August 14, 2025 • 22 mins
He took a chance and said hello to the bigfoot below his tree stand - did that change things that morning?
This video was pulled from the vault of older, previously released videos that aired on the Buckeye Bigfoot Channel on YouTube.
Tonight's video was originally released on 4-25-2023
If you have an encounter you'd like to share, send it to: contact@buckeyebigfoot.com
There are hundreds of encounters over on the YouTube channel: Buckeye Bigfoot
If you have an encountery you'd like to share, email it to: Contact@buckeyebigfoot.com
If you've enjoyed this episode, there are hundreds more on the youTube channel.
Find us on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/@BuckeyeBigfoot
This video was pulled from the vault of older, previously released videos that aired on the Buckeye Bigfoot Channel on YouTube.
Tonight's video was originally released on 4-25-2023
If you have an encounter you'd like to share, send it to: contact@buckeyebigfoot.com
There are hundreds of encounters over on the YouTube channel: Buckeye Bigfoot
If you have an encountery you'd like to share, email it to: Contact@buckeyebigfoot.com
If you've enjoyed this episode, there are hundreds more on the youTube channel.
Find us on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/@BuckeyeBigfoot
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
"Tonight's encounter comes to you from long ago.
(00:06):
Ripple in this one out of the vault."
"Hi there, nance, and to everybody listening.
Well here you go.
Here's my encounter with the king of the forest as you call him.
But me and my friend, we call him the A-hole of the forest.
(00:28):
Maybe even the king A-hole of the forest, but we'll get to that."
I was raised in the southeast of Ohio with family over the state lines in both Pennsylvania
and West Virginia.
We are all proud of our Appalachian heritage.
But one of my relatives, for a short time, was married to a snooty little thing out
(00:49):
of Cincinnati.
No offense intended to anybody out west, but she was a real snoot.
She just knew she was better than all of us hicks out here.
The one, and only time that I met her at a family gathering, she was venomously calling
us a snake's parcel of poster children for the banjo playing Good Old Boys Club.
(01:10):
Or something like that.
It was just a bunch of insults all strung together, and she was trying to sound real smart
and snappy.
That was her thing.
Well, she didn't last long.
I'm only mentioning this because in a way, she was exactly right.
All of the men and many of the women in my family, well, we are usually seen sporting
(01:34):
muddy boots, flammable shirts with thermal shirts showing from under the rolled-up sleeves,
wearing muddy blue denim jeans, and a beat-up hat.
And you can bet your bottom dollar, our Jeep, SUV, or pickup truck, has at least one.
If not more guns, stashed away somewhere inside the vehicle, in addition to what we have,
(01:57):
hidden on our body.
Now we are used to these mountains and these woods.
We aren't the kind to run, and we don't get scared, and we don't ever make up stories.
Well, unless we're all talking about the fish in the big bucks that got away while we're
drinking some beers.
But we all know that's just story hour.
(02:19):
But none of us had ever seen a big foot.
Until one early morning in 2017.
I was in West Virginia with a friend on a rather large piece of private property.
We hiked in there around 2am.
We were following our GPS marks that we had made previously when we scouted the area.
(02:42):
We also had walkie talkies with earpieces in case we needed to communicate without making
noise.
My friend set up for me in a stand about 100 yards away from me to the east.
Both of us had our stand situated and set back from a well used game trail that had many
signs of deer along it when we scouted.
(03:04):
Now there was a minute there that it was too quiet out there as I stood in my stand,
and about the time I noticed and started to listen.
All the night noises came back so I shrugged it off.
A few seconds later in my earpiece I heard my friend whisper, "You in your stand?"
(03:24):
I said, "Yeah."
Then he says, "Well then there's someone else out here."
I was very surprised when he said that.
As I mentioned, this was private property, and it's a large piece.
This landowner was elderly and partially disabled.
(03:45):
He would not and could not have come this far out at this hour of the night.
Now it was close to dawn and while it could have been someone knowingly trespassing, it
might have also been someone mistaking this land for someone else's and gotten lost.
So we just sat tight.
It hadn't occurred to me just then to ask him, "What made him think someone else was
(04:11):
out there?"
I'd been hunting with him on and off for years, so I just trusted what he said.
I had a red light with me, one that I mostly used when I hunted coyotes because they didn't
seem to shy away from it, and it was also good to see the deer in the darkness.
But I didn't want to go shining it around out there even though it was low light, just
(04:35):
in case someone was out there.
They could all go very wrong for me if they thought they were on their land still and that I'm
a trespasser.
It was hunting season and people can be pretty prickly about things.
So you see, it was a very sticky situation.
Now while I'm thinking about that, I begin to hear something coming out of the east from
(05:00):
the direction that my friend was at.
I listened as it came closer.
It sounded like a person walking.
Now they weren't worried at all about making noise, I noticed.
The sound of someone walking on just two legs is a bit different from something walking
on four legs.
(05:22):
Two-legged animals don't overstep their steps.
You hear each step or even hear shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, but you hear separate shuffles
when they're kicking through leaves.
Take their running, it's even more clear to hear.
I have to point this out because I've been asked many times how I knew something was on
(05:45):
two legs.
Listen, just close your eyes and listen to a human run.
One human.
You will hear pound, pound, pound, pound.
You will hear a rhythm of one foot after the other hitting the ground.
Now, close your eyes and if you can find a recording of it, listen to the rhythm of one
(06:07):
horse or one bear running.
You will hear a very different rhythm.
Each step is not as clear and it isn't spaced the same as two-legged steps.
Now either you can hear this difference between them or you can't.
Me?
I can hear the difference.
(06:28):
So this sound is getting closer and closer.
And for a while it seemed to stop and then I heard something that sounded like a log being
rolled or moved around.
Then it was followed by some noises that I can only call scuffling or maybe it was searching
on the ground.
I listened to it in the dark and I wondered what in the world was down there.
(06:52):
Then I hear my friend hit the mic on the walkie-tucky three times.
Now that was our signal to ask is everything okay.
So three mic blips back means yeah, it's all cool.
Pretty much any other response or no response means things might not be okay.
(07:12):
I hit the mic three blips back.
Of course this couldn't be heard anywhere except in his earpiece.
And I wondered what that person or animal or whatever was doing down there.
Then I kept listening as they came as close to within I guessed about ten yards of where
(07:33):
I was.
Then they stopped.
I listened hard in the darkness but I could not hear a single thing for several minutes.
That was perplexing.
I kept looking into the darkness but I couldn't make anything out.
I hadn't checked my watch because I didn't want to give my position away.
(07:55):
But I judged by the sky that dawn was maybe a half hour to forty five minutes away.
There was definitely a slight lightning of the sky.
But down on the ground below me it was still hazy and dark.
I began to think maybe I'd been wrong and that what I'd heard had actually been a bear
or some other animal.
(08:16):
And maybe that bear had come to rest and sleep near my tree stand.
Now that would not be a good thing.
I decided to chance the red light to find out.
You know and I can't say why but I was more and more convinced that what was down there
was not a human.
(08:38):
I pulled out my small binoculars and I held those up with my right hand.
And I lit up the red flash light with my left hand.
I pointed in the direction that I last heard something out there.
I reduced my magnification on my binoculars so I could see things close to me.
I held my breath for a second or two, sure that I had imagined it all because I wasn't
(09:02):
seeing anything.
But wait, there was something.
I pan back.
Yes, right there.
Right next to a tree.
I caught some bright eyes looking at me.
I wondered quickly what animal had eyes that big that could hang on the side of a tree,
(09:25):
bigger than a raccoon's eyes.
Then I took in more of a shape.
It was using the tree to hide itself.
I could see that.
Whatever this was, this thing was smart, I thought.
Because if I hadn't caught the eye glow with the red light, I would have missed it for
(09:45):
sure.
Even its fur had a texture that made it look like tree bark, and the red light only made
it blend in more.
This thing was looking right up at me in my tree stand.
Its head was tilted up at me in the tree.
I kept my hair very, very short.
(10:05):
I work a hot job on a road crew all day, so when I say short, I keep my hair buzzed.
But even so, I felt the hair on my scalp move.
It was standing up or doing something.
I don't know what it was, but it was the creepiest feeling I'd ever felt.
I met the same time.
(10:26):
I felt like my whole body was doing exactly whatever my scalp was doing.
The longer I looked at this thing.
It was really close to my tree.
I can't think if I had gotten down from my tree stand and not knowing it was there.
It was only maybe ten steps from me to reach it from my tree to where it was.
(10:50):
Now looking up at me, through the binoculars, I saw its face very good.
The eyes were wide set, and they were a lot larger than a human's eyes.
The face was covered all over with fur, maybe an inch long.
The eyelids seemed to have light fur on them.
(11:11):
I saw thin lips under all the fur.
They were wide, and they had a smooth leathery look to them.
The jaws jutted outward, but maybe that was only because of the way it was tilting its head
to look at me.
I saw a shoulder and an arm.
I know there was more body, but honestly I could not take my eyes off this thing's face.
(11:36):
I also had the feeling it didn't like the red light.
Unlike the coyotes, I think it saw the red light.
Now while I'm looking at this thing, I had missed or not heard three more blips in my earpiece,
because suddenly I heard my friend frantically saying my name.
(11:57):
He demanded I answer him, but I couldn't.
I was in that weird kind of mesmerized and dazed state.
I don't know if you've had it happen, you stare at something so long, you're mesmerized,
you want to look away, but you can't.
That's where I was at.
Then I heard him say, "Sit tight, I'm coming your way."
(12:21):
Now that snapped me out of it.
I did not want him down there near whatever this was.
I got the walkie-talkie out and very quietly I said, "Don't."
He asked me why not, what was going on?
He could see the red light from where he was.
He could see the red light, but he couldn't see me in the tree.
(12:45):
I told him I was looking at something, and I think I said it like that I was looking at something.
He said, "Is it the person that I heard?"
I said, "Not exactly."
Now this thing, I'm still looking at it, and it was looking at me as I was talking in
(13:06):
the walkie-talkie.
I think it was trying to figure out what I was, and that's okay because the whole time
I was trying to figure out what it was, but the truth was that inside I knew what it was.
It was a big foot.
I just kept looking for another answer.
(13:29):
Then in my earpiece, my friend kept demanding, "Is everything okay?
What's going on?"
He was getting very worried, and I could hear it in his voice.
It looked away from me a couple times down there, like it was listening for something else
in the darkness, but it would always snap back to looking right at me.
(13:50):
How did it know I was there when it first came up near me?
I was always very good about removing and covering all my scent.
I hadn't made a sound not even once, since my friend said he thought somebody else was
out there.
And why would it take notice of me up in a tree stand?
I had no answers then, and I have no answers now.
(14:13):
I've pondered this event over and over since it happened.
Now, maybe it was the red light, but I couldn't read an expression on its face.
I didn't know if it was curious, if I was in danger, if it was thinking of reaching up
and yanking me out of the tree, and given the height that I saw its head against the tree,
(14:34):
I believe it could have reached right up and grabbed me with its arms.
It felt like we were at some kind of an impasse.
I didn't know what to do.
I did the craziest thing ever.
I said hello to it.
I thought if there's even a chance that it's some human playing a prank or that I've
(14:56):
misread this whole situation, well, talking might prove it one way or the other.
I said hello again, and I still got no reply.
I said hello to it one final time, this time louder, almost a yell.
I saw its mouth open, and its face wrinkled up, and I heard a sound.
(15:21):
It was a breathy, hollow, weezing sound that went up and down in pitch, like it was breathing
and smelling through its mouth.
That went on for two or three seconds, then it stopped.
And here's where I almost made myself a big batch of panty thudge as we used to call it
(15:42):
in school.
That's right, I almost cramped my drawers right there in my camos.
This moved so fast I couldn't keep my binoculars on it, and it came to stand right under my
tree.
I dropped my binoculars and let them dangle on their cord.
(16:03):
Stinktively, I had my 44 magnum unholstered in a fraction of a second.
I shined the red light down, and I had trouble finding it under my tree.
It was moving all around the tree, and it kept going just out of reach to where I couldn't
fully see it.
It's like it somehow knew.
(16:25):
Honestly though, even though I had my gun out, I don't know if I could have killed it.
Now maybe this close, at a perfect downward angle right on the top of the skull, or maybe
catch it looking up at me and nail it right in the eye, right to the brain, maybe those things.
Yes, then I was confident that I could bring it down, if not with one bullet, then by several.
(16:51):
But its size and sense of power and strength, they're hard to communicate with words.
I've done a lot of different types of hunting.
And without a rifle, this wasn't something that I wanted to try to kill with just my handgun.
But it didn't really matter because I didn't want to shoot it.
(17:15):
You see, I still had this nagging feeling that there just might be a human under all that
fur that maybe it was a costume.
Even as improbable as it seemed, given the size of what I was seeing, I have never hesitated
with an animal.
But this just still didn't feel like an animal.
(17:37):
Now of course, if it had climbed the tree, tried to get me or otherwise threatened me, I would
have had no choice but to shoot.
But the feeling of not wanting to do that was very strong, and I tried to follow my instincts.
They've saved me more than once.
Now, very quickly, I saw it move to another tree about ten yards away.
(18:04):
There was a little more light as it was now closer to dawn.
I was still uncertain about what to do.
I saw it give me one more look.
Then it melted away into the darkness on the ground, going far beyond my red light capability,
and hidden with all the leaves.
I heard it walking away, just as clearly as I heard it walking toward me.
(18:30):
I was pretty stunned, I guess, and I only snapped back to it when I heard my friend yelling
in my earpiece.
He was telling me to hold tight.
He was almost there.
Don't worry.
He's almost there.
Turns out I hadn't answered him one too many times.
Finally, I got to my walkie-talkie and I told him, "Everything's okay.
(18:51):
I'm sorry that I had the strangest thing ever happen."
He replied with, "You mean that A hole in the gilly suit?"
I wasn't sure what he meant.
And it wasn't at all clear till I got down from my tree stand and met him in the middle
of the forest.
He said he heard that person or that big foot.
(19:15):
It was still too dark to spot them, and by the time he got his night vision, Goggo's
on.
We're almost out of view with all the woods between them.
Then all he could see were bits of my red light through his binoculars.
Then I wasn't answering him.
Then he saw what he thought was some really big guy in a gilly suit moving in on me, coming
(19:39):
close to my position.
He saw what he thought was the A hole in a gilly suit through his binoculars because
I had my red light on it.
Now credit due to my friend.
He really thought some crap was about to go down between me and this great big guy in a gilly
suit.
(20:01):
My friend did not have a rifle, so he couldn't have helped me from the distance he was at.
So he took a chance, dropped out of his stand, and started coming my way even after I told
him not to.
He really felt I was in danger.
And I now think that is what the big put might have been hearing when he kept looking away.
(20:22):
And I think as my friend got closer, that's why it suddenly took off.
Suddenly after all of this I had no taste to stay and hunt that day.
inexplicably I felt that I was trespassing on that creature's land and that I needed to
leave.
I did my best to explain what happened to my friend.
(20:46):
And here is another big credit due to my friend.
The look on his face was incredible when I told him everything.
I visibly saw his face change from an impassive look to a thunder struck look, the very second
that everything clicked in place for him.
(21:08):
And I saw he believed me.
Big butter not, my friend said to me as we were driving home.
He's still an A-hole.
Now that started me laughing.
So that's why he's the A-hole of the forest to me.
I King him King A-hole of the forest because he ruined our hunting.
(21:32):
And he scared us quite a bit that morning.
And I came really close to making panty fudge that I've not done since grade school.
Now I have stayed out of the West Virginia lands when I hunt nowadays.
I know that is not the only place they are said to be, but somehow I don't feel right going
(21:52):
into what I know is absolutely their home territory.
My friend said that it could be easily argued that all of America is their home territory.
And I know that is true.
But I just leave those West Virginia bigfoot alone.
The red light might have made its eyes seem more strange than they otherwise might have seemed
(22:16):
to me on another day.
But I cannot forget how intently and questioningly it looked up at me.
It was as if it was the first time it had ever seen a human or one up close at least.
I really think it was as curious about me as I was about it.
(22:38):
Thank you for listening.
You can call me Rick from Marietta, Ohio.
[ Silence ]
"Tonight's encounter comes to you from long ago.
(00:06):
Ripple in this one out of the vault."
"Hi there, nance, and to everybody listening.
Well here you go.
Here's my encounter with the king of the forest as you call him.
But me and my friend, we call him the A-hole of the forest.
(00:28):
Maybe even the king A-hole of the forest, but we'll get to that."
I was raised in the southeast of Ohio with family over the state lines in both Pennsylvania
and West Virginia.
We are all proud of our Appalachian heritage.
But one of my relatives, for a short time, was married to a snooty little thing out
(00:49):
of Cincinnati.
No offense intended to anybody out west, but she was a real snoot.
She just knew she was better than all of us hicks out here.
The one, and only time that I met her at a family gathering, she was venomously calling
us a snake's parcel of poster children for the banjo playing Good Old Boys Club.
(01:10):
Or something like that.
It was just a bunch of insults all strung together, and she was trying to sound real smart
and snappy.
That was her thing.
Well, she didn't last long.
I'm only mentioning this because in a way, she was exactly right.
All of the men and many of the women in my family, well, we are usually seen sporting
(01:34):
muddy boots, flammable shirts with thermal shirts showing from under the rolled-up sleeves,
wearing muddy blue denim jeans, and a beat-up hat.
And you can bet your bottom dollar, our Jeep, SUV, or pickup truck, has at least one.
If not more guns, stashed away somewhere inside the vehicle, in addition to what we have,
(01:57):
hidden on our body.
Now we are used to these mountains and these woods.
We aren't the kind to run, and we don't get scared, and we don't ever make up stories.
Well, unless we're all talking about the fish in the big bucks that got away while we're
drinking some beers.
But we all know that's just story hour.
(02:19):
But none of us had ever seen a big foot.
Until one early morning in 2017.
I was in West Virginia with a friend on a rather large piece of private property.
We hiked in there around 2am.
We were following our GPS marks that we had made previously when we scouted the area.
(02:42):
We also had walkie talkies with earpieces in case we needed to communicate without making
noise.
My friend set up for me in a stand about 100 yards away from me to the east.
Both of us had our stand situated and set back from a well used game trail that had many
signs of deer along it when we scouted.
(03:04):
Now there was a minute there that it was too quiet out there as I stood in my stand,
and about the time I noticed and started to listen.
All the night noises came back so I shrugged it off.
A few seconds later in my earpiece I heard my friend whisper, "You in your stand?"
(03:24):
I said, "Yeah."
Then he says, "Well then there's someone else out here."
I was very surprised when he said that.
As I mentioned, this was private property, and it's a large piece.
This landowner was elderly and partially disabled.
(03:45):
He would not and could not have come this far out at this hour of the night.
Now it was close to dawn and while it could have been someone knowingly trespassing, it
might have also been someone mistaking this land for someone else's and gotten lost.
So we just sat tight.
It hadn't occurred to me just then to ask him, "What made him think someone else was
(04:11):
out there?"
I'd been hunting with him on and off for years, so I just trusted what he said.
I had a red light with me, one that I mostly used when I hunted coyotes because they didn't
seem to shy away from it, and it was also good to see the deer in the darkness.
But I didn't want to go shining it around out there even though it was low light, just
(04:35):
in case someone was out there.
They could all go very wrong for me if they thought they were on their land still and that I'm
a trespasser.
It was hunting season and people can be pretty prickly about things.
So you see, it was a very sticky situation.
Now while I'm thinking about that, I begin to hear something coming out of the east from
(05:00):
the direction that my friend was at.
I listened as it came closer.
It sounded like a person walking.
Now they weren't worried at all about making noise, I noticed.
The sound of someone walking on just two legs is a bit different from something walking
on four legs.
(05:22):
Two-legged animals don't overstep their steps.
You hear each step or even hear shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, but you hear separate shuffles
when they're kicking through leaves.
Take their running, it's even more clear to hear.
I have to point this out because I've been asked many times how I knew something was on
(05:45):
two legs.
Listen, just close your eyes and listen to a human run.
One human.
You will hear pound, pound, pound, pound.
You will hear a rhythm of one foot after the other hitting the ground.
Now, close your eyes and if you can find a recording of it, listen to the rhythm of one
(06:07):
horse or one bear running.
You will hear a very different rhythm.
Each step is not as clear and it isn't spaced the same as two-legged steps.
Now either you can hear this difference between them or you can't.
Me?
I can hear the difference.
(06:28):
So this sound is getting closer and closer.
And for a while it seemed to stop and then I heard something that sounded like a log being
rolled or moved around.
Then it was followed by some noises that I can only call scuffling or maybe it was searching
on the ground.
I listened to it in the dark and I wondered what in the world was down there.
(06:52):
Then I hear my friend hit the mic on the walkie-tucky three times.
Now that was our signal to ask is everything okay.
So three mic blips back means yeah, it's all cool.
Pretty much any other response or no response means things might not be okay.
(07:12):
I hit the mic three blips back.
Of course this couldn't be heard anywhere except in his earpiece.
And I wondered what that person or animal or whatever was doing down there.
Then I kept listening as they came as close to within I guessed about ten yards of where
(07:33):
I was.
Then they stopped.
I listened hard in the darkness but I could not hear a single thing for several minutes.
That was perplexing.
I kept looking into the darkness but I couldn't make anything out.
I hadn't checked my watch because I didn't want to give my position away.
(07:55):
But I judged by the sky that dawn was maybe a half hour to forty five minutes away.
There was definitely a slight lightning of the sky.
But down on the ground below me it was still hazy and dark.
I began to think maybe I'd been wrong and that what I'd heard had actually been a bear
or some other animal.
(08:16):
And maybe that bear had come to rest and sleep near my tree stand.
Now that would not be a good thing.
I decided to chance the red light to find out.
You know and I can't say why but I was more and more convinced that what was down there
was not a human.
(08:38):
I pulled out my small binoculars and I held those up with my right hand.
And I lit up the red flash light with my left hand.
I pointed in the direction that I last heard something out there.
I reduced my magnification on my binoculars so I could see things close to me.
I held my breath for a second or two, sure that I had imagined it all because I wasn't
(09:02):
seeing anything.
But wait, there was something.
I pan back.
Yes, right there.
Right next to a tree.
I caught some bright eyes looking at me.
I wondered quickly what animal had eyes that big that could hang on the side of a tree,
(09:25):
bigger than a raccoon's eyes.
Then I took in more of a shape.
It was using the tree to hide itself.
I could see that.
Whatever this was, this thing was smart, I thought.
Because if I hadn't caught the eye glow with the red light, I would have missed it for
(09:45):
sure.
Even its fur had a texture that made it look like tree bark, and the red light only made
it blend in more.
This thing was looking right up at me in my tree stand.
Its head was tilted up at me in the tree.
I kept my hair very, very short.
(10:05):
I work a hot job on a road crew all day, so when I say short, I keep my hair buzzed.
But even so, I felt the hair on my scalp move.
It was standing up or doing something.
I don't know what it was, but it was the creepiest feeling I'd ever felt.
I met the same time.
(10:26):
I felt like my whole body was doing exactly whatever my scalp was doing.
The longer I looked at this thing.
It was really close to my tree.
I can't think if I had gotten down from my tree stand and not knowing it was there.
It was only maybe ten steps from me to reach it from my tree to where it was.
(10:50):
Now looking up at me, through the binoculars, I saw its face very good.
The eyes were wide set, and they were a lot larger than a human's eyes.
The face was covered all over with fur, maybe an inch long.
The eyelids seemed to have light fur on them.
(11:11):
I saw thin lips under all the fur.
They were wide, and they had a smooth leathery look to them.
The jaws jutted outward, but maybe that was only because of the way it was tilting its head
to look at me.
I saw a shoulder and an arm.
I know there was more body, but honestly I could not take my eyes off this thing's face.
(11:36):
I also had the feeling it didn't like the red light.
Unlike the coyotes, I think it saw the red light.
Now while I'm looking at this thing, I had missed or not heard three more blips in my earpiece,
because suddenly I heard my friend frantically saying my name.
(11:57):
He demanded I answer him, but I couldn't.
I was in that weird kind of mesmerized and dazed state.
I don't know if you've had it happen, you stare at something so long, you're mesmerized,
you want to look away, but you can't.
That's where I was at.
Then I heard him say, "Sit tight, I'm coming your way."
(12:21):
Now that snapped me out of it.
I did not want him down there near whatever this was.
I got the walkie-talkie out and very quietly I said, "Don't."
He asked me why not, what was going on?
He could see the red light from where he was.
He could see the red light, but he couldn't see me in the tree.
(12:45):
I told him I was looking at something, and I think I said it like that I was looking at something.
He said, "Is it the person that I heard?"
I said, "Not exactly."
Now this thing, I'm still looking at it, and it was looking at me as I was talking in
(13:06):
the walkie-talkie.
I think it was trying to figure out what I was, and that's okay because the whole time
I was trying to figure out what it was, but the truth was that inside I knew what it was.
It was a big foot.
I just kept looking for another answer.
(13:29):
Then in my earpiece, my friend kept demanding, "Is everything okay?
What's going on?"
He was getting very worried, and I could hear it in his voice.
It looked away from me a couple times down there, like it was listening for something else
in the darkness, but it would always snap back to looking right at me.
(13:50):
How did it know I was there when it first came up near me?
I was always very good about removing and covering all my scent.
I hadn't made a sound not even once, since my friend said he thought somebody else was
out there.
And why would it take notice of me up in a tree stand?
I had no answers then, and I have no answers now.
(14:13):
I've pondered this event over and over since it happened.
Now, maybe it was the red light, but I couldn't read an expression on its face.
I didn't know if it was curious, if I was in danger, if it was thinking of reaching up
and yanking me out of the tree, and given the height that I saw its head against the tree,
(14:34):
I believe it could have reached right up and grabbed me with its arms.
It felt like we were at some kind of an impasse.
I didn't know what to do.
I did the craziest thing ever.
I said hello to it.
I thought if there's even a chance that it's some human playing a prank or that I've
(14:56):
misread this whole situation, well, talking might prove it one way or the other.
I said hello again, and I still got no reply.
I said hello to it one final time, this time louder, almost a yell.
I saw its mouth open, and its face wrinkled up, and I heard a sound.
(15:21):
It was a breathy, hollow, weezing sound that went up and down in pitch, like it was breathing
and smelling through its mouth.
That went on for two or three seconds, then it stopped.
And here's where I almost made myself a big batch of panty thudge as we used to call it
(15:42):
in school.
That's right, I almost cramped my drawers right there in my camos.
This moved so fast I couldn't keep my binoculars on it, and it came to stand right under my
tree.
I dropped my binoculars and let them dangle on their cord.
(16:03):
Stinktively, I had my 44 magnum unholstered in a fraction of a second.
I shined the red light down, and I had trouble finding it under my tree.
It was moving all around the tree, and it kept going just out of reach to where I couldn't
fully see it.
It's like it somehow knew.
(16:25):
Honestly though, even though I had my gun out, I don't know if I could have killed it.
Now maybe this close, at a perfect downward angle right on the top of the skull, or maybe
catch it looking up at me and nail it right in the eye, right to the brain, maybe those things.
Yes, then I was confident that I could bring it down, if not with one bullet, then by several.
(16:51):
But its size and sense of power and strength, they're hard to communicate with words.
I've done a lot of different types of hunting.
And without a rifle, this wasn't something that I wanted to try to kill with just my handgun.
But it didn't really matter because I didn't want to shoot it.
(17:15):
You see, I still had this nagging feeling that there just might be a human under all that
fur that maybe it was a costume.
Even as improbable as it seemed, given the size of what I was seeing, I have never hesitated
with an animal.
But this just still didn't feel like an animal.
(17:37):
Now of course, if it had climbed the tree, tried to get me or otherwise threatened me, I would
have had no choice but to shoot.
But the feeling of not wanting to do that was very strong, and I tried to follow my instincts.
They've saved me more than once.
Now, very quickly, I saw it move to another tree about ten yards away.
(18:04):
There was a little more light as it was now closer to dawn.
I was still uncertain about what to do.
I saw it give me one more look.
Then it melted away into the darkness on the ground, going far beyond my red light capability,
and hidden with all the leaves.
I heard it walking away, just as clearly as I heard it walking toward me.
(18:30):
I was pretty stunned, I guess, and I only snapped back to it when I heard my friend yelling
in my earpiece.
He was telling me to hold tight.
He was almost there.
Don't worry.
He's almost there.
Turns out I hadn't answered him one too many times.
Finally, I got to my walkie-talkie and I told him, "Everything's okay.
(18:51):
I'm sorry that I had the strangest thing ever happen."
He replied with, "You mean that A hole in the gilly suit?"
I wasn't sure what he meant.
And it wasn't at all clear till I got down from my tree stand and met him in the middle
of the forest.
He said he heard that person or that big foot.
(19:15):
It was still too dark to spot them, and by the time he got his night vision, Goggo's
on.
We're almost out of view with all the woods between them.
Then all he could see were bits of my red light through his binoculars.
Then I wasn't answering him.
Then he saw what he thought was some really big guy in a gilly suit moving in on me, coming
(19:39):
close to my position.
He saw what he thought was the A hole in a gilly suit through his binoculars because
I had my red light on it.
Now credit due to my friend.
He really thought some crap was about to go down between me and this great big guy in a gilly
suit.
(20:01):
My friend did not have a rifle, so he couldn't have helped me from the distance he was at.
So he took a chance, dropped out of his stand, and started coming my way even after I told
him not to.
He really felt I was in danger.
And I now think that is what the big put might have been hearing when he kept looking away.
(20:22):
And I think as my friend got closer, that's why it suddenly took off.
Suddenly after all of this I had no taste to stay and hunt that day.
inexplicably I felt that I was trespassing on that creature's land and that I needed to
leave.
I did my best to explain what happened to my friend.
(20:46):
And here is another big credit due to my friend.
The look on his face was incredible when I told him everything.
I visibly saw his face change from an impassive look to a thunder struck look, the very second
that everything clicked in place for him.
(21:08):
And I saw he believed me.
Big butter not, my friend said to me as we were driving home.
He's still an A-hole.
Now that started me laughing.
So that's why he's the A-hole of the forest to me.
I King him King A-hole of the forest because he ruined our hunting.
(21:32):
And he scared us quite a bit that morning.
And I came really close to making panty fudge that I've not done since grade school.
Now I have stayed out of the West Virginia lands when I hunt nowadays.
I know that is not the only place they are said to be, but somehow I don't feel right going
(21:52):
into what I know is absolutely their home territory.
My friend said that it could be easily argued that all of America is their home territory.
And I know that is true.
But I just leave those West Virginia bigfoot alone.
The red light might have made its eyes seem more strange than they otherwise might have seemed
(22:16):
to me on another day.
But I cannot forget how intently and questioningly it looked up at me.
It was as if it was the first time it had ever seen a human or one up close at least.
I really think it was as curious about me as I was about it.
(22:38):
Thank you for listening.
You can call me Rick from Marietta, Ohio.
[ Silence ]
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