Today, I want to tell you about a journey that I've been on for
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Now, what are your reporting? I got a screen going on here.
Something just kid with my dog, something to kill your dog? My dog.
We're flying through there, over the tree. I don't know how it
did it? Okay, Damn, I'm really confused. All I saw was
my dog coming over the fence and name was dead once you hit the grill.
I didn't see any cars. All I saw was my dog coming over
the fence. Sat, what are you reporting? We got some wonder or
something crawling around out here? Did you see what it was? It was
enough here. Look, I'm new to window now and I don't need anything.
I don't want to go outside. It's quiet. Hello, hit the
boddy out here? What que on the out there? I've thought of a
bit of about text nine. I don't know easy. I'm out there,
yeah, right, greeting and salutations people of Earth. I'm not going to
give a big preamble to this. I'm just going to jump right into it.
Then I'll come back at the end with a little bit of a recap.
This was recorded back in September at the annual North American Wooded conservancy retreat
that we conduct every year. You'll hear interviews with people who help run the
organization, as well as some eyewitness accounts. So without further ado, and
we'll jump right into it. I will talk to you again when it's over.
I'm sitting here and we're overlooking the What am I looking at here,
Paul? What is this out here? That is the western skyline about Mulga
County. The sun is just set. I can see for many miles ers
on a cloud in the sky. It's absolutely beautiful. Hundred night. We
are at the third ANNUALNAWAC member Retreat. As we've done in previous years,
we're going to do a little summer recap for what the NAWAC has done this
year. I have with me Alton Niggins, who's the chairman of the group.
I have Daryl Collier, who's the field coordinator, and Paul Bowman,
who's the vice chairman. So we're going to sit here and talk a little
bit about how the summer went. I want to start with you, Darryl.
Did we get a wood eight this year? No, we did not
get a wood ape. The first question people are going to want to affeck
that is good question. It's a fair question. No, we did not,
but I will say that we came close again but didn't happen. Alt
to give an interesting presentation today about conservationist Chim Corbett, who worked for decades
trying to achieve his goals. We've only been actively trying to obtain a specimen
for four years. We are just beginning, it's just starting. We came
close. We have no reason to believe that next year we will not be
successful. We've learned some things. Part of the session today included brainstorming and
having discussions about how to tune or craft and get better at this and bring
to bear some of the new knowledge that we have some new tech. We're
going to put it to use next year with Operation Resolute next summer. It's
one of those things that I get asked a lot, when are you gonna
get one? And when it happens, because there's so many of those equal
parts effort and luck and everything else. Alton, you found some inspiration in
what Corbett had written. What were some of the things that you thought were
applicable to the work that we do, And tell me a little bit more
about him. Yeah, Jim Corbett was an Englishman, that was born and
raised in India. He served in the military there. He was widely known
for his knowledge about wildlife, and he turned into quite a conservationist. In
his youth. He loved to hunt and learned a lot about the cultures that
were there. He spoke all the dialects and what have you, and somehow
the military became aware of his expertise in his background, so he was often
called upon to hunt down a man eating tigers and leopards. He was an
excellent writer, and he wrote some books that detailed his exploits. I read
these books as a child, and then I reread them. Just recently,
Travis Lawrence brought an omnibus of his writings and lent me the book, and
I reread the stories and found some inspiration in the things that he wrote,
the way that he operated in his philosophy. So that's what I talked about
today with some of the points that I took from that. I think that
the interesting thing that I took from what he said is that he wasn't alway
sucessful. He was considered to be one of the most successful, as you
said, man eating tiger hunters, which is a really cool thing to be
but he was considered to be one of the most successful of his time,
but that he was often not successful. It sometimes took him many tries and
many months of effort, a year sometimes to finally shoot one of these creatures.
They were seedingly intelligent. He said, we underestimate the intelligence of animals.
And he said that all these people that failed before him, one of
the things that characterized their failure was that they weren't patient enough, that they
didn't really have the discipline to put in the time to endure the sits that
are required to capture to shoot one of these creatures. So I think that
applies to us as well. It takes a lot of patients. He never
gave up. He would keep after it. So that was one of the
points I tried to emphasize. So, Paul, from your perspective, what's
your take on the year that we've just concluded. I've come to the conclusion,
actually in the last few weeks, that I used to be a glasses
half empty kind of person. I realized I'm actually a glass needs a refill,
a person, preferably with a single malt scotch. I was disappointed,
of course, I've learned since I had my sighting, and since just all
the experiences that we've had, I've always thought that we were literally so close,
we were right there. We are on the very verge of making this
happen, and then when it doesn't happen, I'm filled with utter disappointment.
If I may. We had a large event here last weekend, a big
motocross race, and the charity here being or at the Boman Lodge. Yes
here at the ranch. It was a charity race, and some of the
guys came back today to help clean up the course of the dirt track that
they made. One of them was a veteran, and I want him to
meet Darryl. So I just basically had to tell him who was here today.
That's not a five minute conversation. And it dawned on me and I
said to him, as I say these words to you, and as I'd
give you a few stories about what's happened down there in that valley of the
apes. To any person that's not either a friend or family member, it
sounds utterly ridiculous, It sounds fantastically impossible. Yet we experienced these things.
We've seen them with their own eyes, we've heard them it's very real.
All that's really done is it's a tempered the sword, so to speak.
For me, Because we are the only people that are actually doing this,
it almost doesn't matter if anyone believed this or not. I've finally reached to
that point. It's almost a spiritual awakening where you realize, I don't care
if you believe me. I don't even have to tell you what we're doing.
You can laugh, That's right, because I'm not. We're doing this
for the world. We're doing this for the species. We're doing this for
hopefully ultimately the ultimate conservation of habitat of not only for them, but all
the animals and wildlife that exist with them. You don't have to believe what
I believe in what I know to be true. And there again, I've
spoken before about that word belief, and I can't stand using that anywhere in
the context of the wood Apes. I think this year really, upon further
reflection, I've realized that we are the only people on the ground doing this,
and we have the patients, we have the tenacity, we have the
resolve, we have the endurance to continue this project. Time is really on
our side. It's difficult because everyone takes time away from their families. Everyone
expects it to happen. This is the summer, this is when it's going
to go down. And then when it doesn't happen, it's very disappointing.
But nobody else is doing this, and it doesn't matter as far as we
know, if someone else is in a position that this group is in there
not saying anything about it publicly, but yeah, as far as we know.
If I may add one more thing, what I told this guy is
that I just gave him a brief background of some of the highlights of what
we've done in the last four years. But it dawned on me the incredible
amount of knowledge. I never ever would have guessed that we would have been
able to obtain so much raw intelligence and knowledge. And we've talked about this
in the past about how everyone spect a nocturnal or they migrate in the winter.
It's just pure speculation. We actually have hard data. In my mind,
it almost boggles the mind how much we've learned in the last four summers.
In fact, I was telling one of our members, Mike may Is,
today about two of the sidings that are within ten miles of this location.
One of them was a geologist that is about eight miles northeast to here.
He saw what he described as a large chimp like creature hanging from a
tree five or six years ago. That would have been a report to me
anyway of the funtlement. Maybe that was that's not the usual paradigm for Sasquash
reports. People still aren't talking. We're the only ones talking about these things
being in trees because we've seen them in trees. And now not only has
the tree aspect to come into play, but now this small chimp like description
has come It's like we can actually backtrack to some of the sightings that go
back decades and it suddenly makes sense. Now I'm going to talk to Travis
Lawrence here at some point if I can find them. He had an incredible
encounter this past summer that involved small chimp black things. Daryl, from your
perspective, is the field operations coordinator. Tactically speaking, what were some of
the things that we thought would be helpful or profitable this year? I guess
as a way to put it, but it turned out just not to work
for us. I think the primary thing was the modification we did to overwatch
last year. We had provided Overwatch from a ground blind very close to the
cabin. We believed that if we were somehow elevated overwatch, it gave us
a higher position, that it would help us, it would give us a
wider field of view. Many of us went into this year with every bit
of confidence that it was going to happen. Because of the new Overwatch.
We built a tower. The overwatch blind was about twelve feet off the ground.
It was much more comfortable. We had padded floors, swivel seats with
the padd of horse. This year was for quiet. It was to make
it quiet. May even the attention to detail of having the blow and the
dark tape that had the cardinal directions that helped me immensely the few nights that
I sat in the new Overwatch, because you get so disoriented in the pitch
black and you're looking into a thermal scope and you can look down while you
still have eye on the glass. You can actually look down with your other
eyes and say, okay, I'm facing north now. Because when you're spinning
around and you've also got a schamague over your head to keep the light from
escaping from the thermal. Yeah, so you're definitely in total darkness, and
those glow letters really helped. Unfortunately, the Overwatch Tower did not lead to
the success we hoped it would. We're still working on putting our finger on
what the shortcomings were, but we're going to modify it again this next year,
going to augment it. We had a great discussion about this today.
We believe there are some weaknesses that we're going to try to overcome next year.
So what do you think it is from a tactical standpoint. From our
perspective, it's better because we're higher up, we have better field of view.
It's more comfortable. You can sit in there and you're not as fatigued.
What's the flip side? What do we give up? Totally? In
your opinion, because of course we don't know what the apes are thinking.
Yeah, the tower sticks out like a sore thumb. It it becomes the
focus of everything when you walk into this area. The first thing is the
tower where the apes actually threw rocks at people in the tower. So it's
exactly it was like a beacon. So if you're in that tower and you're
not observing light and noise discipline, that is, if you're not staying quiet
if you're using headlamps and making all kinds of noise and stuff, then your
position's given away. It's obvious that someone is up there doing something. Whatever
it is, there's a possibility that they were onto us up in that tower.
We had a number of examples where we were not on Overwatch and we
had things coming up to the cabin, up to the porch. But when
we were rough in Overwatch, it seems like they kept their distance. It's
not unlike what happened with last year's Overwatch, but I think last year we
had more opportunities. We had more instances where we felt they came in and
we actually had thermal hits probable apes. But this year we had maybe one
that's it. Last year we had several that were definite visuals. This year
we had no definite visuals from Overwatch, and we had one possible. The
animals were still coming close insofar as thirty forty fifty yards away, but they
weren't coming into view. They were keeping their distance. It might have been
a result of some suspicion regarding the Overwatch tower. It wasn't that they stayed
away. They still approached. We're still throwing rocks We had guys up in
overwatch getting rocks thrown at them while they're in overwatch. They try to look
through and that's part of the weakness with thermals. People think that thermal is
just it has its limits. It can't see through vegetation, and where we
are operating, it's like a North American rainforest. The vegetation is unbelievably dense.
You can have something to thirty yards away from you, but there's this
thick understory and trees that are between you and it and you can't see it.
As I'm listening to us talking about this, I don't want to get
too hung up on the fact that no specimens collected, because that makes it
sound like we're worried that we failed. And clearly we did not fail this
here because there were so many other things that we learned and experienced along the
way. Let me just say that we actually had what was it today eight
We counted eighteen visual encounters where our investigators had the visual observations, personal visual
observations in the field, hard contact with the target species, and eighteen possible
visual that is where they saw a piece of an animal that just by process
of elimination you could probably say that's what they saw, but because they didn't
really see any true identifying markers, then we have to list it as a
possible. Oh, there were close contacts, Brian. You and I were
on the last team this year, Quebec team. The next to the last
day, I had an opportunity to shoot one. It just moved just in
the nick of time to keep me from putting around into it. And this
is what I'm gonna say. So people are gonna hear because I know,
as they've asked me this on the internet before, well thirty six times.
You're gonna say you saw thirty six with apes over the course of the summer.
Where's your picture? And why didn't you shoot one? Because each time
that I saw one, I only had one and a half to two seconds.
Any of you who can step into a jungle, be on a ground
blind and have an animal step out at fifty yards, it's gone. Now
where's your camera and where's your gun? That's the hallmark. It steps out,
it's gone. You're walking down the trail, it goes across the trail
in front of you. Why don't you get a picture? Why can't you
shoot it? So that as well, because my sighting last year. No
one is more disappointed and befuddled by that as I am, because I've always
been the biggest critic of our own members. Why didn't you shoot it?
So I've had to eat crow. But given the context, and believe you
me, I am a shooter, Okay, I will not hesitate. The
problem is that it was all about context. Just like a lot of things.
I always tell people my own critics that are feeding it right back to
me rightfully, if I had my rifle at the ready, or let's even
go it was slung, I just have my third cup of coffee, eating
my Beanie Leanies and wearing my dry socks. Right, Let's take it a
step farther and say I had my rifle shouldered. I'm in the high ready
firing position. I see this moving object, and I know that within two
to three seconds it's going to step between those two trees at eighty yards and
I'm going to get a solid id on this object. If that had been
the case, I wouldn't have been able to take a shit. You didn't
know where I'll because I didn't know where Daryl was, so I couldn't good
conscious make a shot and I don't want to give the critics too much time
here, but the critics will simultaneously say that we're jumping around into shooting at
shadows and then also saying, do you saw thirty six bag foot? You
didn't shoot any of them, and you can't have it both ways. They're
just wrong. They're just wrong. They don't want to hear that, but
they're wrong. Alton, you had how many times did you maybe Seepe this
summer because you were down there? How long? How many days was out
and down there? Forty three days? Alton was in territory forty three days.
And Alton had three off, maybe four visuals. So of those out
and which ones comes to mind first, two of those were small creatures.
They reminded me of chimps. We had the opportunity this summer to send in
reports of our activities and observations on a fairly regular basis. Every few days.
We had either phones that had the right kind of boosters that we could
get out, or we'd drive up to a place where we had phone access
and we'd phone Daryl and updating, or we'd email or text or send things
to you. Two of the sightings that I had reminded me of basically chimpanzees.
Black creatures. One of them was we heard aloud. It was either
a tree break or a large limb break, and Travis took off towards the
bottleneck and I was behind him, and I stopped and was just glassing the
side of the mountain. I saw just briefly, just for a flash,
this black creature that ran down the mountain at an angle. That was the
last I saw of it. It was just a second or so. We
reported this. Then when I was there for my five day solo, I
heard some knocking and racket down towards the property gate. I went in that
direction and I saw a creature that confused me. It was black again and
had reddish highlights on its tair. I didn't get a good look at its
head. I didn't notice a tail. I can't say it didn't have a
tail, but it did not see a tail. It crawled off in a
very strange fashion. I took off after the see if I could see it
again, and I didn't relocate it. But the color this black kind of
reddish tint combination, and the size of the creature was like a large coon
size. Those two observations taken independently could be dismissed. But then when Travis
had his sighting that you'll talk to him about later, those two things made
sense. They fit in. They all clicked. Yeah, So that's what
I guess impressed me as far as the four sidings, But all of them,
all four of them were interesting in their own ways. Again, this
fits in Daryl's category of sightings that weren't certain. I can't stay unequivocally that
that's what I saw an ape Professor Leeper and I were involved with the situation
where I was going to walk in to a position where he could overlook a
large area, and then I continued on past him and then delayed for a
while and came back. And as I was passing by his position, I
heard some ruckus up ahead, some steps, three quick steps. It was
a heavy sound, three heavy quick steps was going from my left to I
got excited because I knew it was going to cross the road. But what
I saw was this kind of dark around creature that crossed the road so fast
it literally was a blur. And stay tuned for more sasquatch out to sea.
We'll be right back. After these messages I couldn't tell anything about it
except color and relative size. That was interesting. Relatives how big do you
think it was? Ken had me do a reenactment. He's really into doing
re nagris, So he had Travis go to the place where I saw it
across the road, and he and I stood where I saw it, which
was about forty yards or forty steps close to forty yards. Travis ran across,
and of course he running as fast as he could. It wasn't nearly
as fast as as what I'd seen. But the size also struck me.
I saw Travis and he looked small. He's six foot three and he's a
big man, two hundred and fifty pounds. It wouldn't surprise me. He's
a large lad. So that was interesting. When I ran up to see
if I could locate it again. After blurred across the road, there was
a loud commotion behind me, like it clock or so. It succeeded and
distracted me. I looked back to see if I could see it, and
then it suddenly hit me, maybe this is an intentional distraction behavior away from
the other one crowl We've had that sort of thing. We've speculated any realize
what that was. A number of times when we've seen one, are been
close to one, and we've start to pursue it, something loud distracts us
in an opposite direction. Think about that for just a minute. Think about
the last thirty years, all the documentaries and the movies and the shows,
everybody from the community and everything they've contributed to this endeavor. Okay, whether
it be just armschair research or a full on in the field type stuff.
Think about the concept of what Alton just said. We're a long way from
weird travels and solved Mysteries TV shows that the group has been on in the
past. If you've really stop to think about this is incredible data. It's
interesting about what he said and when he said it. It struck me that
we've actually had multiple cases where this happened over the past summer where we've learned
that tactic of THEIRS. Like when we're focused on one direction and we hear
something in the other direction and we look, we go or we focus our
attention there, we think, oh, no, this is what they're trying
to do. Because we've experienced it so much, it's part of what we've
learned four or five years ago to me, it boggles my mind that we've
come so far and it's all been by experience. It's not speculation, it's
not a conjecture. It's literally on the ground, real live experiences that have
molded it's very observable, repeated observations of this and it's obviously a smart animal.
We know that. But this is something that we can try to exploit.
But there are a couple of number of questions for you. This was
Operation Tenacity, right, I kept getting this one in the last one confused
in my head. How many days total, one twenty two. How many
investigators were on site over the course of that time forty one? That's a
record last year. It was not that many last year. I think it
was thirty six, About one hundred and fifteen days I think last year.
But yeah, we're constantly trying to expand increase our time in the field a
number of people. It would be wonderful if we could conduct a six month
operation. This gets back to that nobody else is doing this, and there
are things that we do tactically day to day that other people are doing out
there. But this idea of putting fifty people in the field for almost four
months whatever it was. Yeah, I don't know. I've not heard of
anyone doing that. And when I said that, I didn't mean that as
a slam on any other researchers and what they're trying to do. It's just
that we are gleaning observations and what I would call a hard intel on these
animals and their behaviors. It's repeated from summer to summer. It's just not
that we're I'm not trying to the brag, it's just that we're just trying
to make it happen. Definitely, I'm just really proud of the membership that
we have. They've gone year after year, summer after summer, above and
beyond. They've dedicated their finances, they've dedicated their vacations cooperating in these ventures,
and it's just a remarkable testament to the quality that we have in our
membership. So next year we're planning pretty much the same length of time.
Yeah, it's going to be rough, with the same amount of time,
maybe a little longer. Now. One of the more controversial aspects of the
things that we experienced this here was this whole business with trees. Last time
I had you on the show, we had a handful of experiences where we
had documented trees falling. The week that I was there, we had the
tree fall down. But then there was the week when I was on the
phone with Ken Stewart and the tree came down. How many trees and or
significant limb breaks did we document this year? You recall the specific number twenty
seven, twenty seven trees, so the branches are similar. Correct, While
we were there for one hundred and twenty two days, our investigators observed twenty
seven tree falls. These are big trees, These are loud, obvious cracking.
We saw a number of them. We probably saw as many as we
heard fall. The last team, Quebec team, we saw a tree fall
from fifty sixty yards. We saw the top of it. We ran over
there and then what happened. You had a visual imagine that this tree just
happens to fall out of the thin air, and then there's a wood ape
over there, and I hear one running up the mountain and then one throws
a rock at the cabin. So these are trees that fill in close proximity
to the cabins. Yes, within one hundred yards we saw another one.
Yeah, I didn't want to get into it now. But yeah, So
the story there is that we were it was later in the evening. It
was I don't know, seven twenties. It wasn't dusk yet, but the
sun was going down, and so the trees were silhouetted and we were just
sitting on the fire and we actually had Daniel Falconer down there and we were
looking at comic on pictures on his computer. Out of nowhere, this tree
starts to fall down, and I can see it in the distance because the
sun is silhouetting behind these trees. I can see the tree fall. The
top of it fell. Anyway, there was something I wanted to try on
this team that we haven't done before, and that is, anytime anything like
this happened, just dead sprint to it because they're used to us, I
assume they're used to us creeping down the trail trying to be quiet. So
I just grabbed my weapon and I just hauled freaking ass. And I'd been
doing sprint training, so I was ready and I sprinted. So you went
in there, and in the vicinity of where this tree had come down,
or we're part of this tree at least had come down, you heard definite
movement up the mountain. I'm so confident. One was going up the mountain
and there was a squirrel up there barking at it. Whatever. It was
so large rock displacement. I could hear the branches breaking. Is this thing's
moving off? That's what I'm That's where I think it's gone. I'm yelling
to you, he's gone up the mountain. I can hear him. He's
up the mountain. We're one hundred, one hundred and fifty yards apart.
Yell to me. Daniel and I are on the road and we're trying to
find this tree. We never actually found it, but we were trying to
find where this tree was some from behind us, from the direction of the
south. Basically, we heard a wood knock and it sounded like it was
fairly close. So we're like, do you hear that. We turn around
and I saw a flash of movement. I saw some kind of movement back
there, and it was enough and I was walking along the road when I
saw it. So I stopped. And it's funny because Daniel was filming this
with his little video camera. Yeah, and so he says, yeah,
I saw it too, and so I squat down and like stare in there,
and so when I stopped moving and I'm looking right at it, it
was the head and upper torso of a dark figure that ducked behind a tree.
It was tree peeping, and that's what we saw. And I started
yelling over for you, Darryl, Daryl, we have an animal, and
so I came over. I pursued it. That's exactly right, Darryl,
we have an animal. It's I pursued it for probably two hundred yards.
Yes, I know you can't catch one on foot. Here's the whole thinking
behind that is that you're hoping to capitalize on a mistake. You're hoping that
something's going to happen if you press it. Oftentimes, that's something you learn
from the military. You press the fight, you just press it, things
can happen in your favor. So I just pressed it, chased it for
two hundred yards. I could hear it moving off. Never caught a visual
of it again. But it's a very exciting evening. So this tree thing
again, this is last time we had this conversation was early on. Now
Here we are at the end. Anybody have an idea why this? Because
so if we had twenty seven trees and twenty seven large branches. What have
we typically heard the tree break, the branch and limb breaking twenty one?
Take all those that put those together do the match twenty seven plus twenty one.
That's how many times we heard some sort of part of a tree or
the entire tree being broken failed. So why what's going on? I think
it's a part of intimidation behavior. That's what I believe. I believe they
are breaking vegetation. Just like I said the last time we talked about this,
Brian, in terms of the forest, breaking a tree is a nuke.
It's the loudest thing that you could do to produce noise. And if
these animals equate noise with power, then what better way than to break two
foot diameter tree create this humongous explosion of a sound. Okay, the secondary
sounds too, Yeah, Alton, you want to pop in here. Yeah.
I think this idea of the intimidation makes sense. I was in the
valley once this summer with doctor Ken Hilmer and I walked way towards the base
of the South Mountain, the mountain south of the camp. We positioned to
where he was faced in one direction and I was near him, based in
the opposite direction, and we hadn't been there very long. Down comes a
tree very close to it from my position, very close to us. When
we were finally through it with our set, we went over to find the
tree. Ken saw where he said the creature could have come up. There
was like a path there, and he said, creature could have come up
this path, pushed this tree over, retreated. I would have never seen
it. Here's an instance. We were far from the camp, yet we
had a tree pushed over in our position forty yards from you right. It
was very close forty yards. Yeah, maybe it was close right right in
front of the Ken. To me, that makes sense. It's a huge
coincidence at the very least, but it makes sense to me in terms of
these things following people around and pushing trees over reminds me of our experience in
the Arkansas when we were there years ago. Again, it's a great noise
maker. I mean I was there for that starting that was Juliette team.
I was about three hundred yards to their north and I heard it. It
was a god awful commotion. I couldn't tell that it was a tree from
that distance. I just knew that something. I thought it was a big
boulder or tree something, so I started going that way. But it was
definitely a noisemaker. There's no doubt about it. I'm paraphrasing that. There's
an old saying that if it happens once, it's chance it happens twice to
it's a coincidence. If it happens three times, it's a conspiracy. The
fact remains that the trees fall over in the woods. Everybody knows that,
and some people have been witnessed to that. And I think we could probably
look back and think about all the times we've had in the valley prior to
these missions and these operations, back when we were doing Operation Force Vigil where
we might actually have heard a tree fall. I recall being down there in
the past and having heard a tree fall and not putting two and two together.
But let's just face facts here. I mean, are these really coincidences.
I don't think so. I mean, something doesn't just push a tree
over. You've also all the other data along with that. You've got rock
throwing all in happening concurrently, all those contexts. It's about the totality of
the circumstances. Of what goes on down there in that context is what I
was getting out a minute ago. We haven't observed this kind of behavior at
this quantity in previous years, have we not? As it relates to tree
breaks, tree falls, it's something that's that's a I don't want to call
it a new phenomenon, but it seems to have increased. We had one
fall down during the fox trout when I was there, but again they were
punctuations. They were few and far between. I think they're pulling out the
stops. There is tired of us being in there as we are tired of
not collecting a special and they're literally thinking, how can we Okay, We've
thrown jukebox sized bowlers into the creek bed. We've done everything to try to
scare these guys. We body slammed cabins, We've done everything that we know
as animals to show aggression to try to stave off this intruder. And I
think that's what they dare I say, in the last four summer, the
tree breaking in the tree felling not a new phenomenon, but it's just a
more observed and I just think it's just one more tool in their toolbox to
say, hey, get out of our valley. Who else can do that?
Well. Another difference is for about a week or so the apes up
to the game. In terms of rock throwing, we had a number of
quite large rocks that were thrown at the cabin this summer and we hadn't seen
that before. Very large. The one that you were able to send photos
of it. It was larger than a bowling ball. It was a big
old rock. My daughter came in with me for a Juliette team. We
tried to lost campers scenario where the rest of the teammates, Alton led a
team out just out of the valley away, leave my daughter and my son
in law there seemingly alone, while I am inside the cabin ready to take
overwatch after I've slept. Shortly after Alton's team left, I'm in the cabin
sleeping, just my daughter and my son in law. Out they started lobbing
these big rocks, big huge rocks. Of course, it scared my daughter
and my son in law. Plans changed. Had to abort what we had
planned, which was for them to sleep in a tent and for me to
provide overwatch. They didn't want to sleep in the tent after all these rocks.
Jeff saw one peek around the woodshed. But that again, we're stepping
up our game. We're constantly trying to brainstorm and figure out new ideas that
may sound silly to ridiculous. We're trying to outsmart them and outflank them,
and they're doing the same exact thing to us. It's incredible if you stop
and think about it, the dynamic between us and them. They always surprise
us. One of the interesting things we did this year that was different.
One of these new tactics that we tried was you and I. In the
last week there, we tried a new tactic. I call it the tailgate
drop. That's where you take two guys out on the truck pick up and
you go out of the valley, you drop them off, and then they
hike in under cover of darkness at night. That's what we did, Brian,
you and I did. We hiked in from three and a half to
four miles west of the compound. We hoiked in at night. What time
did you depart? We left the drop zone at about twenty two hundred.
I think we got to the compound about a one hundred or something like that.
We had no lights. The moon was full, but we used no
lights when we were down there and we were trying to sneak in, Yeah,
and we did. We used no lights, absolutely no lights. We
had an encounter on the way down halfway down. Then we proceeded down into
the compound. But the team that was there, which was Alton, was
a part of Bob and Kathy Straying, Daniel Falconer. They created this tremendous
diversion and made all manner of noise, playing loud music, blowing on stadium
air horns, all sorts of things. I couldn't even hear my own steps,
with the idea that they would distract attention away from us because then we
were close. At that point, we wanted to get in a position,
yeah, and that allowed us to slip in hopefully unnoticed. And we have
every reason to believe that we did get in there unnoticed that would put us
in a position collect a specimen. We got into position. We began here
in wood knocks and bangs, but we were just not in the right position.
The tailgate drop is definitely an interesting tactic, and we're going to try
it. We're going to expand it. And we're going to try it.
So you mentioned briefly that we had an encounter going down, and that was
an interesting encounter to me because I thought at that point we had been busted
by potentially an animal acting as a century. Why don't you describe what that
encounter was like for us. We were about halfway down the mountain. The
thing is that the drop zone we actually smelled what we believed was an animal.
There was one waiting, because we have reasonably they followed vehicles out to
a point about three and a half to four miles west of the compound that
they have centuries just like chimps. Gorillas do the same thing. We have
reasonablyive they followed vehicles out. So when we got back to this area,
we smelled what we were certain was in a After Bob Strang took the truck
and left us there, the smell left, which was indicative of an animal
leaving. We no longer smelled it, so we began to hike down a
little after ten pm twenty two hundred. We got about halfway down, we
smelled the smell again, really strong. I'll say I've never smelled it the
first time. You always smell this stuff first because you have this amazing nose.
But the second time it was like a wall of odor that just waffed
it over us. Yeah, it was the strongest stop smelled in several years
now. I haven't smelled one that strongly, I think in three years.
It smelled like he was right next to me. Then something was thrown at
us, So then I hit the dirt. I got in with the trail,
which is more like a ravine. Brian got his third gin out.
He just began scoping. That's when he saw a figure dark from tree to
tree, being back lit by the moon, and the smell was gone.
And that was it. It was gone. And actually I saw it with
my eyes because the moon was so bright, the trees were glowing. They
were just reflecting the white moonlight, so they were glowing white. And there
was a black figure that walked in front of a few if that was an
animal, and I don't know what else it would have been. There was
no indication when we got down there. We stayed in position till daylight.
We had no indication that any animal near the compound knew we were there.
Nothing approached us. We were out all night twenty two hundred to think we
went to bed the next morning at ten am. We were out all night
and nothing ever came within close proximity to us. Nothing approached us. All
their attention seemed to be focused on the cabins. There was banging in wood
knocks from the direction of the central cabin where we stay, so we had
every reasona believe their attention was focused on Alphin's team there at the cabin and
not us, which led you and I to believe confidently that we went in
there unobserved. So we're going to try that again and we're going to try
to capitalize. It gets back to that. We like to joke that they're
forest ninjas, but they're not omnipotent. They don't know why wants happened,
but they are force and injes that is, they're extremely aware of their environment.
But a perfect they can't be everywhere, and they do have weaknesses and
they are fallible creatures. Roan, can I say something about the smell.
Over the last four or five years, I've caught when we thought we busted
one. When we pulled a similar tactic a few years ago we came in
on the bad Boy buggy. That was the first time I actually smelled the
smell. But this last summer, we were sitting in the middle of the
camp in the middle of the day. Try to imagine spending a few days
or even a week out in the woods. You get used to some of
the forest smells, with the dirt, campfire, a certain foliage, and
then imagine all of a sudden, you're smelling a hot, warm apple pie
fresh out of the oven. That is a smell that you're immediately going to
recognize. That is something that it doesn't fit in here. Right when I
was down there, for the first time ever, I caught a smell,
a very strong, completely distinct smell of zoo. I smelled a zoo and
it was eight of the zoo, and it was like and it hit me
for about two seconds and then it was gone, and I didn't smell it
again the entire week. But it was so strong and so distinct in my
mind that it was unmistakable. Just like smelling apple pie, you recognize it
as something that doesn't belong there, but you definitely recognize it as distinct.
That's the first time ever that I've had that smell. There was no question
that it was. It was a zoo. Like smell, and it didn't
belong in that forest. Like I said, the second time we smelled it,
it was almost physical. It was so powerful. It was just like
somebody turned on a light switch and boom, you were filled with this intense,
sweaty ape smell. I don't know if I've told the story or not,
but the smelling with the gorilla, the Saint Paul' zoo and the wind
turned and he was sitting there, and all of a sudden I smelled him
and the hair of my mac went up because it was just like getting voluntary.
Oh, I know that. So we've been talking for a little while
now, and I want to get to a few other folks here. But
what we're looking forward to next year? As always, what's closing thoughts on
this year and opening thoughts for next year? I'll say, we're going to
stay in the fight, press forward, let's just make it happen. We're
not quitting. We've got too much invested, we've learned too much. It's
either going to happen or not. Will responsibility now, we absolutely have a
responsibility to follow through with it. I mean ethical responsibility. I think because
we know this animal is real and most of the world scoffs at it.
I think that if we don't act quickly, I believe that the animal is
probably going to go extinct. But I do want to say that we came
close again this year. We did have opportunities to get this done. The
luck was not on our side again. But as the lesson from Jim Corbett
was applied today, Corbett himself said, you have to stay with it.
That luck does eventually turn you away, that there will be many times that
luck will not go your way and you will think that you can't do it
one more day, or one more year, one more month, But you
must continue to press forward. You must continue the work. Ryan. The
last team, you and I had a shot. Had had he stood there
for one more second, I would have sent around, I would have with
the red dot on it, I would have sent around and it may have
been over. That was the next to the last night. So that's how
close we're coming. No, we're definitely not giving up. Critics be damned.
We are pressing forward. We're going to do this. I'm fifty three,
man, I'm in great condition. We've still got a long time that
we're going to be around, and we're not going anywhere. We have the
team to complete our objectives. Planning has already begun for next year. That's
it, right, thanks guys. Okay, so what we're still outside here
at sunset has turned tonight, the windows blown. It's a lit chilli guy
actually, even though from Minnesota, I will admit to being a little cold.
Right now, I have Geene and Travis and Shannon here and we're going
to talk about some of the experiences they had in x over the summer.
The first time. I want to ease into this and I want to talk
to you, Travis, very briefly about something we tried when we were down
there together. We called it the Haunted Cabin tactic, where it looked like
we completely left the area, and the idea was we were going to leave
you behind in the cabin quiet, and then you would be able to assume
overwatch when the sun went down, with the perception for anyone outside that there
was nobody left in the cabin. That didn't really work out. What happened.
Yeah, it was a nice innovative idea because it's not something we'd tried
before. Did we start about sundown? Is that when we started a little
bit before sundown, all packed things in your truck. I went and hid
in the cabin while y'all were packing things, and then y'all took off.
There were no vehicles in the compound, and I was there by myself.
What my plan was to give a little shd eye until after dark till nine
ten o'clock whatever I could get, and then sneak up to the overwatch tent
and do overwatch all night long and let the apes think that there was no
one in the valley. Because we've always had questions about what happens around that
cabin whenever none of us are there. We wondered, do they apes just
walk around like they on the place, because they pretty much because nobody's there.
We've had those questions, and we don't have any way of verifying that
without having somebody there to witness that. He thought it would be a good
collection opportunity. I'llbeit a little bit risky having somebody there by themselves, But
where y'all were parked whenever y'all went out was only about three miles away.
So we were hoping that if I did have a collection opportunity and I did
fire, we were hoping y'all would hear the shot, and you would be
able to come back and help me out, so I'm not just down there
by myself with or whatever happens in that situation. So y'all left, and
I was already laying down in the back portion of the cabin, and I
was laying on the floor, away from the windows, on a sleeping pad,
hoping to just catch a few hours of sleep. Like I said,
while I was laying there, I found it difficult to fall asleep because now
I was there alone. I had all these things running through my head about
what would happen if I did get a collection opportunity. I was slightly nervous,
to be honest about doing that overwatch by myself, about the whole idea.
I wasn't there. Maybe ten minutes after y'all left, I heard a
rock hit the roof. This summer was a little bit different on the rock
throwing. There wasn't a whole lot of rock throwing on the immediate cabin that
we were staying in, But this was an obvious rock that hit the roof.
It was while I was in the back portion of the cabin laying on
the floor, and I was like, okay, that was a rock.
Just a couple minutes after that rock hit, I heard obvious heavy movement on
the slope just north of me outside the window. The window was open.
It was probably twenty five thirty yards away from me, but it was obviously
a large animal moving around. I heard it come a little bit closer to
the cabin, down the slope a little bit, Then a couple of minutes
later, I heard it move off back up the slope. At that point,
it was just about getting dark, and I was like, I'm still
going to try to get some sleep, So I laid there about thirty more
minutes. I wasn't able to fall asleep because I was too keyed up about
the situation, about the prospect of what might happen, because of what just
did happen. I was pretty sure that was an ape that I just heard
walk away behind the cabin, because he's just thrown a rock a couple of
minutes earlier. So when I decided that I wasn't going to get any sleep,
I went ahead and snuck up to the overwatch tent. I'd already had
everything set up ahead of time. I had the rifle up in the overwatch
tent, I had my head lamp beside me, even though I had no
plans to use it. That was just there in case. I had nothing
but my side arm down where I was. But I pretty much crawled all
the way across the cabin. Took me several minutes because I was trying my
hardest not to make any sounds, not to let any apes know anybody was
there. And I creeped all the way over to the Overwatch ten and I
climbed up in there, effectively not making any noise. I think I managed
to shut myself in there and I assumed Overwatch. I don't remember exactly how
long I was on Overwatch, but I want to say about an hour and
a half. And I heard absolutely nothing. I heard no movement on the
slope anymore. No rocks hit our cabin or any other cabin, no vocalizations,
no wood knocks, no nothing. After about an hour and a half
of nothing, had started to sprinkle lightly. Just it came on like an
onslaught. It just started raining harder and harder. The overwatched him. The
way it's set up right now, it's not totally waterproof. I started getting
water falling on me, and I've got a six thousand dollars thermal scope mounted
on my forty five to seventy So I was like, I don't want this
thing to get wet. So I crawled back down and I went inside the
cabin, and I was like, oh, sleep for a little bit.
If the rain lets up, then i'll go assume overwatch again because I can't
sit up there right now. It's too wet. So I went back down
and I fell asleep and stay tuned for more sasquatch oat to see we'll be
right back. After the east messages, I sat on an alarm on my
phone for two hours later. I woke up then and it was still raining
real hard, so I went back to sleep. The next time I woke
up, it was daylight. It was still raining lightly, if I remember
correctly, at daylight, y'all came down there quickly at daylight. I think
y'all got back down to the cabin at seven or something. It was a
real telling situation. Then nothing else happened. On hindsight, I think it
makes sense because I think our cabin was under direct surveillance from an ape that
was up on the slope. He saw y'all leave, so he was just
testing the waters. Make sure everybody's gone. I'm going to hit the cabin
with a rock. I don't hear any sounds at the cabin. Yeah,
everybody's gone. Okay, I'm gone. They walk around somewhere out. Yeah,
it makes sense if none of us are at the cabins, why would
they be there. I'd just walk off and go ten to their own needs
because they don't have to worry about watching us anymore because we're not there.
So, Shannon, you were down there. What team were you in when
you had your two experiences? I was with Charlie team. It was the
first week of June, over that Memorial Day weekend, and so two things
happened to you in one of which I find fascinating with the thing that sort
of crept up on you. And Mark, why don't you relate to me?
The tail there we got in seven point fifty on Sunday evening. We
had arrived, heard a weird noise on arrival when we were unloading the vehicle,
something like a siren, almost like a clason sound, and all of
this gee that was weird, sat around the fire pit. It was a
very low fire, just embers, and we kept tearing stuff in that Middlewoods
bottleneck area about one am. Mark mcclarkin said, are you okay with going
out there and kneeling in the bottleneck? I think he said it was a
waxing moon. I just remember it being pitched black, and I'm like,
I can't see anything. You're gonna have to I have a great night vision.
So basically I put my left hand on his right shoulder. I had
my shotgun in the right hand, and we walked out about midway through where
that old stump is where we feed Foxy. And his plan is to basically
go over there in the pitch dark and just take a knee and wait.
So we take a knee. If Shannon Mason actually came up behind us,
she had a Gen one night vision monocle that was given off ambient light,
had some bright like bone colored white north face pants on, and he told
her and she quietly went back to the fire area and we took any in.
It didn't take long. You could hear crunch, crunch, crunch from
the direction of what we call the middle Woods. Yeah again, pitch black.
I'm on a knee, right hand, shotgun stabilizing me or sitting there.
I grubbed deer hunting, But I don't know an animal that strategically moves
when the wind blows. The crazy thing. When the wind wouldn't blow,
you wouldn't hear anything. The wind would rustle in that all your senses because
you can't or hearing. And I just remember being like a tuning fork because
this thing kept getting progressively closer and it was going to hit me before it
hit Mark pretty durn close, I would say, within arm's length. He
said, can you smell it? Even though everything is heightened. I could
smell it. I've smelled the zoos smell that manually smell. But I wasn't
smelling it, but I could damn sure hear it crouching. It's okay,
who's going to make the first move? And all of a sudden, Mark
just and it stopped. It didn't like bolt away, It just slowly retreated.
And I said, okay, I'm ready to go back now. So
then you guys got up and walked back back to the We walked back to
the deep fire. Not long after that, he had gone to go to
the bathroom at the out house, and I had the tim which is the
older thermal unit. More black and white image he had come out of the
alt house and all of a sudden I saw him draw his side arm.
Number one. The thing that sticks out is a human lights up like Las
Vegas strip on the tim or anything, and you just clearly see him draw
his side arm. Both myself and Justin Horne said, okay, everybody lights
on. What's going on? Something had growled at him from that Middlewoods area?
How much longer after that? Do you think that was? Maybe fifteen
minutes shortly there after? Pretty quickly then anything else happened that night? Or
is that pretty much it? I think that was about it. And the
next thing, you know, I want to talk about when was that in
relation to these events? So we arrived on Sunday, So it was Tuesday
about eleven thirty. Reading over the notes, we had heard movement in that
Middlewoods area. Again. I like to take laps of the compound when i'm
there and change up the direction each time. This time we headed east toward
the east cabin, through that meadow down into the Bottleneck area. We weren't
really being stealthy. It was myself and Shannon Mason. I was pointed she
was about five yards behind me in the ground was moist. I remember there
was a lot of deer track, talking about all the tracks, and we
were coming in that bottlenecked spot where it starts to open up toward the east
cabin. I saw something bolt across the trail from south to north, heading
towards the north Mountain. I would say it was at least as large as
me, dark brown red, large as you're You're eight and a half feet
tall. Is that no? Whatever it was, I got the impression that
it was the same mass as me. It was a fleeting look that whatever
it was glided literally glided across my vision across that trail, and it didn't
make any noise. So I was just stunned at first because I didn't hear
the thing. It's not the impression that it was stooped at the waist quadrupedally
locomoting across or on biped. It was so smooth and so fast, so
smooth, super fast and not making any sound whatsoever. For a second,
I know, I just stopped and then I just started cussing, and she
and Mason what I'm like, I just saw something bolt across the trail at
me, and she behind me with her side arm drawn and I'm like,
there's no way in hell we're going to catch this thing. It was just
stunning how fast and smooth it was and how quiet. Then we heard a
large limb snap on the north mountain side, and then I saw a white
tail lush east across the creek, two totally different colors sizes. This thing
was smooth. It didn't lumber like a bear. I mean, it just
it was like it was on a zip line. It was fifty yards ahead
of me and I only saw it for a second to a second and a
half. We were watching Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It was a character
that got pulled across on a line that smooth. Yep, yep, And
what you're talking about? Cool? Thank you. That was cool. So
back to you, Travis. You guys had another experience, and I'll say
up front that I think is one of the most significant things we've experienced down
there. Well, why don't you and Jean just set the stage here for
what happened. Okay, this is during my team. I was there with
Jean, David, and Andrew. We had been hearing relentless wooden eye to
our southeast. That's odd because we haven't heard a ton of woodknocks from that
direction. It was just like a motif for that week, as we were
hearing constant wood knocks from this one location to the southeast, and that all
sounded like they were from the same exact spot. They were about the same
volume. We'd heard ten or fifteen of them so far that week. One
of the things that frustrates me to no end about these animals is our inability
to find sign of them other than occasional tracks. Occasional on those trackways,
you find logs that have been stepped on that you're like, something really heavy
stepped on that. We don't find browsing sign from them, and we don't
find trees that they've beat up on these woodknocks and things like that, except
for one time back during Operation Endurance. I've always thought that if they really
are hitting trees with pieces of wood to make these sounds, which I think
they are, we ought to find more sign of them doing that, because
if you do hit a tree with a baseball bat or something that leaves a
wound on it. I was just talking to Gene. I was like,
there's obviously a tree like one hundred yards over there that's all beat the hell
from this week, so let's go over there and find it. This was
like three o'clock in the afternoon. We just decided to go over there and
look specifically for the tree that had been getting hit over there. This is
an interesting area because when you've told me where you went, this is a
place that we Even though it's not very far from where the cabins are,
it's in a little corner that we don't often get into. It's kind of
hard to get to the spot because you have to hop across rocks on the
creek to get there. It's not on the way to get to anywhere.
If you're going to go that direction to get somewhere, it's easier to go
around it. So it's not very far from the compound, but it's not
somewhere we go very often, just because it's hard to get to and it's
not on the way to anywhere. People say small towns in East Texas,
if you end up in this little town, you either have business there or
you're lost. The only reason we would have gone back there is because we
had business there, and our business there was to go find this tree that
had gotten beat up so badly that week. We went looking for that tree,
and we had to find a spot where we could cross the creek.
This was an area to the south of what we call the East Cabin.
We were walking along in those woods very slowly. We were literally walking from
tree to tree. Every tree we could find back there there was big enough
that looked like it would produce a woodknock. Jean and I were just walking
up to this tree, kind of feeling of the bark, looking to see
if we could see any strike marks on it, because I really wanted to
find evidence of the wood knocking tree back there. We were moving along real
slowly. We weren't hunting by any means. I didn't have my rifle in
the low ready because I was looking at all the trees. We were just
walking back and forth. And I think Jane actually sort of prophetically called it
as we were going back there, because we found pieces of trash back there.
Jean said something like, there's all kinds of things to play with back
Can you remember that, Gene. What were you finding on the ground there,
Jean, crash pile or something like it, rusted hands or something from
a locks some by through crash out. Yeah, it's not too far from
this area. We call the homestead where there used to be a home.
Back there, in that area where there was a home, there's little pieces
of trash laying around, some bottles and things like that, and there was
just some, like Jean said, some old metal pans and things like that
laying around the place. As we were walking back and forth in there,
looking at trees, we were about seventy five yards south of the east cabin
walking through there. Midstep, I thought I heard a real subtle sound.
And the sound was so subtle that it made me stop and look to my
east where I thought it came from. It was such a quiet sound that
I wasn't even sure I heard anything. Maybe it was a nut falling and
it hit a leaf, but it sounded like a real quiet huff. I
stopped and I stared to the east for about ten seconds. I didn't see
anything over there, and I didn't hear anything over there. I can't see
very far over there anyways, maybe fifteen yards because the woods are so thick.
It didn't say anything to Jeane because he wasn't standing right beside me,
and because I wasn't totally sure that i'd heard something significant, so I just
went back to doing what I was doing. I started looking at the trees
around me again. About five or ten seconds later, I heard a sound
like claws on tree bark, or if you were to rub a rough hand
down tree bark. I looked over to the east as soon as I heard
that sound, and I saw some small animal moving through the grass. As
soon as I saw it, my first thought was that it was a raccoon,
because it was a very small animal. If you just picture grass and
brush that's two to three feet high. It was moving through that. It
wasn't running by any means, but it was moving through it pretty quickly.
About the time I saw it, it was just in the shade, and
because it was in the thick trees and it was dark, just dark colored,
I couldn't tell exactly what color it was. It just looked dark.
About that time I could see that there was more than one. I said,
Geane, look at that. Jean looked up and saw them. And
about that time it moved through a little piece of sunlight. As soon as
it moved through that piece of sunlight, I could see that it was this
real strange color. It was a reddish black. It's the best way I
could describe it. I went to Vermont just a couple of weeks before this,
and I saw a fissure up there, and that fissure was about the
same color. It's like a black fur with a red tinge to it.
Yeah, if you just mix a black and red fur together, that's what
it looked like. As soon as I saw it ride there, I thought
it was a hog, which is a stupid thought looking back on it,
because we've never seen any hogs in there, and we have one game camera
picture of a hog. They can't really live back there because the ground's so
hard and they can't root. But that's just what I thought it was,
because hogs can be that color, and that's the little box mind put it
in because it was small too. As soon as I thought that, I
took a step to my right so that I could see them better. About
that time, these couple of animals, I didn't know how many there were.
They had made their way to a creek and they were fleeing to the
east, and I just took a couple of steps to my right and I
caught a visual of them fleeing to the east. Before I tell what they
looked like, I want Gene to tell what he saw, because he didn't
see them after that point. What'd you see, Gene? We trash saw
four. By that time I had got up there within four or five feet
of them, and when he said, look, there was a gap over
there about five feet wide where I could see, and one of them went
through that five foot gap. I saw the top of his back. It
was like a dark chocolate lab color. To me. I didn't say a
head or a tail or. I just saw the back and he was moving
east. How big do you think this was? Like relative to other bigger
than a raccoon? It would say, yeah, a raccoon, get up
thirty five downs? Four? Yeah, I said thirty thirty pounds or so
when we first saw it, we said definitely less than fifty pounds, because,
like I said, as soon as I saw it, I thought it
was a raccoon. And Gene, you've seen tons of animals, but as
they're moving, as soon as you saw it move, could you say what
you thought it was? Oh, there's nothing in there of that color in
that valley that I know of. Yeah, so you saw the color before
I did it, or before you could make a preconceived notion about what it
was. I know it wasn't long hair. It was mightbe one inch long
hair like that. I took a couple steps. I took a big step
to my right so that I could see up this creek is these animals are
running away. And as soon as I did that, I was just blown
away instantly, because there was these obviously Semian looking animals running up the creek
on all fours. And as soon as I saw them, I realized real
quickly what they were, and by that time, they were all gone.
Because that's what happens. That's the common theme about lots of these things,
is you think it's something else, and then as soon as you realize what
it is, it's gone, and that collection opportunity is lost. But if
you just imagine small chimpanzees running away in a straight line, that's exactly what
they look like. I didn't see a head or tail. All I could
see was shoulders, the upper part of their bodies. But it was so
strange seeing something whose shoulders were outward facing rather than downward facing like dogs and
cats and things like that, because just the way it was shaped is it
was running away, it couldn't be mistaken for anything else. I've seen bear
cubs in there. I've seen raccoons and things like that running away, and
they're just they don't have that shape to them where their shoulders are wider than
their waist. These things were running away on all fours. They weren't just
booking it full speed by any means, but they were a hurried getaway kind
of pace. They were getting away. But by the time I realized they
were all gone, it was four of them. They were running in a
straight line. So why I think this is so important? And I'm not
a biologist, I don't even play one on TV. But the little that
I do know is that these animals, if you want to use the gorillas
as a parallel produce young, caring for young, that's a resource intensive activity,
right. It ties down certain members of the group because you have the
mothers of the group, But then you have these other animals that are assisting,
and you have fathers. And the idea that there would be four all
presumably around the same age, because they're all about the same size, that
they all appear to be about the same size to you, Yeah, they
all did peer to be about the same size. I would guess that they're
about the same age. If you want to extrapolate that primates generally, gorillas
and humans have single births most of the time, this could mean that there's
four mothers and they're all having offspring at the same time. To me,
again, I'm not a biologist. I don't know the algorithm. I don't
know what the calculation is to get to the total number. But it's a
hell of a lot bigger number than I ever thought could be in there.
You know what I'm talking about. I do know, and it is a
very exciting thing. Like you said, it's probably the most significant visual we've
ever had. Like you, I'm not a primatologist. I won't pretend to
play one, but I know that the simians and us humans. Of course,
we don't have mating seasons like other animals do, so it might seem
bad that you would see four of them the same age, because obviously a
mother didn't have quadruplets. We assume that's not the case. Yeah, but
perhaps if you have a bunch of females around each other, they would ovulate
together like humans tend to do, so maybe that was the case. It's
an incredible experience. I won't lie and pretend like I saw them really well,
because I didn't see them that well. But it was obviously for the
little lapes. It could not have been anything else. They know, they
were not bears. They were not bear cubs. Yeah, I've seen bear
cubs in there, and for one, they're not that color, and for
two, they just don't have that shape. I didn't explain too much about
what happened initially, so let me do that right now. So I heard
the huff and then I heard the little scratching sound on the tree, and
that's what caused me to turn around. If I hadn't I have heard those
two things, then we would have never seen these four animals because we never
heard them, or at least I never heard them. Did you hear them,
Gene? No, I didn't hear them plowing bound that hurriyer. Yeah,
I heard both of those things. And if it wasn't for me hearing
those things, then I would not have turned around and seen them because I
never heard them as they were running off. In hindsight, looking back at
we think, so why would we hear a huff, then hear the tree
scratching sound, and then see all four of them running off and what I
think happened is that those four little apes were up in a tree. There
was a mother somewhere to my east, twenty thirty yards away, far enough
away that she was behind brush and I couldn't see her. She knew that
this was a bad situation because there was four little apes up in this tree
not far from us. This tree was only like fifteen yards when we were
standing. She knew that there was her little the babies that she was watching
over. However that works. I won't pretend to understand the social dynamics of
any grade apes, much less this grade ape, because nobody understands those things,
because we don't have qualified boots on the ground to learn those types of
things yet. But what we think happened, or what I think happened,
is that she was letting them know that they need to get down and they
need to run. She made that real quiet little sound that I wasn't supposed
to hear, that I did hear. Then I happened to hear one of
them make a little mistake because he was jumping off the tree. Then I
could see them bobbing through the grass, and I took a couple steps to
my right and I was able to see all four of them, and I'm
thankful that I was able to see that, even though I couldn't capitalize on
it. Well. Like I said, it's one of the coolest things we've
seen in there, and I think it's really significant. And thanks a lot,
guys. Thanks for sitting out here in the wind, in the cold.
It's talking to me. I really appreciate it. In biology, an
area where there still exists a relic population of an animal, that is,
the remaining population of a species that had at an earlier time a much larger
range that's called a refugium. Refugia can be quite small, like the north
facing slope of the mountain, for example, or the bottom of a deeper
vine, more secluded and sparsely populated corner of the Washtaw Mountains. Members of
the NAWAC are increasingly of the opinion that the valley we call x is a
refugium for the North American wood ape. Besides the significant encounter by Travis and
Gene of four presumably very young apes, the number of sightings we recorded of
other similarly described creatures and pairs of animals moving together is relatively high. Sometimes
the pairs seem to be one mature animal and one smaller one, while at
other times seem to be a mature pair. We can't know their social structure,
of course, but the apes appear to be quite gregarious and potentially fairly
numerous. It's possible that at an earlier time in the history of North America,
situations like that found in x could have existed over a far larger scope,
perhaps back in the time when the only other primates inhabiting the vast wooded
areas of the continent were Native Americans, and while of course they existed in
larger numbers than what's commonly believed, they certainly were not counted in the hundreds
of millions as people are today. It's possible there were hundreds or even thousands
of exes throughout the Lachatas and Aazark Ranges, down along the Red Mississippi Rivers
and into the Bayous of present day Louisiana, and over time, as Europeans
moved into the region and developed their own civilization and exploited the resources they found
in ways Norther people had before them, that the wood it population was fragmented
and isolated. Today, the Nawac has reports from and its conducted investigations in
areas like the mountains north of the Red River where X is, to the
jungle like big thicker region of East Texas, to the swampy lowlands around Kettle
Lake, and of course in between. In all of those you'll find a
little place called Folk. Of course, without a persistent and dedicated field investigation,
it's impossible to know which encounter was the sign of a refugeing population and
which was just a transient animal trying to scratch out an existence on its own.
I personally believe that the majority of sightings reported by witnesses are of the
latter kind. That is, individuals no longer able to live among those they
came from, or are looking to branch out and start their own troops.
It's not unlike how gorillas live again. This is pure speculation on my part,
but many of the commonly held perceptions of what apes do not line up
with what the NAWAC continues to experience an X. In any event, nothing
from the past summer's efforts has done anything but cause the NAWAC to feel an
even greater urgency for protection of the animal's habitat. As I said, there's
really no way to know how many xes there are left, not without a
concerted effort to find them. While I think that's sufficient motivation to continue to
strive for the collection of a holotype, it's also sufficient motivation for anyone hearing
my voice to get involved at some level. As we discussed it with David
Mitchizouski, there are many active groups already working to protect with apes in their
habitat, even if they don't acknowledge the creature's existence. David's National Wildlife Federation,
for example, or the Nature Conservancy here large national groups that spring to
mind immediately, there are likely some in your local area doing the same kind
of work at a more modest level. What's required right now, more than
anything, is for people to get involved somehow to make sure that the areas
we still have where large animals can live and reproduce, remain as they are.
Because if we don't, you and I and all the others who care
about and love our wild places, who will kind If we don't do it
today, when are we going to do it? They say, you don't
have to go home, but you can't stay step steps steps step chid,
this chid, that chid. Everything came right back, right back for joy,
for me joy, stay right, you come in right away, step
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