Now one of your pudding. I got a string going on here, something
just because my dog. Something killed your dog. My dog. We're flying
through the or 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 he was dead. And once you hit the ground like,
I didn't see any cars. All I saw was my dog coming over
the fence. Happen. What are you putting? We got some wonder or
something prowling around out here. Did you see what it was? Or was
it was? Standing up? I'm out here looking through the window now and
I don't see anything. I don't want to go outside. Jesus Quice,
you better hello. Hit the boddy out here, Quinn, I'm out there.
I thought of a bitch of about tech forty nine. I don't know
he's he announce there. Yeah, I'm bulking right head. He didn't.
Thanks so much for joining me for the show. What You're about to hear
is the first episode of a series of these amazing stories that Fred is going
to share from Alaska. Fred was a guest on the show last week,
and he had some really compelling experiences while he was out in the bush in
Alaska. You remember his story about being in the cabin with his cousin and
his elder where they ended up having to shoot their way out of this situation
with the sasquatch surrounding the cabin. In addition to his own experiences, Fred
collects experiences and encounters from other people all over Alaska. He has a YouTube
channel called Subarctic Alaska Sasquatch where he shares these amazing encounters. So each week,
I'm going to handpick some of these amazing stories and Fred is going to
share them with you here on the show. To highlight these amazing encounters and
get them out there for everybody to hear. I have a link right here
in the show notes to Fred's YouTube channel. Make sure you go over there
and check that out. He's got tons of videos over there, and he
is an amazing storyteller. So I think you guys are really going to enjoy
this series. So, without further ado, let's kick it over to Fred
and let you hear these first two amazing encounters. This is Fred and Alaska
carry On tribal member from Dillingham, Alaska. I wanted to share an experience
that happened to us on the Newshghak River. It was in nineteen ninety four.
There was four of us. We all went up. It was just
above ported. We went to jim Slough, a little place off the east
side of the Newshagak River. Those from Bristol Bay know where I'm talking about,
especially those who may live in Dillingham. It was into July. There
was a series of occurrences that happened leading up to this. The first one
was we went to check out a beaver pond, Me and my buddy Rudy
from Seattle. Also a buddy of mine who's now deceased, Michael Arf.
He was there, missa guy rist in peace. Michael. We went to
the spot up by Snake Lake in Dillingham. I'm a Mountain China cap.
He wanted to show us the biggest beaver we ever seen, and we're giving
him crap. Mike with the big beaver. Anyway, we're guys, we're
young, and we get up out there. It was blocked off, but
they started putting a burm up so four by fours wouldn't tear up the tundra
patch up there and the prime berry picking in that spot. We parked him.
Were walking through, and Rudy's a city boy, six foot two,
Filipino mixed guy, a real city boy, dressed street urban. We're giving
him crap about being a city boy and he get lost in the woods type
of thing. This guy stuffed. It was a real light afternoon, very
light. We were kicking along and Rudy wanted to prove himself. He said,
I'm going to take the lead. I'm like, okay, great,
go ahead, city boys. Show us the way where we're going. This
path cuts through a bunch of alders and it's like a covered walkway. They
looked like three or four foot tall from the road, but in actuality they're
like twelve foot tall. Alderbrush and willows just blowing around. So we get
kicking on back in through there. As we're going along, Rudy started getting
ahead of us a little bit. We were all heavily armed, we were
young and cocky. We had the business with us, so we thought.
And as this trail breaks into the open, the path is deeply rooted in
the tundra. There's no mistake in getting off the path. And there's a
slight slope to our right that goes up to a line of trees that cuts
down going towards the Muskeg black spruce, willow alders, things of this nature.
And as we were kicking up down that trail, Rudy had broke through
on the trail before us, and we're coming in behind him talking smack.
All of a sudden we noticed he was stopped and looking straight down at his
feet, and we noticed there was a six foot eight inch round log right
at his feet. And being a small I was like, oh, Rudy,
it's not like the city, bro, there's no doorknob to turn.
You got to step over those Just giving him crap. We get up to
him and me and Michael were both giving it to him, both barrels,
just trashing him about being a city boy, and to mock him. I
walked around him and stepped over the log and said and looked at him and
I said, see, Rudy, this is how you do it. Step
over the log, buddy. And I was being a total jerk, but
the look on his face, he was like, that just fell at my
feet. That's why I stopped. It fell at my feet, and he
was dead. Seriously, I've never seen him freaked out like that. He
said, it dropped straight down in front of him. Me and Michael immediately
looked for a rotted tree that fell. There wasn't one. Michael pointed out,
hey, it's dead quiet. Something mat right, We shouldn't be here,
and I definitely agreed because it was very odd to all of a sudden
this and Rudy was at himant He said it like dropped just straight down.
It was the damnedest thing, and he couldn't wrap his mind around it.
He was really it touched him. It really bothered him. These series of
things caused him to never want to come back to Alaska. We get out
of there, it was dead quiet. We didn't visually see anything. This
got on this creepy feeling, went with our guts on it, and when
we got back to the truck, it's like a little half moon turnaround.
When we get to the truck, the winds picking up pretty good. At
this point, we're all in this little single cab tote of the truck with
those who knew Michael Murphy know the little white toyod I'm talking about. I
was in the middle and Rudy was in the passenger seat, and the parking
brake was down low on the driver's side. When Michael reached down, he
had started to rig and reached out and unlock that. We were just starting
to itch forward because of the stick shift over those olders. That same log
that fell in front of Rudy came flying over those trees and landed in front
of the truck. But we hauled ass out of there. Very creepy.
Michael was telling us it was a hairy man. At this point in my
life, I'd seen the hairy man scream, run away, throw stuff,
that kind of thing, but things seemed different. The log throwing. That's
not really uncommon, seeing them up root trees and stabbing in the ground with
the roof balls up, but there was just something different in the air.
So anyway, we got out of there. Two days later, hear this
noise on my roof and we're trying to figure out what the hell is that
we're renting from the Walls there in Dillingham, and their old little house was
just up from Squaw Creek, up on a little knoll and a single sided
roof, real small little place. We hear this walking and it wasn't like
stop step, it was more like weight being applied. And then lifted,
applied lifted, sort of like, what the hell grab guns? Of course,
we're Alaskans. Run outside to look up on this roof and there was
nothing there, but about twenty yards away there was a birch tree and a
couple other trees just swaying hard like something heavy was on them. Heard some
cracking, and then heard a thump on the ground, and then heard the
thump of something running away. We had no visual on either of those two.
This happened looked in two days of each other, so the creep factor
was definitely going up. Michael had the idea, let's go up the Nishgek
River. Let's go up to jim Slough to the old cabin. Check it
out. See what's happening up that way, do some fishing, See if
there's some harbor seals still chasing salmon up there. We're like, all right,
you want to see if there's a harbor seal there or whatever. That's
pretty far up river for a harbor seal, not unheard of, but far
so. We're like, yeah, bet, let's go. We were adventurous.
Hey, let's do this. We fuel up and we head out.
I was just recently married. For the first time, and my wife had
to work, so I left her there. Yeah, I was young and
dumb. We're out here, We're gonna go play in the trees. So
we take off and we make it up to Jim's Slough in half a day,
three quarters of a day, dicking around fishing on the way. A
Jim Slough cuts up next to the east side of the bank. The sleu
cuts up and in and there's an old, dilapidated cabin off on your right.
We decided we're gonna go see if there's some old melting glass, because
the old timers had that glass. It looks like it's melting and it's cool
but whatever, So we're gonna go inspect that, and of course we're armed.
It bears everywhere. So we walk on over there and Rudy's still sitting
in the skiff, and we had someone else with us. I'm trying to
remember, it'll come to me, but there's four of us, Me and
Michael, Rudy and the other person. I The name slips me. It's
been quite a few years since nineteen ninety four when this happened. So we
get over to this cabin and me and Michael are looking around. Everything's broken,
there's really nothing to find. The scream bellows down the river. It
sounded like it was a mile away, but still sounded really close, this
long bellowing on multiple octaves. It was obviously a Harry Matt. There was
no mistaking. Most don't make that called. Bears don't, coyotes don't that.
The wolves, don't even porcupines fighting, or rabbits screaming, nothing remotely
near it. So we're immediately nervous. So we go back out to the
skiff and we figured, you know what, we're in a skiff. We're
gonna rip up river and see if we can see this thing. We get
over to the skiff and it wasn't starting. There's something wrong with one of
the valves or one of the cylinder or something. It wasn't firing right.
It wasn't firing on both lungs, just out of the blue, which was
real mind boggling because I know Michael had just bought that out board the year
before, forty Horsey Army a Yama. We tend to it, we're looking
at it. Finally get it started. Now during dealing with this outboard,
we totally spaced the scream it's not uncommon to hear those kind of things.
However, we heard another scream. This one was closer and right across the
river, and this is what caused my buddy Rudy to never want to come
back to Alaska. As we were looking across the river, trying to look
into the shadows because on the east side there the sun was in our eyes.
From the west side, it was still pretty high in the sky,
but everything was silhouetted on the other side of the river bank. The creep
factor was a ten, just because we couldn't see it, but we could
hear it. That thing was thrashing, banging and making a ruckus. It
was very creepy. So this thing comes out had to have been eight and
a half nine foot tall, kind of chromagnan old Indian looking in the face,
with a flat nose, flattened down ash gray. The hair looked like
Jimmy Superfly snooka that wrestler how his hair used to go all over like that,
but a little shorter, and the thing was massively muscular. This thing
screamed, broke a tree, threw part of it into the New she River,
and this thing was staring right at Rudy. Now, Rudy at this
point is holding a gun and shaking. This dude's six' to two martial
artists. I've seen him street fight. Dude ain't no punk. He's not
as sissy or none of that. He was shaking. I was nervous only
because this thing was huge right over there and we're having outboard problems. It
screamed, looked at him. It was almost like it was focused on him.
It was weird because I walked down the slew a little waist to get
a better aim at this thing. We're contemplating shooting. We were young,
we're guys. This thing screaming at us. It continues, Hey, we're
going to put it down. It didn't work out like that. We didn't
even get shots off. The other guy that was with us, I can't
remember his name. He got to fix something with an idling tension or screw
or something. He did some adjustment on the outboard and so he got it
fired up. Our attention changed from staring at this thing across the river screaming
at Rudy to get an hell out of there. Now we were backing out
the sleugh All eyes were on this thing. The other guy that was with
us. Man, it's slipping me. I'll remember it at some point,
but he was on point with the business getting us out of there. Us
three, Me and Michael and Rudy, we were eyes on this thing as
we're backing up into the main channel to get turned around. Was going along
the bank, swinging like on the bank from one tree to another to come
and stay parallel with us across the river. It wanted to come over.
It was a deep part of the channel. I think it could have easily
got across there. I don't know why it didn't. So it's just making
these weird noises, click popping sounds and imitating an alphood. We're watching this
thing do this. Rudy was beyond freaked out. He was a dark Filipino
guy. He was pale, white, shaking like the leaf. And me
and Michael are like, calm down, we're getting out of here. It's
not going to follow us back to day telling him. Because of that instance,
within two days, Rudy was on a plane back to Seattle. It
freaked us out too, don't get me wrong, but it wasn't the first
time we had something screaming at us from the woods and throwing stuff. It
just wasn't again, are they our friends? I haven't seen it. We
did nothing aggressive when we got there. We just pulled into the slow,
jumped out, and walked over to a dilapidated cabin. We weren't even firing
off guns or picking the berries that were around, none of that stuff.
This thing made its business to come at us again. What do you do
with that? How do you make friends with something that stone shit at you
and doesn't want to be your friend? I don't know, but thanks for
listening to Fred and Alaska y'all have a good one here to share an experience
with you. That was email room in moved by a guy named Jason.
He wanted to remain anonymous, but agreed to let lose his name. He
might be back up this coming fall and possibly do one on one in review
about the situation. This encounter happened fall of last year, or south of
the De Nali Highway. He had been on a hunting trip with the college
buddy he was up visiting, and after the trip he enjoyed himself so much
in Alaska, so much he decided I had my wife flying my coo.
Young boys up seven and nine and would give him some basics on camping.
Yeah, it's a great thing. It took a few days to organize,
so it was roughly about a week, he said. After a hunting season
had ended. A lot of the masses were gone, the ones that really
show up and go at it for all the time they have huntings. The
crowds were down. His kid made it, and they had planned on just
a couple of nights just to get them familiar with camping and setting up camp
and all the hardships of being in a remote a asket. It's different than
you think. His college buddy had the spare fence, and so he was
extra protective of his boys and was worried about all the gut piles out in
the woods and brought that little protective bear fence, which is an electrical fence
hooked up to a battery. In essence, it's a small bit of a
protective barrier around your campsite, especially with kids there and whatnot. So their
first day there, he borrowed his buddy side by side a little Polaris razor
or whatever it happened to have been, and he gets his boys back in
there, and his college buddy's going to join him in like a day or
two to check on him. Their first day was uneventful. They went out
ripping around on the players, had a great time. By the time they
got back that night, the boys were beat. They're not used to all
the fresh air. They were living in the city somewhere down forty eight.
So they get everything set up, and he was carrying the load because they
were obviously tired and just beat. And he said it was weird. It
kept getting real quiet, and then the birds the trip again a little while
later, and he thought it was odd, but he figured maybe it was
some coyotes or a wolf, you know, running around or whatever. So
it gets dark. I had a good campfire going and the boys ate and
they were already asleep. He watched the fire a little bit and goes back
in onto his cot and he laid there and he was contemplating what he was
going to show the boys tomorrow, show him how to operate a chainsaw,
and just various outdoor activities that they weren't going to learn where they were.
So as he's land there contemplating these things, he hears something hit the tent
and he figured, oh, it must be a leap or twig falling off
the tree. Periodically, he was hearing this little tick against the tent.
Now where they were was south of the south of the Dannali Highway, down
off the north fork of the Golcana River, a very popular spot. Lots
of people go there every year to get their hunting, their caribou, their
moose. Where he was at was just across. Anyone who's been there knows
when you come up to the north fork of the Goulcanon you got to drop
down this bluff and it's steep, so if you're not familiar with an ATV,
you can easily wreck going down this scene. But he had been there
before and they navigated it just flye and once they got across, they found
a perfect little spot to set up camp, which was out in the clearing
but near some trees enough for him to have a nice perimeter of that their
fence up. He's trying to figure out, I don't feel the wind blowing
against the tent. What's knocking this stuff onto the tent. It's sporadic.
It's not a constant. It just every once in a while he would hear
something ticked against the fabrica of the tent. He just off to sleep and
he hears a loud snap that wakes him up. He wasn't sure what time
that was, but the snap he woke up to, he just looked around.
Everything was quiet, His boys were sleeping, and he felt nothing out
of place, so he drifted off back to sleep. He said he wasn't
sure how much time had passed from the cracking to when something off in the
distance started howling caught his attention. He said it was very distinct. It
was like a howl scream, like a woman being murdered, but with a
bear growl incorporated into it. With his words not mine, I asked him,
can you elaborate on that? What was it just one constant or was
it a constant with two octaves? What was going on with that? And
he said it was on two different octaves. It was high pitched along with
this bellowing growl going on at the same time. You got kids there,
That kind of creep you out. But anyway, so he's immediately concerned.
He has protection, he's got his kids there. He's in remote Alaska.
Of course, he's got his hunting rifle and what have you, and a
handgun. And he figured, okay, we're in the wild. This is
where you can hear these sounds. And he thought nothing of it because he's
really not from Alaska. Had he been, he write a non typically only
one thing makes that kind of noise. Stay tuned for more sasquatch out to
sea. We'll be right back after these messages. The crack goes on.
How happens, and he's concerned about the howl, but it's not close enough
to really raise alarm. It had been about twenty twenty five minutes. He
said. He was laying there and just starting to drift back to sleep when
there's another crack and a closer howl. With how closely the two sounds were,
he said they were within moments of each other. There was a crack,
and then it was like a howl not too far away, but facing
a different direction, making the howling sound very concerning two young children in the
tent. He's not having it. He figured out, Okay, let me
grab the spotlight, let me do a security perimeter check, make sure everything's
cope esthetic. He didn't want to alarm his boys. When he was getting
dressed quickly, one of them popped up and said, what's going on?
He said, just calm down on the check the fire and make sure we
have it good for in the morning, and there's still some members to work
with. Kid took it at face value and just you know, let it
be. Little boys are curious. So he gets outside the tent and he
starts beaming around looking for the origin of this crack in the direction he thought
he heard the howling. But he's checking the little Baar fence perimeter. And
that time of year, it gets fairly dark at night. Let's end the
hunting season it's going into I think he said it was early September something like
that. So we're roughly on the twelve twelve light cycle up here around that
time. Cause Alanta, the midnight sun which we reached June twenty first,
discards tapering on. We lose minutes a day anyway. So he does his
perimeter check, and of course he's got his firearm. He wants to make
sure if there's a bear nearby he can make noise or dip in his family.
So I don't mean to make light of this, but the way he
expressed it to me, he was very upset it and that's not funny to
me. I've just been in his shoes. When it comes to being startled,
he hears another crack off in the distance, the same direction he had
heard the howl incomer from that was nearby. As he's checking that area real
closely, he noticed a sound behind him like a oof, and then this
kind of click clacking chatter, almost like a squirrel, but he said it
was far too large to have been a squirrel chattering, but it was like
something imitating a squirrel chatter. Then he heard an alhu. But what bothered
him about the alho was it was simultaneous with the click chatter. I've personally
heard that before, and it just creates this creepy feeling all over you.
Anyway, so he turns his attention behind him to see what the hell is
at and he sees eye Shine Eye Shine with approximately nine feet up and where
he saw it was about thirty yards away, right in the tree line in
between. He was just off the trail, one of the main trails,
and it was on the other side of that trail about fifteen yards, so
it was about thirty yards total between the two. He sees the eye Shine,
and immediately the eye Shine ducks down and tries to hide, which is
very common most of the time. Most of the time, he immediately is
WHOA, that's a tall bear. He thought it was a bear standing up
and looking back at and was just curious about the camp because again they had
that bear fence perimeter, and so he immediately is very concerned. That's a
big bear. In his mind, that's a big bear. It's very close.
I need to get a game plan here of what to do. I
got my boys in the tent. And he didn't know which direction this bear
was going to go. Try to follow what this little spotlight and it had
disappeared. Essentially, he didn't know what to do about that. He's unfamiliar.
He knows that area just from the short hunting trip he was on with
his buddy, just for a week or so earlier, and it really wasn't
his forte He didn't know the grounds very well. He knew what direction he
had to go to get out of there, but he didn't know the area.
He's trying to contemplate. Okay, I know the river is that direction
it went and it paralleled the trail when the eye shine left and he didn't
hear a sound, and he thought for sure he would hear like a bulldozer
going through the trees, and that wasn't the case. There was no sound.
All the sound had stopped once he put eyes on this thing and he
couldn't make it out. All he said is he saw the eye shine and
then some kind of hair for as it ducked out and went behind some trees
and was gone, hair goes up on the back of my neck. So
he immediately he's, okay, I got to get these boys at least be
prepared. He didn't know what to expect. He's not a bad guy,
he's not an Alaskan guy. He was just up visiting. So he gets
his boys up and dressed and says, yeah, this is there's what hunters
do. We get up extra early. We tend to our fire really well,
and we make coffee for everyone, basically shining them on, but wanting
them up and ready in case they had to ski daddles, and he is
already plotting on getting out of there anyway. So they're getting dressed in the
tent and he's immediately back outside surveying with the spotlight in the firearm, just
wanting to make sure his kids are okay. What he told me was he
was spotlighting the fence, and he noticed it was jiggling and there was no
movement, no sound, but this thing was jiggling where he had it set
up on these little posts. I was like, that's weird. So he
went to run to the backside of the tent and looked, and as he
spotlighted, he sees the eyes shine and this thing stands up. He said,
it was very big, bipedal. He made out the face. He
said it looked a lot like Patty did on the close up of the face,
but the hair on the top of the head was long, longer,
and he said he immediately knew something was very wrong. He felt it deep
inside him that this is this ain't right. Obviously, if you've never encountered
these things and it's there, the startle he had must have been immense.
I could just imagine it because I knew of their existence, and when I
saw one up close like that the first time, it scared shit on me.
But anyway, I digress. So this thing was checking the perimeter of
the fence, jiggling the post and seeing what these wires did, and it
stood up. He's beaming it and he doesn't even realize he has a firearm
in his hand. Shooting at this thing wasn't even on his mind. It
made a grunt sound, turned around to walk back into the trees, which
was a short distance away. But he said it moved silently and rather quickly.
But it wasn't moving fast. It was just had a long stride and
it was out of their end of the woods. So now he's really concerned.
He saw something across the trail, and now something behind the tent,
and his boys are in that tent, so he's getting very irrational. He's
getting very panic stricken. And his words were, I didn't know whether to
shit or go blind, which I totally understand. You got a couple of
youngions, and being a dad, you're on point. He immediately picks up
the pace and getting them ready to get the hell out of there. He
starts up the players ranger. They didn't peck anything. He had his boys
get on the gear, get on the ring gear and all their hoodies and
everything. And as he was getting them out of the tent. Before he
brought them out, he circled around again with that spotlight. He didn't know
if they were after his kids. I'm just curious because there was no outward
signs of aggression. At this point, before he brings them out to put
them in the ranger to cut trail, he was contemplating, how am I
going to navigate this trail in the pitch black rajor ass headlights. There's no
right light to light up the sides of the trail. He's contemplating these things
because he wants to keep his voice safe and everything like that. So as
he's going around the tar spotlight and all around trying to figure this stuff out,
just in microseconds he hears another howl and it came from the same direction
across the trail that he had first seen the eyeshine, and it ducked into
the trees. So this, how he said, was it's not like a
woman being murdered along with the mixed in with the xylophone. I asked him
to can you imitate it at all? And it was just like, oh,
mixed in with a screen like a quasi Chewbacca kind of his words,
not mine. He hears that, and immediately it sends a shockwave through a
system. What the hell? What is this? What are these bigfoot?
Wasn't It didn't pop into his head until later in those moments, he was
just like, what the hell are these He's doing all this, and meantime
he's trying to figure out how am I gonna have enough light to see off
to the sides of the trail to make sure Nuning's trying to get us.
He makes a decision to hold out until it gets a little lighter in the
sky. You gotta understand, going through the trees in Alaska, when it's
dark out, it's a different dark. It's pitch black, can't see your
hand in front of your face, none of that. He was thinking on
the side of safety, and since there had been no outward aggression outside of
that scream, he wanted to hold tight a little bit and try to wait
for the light. He didn't want to get caught slipping on that players ranger
just out in the middle of the Tuley's with no one other than himself.
As a seven and nine year old isn't necessarily capable of understanding the dynamics of
what was happening in that situation. From what he told me, he told
the boys stay in the tent. Stay in the tent. I got to
get some things ready before we go, And by now the youngest boy was
sobbing a little bit, really scarce from the scream, which I could understand
that that's a very jarring thing to hear those kind of screams. That it
is a monster, worst nightmare to run into in the middle of the woods.
So he's contemplating these things. How what's the best way to go about
this? And now, grant you, he's not a very experienced hunter.
He's gone hunting down the States, but he only just recently went hunting the
week or so before in Alaska, and he's trying to remember all the little
tidbits aid as college. But he had told him on that trip about watching
the trail, the river rises quickly if it rains, just typical stuff,
and nothing in that gave reassurance on what he was going to do. He
was very conflicted. He wanted to flee, but yet he wanted his kids
to be safe. I totally understand that he was getting really emotional because it
was a form of torment for the poor guy to sit there dwell on these
things. It's a livelihood of his kids. It could potentially be like her
death, and he didn't want to risk any of that. So he even
made the hard decision to build up the campfire and just play camp, make
some coffee, make some snacks, take that opportunity to gather together some essentials.
He didn't pack up the tent or the bear fence. He left that
active, even though this thing was just touching it with no regard of the
zapfth I don't know, but just peace of mind, I guess. So
he gets this an accident to cooking something, and he just starts telling them
about his hunting trip from the week before, just to buy time and mentally
assess. While he was talking to those boys his exact love. As they're
doing this, he said, he heard three different distinct grunts from different places.
One was further up the trail, the direction that they weren't going to
be going to leave. The other one was in the same direction the one
behind the tent went. Then another one opposite side of the trail where he
first saw the eye shine. There's three of these things, he said.
He started shaking and crying visibly in front of his boys, and when that
happened, it dawned on him that I have to go. We have to
get out of here. They're not going away. They don't care about the
fire. Or that sense I got to get my boys out of here.
So he makes that decision. And it's roughly four point thirty in the morning,
he said, four thirty going on five, So there's a little bit
of light on the horizon, not a whole lot. Everything else will still
real pitch black silhouettes in the trees. So he said he made decision.
He got them to get their stuff together, showed him how to put dirt
on the fire, and basically loaded up. He loaded both boys and that
side by side right next to them in the center, little seat belt thing
that they had. He didn't want them bouncing out. Now, I've tried
to use one of these harnesses in these side by sides, and geez,
if you don't have a good aftermarket one, it's digging India. It's uncomfortable
in that situation, or was irrelevant. I could just imagine how uncomfortable too,
of them boy squished in there like that. So he gets them in
there. He's got the rifle leaned up and leaning on his shoulder, and
he'd got the handgun sitting on his lap pointing in a quasi safe direction.
There's a lot of bumps and stuff, but he wanted quick and easy access
to either one of these firearms, which I totally understand. They take off
and they're kicking along. He cleaned off the headlights because there was a bunch
of mudding to bring on him over the years, because no one ever really
cleans their side by side. So he cleaned off those headlights and had a
lot more light than he thought he would, so he was a little relieve
with that. So they kick along. They're going down the trail, and
he's trying to remember the trail exactly so he can navigate it with more speed.
Well, if they had to cross the north fork of the Gold Canna,
and at that time the water was like fourteen to sixteen inches deep.
Anyone who's crossed there to go up into the Alphabets knows that spot I'm talking
about, because there's a little shack city that springs up every fall. So
he's going up this, He gets across, and now he's going up this
deep ass trail and he has to use a motor force to make it happen,
because you can't just gingerly. You gotta punch it and boom dock on.
It's that thing. So he starts his ascent, and as he's going
up, he can hear cracking in the trees. On the high side of
this trail that goes up the bluff, he can hear loud cracking paralleling him
as he's going and this thing is loud. Going up the hill, he
can still hear that cracking. So he's senses are peaked high. Now.
One thing he forgot to do was grab the extra fuel for that side by
side, So they drove in with the full tank, did some running u
on that first day. He didn't resell it, so he's got a quarter
tank once he gets to the top of the bluff. So what the sounds
happening parallel to him? Once he got to the top of the hill,
he told the boys duck down, pluggy ears, and he shot a couple
times out the back of this players ranger to make noise, just to make
noise. He didn't point at anything in particular. He just pointed out and
up boom, made some noise, and continued on down the trail. Now
you got to go past sweed lakes going back towards the parking area. They
hurt nothing else after that point, but he was jumbling along so hard his
voice started complaining, hell out, slow down, it's digging in or whatever.
So he slowed down, but he was looking at the gas situation,
so he wanted to get as much distance as quickly as possible before running out
of gas. It just so happened that as they were coming down this little
gentle hill that leads up to this gravel pit where everyone parks, there's stuffs
in their trailers and what have you in their campers. He runs hot of
gas, just shy, but close enough. There's some other people with campers
and stuff, so he felt a little more safe. So he gets his
boys out. He grabs that little stuff he had packed with. They jump
in his buddy's truck that he borrowed, and they left the side to side
right on the trail. He got them in the truck and drove out of
there. He went to packs and there was just one lowly street light there
at the old Paxson Hotel Lodge or whatever it is. So he said,
no, screw this. He went into glenn Allen and parked at the Tusoro
there right there on the corner. Everyone knows it and goes to it until
I got light. Then he called his buddy cave. They went, saved
the side by side and cleaned up the camp. He told him that the
boys got sick and he was concerned for their well being. That's why he
got out it. He didn't even share that experience with his buddy from college.
There's a lot of these things that happened to people and they don't express
it, even their closest loved ones. Something happens. I haven't even shared
all the things I've dealt with my closest life of one, So I totally
understand because there's a level of it's easier to speak to a stranger about it
because you don't want your loved ones looking at you like you're a kook.
That's that's the last thing anyone wants, just another encounter to just think about.
I'm not saying it happens every day, but when it does happen,
it gets real fast. Just be aware in the woods. You never know
what's out there. They say you don't gotta go home, but you can't
stay. I don't want to be happens. Joy this job, that chart
everything, calling ricket back, pricking back Joy for me, Joy, stay
right, you call it right away. Still still still dosssssste passest things,
us ness,