September 16, 2025 • 31 mins
Sometimes Messages Are Loud - And Others Are Silent.
Bigfoot Gave These Deer Hunters A Clear Message: GET OUT.
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
Bigfoot Gave These Deer Hunters A Clear Message: GET OUT.
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
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
"You can use my first name. It's David."
(00:11):
I grew up in an old rural place where the corn meets the hardwoods, and the creek still
remembers how to properly flood every spring. I've hunted that same slice of my county
since I could hold on and ride a tailgate all by myself, though I know that's not allowed
for children these days. Nearby was an old quarry with a two-track that skirted it, and
(00:34):
the ridge up there made up one side of the place, and that let out to woods full of critters.
I'm not going to name the place because the quarry hasn't been worked in decades, but
there are folks around here that still run their dogs, and they hang stands up there on
that ridge and all down the other side to the creek. And I don't want anybody tromping
in there with plans to be a hero and some big YouTube star being on their brain.
(01:00):
I want instead to talk about the night that Bigfoot pushed us out, and he all but asked
us to leave. Told us to get out of his woods. We were respectful, and so was he, I guess
you could say. But all of you out there need to know to listen to those silent sounds
when they happen. This is my story. It was 2008. It was the second week of gun season, a
(01:28):
Thursday that ran short on daylight long before we were done. The sky was puter all afternoon,
the kind of autumn color that never really quite commits to rain but threatens to all day.
Wind had a lazy drift out of the west. Thermals were out there falling early, which
(01:49):
matters where the holler goes all the way down to the creek, and it carries with it every
mistake you might make right to a white tail's nose. I was hunting with my friend, Tray. He's
a sort that carries way too much rope, and a first aid kit big enough to treat an entire
church picnic, and I love him for it. Tray is definitely the guy you want to go into
(02:12):
the woods with. We park at the pull-off by the old culvert, we hump up the ridge, and
we slide into our little routine that we've done up there probably hundreds of times in
our life. He took the inside edge of that oak flat above the shell cut. I slipped along
the bench that leads to a saddle that deer used like a highway. About four o'clock, I heard
(02:36):
a single dry leaf crack in the way you know it's not some squirrel. I kept a watch, and there
they came. A tight little procession that walked right through. Yearling, doe. Then a buck
with a frame nice and wide and sturdy. He wasn't a monarch, but he was clean and for past
(02:57):
the ears. I don't shoot numbers. I shoot meat with manners, and he had them. He stopped
quartering away at about forty paces, and when the crosshair settled into that perfect
crease, I pressed the trigger so easy it felt like the shot happened all by itself.
(03:18):
He mew all kicked, turned downhill, and vanished into the brush. I listened. You always listen
after. I heard the crash, then the sliding thump of a body hitting the banks down by the
creek bottom. The tray text a single word to me. "Boom?" I texted back, down.
(03:42):
I ease down to the hit spot, and I mark the first blood. Frothy pink. Not a paint bucket,
but plenty enough. We took it slow following the blood. I've lost deer before by being way
too cocky and going way too fast. The tray all stayed good, and then it got even better,
(04:03):
and we found him tucked up tight against an old tree down on one side of the creek. His
tongue was out, and his eyes, they'd already gone to that somewhere else place.
We said a little thank you to the spirit that had left the deer, and then we said a thank
you to the spirit that gave us this deer for our tables. We meant every word of it. We
(04:28):
tagged it, then took our quick picture, and quickly set to work. If you don't dress a deer,
where it falls, you don't drag far. But the bottom there, it runs to all kinds of muddy
muck if you get off the top gravel. And the creek, it throws a lot of that muddy muck all
over the place. We decided to quarter it, and pack out instead of dragging the whole thing.
(04:54):
Less mess and less cussing on our part. We had headlamps and knives that had seen their
fair share of deer. I split him open, careful, to keep the tenderloins clean, then handed
tray the heart for his wife. She fries it up in a cast iron skillet that's turned blocker
than midnight. She does it for their dogs. They absolutely love it. Then we rolled the
(05:18):
hide back from the hams. Coyote's yipped to county over. Not close enough to worry about.
A nosy owl kept a watch over us from a nearby tree. We heard his hoots a few times. Otherwise
it was just us, and the sound of our knives working on a hunt that had gone well and had been
done right. That's when the walking started.
(05:43):
You can feel a walk before your ears know to call it a walk, especially in leaf litter,
with a little bit of frost still hiding down in the low spots under the leaves. This wasn't
squirrel multiple choice, or a deer's careful place and freeze kind of walking steps. It had
wait. It had heft. It had rhythm. Step, step, step. It wasn't hiding or trying to be sneaky.
(06:12):
Tracehead immediately lifted up. Mine did too. We both turned, looking toward the walking
sound. My headlamp wasn't on yet. We still had enough of last light, you know, the purple
kind that gives the woods a hazy look, the farther you look into them.
What we didn't have was any eye shine. You could use to catching that nickel flash of a
(06:36):
deer eye or the green coin of a cune in your periphery just at twilight.
But we had nothing. There was just gray, on gray, on the tree trunk standing still.
"Dear, tray mouthed at me?"
"I shook my head."
"No."
"Dear, put their feet down like they're testing if a pain of glass can bear the weight."
(07:00):
This sounded like a man that didn't care if the floor squeaked under his feet.
We waited a minute, maybe. Then we went back to work, because we need to get that packed
out of there before full dark if we could. But I kept the revolver on my belt right where
my palm could find it from memory. And Trace, at the game bag, a little nearer than he
(07:22):
needed to.
The steps moved with a slow and deliberate patience that raised my hackles about halfway.
They came again, angling off to our left, then slow-tracked behind and downwind where
the creek had an elbow bend.
You could follow the sound with your eyes. But there was nothing else but sound to follow.
(07:46):
Strangest thing, and I thought so at the time. But I kept working.
A smell came with that sound. Musky, earthy. I really don't have anything to compare it
with, though I thought sure it was some kind of an animal scent.
It hit, and it made my mouth fill up involuntarily with spit, like it thought it could clean out
(08:09):
the scent from my mouth the nostrils if I could just spit.
I did not spit.
You got that headlamp handy? Trace asked, calm and steady. "Yep," I said.
"Maybe don't turn it on," he said.
"Wasn't gone too," I replied, and I wasn't.
(08:30):
We finished the hams. I slid the quarters into bags, tied them off, and set them on the
packed tarp. The back straps went in a separate sack.
When I reached for the tenderloins, the steps stopped. Silence doesn't sound like anything
until it's there, and then it's the loudest thing you've ever heard.
(08:53):
I listened so hard to that silence I couldn't hear anything else.
Something shifted a branch, low, like a sapling being shoulder to side when you walked past.
It was a soft and quick sound, but it was distinct.
When the walking started again, circling, but close to us, pacing the same circle around
(09:15):
us, always just outside of where we could see between the trees, which was getting less
and less farther as the light faded.
"Bear?" Trace asked.
"Maybe," I said.
"I didn't have the feeling of it being a bear, but I didn't have another answer of what
it could be."
(09:36):
"Let's just finish up, huh?" I said to Trace. He nodded.
We finished up quick and neat. I sensed my pack.
Trace sensed his. "We left the gut pile as neatly as we could."
We cleaned the cavity and set the lungs off to the side for the coyotes.
(09:57):
Rib meat had been scraped up tidy.
There's a right way and a wrong way to leave a place, and I wanted to be on the right side
of whoever or whatever else was using that creek bottom.
We strung up the other meat parts and bags about 20 feet up in the tree, maybe 150 feet
away from where the gut pile and other discard laid.
(10:20):
We would come back for the meat in the morning.
We just couldn't carry it all tonight.
I thought whatever it was would stay behind and surely go for the gut pile.
Most animals would.
But no, it followed us up and out of that creek bottom.
The trail out of there is an old logging road that's cut into the side of the ridge.
(10:43):
There's deepens to a two-track that turns to red clay once you crest.
That same two-track goes the other way down into the quarry if you go that way, but that's
not where we were going.
We didn't talk too much on the way out.
We mostly listened.
We stepped carefully, listening to our steps in the silence.
(11:06):
And we heard something else under our own footfalls.
Steps that just kept pace off to our right, maybe 10 or 15 yards in, sometimes 20.
And those footfalls were never gaining on us, never dropping back either.
I've had coyotes ghost me like that, curious as kids.
(11:26):
This wasn't that.
This was more like a pushing escort.
Kind of the way, like if you'd been too rowdy at the bar and security make sure you leave
the place.
At the first switchback were the grade swings and you can look down through the mostly
leafless trees to the creek bottom.
Trace stopped.
I did too, because we've done this enough that we moved together in a double act.
(11:51):
If he stops, I stop.
And vice versa.
Trace looked his pack off, set it down quiet.
And cupped his hands to his mouth like he was warming them.
Then he let out a loud whistle.
I was surprised when he did that because we were together looking at one another.
This is the whistle that we use to signal each other over distance or to find each other
(12:14):
in the dark when we're all caught up in thick woods.
One quick whistle, and it's short, followed by a very long whistle, that scales up a note.
No one could mistake that for a bird.
Trace did that, and I looked over at him about to ask him why he did that, when almost the
exact same whistle came back to us from the trees, over where the steps were.
(12:39):
It wasn't perfect.
It was a beat too long on the first part, and the notes weren't exact.
But it was close enough that if I'd heard it out there alone, I would have thought it
was Trace on a day that maybe he had a cold, or he was stuffed up for something.
Close enough, I would have believed it, except I was staring at Trace.
(13:01):
Me and Trace were looking right at each other, with just enough light left that we could
still see.
We knew we hadn't made that whistle.
And we weren't the kind to do much of stuff or crack a bunch of jokes.
Instead we just gave each other a little look like, "You know what, let's be done with
this place tonight."
"Trey re-shoulders is pack.
(13:22):
Let's make for the road," he said, voice just above a whisper.
I nodded.
We made the road in good time.
Near the top of that ridge there's a place where runoff cuts a shallow trench across the
clay in the gravel.
As we stepped over, a rock about the size of a baby's fist pinged off the culvert and
(13:43):
skittered between us.
That rock did not fall.
It was thrown.
Not like someone was angry, it was more like a kid just bored in throwing rocks.
There was no force to it.
You heard that, right, Trace?
"Yup," I said.
(14:03):
We both had that same look and we understood.
Time to move.
We didn't break into a run.
You wanna fall on your face and break a collarbone?
You run under a pack on slick clay at night.
Our steps were firm and sure, but they were a bit quicker than they were before.
The steps down in the trees stayed level with us the whole time.
(14:28):
Twice more.
Small stones ticked the road behind us.
Each one just off to the side, like the thrower was hurting us between the rocks and wherever
it wanted us to go.
When we topped out on the two track, the world around us changed.
It was now open.
Sky above the tree line was still glowing a deep, purple and orange from the sinking sun,
(14:52):
colors that we had lost way down in the bottoms where it couldn't reach.
Down below on the other side.
We saw the white and red of Trace truck where we'd left it by the old culvert.
I could only see my truck behind it because mine had the big Lance cab over camper shell
fitted onto it.
The white of which was easy to see because it stuck up higher than Trace truck.
(15:16):
But the side of both of them was fading in the dim and darkening hazy light.
We went down the two track till we found our cut down the side toward the truck.
We got to the truck.
And I suddenly felt safe.
Like we were kids out there playing a game at night and this was home base and no one
could touch us.
Those were the rules.
(15:37):
I think we both felt that kind of relief.
We slid the quarters into coolers, our hands shaking in that after scared way that makes
you fumble with clips and lids.
Trace shut the hard tonneau cover over the coolers in the back of his pickup truck and
locked it.
We looked at each other and I said, "You want to go back for the rest tonight?"
(16:02):
Trace hesitated just a second then he said, "Nah, we'll get it in the morning."
I don't mind saying to you that I was relieved when he said that.
We both slept in my camper shell as we usually did and it was parked right next to his truck.
So if anything messed with the tonneau or the coolers, we'd hear it.
(16:23):
But nothing did.
I hardly slept that night though.
Every time I shut my eyes I would hear that offbeat whistle and those measured steps
that didn't care if we heard them.
In the grey just before dawn I got up and I made coffee for us both.
Normally in the mornings we channelled out about what we've got to do that morning and we
(16:45):
just chat in general over coffee, but not that morning.
We didn't talk much.
Truth was neither of us wanted to go back there, meet or no meet.
I know that now, but I didn't know it at the time.
Neither of us wanted to voice that to the other.
I sipped our coffee and got ready to go back where we did not want to go.
(17:09):
Missed leg on the ridge low and heavy that morning.
It smelled like fresh rain, but there hadn't been a drop that fell overnight.
We geared up and silently made our way back to the two tracks on the ridge, then down the
switchbacks that we had walked the night before.
As we did I was looking.
And I saw that no other marks had been put onto that clay since hours the night before.
(17:35):
When we came to where the first rock had been thrown behind us, we got a surprise.
We saw a rock can of several rocks on the side of the two track, not where anyone would
have left a print.
They could have stood off to the side and done it.
The rocks there were smooth and they were neatly stacked.
These were not the jagged rocks from the quarry.
(17:57):
I looked over at Tray and he looked at me and just shook his head like, "Man, don't ask
me.
Just don't ask me because I don't know."
We kept walking.
But the whole time I'm wanting to walk the other way.
I didn't care enough about the rest of the meat to really go back there.
At the bottom the discard from the deer lay just as we had left it.
(18:21):
It was neat, cavity open and clean, everything done respectfully.
What was not like we had left it was the ground to the right where the gut pile should
have been.
It wasn't spread or torn around or coyote picked through.
It was just gone.
Every last bit of it.
(18:43):
Instead there was a layer of leaves over the area in a conspicuous circle.
I moved some with my boot.
Underneath was a circle of blood from the gut pile that had been there.
This blood area had been deliberately covered.
I'd never seen anything like it.
Coyotes don't do that.
(19:04):
Tray said his voice low.
"Nope," I said.
"You think it was kids?" he asked.
I let the silencing answer.
I shook my head no.
There were no boot tracks, no cigarette butts.
No beer bottles or cans.
There was no sloppiness in the area to say a bunch of rabbi teens had been up there or
(19:27):
anyone else at all.
Whoever or whatever did it left us no trace that we could see.
We took note, then headed to our bags up in the trees.
Thankfully they hadn't been touched.
We got them down quickly and we made for tracks out of there.
(19:47):
Our walk out was quiet.
No steps parallel thus that morning.
No rocks pinging behind us.
At the switchback, the little stone stack that had been off to the side of the track gave
us another surprise.
It was larger.
Someone had added to it while we went down to get our meat.
(20:11):
I looked at Tray and started to ask, "Am I wrong or?"
The tray cut me dead.
No, you're not wrong.
It's been added to.
It's got more rocks.
We looked at each other wide eyed.
By now my hackles were fully raised.
I didn't know what was going on, but my head started telling me stories that I'd heard.
(20:36):
Things I'd heard all my life about things that lived in those woods and up in the hills.
I didn't want to hear it.
I just wanted out of there.
We double timed it back to the trucks, just one step short of being a full jog.
And that was tough with the weight of the meat, but we knew better than to run.
(20:57):
Back as the trucks we iced the meat down in the coolers, with ice that was becoming more
water than ice by that point.
We shut the tonneau cover quickly.
I made us another quick cup of coffee before we went.
We leaned up against Tray's truck and looked at the two track and up to the ridge.
We were quiet.
(21:18):
Tray and I had known each other since grade school, so we didn't have to do a lot of chatter
at times if we didn't want to.
That we were both thinking about it.
And we both knew the other was thinking about it.
Finally, Tray broke the silence.
What do you think is going on, man?
(21:39):
I thought for a second.
I had a lot of thoughts on it, but I was going to be very careful about which ones I spoke
out loud.
Finally, I said, "Well, I felt like something was pushing us to get out of that area."
Tray was looking at me steadily.
All he said was, "By what?"
(22:00):
"Well, I said, by whatever knows that bottom better than we do, I guess."
That was just the best I could say.
By that morning, I really did have thoughts that it was probably a big foot.
That kept going through my head all night, especially the rock throwing and then finding
those stacked stones.
I knew those were indicative of folklore I'd heard of big foot.
(22:23):
I just didn't want to say it out loud that morning.
Not that I was afraid or what I was afraid Tray would think.
I just had difficulty with it.
I don't know why, but that's okay.
Because as always, Tray did the thing I couldn't do.
He said it.
"Well, man, my two cents, we ran up against a big foot out there."
(22:47):
He said it quiet, and he didn't look at me when he said that.
He just kept sipping his coffee.
But I knew Tray, and I knew that he put all of his cards out on the table with that one
sentence.
He was good for doing that.
I nodded quickly.
Yes.
I said he could see it, even though he wasn't looking directly at me.
(23:09):
Well I said, "Truth be told."
My thoughts had been running that way since last night.
This wasn't some person out there, and it sure wasn't any animal I know of.
I still can't swear that it was a big foot, but that's how my thoughts are running.
Yes.
Tray said no more.
We just sipped our coffees and didn't speak.
(23:33):
We didn't tell anybody in town about this, except for my dad.
He listened the way a man standing on his porch listens, a little sideways, and he had his
hands in his pockets, and he was kind of quiet until I was done.
Then he looked at me and he said, "Hey, I always told you not to drag through the dark down
there.
(23:53):
Now, didn't I?"
I said, "Yes, sir, you did, and we didn't."
Then he said, "I know, I know, but you still took meat out when it was getting dark."
"I told you don't ever do that, and don't ever do that again.
Ain't worth it, my son."
I nodded at him, and I promised I wouldn't.
I went home thinking how my dad didn't tell me I was crazy, or that there isn't any such
(24:19):
thing, because we spoke the word "bigfoot."
Before I left, I asked if he'd ever seen one out there.
I wondered because he was so quick to agree that it was probably a big foot.
My dad looked at me for a few long seconds, and then all he said was, "Maybe."
Then he shut the conversation down.
(24:40):
I knew I would get the story from him someday, just not that day.
And I did get that story, but this isn't about that.
Maybe some other day, if I have the heart, I'll tell it as best as I can remember what he told
me.
He's now left this earth, but his story stays with me.
A week later, I walked that same ridge alone at noon.
(25:04):
I just had to.
There's nothing so foolish or stubborn as me, and I have a lot more of that stubborn than
I do foolish, I guess, though some would argue.
On those muddy banks by the creek where you usually see all the tracks from all the animals
coming down to drink, there were two marks that I still wanted to admit to really seeing,
(25:26):
probably not even under oath in court.
I keep them close and quiet to me.
Those were very wide prints.
Now, they weren't real pretty, and they weren't real crisp, but they were big.
I've seen bear overstep, and this was not it.
They went from the bank up through the brush and the trees.
(25:48):
I followed them.
They went right to where all of our dear discard had been the week before, but the prints
I was following were very recent.
Brush within the last 24 hours I was sure.
Like it had kept going back there, looking for seconds and thirds, or maybe sixthes and
sevenths, I don't even know how many after a whole week, but it had kept going back, looking
(26:13):
for food I was sure.
The prints were clear, and they circled the area, and all of it had been trampled heavily
and overstepped a hundred times.
But I still knew those were not bear claw prints.
And the area kept that bad smell there, too.
Yes, I smelled the rotting blood soaked into the ground, and there were bits of rotting
(26:35):
carcass here and there.
But that musky, earthy animal scent laid over everything.
It was very strong.
I thought carefully before using the word Bigfoot to my dad, and I didn't want to say it
first to tray because, well, television in the internet have made the name kind of
(26:56):
slippery, slimy, like some kind of joke, but it isn't.
I don't have all the answers for everything in this world, but I do know one thing strong
and true.
Whatever was in the woods with us that night was a thinking creature.
I have respect for it, and I do not live in fear of it.
(27:17):
I still carry the exact same gun I've carried in those woods all my life.
I just swivel my head a lot more when I'm out there, and I listen harder to the unexpected
silences, more so than I do with sounds.
Me and tray have modified our call whistle, something harder to mimic.
And we've agreed on what to do if we think something is trying to mimic us.
(27:42):
When I clean a deer now, I don't drag long and never at night.
I pick a good ground.
I pack up tidy.
And when I leave a gut pile, I make sure I leave it clean like a gift to nature.
Every once in a while, while I'm out there working in my shed with the radio on low, and
my old dog is snoring by the door, I think about the small rocks that were sure to miss us
(28:07):
deliberately.
I think about the steps that were in no hurry and how something did a really good job
of mimicking our whistle on the very first try.
One night I dream, I'm out there on the two track again that day, and I'm getting rocks
thrown behind me.
I swear to you, in that dream I can hear a deep, gravely voice telling me, "Leave,
(28:32):
leave, leave."
It chants to me until I finally wake up, wondering if I actually heard it that day, and I've
maybe forgotten it.
I'm going to close this by saying, "If you're ever standing over your tag and you're
busy with your work, and something circles just beyond the edge of your sight, you do your
(28:54):
work right, keep your voice low, you be thankful, and make sure you say thanks, be respectful,
and be quick, and always leave a gift nice and neat."
Then you leave quickly, the way the woods and your watcher have already asked you to do.
(29:15):
One night I dream, I'm out there on the two track again that day, and I'm getting rocks thrown
behind me.
I swear to you, in that dream I can hear a deep, gravely voice telling me, "Leave, leave, leave."
(29:38):
It chants to me until I finally wake up, wondering if I actually heard it that day, and I've
probably forgotten it.
I'm going to close this by saying, "If you're ever standing over your tag and you're
busy with your work, and something circles just beyond the edge of your sight, you do
your work right, keep your voice low, you be thankful, and make sure you say thanks, be respectful,
(30:05):
and be quick, and always leave a gift nice and neat."
Then you leave quickly, the way the woods and your watcher have already asked you to do.
Some messages come in words, and some come in silence and rocks being thrown that you
can't see.
(30:26):
If you ever do find yourself quartering out at last light, and the timber answers your whistle
just a little bit wrong, mind the boundaries, pack up tidy, and leave what you must like
a gift.
And when the woods are something tells you to go, to leave, you listen up.
Take what you can in your pack, leave the rest.
(30:48):
Thank you, my Sasquad, for riding along with me tonight into Sasquadch Valley.
It's always better with your company, and I really liked tonight's ride.
I hope you do too.
Listen up.
Until the next time, please always remember.
Absence of Proof is not proof of absence.
And your best mind the messages you get from the woods.
(31:11):
Thanks for listening.
(groaning)
(upbeat music)
[Music]
"You can use my first name. It's David."
(00:11):
I grew up in an old rural place where the corn meets the hardwoods, and the creek still
remembers how to properly flood every spring. I've hunted that same slice of my county
since I could hold on and ride a tailgate all by myself, though I know that's not allowed
for children these days. Nearby was an old quarry with a two-track that skirted it, and
(00:34):
the ridge up there made up one side of the place, and that let out to woods full of critters.
I'm not going to name the place because the quarry hasn't been worked in decades, but
there are folks around here that still run their dogs, and they hang stands up there on
that ridge and all down the other side to the creek. And I don't want anybody tromping
in there with plans to be a hero and some big YouTube star being on their brain.
(01:00):
I want instead to talk about the night that Bigfoot pushed us out, and he all but asked
us to leave. Told us to get out of his woods. We were respectful, and so was he, I guess
you could say. But all of you out there need to know to listen to those silent sounds
when they happen. This is my story. It was 2008. It was the second week of gun season, a
(01:28):
Thursday that ran short on daylight long before we were done. The sky was puter all afternoon,
the kind of autumn color that never really quite commits to rain but threatens to all day.
Wind had a lazy drift out of the west. Thermals were out there falling early, which
(01:49):
matters where the holler goes all the way down to the creek, and it carries with it every
mistake you might make right to a white tail's nose. I was hunting with my friend, Tray. He's
a sort that carries way too much rope, and a first aid kit big enough to treat an entire
church picnic, and I love him for it. Tray is definitely the guy you want to go into
(02:12):
the woods with. We park at the pull-off by the old culvert, we hump up the ridge, and
we slide into our little routine that we've done up there probably hundreds of times in
our life. He took the inside edge of that oak flat above the shell cut. I slipped along
the bench that leads to a saddle that deer used like a highway. About four o'clock, I heard
(02:36):
a single dry leaf crack in the way you know it's not some squirrel. I kept a watch, and there
they came. A tight little procession that walked right through. Yearling, doe. Then a buck
with a frame nice and wide and sturdy. He wasn't a monarch, but he was clean and for past
(02:57):
the ears. I don't shoot numbers. I shoot meat with manners, and he had them. He stopped
quartering away at about forty paces, and when the crosshair settled into that perfect
crease, I pressed the trigger so easy it felt like the shot happened all by itself.
(03:18):
He mew all kicked, turned downhill, and vanished into the brush. I listened. You always listen
after. I heard the crash, then the sliding thump of a body hitting the banks down by the
creek bottom. The tray text a single word to me. "Boom?" I texted back, down.
(03:42):
I ease down to the hit spot, and I mark the first blood. Frothy pink. Not a paint bucket,
but plenty enough. We took it slow following the blood. I've lost deer before by being way
too cocky and going way too fast. The tray all stayed good, and then it got even better,
(04:03):
and we found him tucked up tight against an old tree down on one side of the creek. His
tongue was out, and his eyes, they'd already gone to that somewhere else place.
We said a little thank you to the spirit that had left the deer, and then we said a thank
you to the spirit that gave us this deer for our tables. We meant every word of it. We
(04:28):
tagged it, then took our quick picture, and quickly set to work. If you don't dress a deer,
where it falls, you don't drag far. But the bottom there, it runs to all kinds of muddy
muck if you get off the top gravel. And the creek, it throws a lot of that muddy muck all
over the place. We decided to quarter it, and pack out instead of dragging the whole thing.
(04:54):
Less mess and less cussing on our part. We had headlamps and knives that had seen their
fair share of deer. I split him open, careful, to keep the tenderloins clean, then handed
tray the heart for his wife. She fries it up in a cast iron skillet that's turned blocker
than midnight. She does it for their dogs. They absolutely love it. Then we rolled the
(05:18):
hide back from the hams. Coyote's yipped to county over. Not close enough to worry about.
A nosy owl kept a watch over us from a nearby tree. We heard his hoots a few times. Otherwise
it was just us, and the sound of our knives working on a hunt that had gone well and had been
done right. That's when the walking started.
(05:43):
You can feel a walk before your ears know to call it a walk, especially in leaf litter,
with a little bit of frost still hiding down in the low spots under the leaves. This wasn't
squirrel multiple choice, or a deer's careful place and freeze kind of walking steps. It had
wait. It had heft. It had rhythm. Step, step, step. It wasn't hiding or trying to be sneaky.
(06:12):
Tracehead immediately lifted up. Mine did too. We both turned, looking toward the walking
sound. My headlamp wasn't on yet. We still had enough of last light, you know, the purple
kind that gives the woods a hazy look, the farther you look into them.
What we didn't have was any eye shine. You could use to catching that nickel flash of a
(06:36):
deer eye or the green coin of a cune in your periphery just at twilight.
But we had nothing. There was just gray, on gray, on the tree trunk standing still.
"Dear, tray mouthed at me?"
"I shook my head."
"No."
"Dear, put their feet down like they're testing if a pain of glass can bear the weight."
(07:00):
This sounded like a man that didn't care if the floor squeaked under his feet.
We waited a minute, maybe. Then we went back to work, because we need to get that packed
out of there before full dark if we could. But I kept the revolver on my belt right where
my palm could find it from memory. And Trace, at the game bag, a little nearer than he
(07:22):
needed to.
The steps moved with a slow and deliberate patience that raised my hackles about halfway.
They came again, angling off to our left, then slow-tracked behind and downwind where
the creek had an elbow bend.
You could follow the sound with your eyes. But there was nothing else but sound to follow.
(07:46):
Strangest thing, and I thought so at the time. But I kept working.
A smell came with that sound. Musky, earthy. I really don't have anything to compare it
with, though I thought sure it was some kind of an animal scent.
It hit, and it made my mouth fill up involuntarily with spit, like it thought it could clean out
(08:09):
the scent from my mouth the nostrils if I could just spit.
I did not spit.
You got that headlamp handy? Trace asked, calm and steady. "Yep," I said.
"Maybe don't turn it on," he said.
"Wasn't gone too," I replied, and I wasn't.
(08:30):
We finished the hams. I slid the quarters into bags, tied them off, and set them on the
packed tarp. The back straps went in a separate sack.
When I reached for the tenderloins, the steps stopped. Silence doesn't sound like anything
until it's there, and then it's the loudest thing you've ever heard.
(08:53):
I listened so hard to that silence I couldn't hear anything else.
Something shifted a branch, low, like a sapling being shoulder to side when you walked past.
It was a soft and quick sound, but it was distinct.
When the walking started again, circling, but close to us, pacing the same circle around
(09:15):
us, always just outside of where we could see between the trees, which was getting less
and less farther as the light faded.
"Bear?" Trace asked.
"Maybe," I said.
"I didn't have the feeling of it being a bear, but I didn't have another answer of what
it could be."
(09:36):
"Let's just finish up, huh?" I said to Trace. He nodded.
We finished up quick and neat. I sensed my pack.
Trace sensed his. "We left the gut pile as neatly as we could."
We cleaned the cavity and set the lungs off to the side for the coyotes.
(09:57):
Rib meat had been scraped up tidy.
There's a right way and a wrong way to leave a place, and I wanted to be on the right side
of whoever or whatever else was using that creek bottom.
We strung up the other meat parts and bags about 20 feet up in the tree, maybe 150 feet
away from where the gut pile and other discard laid.
(10:20):
We would come back for the meat in the morning.
We just couldn't carry it all tonight.
I thought whatever it was would stay behind and surely go for the gut pile.
Most animals would.
But no, it followed us up and out of that creek bottom.
The trail out of there is an old logging road that's cut into the side of the ridge.
(10:43):
There's deepens to a two-track that turns to red clay once you crest.
That same two-track goes the other way down into the quarry if you go that way, but that's
not where we were going.
We didn't talk too much on the way out.
We mostly listened.
We stepped carefully, listening to our steps in the silence.
(11:06):
And we heard something else under our own footfalls.
Steps that just kept pace off to our right, maybe 10 or 15 yards in, sometimes 20.
And those footfalls were never gaining on us, never dropping back either.
I've had coyotes ghost me like that, curious as kids.
(11:26):
This wasn't that.
This was more like a pushing escort.
Kind of the way, like if you'd been too rowdy at the bar and security make sure you leave
the place.
At the first switchback were the grade swings and you can look down through the mostly
leafless trees to the creek bottom.
Trace stopped.
I did too, because we've done this enough that we moved together in a double act.
(11:51):
If he stops, I stop.
And vice versa.
Trace looked his pack off, set it down quiet.
And cupped his hands to his mouth like he was warming them.
Then he let out a loud whistle.
I was surprised when he did that because we were together looking at one another.
This is the whistle that we use to signal each other over distance or to find each other
(12:14):
in the dark when we're all caught up in thick woods.
One quick whistle, and it's short, followed by a very long whistle, that scales up a note.
No one could mistake that for a bird.
Trace did that, and I looked over at him about to ask him why he did that, when almost the
exact same whistle came back to us from the trees, over where the steps were.
(12:39):
It wasn't perfect.
It was a beat too long on the first part, and the notes weren't exact.
But it was close enough that if I'd heard it out there alone, I would have thought it
was Trace on a day that maybe he had a cold, or he was stuffed up for something.
Close enough, I would have believed it, except I was staring at Trace.
(13:01):
Me and Trace were looking right at each other, with just enough light left that we could
still see.
We knew we hadn't made that whistle.
And we weren't the kind to do much of stuff or crack a bunch of jokes.
Instead we just gave each other a little look like, "You know what, let's be done with
this place tonight."
"Trey re-shoulders is pack.
(13:22):
Let's make for the road," he said, voice just above a whisper.
I nodded.
We made the road in good time.
Near the top of that ridge there's a place where runoff cuts a shallow trench across the
clay in the gravel.
As we stepped over, a rock about the size of a baby's fist pinged off the culvert and
(13:43):
skittered between us.
That rock did not fall.
It was thrown.
Not like someone was angry, it was more like a kid just bored in throwing rocks.
There was no force to it.
You heard that, right, Trace?
"Yup," I said.
(14:03):
We both had that same look and we understood.
Time to move.
We didn't break into a run.
You wanna fall on your face and break a collarbone?
You run under a pack on slick clay at night.
Our steps were firm and sure, but they were a bit quicker than they were before.
The steps down in the trees stayed level with us the whole time.
(14:28):
Twice more.
Small stones ticked the road behind us.
Each one just off to the side, like the thrower was hurting us between the rocks and wherever
it wanted us to go.
When we topped out on the two track, the world around us changed.
It was now open.
Sky above the tree line was still glowing a deep, purple and orange from the sinking sun,
(14:52):
colors that we had lost way down in the bottoms where it couldn't reach.
Down below on the other side.
We saw the white and red of Trace truck where we'd left it by the old culvert.
I could only see my truck behind it because mine had the big Lance cab over camper shell
fitted onto it.
The white of which was easy to see because it stuck up higher than Trace truck.
(15:16):
But the side of both of them was fading in the dim and darkening hazy light.
We went down the two track till we found our cut down the side toward the truck.
We got to the truck.
And I suddenly felt safe.
Like we were kids out there playing a game at night and this was home base and no one
could touch us.
Those were the rules.
(15:37):
I think we both felt that kind of relief.
We slid the quarters into coolers, our hands shaking in that after scared way that makes
you fumble with clips and lids.
Trace shut the hard tonneau cover over the coolers in the back of his pickup truck and
locked it.
We looked at each other and I said, "You want to go back for the rest tonight?"
(16:02):
Trace hesitated just a second then he said, "Nah, we'll get it in the morning."
I don't mind saying to you that I was relieved when he said that.
We both slept in my camper shell as we usually did and it was parked right next to his truck.
So if anything messed with the tonneau or the coolers, we'd hear it.
(16:23):
But nothing did.
I hardly slept that night though.
Every time I shut my eyes I would hear that offbeat whistle and those measured steps
that didn't care if we heard them.
In the grey just before dawn I got up and I made coffee for us both.
Normally in the mornings we channelled out about what we've got to do that morning and we
(16:45):
just chat in general over coffee, but not that morning.
We didn't talk much.
Truth was neither of us wanted to go back there, meet or no meet.
I know that now, but I didn't know it at the time.
Neither of us wanted to voice that to the other.
I sipped our coffee and got ready to go back where we did not want to go.
(17:09):
Missed leg on the ridge low and heavy that morning.
It smelled like fresh rain, but there hadn't been a drop that fell overnight.
We geared up and silently made our way back to the two tracks on the ridge, then down the
switchbacks that we had walked the night before.
As we did I was looking.
And I saw that no other marks had been put onto that clay since hours the night before.
(17:35):
When we came to where the first rock had been thrown behind us, we got a surprise.
We saw a rock can of several rocks on the side of the two track, not where anyone would
have left a print.
They could have stood off to the side and done it.
The rocks there were smooth and they were neatly stacked.
These were not the jagged rocks from the quarry.
(17:57):
I looked over at Tray and he looked at me and just shook his head like, "Man, don't ask
me.
Just don't ask me because I don't know."
We kept walking.
But the whole time I'm wanting to walk the other way.
I didn't care enough about the rest of the meat to really go back there.
At the bottom the discard from the deer lay just as we had left it.
(18:21):
It was neat, cavity open and clean, everything done respectfully.
What was not like we had left it was the ground to the right where the gut pile should
have been.
It wasn't spread or torn around or coyote picked through.
It was just gone.
Every last bit of it.
(18:43):
Instead there was a layer of leaves over the area in a conspicuous circle.
I moved some with my boot.
Underneath was a circle of blood from the gut pile that had been there.
This blood area had been deliberately covered.
I'd never seen anything like it.
Coyotes don't do that.
(19:04):
Tray said his voice low.
"Nope," I said.
"You think it was kids?" he asked.
I let the silencing answer.
I shook my head no.
There were no boot tracks, no cigarette butts.
No beer bottles or cans.
There was no sloppiness in the area to say a bunch of rabbi teens had been up there or
(19:27):
anyone else at all.
Whoever or whatever did it left us no trace that we could see.
We took note, then headed to our bags up in the trees.
Thankfully they hadn't been touched.
We got them down quickly and we made for tracks out of there.
(19:47):
Our walk out was quiet.
No steps parallel thus that morning.
No rocks pinging behind us.
At the switchback, the little stone stack that had been off to the side of the track gave
us another surprise.
It was larger.
Someone had added to it while we went down to get our meat.
(20:11):
I looked at Tray and started to ask, "Am I wrong or?"
The tray cut me dead.
No, you're not wrong.
It's been added to.
It's got more rocks.
We looked at each other wide eyed.
By now my hackles were fully raised.
I didn't know what was going on, but my head started telling me stories that I'd heard.
(20:36):
Things I'd heard all my life about things that lived in those woods and up in the hills.
I didn't want to hear it.
I just wanted out of there.
We double timed it back to the trucks, just one step short of being a full jog.
And that was tough with the weight of the meat, but we knew better than to run.
(20:57):
Back as the trucks we iced the meat down in the coolers, with ice that was becoming more
water than ice by that point.
We shut the tonneau cover quickly.
I made us another quick cup of coffee before we went.
We leaned up against Tray's truck and looked at the two track and up to the ridge.
We were quiet.
(21:18):
Tray and I had known each other since grade school, so we didn't have to do a lot of chatter
at times if we didn't want to.
That we were both thinking about it.
And we both knew the other was thinking about it.
Finally, Tray broke the silence.
What do you think is going on, man?
(21:39):
I thought for a second.
I had a lot of thoughts on it, but I was going to be very careful about which ones I spoke
out loud.
Finally, I said, "Well, I felt like something was pushing us to get out of that area."
Tray was looking at me steadily.
All he said was, "By what?"
(22:00):
"Well, I said, by whatever knows that bottom better than we do, I guess."
That was just the best I could say.
By that morning, I really did have thoughts that it was probably a big foot.
That kept going through my head all night, especially the rock throwing and then finding
those stacked stones.
I knew those were indicative of folklore I'd heard of big foot.
(22:23):
I just didn't want to say it out loud that morning.
Not that I was afraid or what I was afraid Tray would think.
I just had difficulty with it.
I don't know why, but that's okay.
Because as always, Tray did the thing I couldn't do.
He said it.
"Well, man, my two cents, we ran up against a big foot out there."
(22:47):
He said it quiet, and he didn't look at me when he said that.
He just kept sipping his coffee.
But I knew Tray, and I knew that he put all of his cards out on the table with that one
sentence.
He was good for doing that.
I nodded quickly.
Yes.
I said he could see it, even though he wasn't looking directly at me.
(23:09):
Well I said, "Truth be told."
My thoughts had been running that way since last night.
This wasn't some person out there, and it sure wasn't any animal I know of.
I still can't swear that it was a big foot, but that's how my thoughts are running.
Yes.
Tray said no more.
We just sipped our coffees and didn't speak.
(23:33):
We didn't tell anybody in town about this, except for my dad.
He listened the way a man standing on his porch listens, a little sideways, and he had his
hands in his pockets, and he was kind of quiet until I was done.
Then he looked at me and he said, "Hey, I always told you not to drag through the dark down
there.
(23:53):
Now, didn't I?"
I said, "Yes, sir, you did, and we didn't."
Then he said, "I know, I know, but you still took meat out when it was getting dark."
"I told you don't ever do that, and don't ever do that again.
Ain't worth it, my son."
I nodded at him, and I promised I wouldn't.
I went home thinking how my dad didn't tell me I was crazy, or that there isn't any such
(24:19):
thing, because we spoke the word "bigfoot."
Before I left, I asked if he'd ever seen one out there.
I wondered because he was so quick to agree that it was probably a big foot.
My dad looked at me for a few long seconds, and then all he said was, "Maybe."
Then he shut the conversation down.
(24:40):
I knew I would get the story from him someday, just not that day.
And I did get that story, but this isn't about that.
Maybe some other day, if I have the heart, I'll tell it as best as I can remember what he told
me.
He's now left this earth, but his story stays with me.
A week later, I walked that same ridge alone at noon.
(25:04):
I just had to.
There's nothing so foolish or stubborn as me, and I have a lot more of that stubborn than
I do foolish, I guess, though some would argue.
On those muddy banks by the creek where you usually see all the tracks from all the animals
coming down to drink, there were two marks that I still wanted to admit to really seeing,
(25:26):
probably not even under oath in court.
I keep them close and quiet to me.
Those were very wide prints.
Now, they weren't real pretty, and they weren't real crisp, but they were big.
I've seen bear overstep, and this was not it.
They went from the bank up through the brush and the trees.
(25:48):
I followed them.
They went right to where all of our dear discard had been the week before, but the prints
I was following were very recent.
Brush within the last 24 hours I was sure.
Like it had kept going back there, looking for seconds and thirds, or maybe sixthes and
sevenths, I don't even know how many after a whole week, but it had kept going back, looking
(26:13):
for food I was sure.
The prints were clear, and they circled the area, and all of it had been trampled heavily
and overstepped a hundred times.
But I still knew those were not bear claw prints.
And the area kept that bad smell there, too.
Yes, I smelled the rotting blood soaked into the ground, and there were bits of rotting
(26:35):
carcass here and there.
But that musky, earthy animal scent laid over everything.
It was very strong.
I thought carefully before using the word Bigfoot to my dad, and I didn't want to say it
first to tray because, well, television in the internet have made the name kind of
(26:56):
slippery, slimy, like some kind of joke, but it isn't.
I don't have all the answers for everything in this world, but I do know one thing strong
and true.
Whatever was in the woods with us that night was a thinking creature.
I have respect for it, and I do not live in fear of it.
(27:17):
I still carry the exact same gun I've carried in those woods all my life.
I just swivel my head a lot more when I'm out there, and I listen harder to the unexpected
silences, more so than I do with sounds.
Me and tray have modified our call whistle, something harder to mimic.
And we've agreed on what to do if we think something is trying to mimic us.
(27:42):
When I clean a deer now, I don't drag long and never at night.
I pick a good ground.
I pack up tidy.
And when I leave a gut pile, I make sure I leave it clean like a gift to nature.
Every once in a while, while I'm out there working in my shed with the radio on low, and
my old dog is snoring by the door, I think about the small rocks that were sure to miss us
(28:07):
deliberately.
I think about the steps that were in no hurry and how something did a really good job
of mimicking our whistle on the very first try.
One night I dream, I'm out there on the two track again that day, and I'm getting rocks
thrown behind me.
I swear to you, in that dream I can hear a deep, gravely voice telling me, "Leave,
(28:32):
leave, leave."
It chants to me until I finally wake up, wondering if I actually heard it that day, and I've
maybe forgotten it.
I'm going to close this by saying, "If you're ever standing over your tag and you're
busy with your work, and something circles just beyond the edge of your sight, you do your
(28:54):
work right, keep your voice low, you be thankful, and make sure you say thanks, be respectful,
and be quick, and always leave a gift nice and neat."
Then you leave quickly, the way the woods and your watcher have already asked you to do.
(29:15):
One night I dream, I'm out there on the two track again that day, and I'm getting rocks thrown
behind me.
I swear to you, in that dream I can hear a deep, gravely voice telling me, "Leave, leave, leave."
(29:38):
It chants to me until I finally wake up, wondering if I actually heard it that day, and I've
probably forgotten it.
I'm going to close this by saying, "If you're ever standing over your tag and you're
busy with your work, and something circles just beyond the edge of your sight, you do
your work right, keep your voice low, you be thankful, and make sure you say thanks, be respectful,
(30:05):
and be quick, and always leave a gift nice and neat."
Then you leave quickly, the way the woods and your watcher have already asked you to do.
Some messages come in words, and some come in silence and rocks being thrown that you
can't see.
(30:26):
If you ever do find yourself quartering out at last light, and the timber answers your whistle
just a little bit wrong, mind the boundaries, pack up tidy, and leave what you must like
a gift.
And when the woods are something tells you to go, to leave, you listen up.
Take what you can in your pack, leave the rest.
(30:48):
Thank you, my Sasquad, for riding along with me tonight into Sasquadch Valley.
It's always better with your company, and I really liked tonight's ride.
I hope you do too.
Listen up.
Until the next time, please always remember.
Absence of Proof is not proof of absence.
And your best mind the messages you get from the woods.
(31:11):
Thanks for listening.
(groaning)
(upbeat music)
[Music]
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