderness locations (uncle sam would not approve .. if found they'll be confiscated) which are somewhat for locating game, hopefully identifying the source of those sounds, and maybe possibly getting a picture of a bigfoot someday. But ultimately, I'm still just a guy out there doing what he loves in the woods ... I just have my eyes open to a little more while I'm there.

Tom

PS: thanks, all, who chime in with your own experiences! I think my next thing "up on deck" is my 2nd sighting, but I have to get some work done first.

... continued.

There was one other thing in 2013 I overlooked ... my 2nd sighting. So maybe it wasn't such an uneventful year after all.

That tag I had which lead to the backpack hunt, torn up heels, and road trip is also valid for regular deer season unlike our other special draw tags. Some time in the middle of the first week of deer season we got some rain. I got up early the 2nd saturday and went for a wander. There's a small lake, more of a pond, on the map and I'd read that F&W used to stock it with trout. I'd been wanting to go check it out. I packed my day pack with a short pack spin rod, some lures, my camera, a little food, some water, extra shells, grabbed my deer rifle, and headed off to wander around ready for mostly whatever happened. It's a couple hour drive and I got an early start. Because of the dust-dimpling on the road from the rain, I could tell nobody had driven within 10 miles or more of the turnoff to the lake ... I was alone up there, had it all to myself.

A little about the lay of the land. A significant river runs roughly north-south. It has two tributaries heading west separated by a high rocky ridge. Each of those, in turn, have tributaries. One from each, one heading south, one heading north, both start at a relatively low saddle in that high rocky ridge. There's a road following each tributary passing through that saddle and forks of the road going a ways up each ridge. Pretty steep so those side roads wind and switchback a bit. Westward above the saddle is a low side ridge and in the valley beyond it, the lake.

To get to the lake, y' come in from the north, climb to the saddle, drive just past it, then take a right (west) which wanders up through the trees to a USFS gate. Park and walk on the gated off road. After a half mile or so, that is blocked by a fallen log. Its got some fence or something on it to keep the four wheelers out but that's been vandalized so they can drive further in where they're banned. From that log, the road is pretty level for a ways. The ridge is on the left. It's dropping from high behind to lower in front. Eventually the old trail / two track road turns hard left crossing the ridge, then drops down into the valley with the pond / lake. It goes about halfway down, hits a small side gully, does another switchback to the right, and heads down to where it hits the low earth dam face. The road continues across the dam face (just a dirt/boulder pile), goes a short ways through a clump of trees, and comes out into a meadow on another spur canyon where there's an old line shack. The cabin is made of 4x12 planks with dovetail ends (not sure what you call it ... like how a wooden dresser is put together) with a galvanized metal roof.

So ... layout done, back to the story.

I left my truck below the gate, hiked up the little bit of remaining hill, and headed around the flat part. Somewhere past the log blocking the road / trail, it passes through some old logging which has sparse second growth douglas fir trees. They're big enough the bottom limbs have died, needles have fallen, but the branches haven't rotted off yet. When I got to the hairpin corner where the road crosses the ridgeline, I noticed something in the left trackway. I don't remember what it was .. maybe a piece of metal off a rig, maybe a big mushroom, nothing wildly unusual. I stopped and bent over to look at it.

I heard a big swish behind me ... branches moving. There were dog-hair firs lining the edge of the road there. They were moving back and forth top to bottom, together, from ground up to 9 feet or so. It wasn't the chaotic kind of branch movement you'd get from birds moving out of sync, it looked like the result of a single thing that tall stepping backwards. I can't know for sure, but I suspect I'd turned my back on "one" which had been frozen unnoticed waiting for me to past and when I stopped she lost her nerve. (By itself, that's weak, but more to come.) Didn't hear anything, didn't see anything, but I couldn't see past the trees. Said to myself "maybe", smiled, laughed and went on about my biz. That was to my left as I rounded the corner. (Oh, that corner is sharp enough that a full sized pickup would probably not make the turn without jockeying it once.) I took a few more steps, 15-20 feet or so, and on that same left side, I heard something. There were a small number of "voices" hauling ass away from me up the ridgeline in the brush. I couldn't make out words. They were sort of high pitched, sort of muffled / mumbly, and kind of giggling. Weird. No thrashing or crashing, just slight sound of brush being pushed aside. I remember thinking "don't chase those, people who chase those don't come back." I don't remember who told me that. Lore from somewhere along my path. So smiled, laughed, and kept on walking down to the lake. I made a few casts, caught nothing but cat-tails, no fish. I went back to the cabin and back meadow and took some pictures. Then headed back toward the truck. I got up the hill, rounded that sharp bend, and started out into the area with the widely spaced second growth firs.

I got about halfway across that and noticed to my right (west now, since I was going the other way) there were a couple sets of old tire tracks, either a four wheeler or truck, heading towards a gap in the trees on top of the ridge which really wasn't far away or much above me. I didn't think about it much, I just thought "photo op", pivoted on one end, and sprinted towards the gap. Sprinted .. why? Because it was a bright sunny day, crisp, and the wind was blowing a bit. Days like that seem to ionize the air or something and it wind me up ... it was just an incredible moment to be alive.

I got about 3-4 steps into my sprint and caught something moving ahead to my left. Something about 7-1/2 feet tall, covered with brownish hair, running on two feet pumping it's arms as it ran. Holy crap. It was going from my left to my right towards the tire tracks I was chasing. As it went under / behind one of those firs with the dead branches it bent at the waist, put it's arms over it's head as if to protect it's eyes, and plowed in full throttle. I expected it to come out the other side and cross the tracks but it didn't, it just vanished. I think it pivoted once it had the tree for cover and went right over that ridge I'd been headed for. That's what made sense. It probably didn't last 2 seconds.

Only a guess, what it "felt" like ... I think that thing that'd swished behind me walking in was "mom." This one was slender as bigfoots go and didn't "feel" like an adult. I think the "little" son of a gun was misbehaving shadowing me through the woods, just practicing, and I did something unexpected by either of us and busted him. I really think he was more worried about what his mom was going to do than what I was going to do. He didn't really act afraid, he just acted like he he'd screwed up and was expecting an earful.

So ... Oct 6, 2013 ... pretty sure. 9:45 am, give or take. "Bluebirds" day, bright sun. Bigfoot. 100 feet away. Exactly no doubt about what it was.

It was just a "well I'll be damned" moment, not scary, shocking, or anything like that, just a sense of having beaten the odds. It's amazing what you can get used to.

(I'm not sure which came first, this sighting or the maybe. The maybe might have been a year later, could have been a month or two earlier the same year. Obviously I should have kept a journal to keep the order of stuff straight. I didn't so I just try to rebuild from the things that happened around them.)

Sort of out of order, but the saddle below that the road goes through has some funny game trails through it. Some are clearly deer trails. Others have dried mud ridges which seem to have been worn smoother, the sharp polished off of them, by passage of soft-bottomed feet. Being the lowest pass over the ridge for a few miles in each direction it would make a good route for anything heading between canyons to pass through. I have a couple cameras set up just down into one of the canyons that nobody stopping in the saddle on the road to take a leak is likely to stumble over them. So far, just deer and bear. I hope to go back some time late this month to retrieve them and see if I got anything "interesting." Probably not but y' never know. Sure won't unless you try.

Tom

Good stuff TOM, thanks for taking the time.

Can you define the general location of most of your experiences (unless I missed it)?

Primarily SW Oregon, but not exclusively.

Thanks. It's kind of useful to take time to organize it to put it in writing.

One thing I have never experienced in the bigfoot world are any of the classic screams, howls, etc that you'll find if you go listen to recordings on youtube. I don't know why. If I were relying on others reports, they seem ... common. Same for tree knocks. I've spent a ton of time in the woods. In all the years, I've heard 3. I told of two in the context of the first of those camp visits. I also recorded one near my truck when I was gone.

Branches break. Acorns fall. Trees tip over. Once in a great while it may be bigfoot but by far, "most of the cigars are just cigars." People get all freaked out over nothing.

Following that first "ahhhh" sound I bought an audio recorder to carry in my pocket which runs full time. When I got a few more $$, I bought one to set up under the hood of my truck because that first "ahhhh" was pretty close to the parking lot. Fingers crossed. It's like the lottery, you may not win, but you certainly won't if you don't buy a ticket.

In 2013 (gee, it was busier than I thought) deer season was a bust. Toward the end, I "felt" it ... I just knew I was eating tag soup so I decided to make the most of the last couple days for exploring instead. I'd heard about a lake in a basin 2-1/2 or 3 hours away so I drove up to look. I had my rifle but mostly I was fishing. I saw a HUGE brook trout but it was spooky and wouldn't bite. On the way into the lake I found a pretty good bigfoot track beside the trail. 5 clear toes, 15.5x5 inches, no claws, wide heel. It wasn't perfect, though, 'cause it was in decaying fir needles over a gravelly substrate. I got a blurry picture of it (I didn't realize how dark it was under the timber, my eyes had adjusted, so I didn't use the flash) and went on about my business. It's a little lower than my favorite search area so I thought the season might go a little longer ... snow free longer. I went in the next fall to set up a couple trail cameras and take another shot at that big trout. I left a recorder running under the truck hood. . The trip in and back was uneventful, I set up two cameras, got fooled again by the trout, walked back out, drove home.

When I got back I listened to the recording from the recorder under the hood. It started out with the normal very metallic pings of the engine and exhaust cooling. Few birds. Camp Robber. . Woodpeckers. I'd parked out away from the trees a little bit, nothing overhead. After a while, I started hearing small pebbles and cones hitting the sides of the truck and the hard tonneau cover. Very different from the cooling noises. There were no sounds of cars going by on the gravel ... I've heard that there other times and it's LOUD. After a while, there was a single loud KNOCK. A sharp crack, high velocity. No sounds of anything bouncing .. that's a dead giveaway of normal debris falling.

I can't prove it, didn't see what made the sound, but my best guess is that was indeed a bigfoot.

One interesting thing about knocks ... the number of knocks USUALLY matches the number of humans. 3 people, 3 knocks, 2 people, 2 knocks. When my buddy and I were out that night camping, 2 knocks. The other one I heard, I was alone ... early morning, after daylight, one knock. That recording ... I was by myself .. one knock. Somebody out there can count.

And on that note ...

There's a lake not far from there in a canyon which older USFS publications mention as having a very creepy feel. It's quicker to get to, go clear around on main paved roads, then come back from the far side. The main trail comes down from above a granite outcropping, a few hundred feet elevation, half a mile maybe. The first couple times I went to it, that's how I got there. The first time was pretty bad, it was close to dark when I hit the short, everything and a really ominous feel to it (impending doom!), so I made a couple casts and left. Got pictures of bazillions of fingernail-sized frogs before leaving. The next time in was pretty different. The first time was prior to getting ticked off and hiking up that one road late so I could come out in the dark, the second was after, when everything changed. Coincidence? Don't know. ANyway, the second time in, I hit the lake shore at the bottom of the trail and started counter-clockwise around the lake. There's a skinny spot at the back where there's just a narrow neck, steep, of dirt, with high elevation firs, real thick, between the water's edge and the base of a rock cliff. 20 feet wide? 25? It's got deer trails through it. They're really crooked but you can get around by pointing your rod straight up.

As I was walking through that, something between me and the wall whistled quietly. Sounded bird-ish but on a whim I whistled back. For the next 15 minutes (not sure, wasn't checking my watch, so that's a guess) I stood there whistling back and forth, keeping count, changing count, taking turns leading and mimicking. It was 15 feet away or so hidden behind one of those trees and I never saw it. I can't say what it was, but whatever it was, it can count, it can mimic, and it knows about taking turns. I'd do 1, it'd do 1, I'd do 3, it'd do 3, I'd do 2, it'd do 2, etc. Then I'd pause and it'd start, so I'd mimic for a while. Then it'd stop and let me take lead. I honestly don't know WTF that was. It goes beyond what I expect of a bird.

Eventually I decided to move on around the lake shore and catch more fish. There was an open area, then back into thicker timber right to the water, but there were big enough spaces to cast and some logs I could walk out on. I saw one suspicious looking track-like shape. Bigger than my shoe would leave, but in dried duff and crumbled in so there was no detail left. Before long I started hearing quest taps close behind me .. 1-2-3. They only happened mid cast where I couldn't look behind me. Whatever tapped followed me on around to the lake outlet. Never saw it, don't know what it was, but that's not a real usual thing.

The place has come to feel like refuge. Yes, it has that creepy feel, but ... not "bad." On a fall morning when it's crisp and clear, it feels like you could be the last person on earth and you wouldn't know it. Isolated, FAR from anything. It's a place I've picked ... if I ever need to run, that's where I will try to go.

Aside from that first time it's felt good, comfortable. 'til the last one last fall. Hard to say why, but I just knew things were ok during daylight but I needed to be gone before dark. Sort of like sharing and my turn was up. Hell of a good evening of fishing though! The brookies were just suicidal. Never noticed any reason for that weird feel. I'm kind of curious what it's like next time I go back.

Pay attention to your spidey sense.

Tom

Pondering more about sounds ...

Sounds are a bit ambiguous. Unless you SEE what is making them, there should always be a bit of doubt. In that context, I'm not saying "it's bigfoot", instead, I'm saying "I'd sure like to know what that was."

Remember I mentioned funny tracks in the bottoms of two lakes I saw in 2012? I refer to that hiking trip where I was out of water, cramping, falling, etc as my "death march." Labor Day weekend of 2015 my investigator buddy and I went for a couple night backpacking trip back to that area to end the year, switch gears from summer, and move into fall hunting mode. We stayed up at the upper lake where he and his buddy had the camp visitor poking at their tent in the '90s. We took a different trail in. He was whupped so he stayed in camp while I went down to retrieve a PlotWatcher camera I'd left observing the lake and shore over the summer. I was hoping to get a picture of whatever left the tracks in the lake bottom. Instead, I got pictures of a few bears including a blonde one that had just a little bit of black showing through on her face, some deer, and one monster bull elk.

When I was down at the lake picking up that camera, I got curious and I got an idea. It'd snowed a little a couple nights before but it was fairly warm out in the sun and the lake water was warm, so I stripped and waded out to the tracks to get a better look. They were a little less than knee deep and the water was gin clear but the bottom was silty so I had to be careful about stirring up a cloud I couldn't see into. They sure looked human-shaped. They were probably about 8 inches deep. When whatever made them stepped down, the mud pushed up and away, then collapsed partway back into the track when the foot was extracted. They had a layer of silt built back up in them.

Backing up ... the lake is not real big. It's about 150 yards wide and about 300 yards long, roughly teardrop shaped. What it is, I think, is a glacially carved gouge in bedrock with soil built up over and around it. It's only about 8 feet deep in the deepest part. The water comes in from the south via a tiny trickle of a creek that is at most a foot wide and 2 inches deep. It comes from a granite boulder field with fir trees around it. The only sediment coming in is "rock flour" and very fine decomposing wood. The point of that is it takes a VERY long time for silt to build up, a very slow process.

There are a number of lines of tracks, probably a dozen or more, out underwater.

I decided to explore one of the tracks in detail by shoving my foot into it and feeling around.

Whatever made them was very heavy. They punched clear through the mud to hard rock underneath. Except where I was stepping in the track, I went maybe half that deep. That means not only was whatever it was heavier than I am, it had more pounds per square inch of foot bottom than I did. The tracks were much older than I thought. There was .. guessing ... about 1.5 inches of that silt re-deposited in the track bottom. Since the tracks are about 150 yards from the inlet stream, I'm throwing out a guess that they were at least 2-3 decades old and maybe a lot older yet. (That says something about the probability of ever getting picture on a camera there in my lifetime.)

The tracks were indeed shaped like my foot but larger. They are at least 3 inches longer than my foot, at least 1.5 inches (so 3/4ths of an inch on each side) wider at the heel, and at least 2 inches (1 inch to each side) at the ball. Sounds good so far, right?

However ... a) I could not feel any individual toe marks at the front, and b) the tracks had a very very high arch ... bigfoot tracks should be flat-bottomed. Looking at it the other way, though: a) I could also not detect any sense of boot tread lugs, and b) that high arch was smooth and curved both front and back, it didn't have that sharp heel edge of a boot. I couldn't span the height and length of the arch with my foot, I could just slide my foot backwards dropping my heel into the heel pocket and forwards dropping my foot into the pocket for the ball of the foot.

I don't know what made them. I know a lot more details but I have no better understanding of what made them. Figuring that out has become a personal challenge. No speculation. Not trying to prove it's a this or it's not that. Just want answers.

So, I headed for the shore, dressed, hiked the mile / climbed the 400 feet back to camp. Sat around for a bit BSing, then headed off into the woods to swap SD cards and replace the batteries in 2 trail cams I was leaving out for the winter. Nothing happened.

When I got home, checked the pictures. One of the cameras had over 6,000 pictures. About 2 dozen had animals, the rest were all triggered 'cause I left the sucker pointed too much to the east and the sunrise tripped the I.R. sensor. I knew I better return and reposition the camera else I'd be wasting it's winter "soak." I hiked back in solo 2 weeks later, just a day hike. It's about 9 miles round trip with a steady 500 feet per mile grade.

I think that was the third weekend in September. I got an early start and got to the camera mid morning. I pulled it down and put it on a tree facing a better direction. I also brought along the PlotWatcher. With lithium batteries and a 128G SD card, set up for a pic every 5 seconds, they last about 3 months before the card fills which is about the time the batteries die. I'm very interested in what happens in that area when the ridges snow shut so we can't get in but the valley bottom isn't snowed shut so it was a good opportunity for me. This a small pond back in there that doesn't completely dry out every year ... a possible water source. Seemed like the shoreline of the pond was a good possibility. I was setting up the camera on a small fir looking along one edge and at the far shore when I heard something.

The 2 campsites, separated by a 10 foot high berm of dirt, sit on a moraine pile holding back a small lake. That creates a bottleneck ... most everything traveling needs to go across the moraine pile and through the campsites. Across the lake, up on the other side, I heard 3 things calling back and forth. They sounded like they were between a quarter and half mile away from me and separated from each other, in a sort of triangular formation, by a couple hundred yards at least. The pitch of the voices reminded me of slightly pre-puberty boys ... fairly high. They were coming towards me and getting closer to each other traveling really fast for the terrain. They converged at the far side of the moraine pile and crossed passing through the campsite together.

They exited the camp area and came up through the brush and timber onto the hidden bench I was on, together, and still yelling back and forth. As they got closer, they seemed to be within maybe 30 feet of each other, yelling back and forth, talking in a language I couldn't make out. I can't even tell you what linguistic family it came from .. totally unfamiliar. In the middle of them, there was another sound which ... best guess ... sounded like elk "cow talk."

They got within about 75 yards of me. I almost yelled back, but since I was hiding expensive cameras, I didn't want to draw attention to my presence. I slipped through the fir clump I was in and tried to look around but I couldn't see them, lot of heavy cover in there. They continued yelling for probably 10-15 minutes. Eventually they moved on up the hill. They yelled less often but still kept up. One of them seemingly stopped about 200 yards above me, the other two split going uphill, one to the left, one to the right.

Once I was done, I hiked back down through the camp area and back to the main trail. There I met a young couple coming in for the weekend. I talked to them a little .. they said they'd heard the voices as well.

It was the last weekend of archery elk season. It could maybe have been kids hunting, but I don't think they would have been old enough to be alone. I can't imagine parents turning 11 year olds loose to bow hunt for elk unsupervised, and have to do a miniimum 4-1/2 mile pack out, and there were no other cars at the trailhead. Doesn't add up. I also don't think any human could move as fast over boulders, logs, through brush, etc as fast as those voices were traveling.

All in all one of the oddest things I ever ran into. The only thing I can say for sure was "damn, that was weird."

Then probably 2nd or third weekend of October, I went back to "refresh" two cameras below the saddle where I had my last sighting. Late morning. Nice day. While I was changing batteries, from a half mile or so down deeper into the canyon that points north, I recorded 3-4 yells. The creek canyon was logged long ago and has grown up to the most incredible, essentially impenetrable brush patch imaginable. And it's really really steep. It's so bad I haven't even gone in there and I love hunting brush. The yells weren't words that I could make out on the recording. Didn't see any rigs on the road for probably 10 miles.

Another ... I don't really know what that was. It's hard to imagine a person going **there** but it's premature to conclude it was anything else. Just have to stamp it "huh" and hope for answers someday.

Last year was even more uneventful. I chased trail cams around, didn't get anything. Didn't hear anything. I found one partial track on the hill above that bench when I was refueling a camera in late august and a complete track in september when I was setting up a camera in the river canyon below the waterfalls separating the lower canyon from the bowl or basin we backpack into. Both were older, made probably in late spring when the ground was damp and feet would sink in. The complete track had that same 15.5x5 inch size I've been finding up there. They were old enough that time had dulled the edges, sharp parts had become muted.

At this point, off the top of my head, I'm running out of events to share. Hmmm ... I found a roughly 17 inch track on sand bar along the upper Rogue River trail a mile or two above union creek. It'd rained during the week a little. I was there on a Saturday. The whole track was visible. Two toes were in the shade so the sand hadn't dried, the rest was in the sun. The sand had dried, the edges collapsed, so the rest was just afoot shaped sort of depression.

Uh ... what next? Any questions? Details I might have left out? Help ... I'm sort of grasping for what's next, like I need the "wrap up" or "conclusion" or "punch line" or something?

Tom

What's your ideas on migration of these creatures, migration routes, seasonal or yearly, versus resident groups. in areas of repeated activity? Are there still herds of big game, elk, deer in the area during the activity, in your estimation? Smell wise, notice an increase in smells, pungent etc, at any particular time of year?

Migration ... I think it varies with location, I don't think there's a one size fits all answer.

I think the deer/elk populations / locations are a good model. If there's a lot of elevation difference, some of the deer/elk seem to stay low year around, most migrate vertically to some degree. In my area there seem to be a steady low number of reports from low elevations year around. There is a seasonal fluctuation of reports at higher elevation. I think that is genuine / accurate, however, it pays to remember that a report necessarily has two components, something to see and a witness to see it. The witness aspect has two variables .. first, present or not, and second, some groups of people are more likely to file a report than others. To understand what is happening we have to consider all of the pieces.

A couple examples:

There's a small wilderness not real far away that only has a handful of published bigfoot reports over many decades, but every stinkin' one of them was in the last week of June of whatever year. WHY? My theory ... it's about HUMAN behavior. That wilderness is slightly lower than the Cascade range. I think people get into it a couple weeks earlier, but as soon as the Cascades are accessible, people go there instead. No witnesses, whether there are bigfoots or not, means no reports.

The other is in regard to my favorite spot. There's an increase of reports in late August, continues into September, and absolutely STOPS at Labor Day. I used to think the bigfoots left. Nope. What happens ... the increase reflects humans having one last late summer vacation before the kids return to school. By 4:00 pm or so on Labor Day, the family vacationers are GONE. The total human numbers drop a lot but there are still people around. Different people, though. They tend to be more local, tend to be rural, berry pickers, hunters, fishermen .. tend to be less inclined, on average, to talk about seeing or hearing a bigfoot. Either they're more used to that being sorta normal or they're less willing to risk ridicule.

One additional factor ... there seem to be the ones that stay roughly in one place, the ones who seem to follow the food migration, but there also seem to be occasional groups that just ... roam. Some people in rural-ish places say they have bigfoots around on a long term basis and come to recognize individuals by behaviors, etc. They suggest that some of the late adolescent / young adult males will form small groups and take off on a "walk-about" which might last a few months or might last for years, but often do return on some cycle.

Heck if i know ... I'm still trying to test some of those claims, see if i can prove or disprove. The difference ... truth or untruth ... is significant.

Smell ... I'm not sure. Based on that first location, I'd have said seasonal. Gorillas )(reportedly) have a scent gland up their anus which they use in intimidation displays ... hard to fight when you're trying not to gag, or something like that. I had wondered if I'd stumbled into a nursery area and was being told to leave. That's Sept-Oct. However, since I've run into that smell in July twice now, I'm less sure. It could still be a defensive reflex. Or it could just be plain old incredible B.O. Or .. maybe it's not even bigfoot. I didn't smell them the two times I saw them so I have to be careful about over-connecting dots.

Geez ... to share TMI or not to share TMI? Sure. This is about biology and science. One time I was out of town training. I'd walked about a mile to and from training in hot weather. When I got back to my room I bent over to take my shoes off and I 'bout gagged ... got that same incredible stench I identify as fecal. There was nothing on my shoe bottoms so the only logical thing left was I'd somehow [bleep] my pants. I hauled for the bathroom to check ... of course. No problem. Whew. But ... ? When I kicked my shoes off, I found out. Foot sweat, into cotton socks, fermenting inside nylon shoes, produces that same smell. So .. eh, maybe it really is B.O., not fecal.

Tom

I am enjoying this!

Thank you so much

T O M, thanks for the response to my questions. Things I had thought and wondered about over the years, you've given some interesting perspectives on.

I stand corrected. Nice save T_O_M. I for one do not believe in Big Foot/Sasquatch/Yeti, etc. However, I have always enjoyed these and similar writings. By the way T_O_M, when I say that I don't believe in these creatures, don't take it in any way as me challenging the veracity of your narratives above. I have no reason to doubt they occurred exactly as you described. Thanks for sharing your experiences.

I am also intrigued by your findings. please continue, I really enjoy reading about your experiences. I think just about everyone has had unexplained experiences in the wild, your perspective truly puts a different spin on what might be out there. Thanks

Thanks for posting this, I enjoyed reading your experiences.

I'm not gonna say I'm a believer or not but I have a friend who had a run in with something of this nature. After reading this a.m. I went for my usual run before sunup and let's just say I was watching the trees ...