Archive 207 Bigfoot Only

Archive 207 Bigfoot Only

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
I have never shared my story except with my father,
but I like to listen to and believe the stories
from other hunters. They lived them, and who am I
to tell them what they saw. It doesn't take much
imagination for me to feel like I'm right there with
the person in your stories at the time of their encounters.

(00:27):
My name is Bob and I'm seventy nine years old.
I stopped hunting when I was fifty nine. I hated
giving up hunting, but I had sport knees and it
was getting too hard to walk in the forest and
the mountains. I sure miss the elk meat and the venison.
I know that Bigfoot has been here forever. I started

(00:49):
to read about them when I was twelve. There wasn't
much to read about them in those days, but every
once in a while you would hear a strange story
that a hunter or a camper had seen one or
something they couldn't explain, or experience being harassed by something
they never saw. They just heard it or smelled it,

(01:09):
but no one talked about it for fear of being crazy,
because no one believed that Bigfoot existed. I also never
spoke to any of my friends about seeing one. I
don't believe they would have believed me anyway. I saw
the only one I've ever seen when I was fifteen
years old. It was October nineteen fifty six and I

(01:32):
was elking deer hunting on Canfield Mountain just outside of Cordelane, Idaho.
I lived just ten miles from Canfill Mountain, so after
school I used to drive my old car up to
Canfield and find an old logging road and walk it
three steps at a time until it got dark. The
huge thing, at least eight foot tall and I would

(01:54):
guess five to six hundred pounds, stepped out of the
trees onto the old logging road about twenty five yards
in front of me. It was getting dark and I
was on my way back to the car. I only
saw it for maybe twenty seconds before it disappeared back
into the brush in the trees. I don't remember hearing
any bushes breaking or other noise as it disappeared. I

(02:18):
was probably too shocked to notice. I did see that
it was a brownish and black color. I don't recall
any odor. Its face was lighter and hairless. I don't
recall the facial features either. It scared the crap out
of me. I knew immediately I wasn't looking at a bear.

(02:39):
I had my three hundred h and h MAG with me,
but I never thought to shoot it. Hell, I couldn't
even move. My father was an avid hunter. He started
me hunting with him when I was ten. He taught
me that you only shoot or hunt what you're gonna eat.
He said he saw one in the nineteen fifties, seventy
yards away while hunting on Brown Creek's saddle. He said

(03:04):
it was a good thing I didn't shoot it, because
I probably would have just pissed it off and it
would have killed me. I never stopped hunting on Canfield Mountain,
and I was back just a week later hunting there.
I figured I would probably never see another bigfoot again,
but I watched out for one every time I went
into the woods. I can recall the feeling I was

(03:26):
being watched in other parts of northern Idaho when I
was hunting. I listened to your show all the time.
Thank you, Bob. I appreciate that it's a great show,
very interesting and good entertainment. I just wanted to tell
my story, and you were right. The bigfoot story and
what they are is known by many, but for some reason,

(03:48):
no one is talking about it, but the honest people
who have seen one. There's so many people who are
phonies who want to join their sights and send money,
so many that know absolutely nothing about hunting or animals.
They lie and they tear down good, honest people who
have had encounters with bigfoot. The old platitude, no evidence,

(04:11):
no body, no DNA, phony pictures and so forth, and
so many shows trying to make money off of bigfoot
with their phony shows about hunting bigfoot. I wish they
would see one and it would chase them.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
I hope they have a lot of toilet paper with
them so they can clean up. Why don't these brave
hunters hunt in places that are active for bigfoot? Are
they afraid they might find one or be found by one?

Speaker 3 (04:43):
In Durant, Oklahoma, around nineteen eighty six or eighty seven,
I was six or seven years old. My mother and
I lived in an old farmhouse on the outskirts of town.
To the left of the house was a large field,
and at the back of the field there was a creek,
and the name of the creek was mineral by you.

(05:05):
It was summertime and my best friend and I decided
to take a single shot twenty two out to the
field to see if we could shoot some armadillos. It
was just about thirty minutes past dark. The only form
of light we had was one of those old big
square flashlights with the batteries, and they were almost dead,

(05:25):
so it was very poor light. We crossed the barber
our fence that separated our house from the field and
started walking towards the creek, which was about five to
seven hundred yards away from the house. When we had
traveled two hundred yards from the house, we noticed a
figure walking into the field from our left, maybe fifty

(05:47):
yards away, assuming it was a cow, but we weren't
for sure. We continued forward until we were much closer,
maybe within ten or fifteen feet ten or fifteen feet
of the animal. Really, it was standing upright with its
right arm facing us. As we got closer, it turned

(06:09):
and looked at us, and that's when we could tell
that we were not for sure exactly what this thing was.
It had gray hair and modeling clay grayish skin on
its face, and the hair was not extremely thick. You
could see the skin in several different spots. It was

(06:29):
between six and seven feet tall, and was definitely not
a man. By this time, we were close enough to
almost touch it. This is blowing me away. We got
a very good look at its face. It looked like
its lips had vertical creases towards the edges. Its lips

(06:50):
were fairly thin and just slightly darker than the skin
on its face. It had large, square shaped teeth with
several missing from what I could see, and it had
large brown eyes. It had the strangest expression on its
face that was very hard to explain. It was almost
amused and surprised at the same time. It looked at

(07:14):
us and then turned and walked maybe six feet away,
and then it stopped again. When it turned, you could
see that it had red clays stuck throughout its hair,
like it had been in the creek for some reason.
We were not afraid of it at this time, so
we followed. The creature would let us get within six
or seven feet, and it would walk further towards the

(07:36):
creek and then stopped again. It did this several times,
with it stopping and waiting for us to get closer,
and then moving on and then stopping again, until we
were maybe one hundred and fifty yards from the creek
and the tree line. Whenever the creature entered the tree line,
we had an ominous feeling and decided not to follow

(07:57):
it into the tree line, so we went home. My
mother was asleep when we got home, so we just
didn't tell anyone about it. Not long after this incident,
we had a dog go missing and my mother said
someone was peeking in the bathroom window while she was
in the tub. We called the police, but they couldn't

(08:18):
find anyone. A couple of years later, my cousin and
I were at the same creek, which was about a
half a mile from my home. We found several large,
bare footprints and a handprint in the bank of the creek,
and you could see where this thing had climbed about
eight foot off the bank and out of the creek. Charles,

(08:42):
I am just blown away that you boys walked right
up to this thing and it didn't do anything. It
just kept walking, just keeping its distance six or seven
feet away. That is a phenomenal. It's a great encounter story.
I'm sure you will never forget it. I'm just at
a loss for words because I've read so many of

(09:05):
these and this is one of the few that I've
seen where boys actually followed this thing into the woods
that close. It's just crazy, all right, Charles, it's a
great story. Thank you so much for sending it in.

Speaker 1 (09:22):
This is an email I got from a gentleman in Alaska.
This is great. Oh my gosh, this is fantastic. Here's
what he writes. I'm thirty one and was born and
raised in Alaska. I've spent much of my life in
the wilderness. I grew up north of Fairbanks as an adult,
and I also spent a lot of time hunting and

(09:43):
trapping near my mom's home village on the cusca Quinn River.
Before writing this email, I was asked by a family
member to keep the name of the village anonymous. But
it is a large Upik village on the main cusca
Quinn River between Tululuksak and McGrath. I'll just leave it

(10:04):
at that. There are several areas in Alaska that are
known to be Bigfoot hotspots. Some of these areas have
a bit of a disturbing history, places like Port Chatham,
which you probably already know about, but for those listening
who don't know, it was a small fishing community abandoned
over sixty years ago when the local people suddenly fled

(10:26):
the town. The town had numerous strange and unsolved disappearances.
There are old stories about people finding human bodies ripped
apart limb by limb in the woods, along with various
Bigfoot sightings. There's another area along the Wrangele Mountains where
locals say there are large, hairy, human like beasts that

(10:48):
are aggressive and don't like people. There are long rows
of hills behind my mom's home village that seem to
be one of those hotspots for Bigfoot activity.

Speaker 3 (11:00):
There.

Speaker 1 (11:00):
The Yupik natives referred to the Bigfoot as hairy Man.
One Native elder and a longtime family friend told me
back when he was young, he and his dad were
traveling by dog team while out getting firewood. Daylight doesn't
last very long in Alaska during the winter, and it

(11:20):
was well past dark by the time they were heading home.
He was riding in the sled and his dad was
standing behind him on the runners controlling the dog team.
The dog suddenly stopped in the middle of the trail
and became spoofed. They were whimpering and trying to turn around.
The fear eventually subsided and they were able to continue

(11:42):
on home. The elder telling me this story said that
back when they used to regularly travel by dog sled,
it was known to be a telltale sign that a
bigfoot was nearby when the dogs would stop and become spooked.
When sensing wild animals, the dog would become alert and
even aggressive, ready to fight, but there was a specific

(12:05):
type of freaked out that would overtake them when picking
up the smell of a bigfoot. Here are a couple
of stories that happened to my grandfather on my mother's
side and my two uncles. Both of these stories were
told to me firsthand by my uncles, and then lastly,
I have a story of my own I would like
to share at the end. Back in the nineteen sixties,

(12:29):
my grandpa had a fish camp at the base of
the hills, a few miles up the river from the village.
Both my grandpa and my uncle Daniel saw strange large
tracks near their fish camp. My uncle Daniel was just
a kid, but he remembers it vividly. There was one
day they also found long golden colored hair stuck in

(12:50):
the wooden slats of the smokehouse wall. And several salmon
strips had been carefully picked off the horizontal poles in
the middle of the smokehouse. It's not uncommon for bears
to get into people's smoke houses, but when it's a
bear or any other wild animal, you'll know because of
the mess and destruction they leave behind. This thing, whatever

(13:13):
it was, was able to pry its arm in between
the slatted wall and reach all the way to the
middle of the smokehouse. It had to have a long
reach and a human like hand. It also only picked
the choice salmon strips and left the rest of them
hanging on the pole untouched. It was smart enough to
not only stealthily steal some fish, but also smart enough

(13:36):
to know which fish strips were the best. The next
story is the best testimony I know of someone who
has seen bigfoot tracks and examined them up close. Years ago,
my uncle Mark was hiking behind that same line of
hills near the village. He came across an old fire

(13:57):
line that local firefighters had bllen dozed in years ago
to prevent wildfires from reaching the village. It was springtime
and with the snow melting and the torn up tundra
along the fire line, it was all muddy. My uncle
Mark saw two very clear big footprints in the mud
crossing the fire line. Each footprint was about eighteen inches

(14:21):
long and five inches wide, and there was a six
foot stride between the two prints. He said he could
clearly see five toes, the shape of the foot, and
the hill marked in the mud, just like a human foot,
only much bigger. My uncle Mark has been tracking and
trapping animals most of his life, and he knows what

(14:41):
he's talking about when he says these were clearly giant
human like footprints. Something walking barefooted with eighteen inch feet
and six foot stride had recently crossed there. My uncle
said he started having a very eerie feeling and he
got out of there without looking from more tracks. And

(15:02):
I have a story of my own i'd like to share.
First off, I hate to disappoint the listeners, but I
personally have never seen or heard a bigfoot, despite all
the time I have spent in the Alaskan bush. However,
I did have a strange experience camping alone one winter
in December of twenty fifteen, I decided to hike to

(15:24):
the end of a valley about two and a half
miles inland from the Coscoquin River. I would like to
give more information on exactly where this took place, but
again I was asked to keep the location somewhat anonymous.
I will say, however, that this valley that I was
camping in was located between where my uncle Mark had

(15:45):
seen the bigfoot tracks in the mud years ago and
where my grandpa had his old fish camp. So I
guess you could say it should be a good place
to encounter a bigfoot. I had explored and camped around
this valley before, but I had never gone all the
way in. So early one December morning, I packed up
some gear and I headed out. It was slow hiking

(16:08):
because of the deep snow, and I didn't have snowshoes.
It took me three hours of non stop hiking to
reach the middle of this valley and find a place
to set up camp. The weather was pretty clear, but
I could see off in the distance a big low
coming in, and I knew it was probably going to snow.
This place was covered in rabbit tracks. My plan was

(16:32):
to set a bunch of rabbit snares, spend the night,
and then check the snares the next day before heading home.
When I saw the big winter low moving in, I
decided not to set any snares because they would probably
just get buried in the snow. I was a little
upset about that, but I decided it would still be
a nice time camping out. At mid afternoon, I cut

(16:54):
a big supply of firewood from some small standing dry
wood nearby and got a huge fire going. I ate
a snack and made some tea with a pot of
melted snow over my big campfire. I hiked all over
that area and I saw country that I had never
seen before. By late afternoon, it was getting dark and

(17:15):
I returned to my camp. For the next couple of hours.
As it was getting completely dark, I pretty much just
sat on a log, drinking tea and waiting for my
fire to burn down into a bed of coals. There's
an old trick when camping in the winter. Make a
big fire, let it burn into a bunch of smoldering coals,
and when it's melted through the ice and snow and

(17:38):
into dry ground, mix it with the dirt and sleep
over it. The coals under the dirt will summer all
night and they'll keep you warm. As darkness fell and
my fire was burning down I started getting this feeling
that something was watching me. I know that sounds corny,
and I brushed it off. It's just my imagination, but

(17:59):
the got stronger. By ten o'clock, my campfire was nothing
but a bed of smoldering coals. It had been dark
for a long time now, and the only light was
the faint illumination from the coals dancing on the trees
around me. I got a sudden tingling sensation down the

(18:19):
back of my neck and along my spine. I felt
really uneasy, but I ignored it again. I told myself,
I'm a tough, alasking boy born in Bread. In the wilderness,
nothing scares me. But down in my gut I knew
something was different. I've spent many nights alone in the
wilderness and hadn't felt what I was feeling this time,

(18:42):
so I couldn't help. But since that something was off,
I mixed the coals in the dirt down in the
hole where the fire had burned through the layers of
snow and ice. Now, with the coals buried in the dirt,
it was totally dark, and I clicked on my head lamp.
I laid some spruce bows over the smoldering heap and

(19:02):
put my sleeping bag on top of the spruce bows.
I crawled in my sleeping bag, and I then pulled
a small tarp over me to hold in the heat.
It was nice and cozy, and I fell asleep really quick.
I'm not sure how long I was asleep, but it
was probably only about twenty minutes or so when I
suddenly woke up and felt almost paralyzed with fear, similar

(19:27):
to what my elder friend had told me happened to
him and his dad on the dog sled trail. I
forced myself to shake off the paralysis. I was about
to go back to sleep, but immediately got this urgent
feeling that I needed to get the heck out of
there and quick. My whole body started tingling, and I
felt like something didn't want me there. I could hear

(19:49):
snowflakes gently hitting the tarp covering me, and I pulled
the tarp off, clicked on my headlamp, and saw it
was snowing hard and the wind was picking up. I
didn't want to leave because my camp was nestled in
the woods, and I knew walking back home now in
the dark mint crossing areas of open tundra where it
would be blowing snow, so I stayed put. Suddenly I

(20:13):
felt again this unsettling feeling that I needed to leave
right away. My heart started racing and my instincts were
telling me to get out of there. I had packed
light on this camping trip because I knew I was
going to be hiking in a lot of snow, so
the only gun I brought with me was a Ruger
ten twenty two. Being armed with only a twenty two

(20:36):
long rifle didn't give me a lot of confidence out
there alone in the dark, feeling like something wanted to
hurt me, even with a twenty five round magazine. I
clicked my headlight back on and quickly packed everything up.
I stuffed my sleeping bag in tarp in my pack,
along with a few other things, without taking the time
to brush the snow off. Within a couple of minutes,

(20:58):
I was all packed up and I left immediately, heading
for home. The wind had picked up even more, and
when I got out of the tree line into the
open tundra, it was basically a blizzard, just as I
had expected. I tried to find my trail from earlier
that day, but it was already covered up with snow.
I felt stuck between a rock and a hard place.

(21:21):
It was the middle of the night and blowing heavy snow,
which made me worried that I was going to get
lost trying to hike home, but I didn't want to
return to camp either. I thought about heading back to
my campsite, and even turned around to do so, but
that horrible uneasy feeling hit me again as soon as
I turned to walk back towards camp. For a moment,

(21:43):
I wasn't sure what to do, but the uneasy feeling
I had motivated me to push on through the snowy
conditions and get home. I had an easier time seeing
with my headlamp off, because with it on, the light
reflected so much blowing snow all I could see was white.
With it off, I could just barely make out where

(22:05):
I was and where I needed to walk. Slowly and
with lots of praying to Jesus, I made it across
the long trek of open tundra and into the next
tree line across from the valley. I knew from there
I was close to the old woodcutting trail that led
back to the village. Once I got back into the
deep woods and sheltered from the weather, it was much

(22:28):
easier to navigate. I eventually found the old woodcutting trail
and followed it on the long height back to the village.
When I finally saw the lights of the village off
in the distance through the trees, I felt relieved. I
was covered in snow and tuck her out when I
made it back to my uncle's house. But I felt

(22:48):
so grateful, and since I was back in cell range,
I texted my mom that I loved her, even though
it was really late. She texted me back. I was
just glad I made it out of the situation, and
I will never forget that unshakable, creepy chill I felt
camping back in those woods in that valley. Since this experience,

(23:10):
I've camped out alone several times in other places and
haven't experienced any freaky feeling or felt disturbed at all,
which helps confirm to me that there was something in
that valley that one night giving me chills. I've never
camped in that spot since then, and I have no
desire to thank you for taking the time to read

(23:31):
this email and for letting me share these stories with you.
Signed Alex Alex's that's an awesome story. Man. You I'm
assuming you're a native person up in Alaska. Obviously your
family is there and they live in the villages up
in the Great White North. And you know, I never
get many stories out of Alaska at all. I think

(23:52):
we've had maybe two or three in the last two years.
And this is fascinating stuff because I don't know, I
would think think that there would be a huge amount
of bigfoot activity in Alaska. We get stories from Mississippi, Alabama,
and we have you know, we have some pretty good
wilderness down here, but the southeastern United States is pretty populated.

(24:15):
The places where this man lives is I mean, the
population is probably nothing compared to here, and the wilderness
is so vast and expanse and full of woods and tundra.
Like he was saying that, you would think that those
things would live in there. But I really don't get
many reports from Alaska. If anyone else has encounters from Alaska,

(24:37):
I'd love to hear them. And I know there are
stories from up there. I know there are, I just
don't get many of them, and I'd love to read
some more. Okay, I'm just babbling on let's let's let's
move along here. Thanks Alex. I didn't have to edit
a single word in this story, and I really appreciate
the way you wrote it. Apparently you listened in school
when you're in your English class and you did a

(24:58):
great job. Brother, appreciate you.