My father was the second youngest of ten kids. He and his twin sister
were born in nineteen forty five at their family home in Clay, West,
Virginia. He grew up being called Buckshot, and until I was nine or
ten years old, I thought that was his Christian name. Although he passed
away in two thousand and seventeen, he told his story many times before he
died. My brother was with him when it happened, and he has never
discredited a word of my dad's story, so I have no doubt that this
story is true. In nineteen seventy eight, when my brother Phil was eleven,
Dad said, come on, boy, it's time you're going to go
on your first raccoon hunt. Our father's love for raccoon hunting was infectious,
so Phil was tickled to death to be joining him for the first time on
their coal miners, light helmets, and strap the battery packs to their waists.
Than they headed out. The only one more excited for the hunt that
night than my brother was was my dad's favorite dog. He was a walker
named pretty Boy. Whenever he saw Dad getting ready, he always started panting
and barking and dancing around his legs. He knew they were going hunting,
and he couldn't wait to see the tailgate drop on my dad's nineteen seventy six
Chevy Love truck so he could load up. That night, my dad and
brother drove twenty miles to his friend Rick's place. Rick had several dogs of
his own, along with two teenaged sons who also hunted. They decided where
they'd be going, and they set out as it was getting dark. They
knew they'd have good luck that night because the farmer who lived there had been
complaining about the raccoons getting into his feed bins. With their good quality hunting
dogs and their own skills, they were sure to be able to relieve the
arm of at least a few of those pests. Dad Rick and the boys
walked the dogs out on leashes, located a scent trail, and turned them
loose. After that, it was only a matter of time before the dogs
treed. Until then, all they had to do was settle in near their
trucks and wait and listen. It didn't take long. Within fifteen minutes the
dogs had treed. My dad said they were real close. They turned on
their lights and started up the mountains towards the sound of the dogs. They
had to cross a barber wire fence, but they found the dogs at the
base of a large beech tree in West Virginia. These trees, with their
pale, almost white bark, can grow to massive proportions. It can take
three men with their arms stretched wide to reach around the circumference of one.
Because of the tree's size and the fact that it still had branches of dead
leaves here and there, they thought they might have difficulty seeing the raccoon.
The dogs were leashed and pulled away from the tree. However, they discovered
they'd have no trouble spotting with the hounds a tree, but it wasn't a
raccoon. Sitting up on the branches of the tree, covered in reddish brown
hair, was a young sy squatch. It was six feet tall, and
Dad described it as looking like a tall, skinny orangutan with a face like
a man. It looked down on them with glowing red eyes and bared its
big, square teeth and sharp canines at them. That's when it screamed,
and it hit them in the chest like a mic truck. Phil and the
other two boys fell to the ground and began to cry. Rick stood frozen
in place and he was unable to move. The dogs cowered in submission,
but pretty Boy managed to crawl over to where Phil was and he laid across
him. A second later, an answering scream came from somewhere in the distance,
followed by another one that sounded like it was a mile or so away.
That was what shook my dad back to reality. He pushed pretty Boy
off of fill and helped him to his feet before punching Rick and the arm
and saying, let's get the heck out of here. Yeah that's Rick answered,
as he helped the boys up off the ground. Let's go. Their
dogs led them down the mountain as they all hogh tailed it back to the
woods. They were only about halfway there when they heard something behind them come
crashing through the woods. It sounded like a bulldozer following them. At that
point, Dad picked up Phil like a football and broke into a dead run.
He cleared the three strand barbed wire fence and didn't stop until he reached
the truck. The dogs were there waiting for them. Whatever had chased them
down the mountain never caught up with them, but stayed just close enough to
keep them motivated. From the top of the mountain came another screaming sound.
Daddy thought it had to be a second one, but they weren't going to
hang around to find out. He loaded my brother and his dog into the
front of his truck, while Rick loaded the boys and dogs into theirs,
and they all sped off. Dad headed straight for home and didn't stop until
he got there. For him and my brother, it was the end of
a harrowing experience, and for Rick and his family, however, it was
just the beginning. Dad and Phil had a twenty mile drive to make,
and Rick and his boys lived a short seven miles away. As soon as
he got home, he told his wife all about what happened that night.
They'd been home about thirty minutes and Rick was still trying to gain control of
his heart rate when the same screams they'd heard up on the mountains started coming
from the woods behind their barn, about one hundred yards from the house.
Rick's wife was furious, you brought those things here. I've got babies in
this house and you brought those things here, and she yelled at him get
rid of them now. Rick sent her and the kids upstairs with the warning
not to come down, no matter what she might hear. He then walked
around their farmhouse and secured all the doors and windows. As the screams got
closer, rocks the size of baseballs began landing on the tin roof. Soon
something was walking around the house with heavy stomps that shook their antique hutch and
rattled the china plates that were a gift from his wife's granny. He'd brought
the dogs inside with him when they got home, but they were hiding under
the bed and were of no use. Every ten minutes or so, something
slapped the side of the house or tapped on the window. Rick's nerves had
just about reached their limit when he heard his wife screaming from upstairs. He
ran up to find her pointing at the window in near hysterics. I saw
a face in that window, she claimed, But that was impossible. That
window was twelve feet off the ground. Call the laws, she pleaded.
Do you think they're going gonna believe me when I tell him we have a
twelve foot peeping tom outside our window? Rick reasoned with her, they'll lock
us up. After his wife's screamed, there were no more sounds from outside.
They were all able to get the kids settled down and into bed,
but Rick and his wife stayed up the rest of the night. Once the
sun came up, he went outside and walked around the house. Then he
went back inside and he called buckshot. My dad got there as quickly as
he could, had his Winchester two seventy his three point fifty seven pistol,
and Rick grabbed his twelve gage Remington, and together they went around the house,
the barn, and the perimeter fence. They found rocks on the low
side of the roof and footprints all around the house. The largest of the
tracks measured twenty four inches long and ten inches across, with five toes.
Where those prints stood under the upstairs window, they sank three inches into the
ground. That must have been our peeping tom, you reckon, said Rick.
Another set of prints measured sixteen inches long and eight inches across, but
they only had four toes. The third set was smaller, still at twelve
inches, and they only had four toes too. Rick and Dad estimated the
smallest set must have been the one their dogs had treed, while the middle
sized set must have been the mother and the largest set belonged to the daddy
or the alpha male. Within the week, Rick and his wife moved to
North Carolina, where her family lived, but he and my dad remained friends
over the years. And by the way, the place they were hunting that
night, it's called Booger Holler. When I was a kid, we lived
back in the Arkansas Sticks. There were a lot of old, abandoned properties
scattered around the countryside. These properties always had dilapidated houses in various stages of
decay and disrepair, and these houses always had at least a few fruit trees
around them. In the fall of nineteen sixty three, the year I turned
fourteen, one particular pear tree in one of those old house shars was loaded
with sweet, juicy pears. One day, my dad happened to notice that
tree, and, not wanting to see the fruit go to waste, sent
my sister and I to pick two one hundred pound bur lapped sacks full.
We saddled up our old mare and we set out to complete our task.
Okay, okay, I think that's funny. I found a fruit tree.
You kids, get out there and get me two hundred pounds of pears.
My dad used to send me into the seven eleven, when I was like
six or seven, to buy him cigarettes. And there were several times that.
I mean, I was a little bit of a smart elect but there
I never did this, but there were several times I thought, get in
there and get your own damn cigarettes. I don't want to go in there.
But anyway, once again, I digress back to the story. We
got there, and we quickly devised a plan to complete our work as quickly
and sufficiently as possible. I stood up on the mare's back and we picked
pears and then dropped them down to my sister, who put them in the
bags. It wasn't long before both bags were full and draped across the mare's
back. My sister and I managed to climb on with the bags and arrange
ourselves as comfortable as we could without smashing the pears, and we headed for
home. We were passing by a creek bed when we saw something that I
have never been able to reconcile or identify in all the fifty eight years since
we saw it. It was some kind of animal that I have never seen
before or since. It looked like a hyena. Specifically, it looked like
the species of the hyena that live along the coast in Africa, and they
feed on seal pups. I think they're called brown hyaenas it's the only animal
that comes close to matching the things standing in the creek bed and staring at
us. What we saw was about three feet tall at the shoulders, Its
hips sat a little lower than the shoulders, and it had a mane that
ran from its head to halfway down its back. It was a brindle dark
and a reddish brown, with a wide head. It had a squirrel in
its mouth. I've lived most of my life in the great outdoors with only
one exception. Neither I nor anyone I know has seen any strange animals in
these parts in all the years since that day. My sister and I stared
at it for a while, and it stared back at us, and then
we moved on. As for that one exception I mentioned, it happened to
my dad about three years earlier after my sister and I saw the first animal.
Daddy came barreling home and on the old mare at a dead run.
He went straight to the barn and he shut her up inside. Then he
ran as fast as he could to the house, and he slammed the door,
and he stood there, shaking with fright as he told us about the
brindled puma or jaguar that had followed him all the way home. Science says
that these things don't exist, but my father believed what he saw so much
that whenever my mother or the kids went out to milk or do chores,
he stood guard over us. You could take this all with a grain of
salt, but I'm not one to tell lies, and I think my Dad's
actions stand for themselves. These days, when I look back, I have
decided that I would not camp like I used to unless I brought a gun
big enough to knock one of these non existent animals down. Arkansas has a
fairly healthy population of wild hogs, an animal that can be just as dangerous
as any jaguar, anther, or any other animal out there. If people
don't want to believe in what I saw or what my dad saw, they
should remember all the big hurricanes we had and all the little zoos and wild
animal farms scattered around. Animals escape from those zoos, especially when bad weather
hits. So anyone who thinks there isn't anything out there that can hurt them
had better get that notion out of their head. I'm just glad I live
close enough to the outdoors that I love to drive there and enjoy it and
then sleep in my own safe bed at night. Oh Man, Jesse,
That's exactly the way I feel. I mean, I live out in the
country. I live right in the I was looking at the satellite map,
and I've looked at it several times. There's a huge just north of me.
There's this huge, vast expanse of woods where there is no civilization.
I don't know how many miles it is, but it's a Holly Springs National
Forest. We ride ATVs and four wheelers back down those roads and stuff.
My wife and I like to go ride those things. A matter of fact,
we were looking at one of those dune buggy looking things, like a
Polarish razor or something. I'm not going to buy one, but boy,
I wish I could afford one, because that would be so fun to just
blaze up and down those dirt and gravel roads on that. But I'm getting
off topic. Here here's the deal. He's right, and he's in Arkansas,
And did y'all know have y'all ever heard of the story in I think
it was Clavern County in Arkansas where two lines escaped. You know, these
people were keeping exotic, exotic animals, and these two lines escaped and they
roamed those hills in Clavering County for quite a while. I think a deer
hunter saw one take down a deer. Can you imagine sitting in a deer
stand and looking at a line take down a deer and you're just sitting there.
He can get up that tree. Oh yeah, yeah, line can
get all the way up that tree. I would absolutely have a heart attack.
And so this man's right, these people keeping exotic pets. I've read
a lot about this. You know, the laws on exotic pets are veryax
and pretty much every state I know, y'all watched that Joe what was that
show? That crazy guy that had the tigers and him and that woman were
trying to kill each other and he's in prison now. And Joe what is
his name? Joe something, y'all, I can't think of things real quick,
but Joe exotic, that's what it was. Y'all. Ever seen how
many tigers he had in that place? All of would take is a good
tornado to come through there and all them tigers are out. But anyway,
in Clayburn County, Arkansas, hunters finally kill those tigers. They had to
hunt those tigers. They were hunting big African dangerous game in the hills of
Clavern County, Arkansas. Look it up on the internet. It's there. M