Hunter Encounters Massive Figure in Hells Canyon—and Everything He Knew Falls Apart | Idaho - Bigfoot Society

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to Big for Society, and I'm Jeremiah Byron.
In this show, we go beyond the campfire stories to
bring you first hand encounters from people who say they've
seen something impossible. From backwoods trails and remote mountain haulers
to quiet farms and crowded highways. The stories come from everywhere,
and each one leaves us with more questions than answers.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
These are the.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
Voices of the people who've lived it. To settle in,
because today you'll hear another account that just might change
the way you see the woods forever.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
So stay with us, all right, Big for Society.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
You've got the privilege of talking to Jeffrey today. Jeffrey
is a pastor, outdoorsman, a big game hunter, a lot
of things going on in the outdoors realm. Welcome to
the show, Jeffrey. How are you doing today, sir?

Speaker 3 (00:45):
You're very good?

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Thank you awesome?

Speaker 1 (00:47):
And you you listened to the show over on the
YouTube side, Is that right?

Speaker 3 (00:52):
Yes? I do. I catch you a couple episodes a week,
a lot of the older ones. We have very interesting.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
Show, perfect thank you. Thank you so much for doing that.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Jeffrey.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
We have definitely some interesting things to talk about. But
we were talking a little bit beforehand before we recording started,
and we are going to go You're actually going to
start your story back a little bit earlier, talk about
your how you were introduced really to bigfoot in general,
and then we'll go from there. So feel free to
take it away at Jeffrey and take us back to

(01:23):
when this all started for you.

Speaker 3 (01:26):
Yeah, very good. Yeah. So my father was a big
game hunter and got me into it, and he used
to take a lot of trips out of town when
I was little, and I think one of my earliest
memories was when I was about four and him packing
up his gear to go on a hunting trip into
the after neil deer and elk into the rocky mountains
and such. And so it's been a part of my

(01:48):
life the outdoors, has hunting, fishing, hiking, and been very
successful as an outdoorsman in a hunter my life, which
has put me out there in the woods a lot,
in the mountains and the rockies to experience a lot
of the natural beauty of the world and such. And

(02:08):
I remember when my dad got back from one of
his trips, he for the first time and the only
time in my memory. He decided to take the family
to the movie theater, and so I was I was
like five or six years old, pretty excited to get
to go to the movie theater. This was back in
the sixties and so interesting. What was the movie going

(02:31):
to be? It was a double feature Bigfoot and Cougar Country,
and of all things, my dad wanted to go see Bigfoot,
the Patterson Gimli film, and that's where I saw that
in a theater when I was about six years old,
and it was it's fascinating. I had to say, I
was much more interested in the Patterson Gimblin film that

(02:53):
I was. The Cougar Country that was boring after seeing
Bilkford running across the screen like that. So that was
my first exposure to it. And what was interesting then
shortly after that, of course, being back in the sixty
thirty five millimeter film My dad was not a photographer.
He carried around his little pocket cameras that it would

(03:15):
click through manually click through, and so he took that
hunting with him, take pictures of his trips and such.
And he brought out a photograph and it was snowy
background up in the mountains and cross there and he said,
he showed it to me, and he said, oh, won't
you look at that, see that spot right there, because
I think that was like a juvenile bigfoot. Of course,

(03:36):
I think he used a small kid or child bigfoot.
I'm only six. Juvenile wasn't, but that's what he was implying.
And I'm looking at this thing, and I look at
that photo for a while, and he says, yeah, it
was there most of the morning. And of course, I
to this day, I'm not sure what I saw in
that photograph, but I remember those I remember that vividly

(04:00):
is him showing that photo. And I don't even know
where that photo is at today. It's a little too
late now to be asking my father about it. Maybe
when my mother passes away, I'll be able to rummage
through all the hundreds and hundreds of old photos and
find it. But well, it was interesting about it, as
I got later in life, when you what is that
term when faces are figures and things that aren't there

(04:22):
with it, paradolia? Ye, yeah, as I looked, as I
remember back and looking into that photo, that effect wasn't
in play at all. There was, and so it wasn't
like a trick of shadows he was showing me or
anything in my mind, and what I saw there was
something else there that you know, because for me it

(04:44):
was hard for me to even pick it out. So
I don't think he was showing me so much a
trick of the shadows, but maybe there was something there,
And I wish I had the photo. I wish I
could ask him. But never talked about bigfoot again after that.
It was not a subject. And of course over the
years he got me out in the mountains with him,
hunting and fishing and stuff, and never really was they

(05:08):
put a concern or even a thought. It was interesting idea.
But by the time I was in my mid twenties
getting towards the later twenties, I'd spent countless hours in
the mountains back when I was During up to that
time in my life, I had a about thirty hour
week job, and when I wasn't working, I was hunting

(05:30):
or fishing and sleeping in my car up in the
mountain with a fishing pole or a boat or a
rifle or a shotgun or something. And I'd come home
and shower and to take off into work and then
repeat that process over again. I lived to be in
the mountains and spending the night alone in the mountains
as a guy that I would leave camp and when

(05:52):
we would go on our hunting trips with my father,
I'd leave camp at six before sun came up, and
I can get back till after the sun went down.
I got something. So I spent hours out in the
dark and such, never had any experiences whatsoever. It was
a week or two ago. You had a gentleman on
that was up at Loon Lake in Idaho, up above McCall. Yeah,

(06:16):
and I hunted. I spent all my years below south
of Loon Lake, down between there and the Boys area
and over to Hills Canyon or the west of that,
in that block of area, and so that's where all
my experiences take place when I began to actually maybe
experience some big foot encounters, not a lot. I hunted

(06:41):
there for in that area for nearly forty years, and
there's only two or three maybe times when I really
thought I was experiencing something. But so it was my
later twenties and I'm up hunting. I got rifle season,
I got a elk tag and a bear tag, and
I drive up head out in a couple of miles

(07:04):
off the road and to get out there overlook a
canyon before dark, and I'm sitting there and it was
about three hundred yard maybe three fifty yards across this
canyon where the trees would break out into some heavy brush,
and I'm watching the shill side open a nice bowl.
We walk out and I see movement across the canyon,

(07:26):
just on the edge of the trees. Later in the evening,
and the sun's cutting through the mountain peaks and through
some clouds and patchy light, and so I caught movement.
I put my binoculars up and I see a flash
of dark black so a medium. Thinking that's a bear.
There's a bear over there. Bear seasons still open. I've
got a tag. So I catch another glimpse through my

(07:47):
binoculars and yeah, this is definitely not an ol, definitely
not a deer. Based on just the glimpses I'm getting
it can't be either one of those creatures. So it
has to be a bear. So I get my rifle up,
start looking and forming the scope, and he's moving up
the canyon across the way from me, and as I'm
watching him, I get it the sun. He goes in

(08:08):
a sunny spot, and I've never seen a full body
because of the He's on the edge where the brush is,
and so I'm kind of looking through brush, hoping he'll
step out this barrel'll step out and give me a
good shot. He's moving swift, which is kind of surprising.
I don't think any other hunters around, so I can't
figure out why he'd be moving so quickly off this canyon.
But he's moving quick, and like I said, he stepped

(08:29):
out just a little bit of that. I've caught this
glisten of off his back and it's an orange, just
blondish color I caught and I think, okay, even better,
this is a phase bear. It's a bear, not black.
It's off phase, which will make a really nice a
nice trophy. So it's getting excited. I'm tracking him and
see glimpses, trying to wait for him to give me
that good shoulder shot. And then I begin to see

(08:52):
things that don't make sense. I'm like, where I think
I see ahead, I don't see any years. I think
I see a rump, it's out a position, or a shoulders.
Shoulders seems to be too high up above it is
back in, But I'm never seeing the whole body, and
I keep looking at this thing through the scope and

(09:13):
then I see what I think is completely out of place,
like an arm swinging by, and a bear's front legs
just don't look like that. There's not long enough to
resemble an arm the front legs or when he especially
he's moving quickly, they're going to be down on the ground.
And the position was just not making sense to me,
and it began to really concern me. And after I

(09:36):
saw a couple more glances of things that just weren't
making sense, I began worried maybe I'd been out of
my rifle on another hunter. But that didn't make it
sense either. It was moving too quickly, too smooth, just
that that gate that just was effortless. As he went
up the canyon, climbing, climbing the edge of that canyon,

(09:57):
still in the brush in the trees, I could see
him weaving in and out of that, and it was
just it was mind boggling, and it really unnerved me
because I felt like, oh, no, I've had my rifle
pointed at another man, another hunter for the last two
or three minutes, and so I pulled down the rifle
and put the binoculars up and watched him for going

(10:19):
in and out of the brush for probably another two
or three minutes, and then it was gone. Never saw it,
never heard a thing, which isn't unusual of it that
a bear can be very quiet. They have pads rather
than hoods, so they don't break branches or anything like
a deer or an elk, wood, especially an elk, so
they are very quiet animals. But the whole it really

(10:40):
was a sickening feeling in my stomach to think I
had just that maybe I had pointed my rifle at
another person. But I couldn't reconcile it. It wasn't. It
couldn't reconcile it definitely wasn't a deer. It definitely wasn't
an elk at the time, I thought, but it had
to be a bear. It couldn't. But it didn't look

(11:00):
like it bear. And so I will go back. I
go back. That's getting dark. So I walk out of
there in the dark, back to my back to my vehicle.
And my plan was to spend the night there. I
wasn't much for camping. I when you're young, you sleep
anywhere anyhow, So I'm just like man lay the seat
back and calk out for the night, get up and

(11:22):
grab a few donuts and the jug of milk, and
head up to the hills again. How I operated, I
wanted to be mobile in case I didn't see anything,
I could move on. It was hunting with such a
such a thing in my blood, in my life, I
just that was more important than it than a good camp.
So I spent the night there and I got up
the next morning, and I really had trouble sleeping. It

(11:45):
was really whether it was the excitement, whether it was
the nerves of how upset I was that I had
maybe had my rifle pointed at a human, which was
completely I don't know if you've ever had an experience
like that, but it's very unnerving, especially for somebody who
has drilled gun safety and weapons safety their whole life.

(12:07):
So the next day I circle back around. I decided
to go across the canyon to where I saw this
what I thought was a bear, and I'm going to
go look for sign and see if maybe I can
find maybe he's back in the area. Maybe I'll redeem
myself and actually see that he was a bear. But
I get over there and i'd never been across this
canyon before. This is a place that I was newly exploring.

(12:29):
And I get over there and I'm walking. I walk
up and down that ridge for a couple hours, on
the edges of the trees, and I couldn't even see
where I was. I couldn't look across the can and
see where I was sitting because the brush was too tall,
and I could not find a place anywhere where a bear,
a deer, or an elk would have been tall enough

(12:49):
for me to have seen it where this thing was walking.
And it was after a couple hours of search I
gave up and completely baffled that the idea that I
possibly was seen in a sasquatch at the time, I
couldn't even it didn't even come to my mind. I

(13:12):
wasn't there. I'd spent how many I'd already at this point,
I'd spend fifteen years alone in the mountains all the time.
Even when my dad would take me hunt as a
young kid, we'd split up and i'd take off by myself.
He'd take off and have a plan. So I was
used to being in the woods alone, and never once
did I ever think, Oh, I hope I don't run
into a big foot, and so the thought that this

(13:33):
thing could have been a bigfoot or a saucequatch, it
just never occurred to me. And it wasn't until recently
that I began to realize in coming to terms with
what I had seen, because nothing else fits the scenario.
There's no body, no person, no creature, no animal that
could have moved and been that tall to have seen

(13:53):
over the brush. Anything else in that particular area where
he was going up and down the canyon would and
I would have been out of sight, would have been
hidden behind the brush. So, like I said, it probably
wasn't until in the last year that I've really figured
out that maybe that was a first encounter I've had
with a sasquatch. Now and I rolled forward about another

(14:15):
ten years in my mid thirties, and again I'm hunting,
and I've been hunting all these years too much, honey,
it's my whole. That was my hobby. It was I
was working or I was hunting. At that point in
my life. I wasn't even really a pastor or slightly
involved in church ancillary, but that wasn't really a driver.

(14:36):
But it was about ten years later in me and
my dad, this is a spot that I'd hunted a
lot and a favorite one of my hunting places. I
would I had my particular route I would take up
into the hills. It was an all day hike. I
would leave camp, like I said before, the sun came up,
hike all day and come back and hit camp after
the sun had dropped, so I could be out where
the animals were, and so i'd climbed the sales. It

(14:59):
was an nice day, sunshiny day. Get up and it's
about ten ten o'clock, ten thirty in the morning, and
I come to the one of the first areas where
I would usually sit down and take a mid morning break,
overlooking a nice canyon where I'd seen deer and out before.
And so I'm looking down over that canyon and behind
me is the trail I came in on, and it

(15:21):
goes down into extremely brushy, brushy canyon which I never saw.
You hear, yeah, you could hear them from twenty fifty
one hundred yards away if they went through there. It
was so thick with brush. And I'm sitting so I
sat down. I'm sitting behind this nice big tree I
usually sit under where I can see the canyon. Get out,
get out a little snack for breakfast. Sat there for

(15:42):
maybe ten minutes and something thumps to the ground and
the bushes about ten feet to my right, and I
look over and I don't see anything that hit there,
but on my first instinct, this was a big pine cone,
maybe fell out of the tree. So I'm looking up
looking see the tree had pine cones in a big
pine corona cones that would make that kind of thumping noise,

(16:05):
or maybe I would see a squirrel up there. But
usually when you're that close to squirrels in the mountains,
they're chattering at you. They don't want you, they see you,
they get scared, they chatter at you. Then every squirrel
in the area knows there's somebody there that belong but
there's no chattering of squirrels. And so I sit there,
and probably five minutes later, something else stumps right next

(16:28):
to me in the same spot, about ten feet away,
and I look over and I see this rock about
the size of a golf ball bounce into the brush.
There's somebody behind me throwing rocks at me. And I
pride myself on being really sneaky in the woods. I
don't want the animals to know I'm there. I don't

(16:48):
want other hunters to know I'm there. I like to
get in and get out. If I see other hunters
and they don't see me, that's an a that's a
goal of mine, not to be seen, to be just
part of the wilderness. So that I would be sitting
there quietly concealed behind this tree and somebody hunter throwing
rocks at me. That was a disappointing. So I sit
there real quietly, and now I'm paying more attention to

(17:11):
listening for what's behind me. And another one plops in
same spot about the same size rock. Are they all right?
This is weird. So the tree is large enough where
you can't see me from the other side, and I'm
able to stand up real slowly, and my idea is

(17:31):
to just peer around this tree and figure out who's
throwing rocks at me. I want to know who's this
other hunter that would have the nerve to start throwing
rocks at me and the trees in the woods. That's
not something you do. It's like kind of joker, is this?
Maybe it's I know a couple of guys that hunt
up there. Maybe one of them saw me, And so
I stand up, and I slowly leaned my head out

(17:52):
to look around this tree, and I don't see anything.
And I'm standing there and all I'm just got my
head hooking out behind this tree, just looking and looking.
I don't see anything. So I stepped back in behind
that tree and I'm listening real carefully. I don't hear
anything another rock. And now this is like, all right,

(18:16):
I'm frustrated. Now I just walk out and start walking
in that direction. I don't see, I don't hear anything,
nothing what throws rocks? So I hunt the rest of
the day. I get back to camp. Never saw anything,
never hurt anything. That was all there. It was. And
so I get back to camp and I said, Dad,

(18:37):
I said, did you see any hunters come up the
ridge I was on? Because I would always hunt my ridge.
He would hunt his ridge this kind of how we
did it, and we would and he always hunted. He
didn't go up nearly as eye on the ridges as
I did, me being younger and healthier, and I would
go up higher. And he didn't hunt quite as hard
as me. And he said, no, I didn't see anybody else,
as when you see anybody maybe park down along the

(18:59):
just work from him where he would hunt. He could
see down at the road and kind of the typical
parking spots where people might park or camp or pull
over to to hunt up the ridges in that area.
Would you see anybody? I saw a couple of people
drive by, but they never stopped, kind of rolled along
real slow road hunting. But you know, nobody ever got out.
He says, Wow, So somebody is up there throwing rocks

(19:19):
at me. He's like, I didn't see anybody. I said,
where were you at? It said, I was over here
all day on my ridge, And so again it's it
was perplexing. The thought that it could have been a
bigfoot never crossed my mind. I'd never even heard that
it was. Again until the last few months. As I
began to just look into the phenomena of bigfoot, I

(19:43):
learned that they throw rocks. Now these are smaller rocks.
And now, as I look back, I probably snuck in there,
sat down behind my tree, and this thing just wanted
to know what I was and what I was doing there.
It seemed because as a hunter, I've been hunting in
seen a brush pocket or something, and I thought maybe
there was deer in there. But I was in the

(20:05):
Great Advantage spot. So I would take a big rock
and throw it down in there and see if I
could bust a deer out of there or something whatever
was in there, get him to come out so I
could see it. I kind of got the feeling as
I look back at he was probably just trying to
do that. He just wanted to see who was sitting
there behind that tree, what I was doing. Anyone is curious,

(20:26):
That's the feeling I got out. Do I know that,
absolutely not. I don't read bigfoot minds. A'm not a
I'm really good at understanding how deer and elk and
bear operate in the woods, but sasquatch or beyond me.
But it just felt like whoever was there or whatever
they're doing, maybe they were just trying to get my attention.
Maybe they wanted me to step out so they could

(20:46):
see me, see what I was up to. And now
that I put it on place, it makes sense there
was nobody else there. It's impossible. I never heard a
sound I walked in that direction, never heard her sitting,
and I didn't see anything. I'm thinking this thing had
to be a SA squad. And again I think back

(21:10):
on that now so I started. I started, I don't know,
I kind of run out of things to watch on TV.
All the Netflix shows you want to watch, it done
in that downtime, and I got YouTube up. I like
to watch a lot of different things on YouTube about
bushcraft and watch hunters and carpentry work and all kinds
of stuff. I got plenty of many interests, and so

(21:31):
YouTube is a great place to go. I come across
some bigfoot stuff and in my mind, I'm an analytical person.
I'm like, man, I've been in the mountains for ever,
and like I said, six eight months ago, I was like,
there's no bigfoot. They're not real. They'd be cool if
they were, but they can't be real. I would have
seen one in all the years of hunting. And then

(21:56):
I caught what interests. What I really started watching is
many of the shows with Meldrum on him, who, as
I understand, recently passed away, but anyway, as a professor
with his scientific approach to studying their footprints. So that
interested me. All right, now we have a legitimate professor
who's doing in some tiny scientific studies on the footprints,

(22:18):
and he's convinced there's something out there. I forget exactly
how he used to say it, but he says there's
some unknown bipedal primate out there making some of these tracks.
They're not some of these are not fake. And so
it got me interested. So I began to watch it,
and I read about or what watch these shows about
how they would throw those rocks, and I think, my gosh,

(22:42):
this that's it. That's what was happening. No other creature
in the woods throws rocks except a person or I
guess now sasquatch. And there's no way it was a person.
And I also watched I'm Gonna Throw I don't know
that there's really any experts on sasquatch. I know people

(23:04):
spend a lot of time studying them, but the evidence
is somewhat mostly fut prints. Obviously great evidence, but when
you get into the the court system and when you
really want to find evidence that firsthand visual experiences is
a week, it is one of the weaker forms of evidence.

(23:25):
I'm convinced that I saw something unusual that day when
that had to be, but wasn't a bear. There's nothing
fits it. And I'm also convinced that nothing else has
ever thrown rocks at me. In the woods ever that
there's something going on, But anyway, I think, how did

(23:48):
it get away from me? And then I began to
hear stories about how they would they would sometimes move
around on all fours really swiftly, or I think I
heard wanting was crab walking, and I think, how could
this creature elude someone who's experienced in me hunting? And
to give the context, I think I shot my first year.

(24:09):
And I don't want to offend anybody who might listen
who's opposed to hunting. I understand that, and it's not
my intent to offend anybody with this, But I shot
my first dear when I was fifteen, and up until
laid in my fifties, I shot at least one deer
or an elk or a bear every year of my life,
so nearly forty over forty years of successful hunting every year.

(24:36):
So i'm I would say, I'm prett accomplished at it.
And none of them were all of them self guided,
so it's not like it's one of those guys that
pay somebody five thousand dollars to put me in a
deer standing kills say these were all self guided, just
me and my dad or me by myself or a
couple of friends, the hunting in the mountains, but I'd
never seen anything. And then people at people say, where's

(24:58):
the skeletal evidence, where's the carcass? Why I haven't found
a dead one? How many I've spent over forty years
in the mountains. You know how many bear carcasses I found? Zero?
And you know what, there's gotta be a everybody agrees
there's more bear in the Rocky mountains than there are
big foot. You know how many cougars I've found dead? Zero?

(25:23):
I found plenty of deer, plenty of olk that were
killed by various weeds, maybe by wolves or disease or automobiles.
But never have I ever found a carcass that was
a bear or an olk. So excuse me, a bar
of cougar. So why would I expect to ever find
a dead scott sasquatch. They would have to be more

(25:44):
rare in order to escape our attention. So I don't
see that as as really an argument for why they
don't exist. And like I said to having watched that one,
and I'm assuming it was a big foot now these
many years later, as it crossed the canyon, I think
about the way it moved, and that's the fluid nature

(26:04):
of its movement and how quickly you could shift directions
and shift his but so fluidly. When I hear about
these people that think the bigfoots there and it disappears,
I've seen Elk do that, and they're not magical. These
things are. Elk can be like a ghost, they can
sound like a freight train, or they can just slip

(26:25):
away like a ghost. And even Elk can do that
with his giant hoofs that crack and smash prelimbs on
the ground. Then why couldn't soft footed sasquatch maneuver better, faster, quicker,

(26:45):
designed for that type of thing. So I don't know.
While I never I didn't have a lot of experiences,
I can't. I can't rule out the the abilities of
these things. And as I said earlier in the meaning,
I'm a pastor and I had been a pastor for

(27:08):
in the ministry for over twenty years now, and I
can I don't know. I think there's maybe this does
maybe they thought of a bigfoot, or I'll throw it
out there, or space aliens would would cause somebody to
stumble in their faith about about about God or their
belief and it doesn't I don't. It doesn't have to.

(27:29):
And you can go back in history and look at
what the Church has done to science. Galileo was he
was a labeled heretic because of his of his belief
in his identification of the solar system that the Sun
was at the center and not Earth, and early Christians
fell away, We're the most important thing got made, so

(27:52):
obviously the whole universe revolves around us, and so he
was labeled a heretic. And another gentleman about the same
time period Gerdano Bruno, who was a philosopher and a cosmologist.
He was burned at the state in the Inquisition in
Rome because he would not recant from the heresty of

(28:13):
believing that the universe was infinite. So I went through
a time in my I'm going to get it into
a little spiritual side because I think it's important for
Christians and people they don't have to you don't have
to discount God, or you don't have to lose faith
in God because of a bigfoot aliens. Yeah, because yeah,

(28:34):
I mean it's Christians and scientists have been at odds
many times in history, but God in science has never been.
God created science. He created quantum physics, He created space
and time. He is not bound by space and time.
He created all that there is. He created an infinite universe,
and we're the only people in it. We're the only humans,

(28:55):
only beings in it. That he died for That Christ
died for great then he created us an infinite universe
because he loves us so much and he's so powerful.
If he wanted to see this magnificent universe and he
wanted us to experience the greatness of who he is.
But if he put a million other planets out there
across the expanse of an infinite universe, and he's present

(29:17):
on all of them, the Bible doesn't talk about that.
The Bible doesn't say yes or no, just like the
Bible doesn't have any stance on whether Bigfoot is real
or not. We don't have to allow these things to
shake us spiritually or in our Christian faith at all.
And because the Church has historically made some big blunders

(29:38):
on science, having excommunicated the Galileo who was proven right,
and so was Bruno who was burned at the Steak,
I would like people to realize that you don't have
to an experience of any nature, doesn't have to any
way take away from your faith in God out there

(29:58):
mutually acceptable. Yeah, at least nobody's ever found me yet exactly.

Speaker 1 (30:04):
And I'm a Christian as well. And the way, because
I've thought about this a lot too, and the way
I also look at it is so if you look
at the Bible, you look at the whole thing, you
think of all the stuff that's happened in it. There's
a lot of weird stuff in it. There's a lot
of not normal things in there, And so why do

(30:28):
we not expect there to be weird stuff and stuff
out of the ordinary in our world today? That type
of thinking just does not make sense to me. How
people can be okay with okay, yeah, just really behemoth
in the Old Testament and just different things like that,

(30:50):
and then today we don't have that anymore, I don't think.

Speaker 3 (30:53):
So.

Speaker 1 (30:53):
I think it's not crazy to think that there could
be things like Bigfoot or you could talk about other
cryptids involved with that as well. And now there's different
ways to look into that. On the religious side, there's
people that think maybe they're demons, maybe they are giants,
or nephilim or There's so many different ways to think

(31:15):
about what Bigfoot could be on the religious side, But
do you have any thoughts about is that anything you've
ever thought of trying to figure out how that fits
into your worldview?

Speaker 3 (31:30):
Yeah, no, it's I have. I have quite a bit
of thought on that, and I'm pretty confident in my
position on it, and that is that what one hundred
and fifty years ago, in the last one hundred fifty years, gorillas,
gorilla would be that wasn't it was believed not to exist.
One hundred fift years ago. On hundred ft years ago,

(31:52):
you'd talk about gorillas in the giant squid. You would
have been talking to fairy tales in monsters that weren't real.
Yet they'd both proven out to be real. And when
I think about Bigfoot, all right, so the likelihood of
a sasquatch being real living in the world, if I

(32:14):
look at it just intellectually, it's probably pretty low probability
that it could be. But if one shows up, then wow,
God created this creature that could hide, is so giant,
so big, so powerful, that could hide from us seemingly
in our backyards, just out in the mountains and out

(32:36):
in the trees in the forest. He made a spectacular creature.
Here would I Why would I be anything but excited
about what he did? And and people talk about the
possibility of Bigfoot being like a Nephelom or a giant
from old Yeah, first off, nephelm is a very controversial

(32:59):
so object to all theologians, and it has been for
hundreds of years. Somebody wants to hypothesize that Sasquatch could
be Nephlum. I'm okay with that. It's a non from
a Christian perspective. It's a nonsalvation issue. In other words,
if you believe it or you don't believe, you're going
to heaven. Either way, one belief or the other is
not going to keep you from heavens Okay, fine, believe that.

(33:21):
I tend to not go that route just because I
don't because it is such a controversial subject in Nephlom.
And I don't see scripture that really. I sometimes I
think scripture used like when they were talking about when
they're about to cross the Jordan for the first time
into the Promised Land. They came back and they were

(33:43):
talking about the giants and the Nephlum. I think that
was more of a metaphorical statement about the size of
these people. But you know what, if we had ran
in Shaquille O'Neil back then, we would have thought we
ran into a giant. And giants were there even under
David's time, when Goliath and his four brothers obviously very large,
very large people. But we have very large people today.

(34:06):
So do I think they're That's something I don't think.
So I don't think it fits. I don't think if
it's by believed. But again, I definitely would not want,
ever want to divide over that or call somebody anything
other than that's. That's fine, It's okay believe. Now, Could
they be the giants of old from the Old Testament
and such? I doubt it. I'm more inclined to believe

(34:27):
that they're I don't know. That's I don't know, But
I say, I don't have to fit it into a
Christian worldview. All I have to do is look at
it from the perspective. Does the Bible exclude or specifically
include the possibility, And it's silent on the subject as
far as I can tell, So I don't The Bible

(34:49):
doesn't it's not a scientific book. It's not meant to
be scientific. If you go back to the whole debate
about know we're getting off track, but I think it
creates worldview perspective about Christianity and Sasquatch. But the whole
debate about youngers old you know, olders. I don't think
the early Israeli prior to the Israelites, when from the

(35:12):
time of Adam and Eve, whether you believe it's metaphorical
Adam and Eve or literal, I don't want to get
into that debate. But from then on, by word of mouth,
by family talking, they passed down through the generations up
until Moses came along and wrote it down, the tales
of the early life on Earth and the Garden and

(35:32):
the creation. Do you think that the Israelites had any
reason to understand what thirteen point seven billion years was.
They counted maybe one hundred and fifty sheep at a
time they were They could not have comprehended thirteen point
seven billion. So God is not going to then incorporate

(35:53):
into their theology the idea that the universe is thirteen
point seven billion years old, young Earth older. We can
debate that all we want but it's not a scientific journal.
It's not meant to be. It's a spiritual book that
takes the life of the events in people's lives and
teaches spiritual and moral lessons for us to see. And

(36:15):
it's inspired by God. I believe that hundred percent, no
doubt it's God. If God could create the heavens, in
the earth and the universe, he could definitely preserve his
word from the time that Moses began to write it
until all the other prophets. It would be a simple
matter for the creator of the universe to maintain his
word through history. Oh sure, I don't have to doubt. Yeah,
I don't have to doubt it's legitimacy. But that's one

(36:36):
of the things I left out. And maybe you have
some more questions on what we're just talking about, but
I just want to throw it out to refer to
forget since that first encounter where that bear sasquatch, Dear help,
whatever that thing was that did not fit in any
of my pictures of what animals should look like, that
has such an impact on me emotionally that to this day,

(37:02):
whenever I have a dream about hunting and I bag
an animal, that creature. What I get was I begin
to walk up towards it, it begins to morph and
change into a human. It was very upsetting for me.
I think that maybe expresses how upsetting it was for
me that I had pointed my rifle at something that

(37:23):
maybe was a person and now it was a sausquatch.
I've come to believe now that maybe that's what I
was seeing, because it was very upsetting for me. And
I don't think that was I don't think that's a
spiritual event. I don't think the saucequatch caused those dreams.
I think it was the emotion and how dreadful it
was that I had pointed my rifle at what could
have been a human. So, yeah, even today when I

(37:44):
have dreams about hunting, they always morph into a human
when I get there wearing antlers or its slowly just
change and it's very unnerving, nerving dream.

Speaker 2 (37:55):
So that is really interesting, And that's happened for years.

Speaker 3 (37:57):
Then, oh, yeah, it's happened for yeah, twenty five thirty years.
I had least fie dreams.

Speaker 1 (38:05):
Yeah, talking about the canyon sighting that you had, so
you went over to the other side, You're seeing that
the brush was really high, So were you able to
estimate then how tall whatever that was would have had
to have been in order for you to see it.

Speaker 3 (38:24):
That brush from where it could have walked. I could
never There was only a few places where I could
look through the brush clearly and see where I had
been sitting across it. And I'm six foot, so that
means most of the there's only two or three spots
where the brush was low enough for me to see,
and a lot of it was seventy eight feet tall,

(38:48):
So I would have to estimate that it was over
six foot easy could have been seven. It's really hard
to tell, but it had to be at least that tall. Yeah,
otherwise I would have seen it at all.

Speaker 1 (39:00):
So this, I believe you said it was at Hell's Canyon.
Is this on the border that area?

Speaker 3 (39:08):
Yeah? Yeah, it's on the border of Idaho and Washington.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (39:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (39:14):
And have you looked to see if anyone else has
had experiences similar to that in that area or heard
any other things?

Speaker 3 (39:24):
Very little, there's very little and remind me and everything.
I want to go back to that my dad's hunting,
But I'm going to touch on this topic here. You
were talking about very little. And as I I use
this term loosely research to say that I've researched, it
would be it would be an insult to true scientists.
Two researchers. But having looked at like all the sites

(39:46):
I could find on bigfoot sightings and stuff, most of
the sidings tend to be north of the McCall at
Loon Lake area north of that, and then of course west,
so we're into Washington, and then when you get over
into Oregon, they tend to be more on the western
edge of Oregon. And if you're not familiar with the train,

(40:10):
I've driven out all that area a lot, from here
to Oregon coast, from here up in the Washington and
I've been thinking a lot about this give a context
to why I think what I'm going to say is
one of my primary ways of hunting is to hunt
the migration routes. I try to figure out where the
animals will migrate, where they'll shift from the high country

(40:31):
to the low country, trying to get their patterns and
how they move. And I try to set myself up
in those locations with the idea that today I see
nothing tomorrow as it gets later in the year. It's
only going to increase my odds, and it's proven to
be very successful. So I think a lot about the
weather when I'm in the mountains. I think a lot
about the terrain and the funnels where the animals will move.

(40:53):
And it has occurred to me as I was looking
at all this and reading about the Sasquatch, and you'll
notice at least this section of the state where I
spend all my time south of acall over to Hell's
Canyon and down, it's very dry. Even when you're in
the trees. It's much drier than when you get up
into northern Idaho. And of course if you go off

(41:16):
to the coast into California, they're off the Pacific side
of the continent where you're getting a lot more moisture
in those California redwoods and a lot more moisture. There
are a ton of moisture on the Oregon coast leading
up into the until you get over towards Bake Baker
and then it starts to get dry. And you'll see
that also in Washington kind of loops around. The cold

(41:40):
the dampness kind of loops around up north into northern Idaho.
I've heard it said that sasquatch red scene and videos
tend to go where there's bear, there could be sasquatched.
I think so. I honestly, I think if I look
at the patterns, I kind of see more that they
want the more moisture. They want moisture areas, and so

(42:01):
where I'm at, it's dry, and it's a lot of
high mountain desert, a lot of sagebrush, and then you
just touch into the trees, and so a lot of
what I saw my experiences were at the edges of
the trees above the sagebrush, that kind of that transition
area with animals. Saying so, I think, and the reason
we don't see a lot of activity in this particular

(42:23):
area is because it's more of a pass through area.
They may come through. Maybe you got a young male
looking for a new location to hang out because he's
more populated, he's adventuring. But I don't think it's like
an area they would hang out in. I think they
want someplace a little more moist And I think down
this stretch along this lower half of Idaho, it's a

(42:44):
little dry, and I think they would want to again
do I know this, I have speculation totally speculation, but
that's where I'm thinking the activity is going to be
in more moist areas.

Speaker 2 (42:55):
Yeah, absolutely, if you look.

Speaker 1 (42:58):
I've tried to come up with formulas like, Okay, how
do I figure out what are the most squatchy areas
in the US. And there was this great Actually there's
a great article about it on ANYWAC site or a
wood ape site where they talk about how most sightings
happen when I believe it's over, it's a certain amount

(43:22):
of annual rainfall and it might be thirty six around there.
I'd have to look it up again, but that is
an interest. So if you take that into consideration, yeah,
the weather place is gonna be I think you have
more of a chance for sure. But the only thing
I was able to find about Hell's Canyon as I

(43:43):
did a little research too, is a gentleman who talks
about he's a guy into Bigfoot names Owa, he Jack,
He's got a cool website. He was writing atv up
lind Saddle around Hell's Canyon in Idaho and had a
all of a sudden got a feeling like do not

(44:05):
go any further, Like one of those whereas you go further,
you're going to have issues. So they turned around, actually
they stopped the ATV, turned it around. Then they tried
just hiking up a little bit. They couldn't do that either,
and it felt like there was almost like some kind
of physical wall preventing them from going any further into
It's a weird thing that happened.

Speaker 2 (44:27):
In the same area.

Speaker 3 (44:28):
So, yeah, that would be that would be west of
where I had most of my experiences. But yeah, I
know we're Lynn Saddle Is up above the Snake, one
of the tributary type canyons that run down the Snake
that goes through Hills Canyon. Yeah, beautiful country, thick, heavy country.

(44:48):
But yeah, I found that interesting. You said we're the
rainfall thirty six inches, because yeah, that's when you get
a little north north in Idaho. And also, like I said,
over towards the coast more and I think you get
back to the Tennessee areas and the Virginia's and all that,
they got more rainfall there than we do here. So
I think that's why Missouri. I think that's why. And
maybe we don't see as many here because it's just

(45:11):
a little too dry. Now they we'll go through here.
But I think they want something a little more moist.
I think they want a little more rainfall.

Speaker 1 (45:18):
Absolutely, when you when your dad showed you that picture,
did he mention at all, like where the picture was
taken or was that a nod detail that came out.

Speaker 3 (45:29):
No, that's that's what I wanted to go back to,
I said. A couple of years, we go back to that.
So that was west of Pregosia Springs, between Pregosia Springs
and Durango.

Speaker 2 (45:45):
In Colorado.

Speaker 3 (45:47):
Yes, And I think that between the outside of Durango
was where they had that video. I think last year
before it came out, there were people on a train
and out in the middle off the side of the
mountain there they saw, well it looks like a sasquatch.

(46:07):
Oh yeah, a long too. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (46:10):
So yeah, with videos.

Speaker 3 (46:16):
And that was sixties when he took that, it was.

Speaker 2 (46:19):
Totally okay, so I would it was.

Speaker 1 (46:23):
So the community really dug into that one, and they
found the exact costume from if you like to look
at it really close, like some dude found the exact
I can't remember who the guy was, but he found
the exact costume on name was honest, like, oh man,
that's too bad.

Speaker 2 (46:40):
I hate it when that happens.

Speaker 1 (46:41):
But yeah, yeah, that one was unfortunately not a PG film.

Speaker 3 (46:46):
Yeah yeah, yeah, that's too bad. I could see people
have fun doing that sort of thing, making people out
get the whole train decided. They get to see the
Stells on YouTube run across the hills. But anyway, that's
the area whether that where he took that the photo.
And like I said, he never brought that photo out again,
never talked about it again. In all the years I
hunted with him, he never mentioned the Bigfoot again. He

(47:09):
was It was just not a subject we ever talked about.
And I don't know, I don't know why. But like
I said, I've never been I've never been afraid in
the mountains even after because I've been been out there
over forty years now fifty fifty years, and I figured
if it was dangerous, I'd probably already had a dangerous encounter.

(47:32):
So I'm thinking that it's safe. I'm thinking it's safe
if they're there, they're okay with me being there. But
I'll tell you one thing you hear about guys, I
want to go shoot one. I could never do it.
I could never do it. It would be an impossibility
for me that first, that encounter across the Canye, when
I put my scope on that, and now I think
back on it, I don't know what If they are

(47:56):
more than just an animal, I don't I would not
want to be. I would rather know they exist, see
it and watch it walk away, then be the guy
that harmborn. I couldn't do it.

Speaker 1 (48:10):
That's the thing, right because I man, I can't imagine
being in that situation. And then you look into I
don't know if you've seen the documentary that Small Town
Monsters put out about justin Smaha, the individual that allegedly
shot a bigfoot in this year in Nevada's doubt. That's

(48:35):
around the twenty tens, so just long enough so that
people are forgetting it, and it really affected this guy emotionally.
It's they're still they're interviewing him and it's like you
tell that he is, He's right back there at it.
And it's a very intense documentary. If you haven't checked
that out, I would recommend you do so it's well done.

(48:56):
But yeah, the whoever, any individual that is in that situation,
they're going to have to really deal with a lot
of fallout.

Speaker 2 (49:05):
I think for different reasons. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (49:10):
Also, I would say there's probably a few listeners after
the whole Pagosa Springs, So just because that one incident
happened doesn't mean there couldn't be bigfoot around Pagosa Springs.
I think I had a talk to an individual where
they actually had seen one. I believe it's hit by
a car in Pagosa Springs just about a year ago.

(49:33):
I do a call in show in the Gentleman called in,
so I know there is activity in that area over
the years, but it's been an extremely interesting conversation.

Speaker 2 (49:46):
Would you ever.

Speaker 1 (49:50):
Get to the point or I guess I'll ask it
this way. Have you ever gone on like an actual
expedition or is it a thing where you're out there hunting,
fishing and it's just in the back of your mind
and you're ready for if something happens, you'll know what
you're looking at.

Speaker 3 (50:07):
Yeah. No, that's where I'm at. I've never gone out
with a purpose to hunt a fine wand and call
myself that that and really the very idea that's only
came up in the last year or so. I have
to say when I was out hunting this year. First off,
do they have telepathy? Can they mind speak which has
formed I don't know. I don't know of any other

(50:27):
creature on earth that does that. So I'm skeptical. But
that's okay. I'm still skeptical about the very existence of them.
And here I am talking with you that one would
have to actually talk to me in my mind before
I believe it. But I don't want to discount other
people's experiences, though that's not my point either. That's one
of the I can't. I don't want to be that

(50:47):
kind of person either, to discount someone's other experiences. But I,
as I was walking around the woods this year on
my hunt, I pray talk to God. It's more like
a talk when I say, it's more of a conversation
than I have on my side with God and stuff.
And I'm talking to if there's a big foot out
the if they're real and they really have telepathy, I
would like to experience that, but I don't want to

(51:10):
step over any spiritual lines or anything like that. And
so did I hear anything back? No, I didn't. I
did not, but I did I did see something that
it was unclear again what that was. Something moved to
the brush, probably only about forty fifty yards from me,
very swiftly, very smooth, quick, and it was gone. Never

(51:31):
heard it, never wrong color again to be an elk
or a deer, couldn't have been a bear. It was
right after a four wheeler had gone by, a couple
of guys coming through. They were And whenever I hear
somebody coming and I'm on a trail, I step off again.
I don't want to. I don't want them to go
on there. That's just where I am. I like to

(51:51):
be hidden, So I step off. I'm hiding behind brush,
and then I keep going if to go back, And
here they come back the other way again, those guys,
And so I'm looking back as they drive past, and
I was standing in the brush, and when they went
around this corner, something just moved right out of that
corner where they had been, right forty fifty yards for me.
And I'm thinking, that doesn't even make sense. How did

(52:15):
whatever it was get there without me hearing it? Again?
They drove right pasted it. Didn't see it. I didn't.
I'm looking for antlers, I'm looking for a head, I'm
looking for anything that would be looking for color. Nothing
And it was gone in about two seconds. Whatever it was.
But again, now I'm beginning to see a sausquatch everywhere.
So is that a real experience or is it just

(52:36):
my mind playing tricks on me. Yeah, it's hard to tell. No,
I have never been out with the purpose of finding one,
but I'm aware now I'll look around. It would be
really great. I would be really great. I'm not a
lot of people have very frightening experiences, but I think
part of that is I've been thinking about that too.
Let me put it this way. I'm not scared. I'm
not scared of snakes. I'm not scared of spiders, not

(52:59):
scared to bear. But there's a proximity thing. When that
spider crawls across my eyelid, I'm freaked out. When a
snake is crawling up my pants leg, I'm screaming like
a girl. Am I afraid of I'm no, No, I
see one, I'm not afraid of one. And if I
see sasquatch across the canyon, am I afraid of it? No?

(53:23):
But if it catched me on the shoulder and I
turn around and see a ten foot giant stand behind me,
maybe I'll scream like a girl. It's proximity and so
when I go out there, I don't have any fear.
But then again, if one jumps out behind a bush,
who knows what will happen to me? And so I
think people to go out there and not expected anything
and come into a close contact with one, they're frightened,

(53:44):
and I think it impacts them the rest of their life,
even though I don't think they need to be. Like
I said, there's we don't have sasquatch killing people all
over the place, so I don't think they're out there
to cause us harm. Again, I'm not an expert. I'm
just speculating based on anecdotal evidence.

Speaker 1 (54:02):
So absolutely I think, yeah, I agree with you. If
there were there's things like that happening, we'd be hearing
more about it because there would there would be You'd
think there would be people to tell the story. I
think that might happen when people are out there solo
sometimes unfortunately, and then the story is just never told

(54:24):
because there was only one person present and they were
the victim or whatever. But I don't think it's a
widespread thing for sure. But the last thing that you
had mentioned where you saw something for a few seconds,
was that also in the Hell's Canyon area.

Speaker 3 (54:41):
No, that was closer towards It was further further east
from there. Yeah, yeah, a little different location. I don't
want to get too specific because well, and it's not
like too Like I said earlier, I don't think that
this is a place where they hang out. I think
if they are here, their past through, maybe spend a

(55:01):
few days. I don't think it's someplace that they're going
to put down roots like they would anywhere else. So
I don't think it'd be as much time as I
spent up in the mountains in this area. You just
think they would probably be just passing through. I don't
think it would be anybody good to know exactly where
went back to here every year for fifteen twenty years and

(55:21):
never saw one again, and they never None of these
experiences have ever fighting me off. So yeah, I don't
think I wouldn't put an expedition together to go to
some of the expots. Just not enough I don't see
enough evidence. That's why I think better transitory just move through.

Speaker 2 (55:36):
Gotcha makes sense, Jeffrey.

Speaker 1 (55:38):
I appreciate you you coming on the show and sharing
what you have experienced over the years and also your
viewpoint as a pastor, and I feel that might help
a few listeners that might have had experiences but that
are also religious and don't want to come forward because
of that, and just to let them know that, hey,

(55:59):
it's okay to be able to share what happened and
it doesn't have to go against what you hold with
your beliefs.

Speaker 3 (56:07):
Yeah, so there was a pleasure great talking with you,
and glad I could hopefully provide some good information for
your listeners and some entertainment.

Speaker 2 (56:16):
Of nothing else fantastic.

Speaker 1 (56:19):
If anything else happens out there in Idaho, feel free
to reach out. We'd love to hear from you again.
But thank you so much for being on the show, Jeffrey.

Speaker 3 (56:28):
Yeah, you're very welcome. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (56:30):
Before we wrap this episode, I want to say something
directly to a very specific group of listeners. If you're
in the military, any branch or forces, and if you've
seen something that no one can explain, or if you're
a National park ranger or forestry worker who's been told
to stay quiet, or if you're a pilot who's seen something
strange down on the ground, or if you're with the

(56:52):
FBI a federal agency, or working intelligence and you stumbled
upon something you're not allowed to talk about. And if
you're firefighter, paramedic or search and rescue responder who's heard
screams or found tracks that didn't make sense. If you're
in the logging industry on a remote oil field, or
a trucker with government contracts and you've had something happen

(57:14):
that you've never told a soul. And if you're a biologist,
a wildlife specialist, or a field researcher under contract who
has found evidence you're not allowed to report. If you're
a pastor, a missionary, or someone on a spiritual retreat
and you saw something that shook your faith, or if
you work in the shadows CIA, NSA or anything with

(57:35):
clearance and you've seen what the public hasn't, then I
want to talk to you, even if it's anonymous. You
can reach me at Bigfoot Society at gmail dot com.
The world needs to hear what you've been forced to
carry alone. And you're not alone. You've got the story,

(57:57):
we've got the mic, you and the ons. Thank you
for listening to this episode of the Bigfoot Society podcast.
Every encounter we share reminds us that the world is bigger.
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(58:18):
next episode, and share this with a friend who's into mysteries, monsters,
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(58:40):
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(59:01):
into the Bigfoot subject as much as you are. Thanks
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keep your eyes open, trust your gut, and never stop
asking what else might be out there? And see you
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Hunter Encounters Massive Figure in Hells Canyon—and Everything He Knew Falls Apart | Idaho

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Hunter Encounters Massive Figure in Hells Canyon—and Everything He Knew Falls Apart | Idaho