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All right, here's another bigfoot story. My story began five years ago in

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Pickens County, Alabama. An older
cousin of mine had told me that I

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could hunt its property, where he
had planted fields that no one else was

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hunting. The field I chose was
one hundred and fifty yards by one hundred

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yards, with a swamp on one
side and a cutover in front. I

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went in before daylight and I climbed
into his shooting house. It was large

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enough to sleep in if I wanted
to. I stayed all day long without

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seeing anything. Finally, at about
four PM, a large group of does

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came into the field. I was
waiting for a buck, but when one

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didn't show, I picked the largest
dough and I shot her. The does

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that were with her I ran to
cutover thickets. It was getting dark when

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I climbed out of the shooting house, and I took my rifle and my

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cheek flashlight into the backfield with me, but I left my backpack behind.

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No sooner had I found a blood
trail than I heard a weird growl coming

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from the other side of the shooting
house. I couldn't place what animal it

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was, but that put me on
edge. An own enemy is always easier

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to face than an unknown enemy.
And then, to make matters worse,

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it was moving toward me. I
held my rifle and my flashlight pointed in

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the direction of the sound, but
it never came into the light. Fear

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was pushing my heart rate up as
I continued to scan that direction to find

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the creature with a menacing growl.
It sounded big enough that I figured I'd

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only get one shot and that would
be it. But whatever it was,

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it was probably going to eat me
anyway. Suddenly, from over the hill,

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I heard a four wheeler coming and, to my relief, stopped.

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We got the deer, and we
got out of the woods. When I

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told my story, everyone laughed at
me, and they said that I'd been

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living in the city for too long. Well, I didn't care. The

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next year, my nephew and I
went back to that property. He elected

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to hunt from the shooting house while
I went elsewhere. When I picked him

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up at dark, he asked if
I had tried to scare him. I

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pointed out that he had a thirty
six and I'm not that stupid. The

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story he then told me sent a
chill down my spine. He said that

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it was a little before I had
got there to pick him up, the

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entire shooting house began shaking, as
if someone was trying to push it over.

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That's a big, sturdy house,
and there's no way anyone could shake

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that structure. He told me that
he was screaming at the door while this

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thing was shaken. He was stating
his name and saying that he had a

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right to be there. This lasted
for several minutes, with him amy his

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gun at the door the whole time. I hate that it had to happen

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to him, but I couldn't help
but be relieved that someone else had an

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experience in that swamp bottom now reminded
him not to make fun of me about

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it anymore. Oh man, that
was full on payback, wasn't it.

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The writer his name is Larry.
He tells his buddies the story and Pickings,

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Alabama about something growling at him.
They laugh at him. One of

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the guys that laughs at him actually
experiences the same thing. Told you so,

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told you. That's a good way
to get some payback, isn't it.

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Larry? Hey, Larry, thanks
for the story. I hope you

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guys are doing good in Alabama.
Really interesting story. I appreciate it.

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All right, thank you all for
clicking on the video. I really appreciate

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you. I'm Cam Buckner. This
is a Dixie Cryptid podcast where all we

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do is tell stories. So if
you like good stories, you found your

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people, and I appreciate you hanging
around and maybe you could subscribe or hit

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the thumbs up button, you know, all that jazz. I've gotten a

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few emails, maybe two or three, and a few comments about where I've

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been the last week. I've been
working on a project I think you all

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are going to really enjoy. It's
going to take maybe two weeks to a

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month to get everything finalized, but
all my work on it is done.

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It's an audiobook. It's not Blood
Eagle. Blood Eagle is next, but

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it is an audiobook. It's about
a three between three and four hour project.

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I think people of my generation are
going to love this audio book.

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Anyway, That's what I've been working
on. Before we move on with the

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podcast, I'm gonna tell you a
little story. My wife and I were

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at the we have a big baseball
field here. We were down there letting

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the grand kids play on the playground
that is in the ballpark and there were

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some girls out there, some teenage
girls, and they were jumping around on

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the playground equipment and they at first
I thought they were born, but then

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it became very obvious they were girls. And they were dressed like boys.

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They had used some makeup and painted
on some mustaches and beards, and they

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were wearing camouflages and hats, and
they were just being silly. And I

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wasn't going to ask them what the
deal is because in this culture, you

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know, you don't want to offend
anyone. But after a few minutes I

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could kind of tell what they were
doing. They were kind of poking fun

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at the dudes around here. So
I asked them what was going on.

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They said, they have a YouTube
channel. So there are some local girls

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here in my town. They've started
a YouTube channel, and I told them

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I would tell y'all about it.
I can't remember the name of their channel,

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but they'll tell you in this little
video clip. See y'all look at

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it, and when they're done,
go to the description of this video,

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there'll be a link to their channel. Go over there and subscribe and show

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them. I was telling them one
of a nice audience we have that listen

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to these stories and follow my channel. Se y'all going over there and just

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say hi if you would, if
you got time. It's not a big

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deal. It's probably not your cup
of tea, but it could be.

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It might be your kid's cup of
tea. I guarantee you it's clean,

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and it's teenage girls having fun,
and I think you'll enjoy it. So

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go over there and give them a
big thumbs up, a subscription and say

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hey, I'm sent you. And
here is the little video I took of

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them. All right, there,
you go there, you have it.

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Go over there and show them what
great people you are. All right,

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let's move on with this podcast.
Again. I appreciate you clicking on this

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video or on this podcast. Got
two more stories, they're pretty good.

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All right, here we go.
Okay, I have an email from Australia

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from a I think it's a man
named yet it is a man. His

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name is Daz Daz and he says
it's okay to use all the names in

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his story. So that's what I'm
going to do. I'm ninety seven point

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five percent convinced that the Big Fella
exists, not just because of what I've

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seen or because of the stories I've
heard on your channel, but because of

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the indigenous folk here in Australia.
They've been featuring him in their cave paintings

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since long before Europeans arrived here.
More importantly, there are places where the

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Aborigines won't trespass, either out of
respect or fear. Rather than go into

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those areas, they'll turn and go
the other way. Around Christmas of two

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thousand and five or two thousand and
six, we had a couple of weeks

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off from work. Summer was in
full spring and it was bloody hot outside,

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so we decided to head to a
property that was owned by my buddy

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Maddie's uncle. There were four of
us on this trip. Me, I'm

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a bow hunter and all around outdoorsman. There was Fish, another outdoorsman who

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bow hunts and he is almost reptilian. And Lindsey, who grew up out

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this way in his country to the
bone. And then there's Mattie and his

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uncle owned the property between Mattie's uncle's
land and the three neighboring properties we had

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permission to hunt. We had fifteen
hundred acres at our disposal, and if

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we got bored, we could always
head to the pub that was also owned

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by Mattie's uncle. For the first
couple of days, things went pretty well,

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and during the day we bow hunted
fox and pig and the thicker scrub

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and then spotlighted the grain paddocks with
our rifles. By night, we camped

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out in the scrub as a base
camp and took some foxes and pigs and

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everything was normal until it wasn't.
The one thing I can assure you is

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that we were not drunk. We
hadn't been to the pub and we don't

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drink alcohol before heading out with rifles. It was coming to dusk and we

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had cranked up the fire and cooked
up some basic camp feed, canned soup

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and ravioli, and we're getting ready
for a spotlight and a bit of gun

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action on what was turning out to
be a beautiful night. And that's when

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things turned weird. We started to
hear a plane. Wasn't a normal plane,

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It wasn't a crop duster. We
thought it sounded like a twin tailed

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World War Two era plane that was
circling overhead. Well, we sat there

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for twenty minutes jabbering about how weird
that plane was, and coming up with

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some pretty good conspiracy theories. When
the biggest, most awesome shooting star or

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meteor or something flew across the sky, it crossed the horizon from left to

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right for about a minute, and
it lit up our world like search lights

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in a prison yard. When it
comes down to it, we didn't care

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much for the whole airplane thing,
but the meteor was awesome either way.

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We were keen to head out and
hopefully shoot some critters. Then we I

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figured we'd head back to camp and
get some sleep, but on this night

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things did not play out that way. We headed from camp out to the

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main track that connected all the properties, and we went for the middle property

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first, which had a couple of
one hundred acres of wheat sown. We

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didn't take anything down there, so
we moved on. After another gate or

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two. We were in the sheep
paddocks. Lindsay and Fish were in the

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back of the yute with their weapons
in the spotlight, and Mattie was sleeping

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in the passenger seat while I drove. All of a sudden, I got

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the customary thumping on the roof to
indicate that they saw eyes shine. I

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didn't see it at first, but
then there it was blue eyes, a

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good seven feet taller than the sheep. I could make out a massive,

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dark brown figure, but I was
in complete and utter disbelief. In front

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of us was a mob of three
hundred sheep in full on panic, running

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from right to left, while this
thing walked in the same direction at the

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edge of the flock sixty meters away. We watched it move around the edge

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of the paddock, and none of
us said anything. Not one word was

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spoken for fifteen minutes. We were
all too busy contemplating what we had just

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witnessed. And finally we got the
courage to drive in where he disappeared from

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sight. But we didn't find anything. Now, I wouldn't say we were

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freaked out, but we did spend
the rest of the night building a fortress

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around our camp. We set up
tripwires and branch fortifications until we were totally

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enclosed. It was like Predator and
Rambow combined. Okay, maybe we were

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a little freaked out, but we
stayed for another week and we never got

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another glimpse of any hairy men,
except maybe at the pub that Mattie's uncle

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owned, although he did get a
good nap Mattie didn't see a thing.

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Oh that's a great story that they
shine. So they were out shooting.

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I'm not sure what they were shooting
at night. I've read that you guys

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can go out and just shoot kangaroos
randomly spotlight them and all that stuff.

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Apparently, and I could be wrong
about that, but apparently kangaroos are a

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like a pest or a maybe I
don't I wouldn't consider them a predator.

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They're not meat eaters. I don't
think. I don't know much about kangaroos,

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although they're cool when they're running that
I love to watch them run.

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They just bounce boing boing boying,
and they're really fast. But anyway,

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I'm just rambling on. I don't
know what they were shooting at. Pigs

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maybe, but they shine this big
hairy thing that was two or three feet

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taller than the sheet. The sheep
were in a panic, in a full

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on run. He said, So
something was spooking. What could it have

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been? A yowie? This is
a yowie story. I appreciate the writer.

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I love these stories from Australia and
so glad he sent it. Thank

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you. Okay, fair warning this
story has a lot of places. That

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has a lot of places that have
Spanish names and French names that I may

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get wrong, So get ready for
a laugh. But I just can't pronounce

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them because I've never heard some of
them before Nioma edited this, she goes,

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there wasn't really much to do to
it because the person is a talented

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writer, and so this should be
a good story. And I'm reading this

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cold. So just hang on to
you weaves. All right, here we

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go. It's a bigfoot story.
Growing up in the nineteen seventies in the

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small town of Monroe, Louisiana,
we heard all kinds of stories about the

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history of the town and that region
of northeast Louisiana. For a sleepy little

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town nestled in the curves of the
Wachita River, the Bayous, and the

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swamps, you would never guess that
it had been a place of habitation for

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several cultures going back nearly six thousand
years now. I spent a lot of

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time sitting around and listening to my
grandfather and one or two uncles as they

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told stories of things that they encountered
on hunting trips or while working around the

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family farm, or the stories of
what other relatives had experienced in the bayou

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and swamp country around Monroe. As
a kid, I enjoyed all the stories,

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even if I didn't quite believe them
or thought there might have been a

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bit of leg pulling going on.
This syria had been settled and lived in

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for thousands of years by Native Americans, with the oldest mound complex found in

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the Western Hemisphere and it dates back
fifty four hundred years and it's found in

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the northwestern part of Monroe at the
Watson Breaks site. The Poverty Point World

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Heritage Site, which is the largest
known earthworks in North America, is only

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a fifty minute drive to the east. Another facet of the local history was

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the Spanish colonial of post pastead dou
watchitall that was stored. I think it

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was that means post watchitall. I
think that was started in seventeen eighty one

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and renamed after the Spanish governor Estevan
Miro as Fort Mirou in seventeen ninety one

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when the fort was constructed. As
the settlement expanded with French and Americans moving

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into the area, the settlement would
be renamed Monroe in eighteen twenty after the

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arrival of the steamboat James Monroe.
The town was also part of the Vicksburg

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Campaign as a supply depot and hospital
during the Civil War. Some of the

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stories told to me growing up were
from the Spanish and later American settlers,

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and also from the earlier Native American
people. There were stories of giant,

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hairy manlike creatures who lived in the
deepest part of the swamps and who did

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not tolerate trespassers. There were beings
who could change their shapes to look like

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animals, and other stories were about
people who would disappear out in the swamps

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with never a trace to be found. Of course, there were plenty of

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ghost stories around the Old Garden District, and Monroe had more than its share

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of haunt houses. I experienced a
few of these things in some of those

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two hundred year old homes that I
can't explain. But those are stories for

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another time. By the way,
if you ever feel like writing those stories,

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brother, please send them in because
I'll get them. I'll get them

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on the podcast Back to the story. In nineteen seventy five, I had

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my own close encounter with a bigfoot
out along the Watchtaw River among those ancient

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Spanish moss draped trees and waterways,
and my mom and I had gone on

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one of the periodic camping trips our
Baptist Church put together for our congregation in

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the late summer of that year.
This particular camping trip was to Moon north

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of Monroe. This area is adjacent
to the Black Bayou National Wildlife Refuse that

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has a long history of strange things
happening and sightings of strange creatures. If

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you had a canoe or a flat
bottom aluminum boat, you could go out

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on the switchbacks of the watch Taw
River and eventually you would cross over the

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Black Bayou itself or by you Dassard, I think I pronounced that right,

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Disiard. The further up the side
by us you went, the thicker the

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curtains of moss hanging from the trees
would grow until you could see only a

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few yards in any direction. Now, back in the nineteen seventies, the

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area around Moon Lake was still fairly
wild and undeveloped, and it was by

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you territory, with only a few
scattered houses and trailers off the old State

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Road five point fifty three as the
crow flies. It was only about five

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miles from my dad's house, but
that short fifteen minute drive would take you

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from the civilized comforts of town living
to another world of moss draped trees and

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dabble sunlight, and foggy swamps inhabited
by alligators and other creatures. Our church

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used a camp at the lake for
family weekend getaways and for some retreats.

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The camp was on the east side
of the lake, between the road and

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the main body of the lake,
with the river making the northern boundary.

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It was an old camp, but
it was well maintained, and the main

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camp was clear and level, but
surrounded by old trees and bushes. On

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this weekend, families had started arriving
late Friday afternoon, with the rest coming

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in early Saturday morning to set up
their tents and personal camp sites within the

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larger camping area. As each family
arrived, more of the kids I knew

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would be running around and playing tiger
chase or hiding's And during one particular wild

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run through the camp, I missed
seeing a tent rope that caught me right

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across my face, and I proudly
wore that diagonal rope burn across my face

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for several days and enjoyed my badge
of honor. Saturday progressed and we moved

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to exploring the area outside of the
campgrounds, which included walking aways up the

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shallow river banks, skipping rocks across
the slow moving current, and looking for

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arrowheads. We didn't find anything,
but we had a grand time poking around

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in the soft soil, and we
made a full day of it. At

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dusk, everyone was called in for
dinner and visiting, and my friends and

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I group together for a dinner of
hot dogs and chips and beans and potato

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salad. And while we were eating, we noticed the dogs that some of

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the families had brought with them were
tracking around the campground and occasionally whining.

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And since we were among the trees
and there for more to the north and

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west, the setting sun made a
long and broken shadow between the trunks and

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the hanging moss. It made it
difficult to see what the dogs were reacting

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to. It did not make much
of an impression on me at the time,

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and as soon as we finished eating, we ran back into the woods

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for an evening edition of hide and
seek. After about an hour, we

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went back and picked up some flashlights
so that we could continue our game until

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our parents would eventually call us in
for the night, and we gathered back

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together and we stood talking at the
edge of the clearing and a small stick

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was thrown into our group from the
area just outside the lantern light well.

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We thought it was one of the
other kids, so we started trying to

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find them, but we never saw
anyone, but every couple of minutes another

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stick would be thrown from the trees. Eventually, we started concentrating our flashlights

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in one beam and swinging them back
back and forth, and we tried throwing

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sticks and small rocks back to the
trees to see if we could flush out

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whoever it was, but we didn't
have any success. After another ten minutes

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of this, we still didn't see
anything, and then another stick came flying

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out of the trees, this time
it came from higher up. We swung

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the flashlight beams up about ten feet
and at first we didn't see anything but

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a curtain of Spanish moss hanging from
a branch close to the tree trunk,

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and then a face pushed out of
the moss. Our first thought was one

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of the kids had climbed up the
trunk, but on closer inspection, though,

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we realized that the face was not
entirely human. After a stunned a

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few seconds, a body that was
fully ten to eleven feet tall, covered

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in shaggy brown hair, stepped out
from the tree trunk and moss less than

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twenty feet away from us. They
started yelling and running back to the camp,

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while whatever this was disappeared at a
loping run back to the north.

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The adults who came running at our
yelling listened to our hurried description and then

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took off in pursuit. They too
caught a few glimpses as the bigfoot ran

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through the undergrowth and then dove into
the river to make its escape. When

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the adults came back to camp,
every family packed up and left that night

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without another word being said about the
events of that night, And for several

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years after that event, you would
hear stories of strange happenings around the Moonlake

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area. Whoo, that's a There
was a lot of lead up to the

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actual apex of that story, but
it was all important because you kind of

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get a feel for the area and
why they were there and what was going

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on in the mood of the kids
playing, and then the this face pushes

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through Spanish. If you could see
me. I've got my shoulders all scrunched

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up behind my head because it's given
me the creeps. Man, what a

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great story. I love that story. I appreciate the writer and regarding the

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houses and whatever happened in the haunted
houses that you claim was a time for

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another story. I would appreciate getting
those from you. I'll be glad to

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put them on the internet. I'll
be glad to put them on the podcast,

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because, dude, you know how
to tell a story anyway. Thank

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you for sending it. I really
do appreciate it. Thank you once again

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for watching this podcast. Should have
another one up here in a day or

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two. I had fun doing this
one. It's good to be back doing

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this after a long stint of recording
an audio book, and it was fun.

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This is my favorite thing to do
is doing these email podcasts. I

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love them. I absolutely love them. So thank you all for listening,

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and we'll see you on the next
one. I appreciate y'all. A
