Two thousand and five, I was a fifteen year old growing up in southwestern
Virginia. I've spent most of my life in the woods. I still love
to be in nature. It's where I believe I have a stronger relationship with
my creator. I was sitting under some pines overlooking a deer trail on a
cold morning. My uncle had a deer stand in an old tree in the
same spot, and he'd killed a few deer from there. Because of that,
in the cold front that had come through the night before, I had
a feeling something was going to happen. As I sat there with my old
side hammer, muzzleloader loaded and ready for any deer to walk by, I
heard the distinct sound of something crunching through the leaves. I put my rifle
to my shoulder in anticipation of the deer I knew was about to pop up
over the hill. What came over the hill wasn't a deer. It was
a man who looked to be in his forties. Right away I noticed he
was wearing clothes that weren't from this era. He had on a flat brim
leather hat with metal buttons on the front for decoration. His coat was made
with the fur turned to the inside, and his pants were the same,
with worn leather on the outside. His shoes were harsh soul moccasins, and
he carried a leather possible's bag, the bag Muzzloder hunters carry with everything they
need inside. It was across one shoulder, with a powder horn on his
opposite shoulder. His rifle was longer than the hawking style rifle I had.
His hair was coarse and brown. His bright blue eyes sized me up from
a face covered in a full graying beard. It was as if he had
stepped through the mists from a distant past. He had a look of confusion
on his face as he approached, but asked in a congenial voice if I
had seen anything yet. Perplexed by the fact that someone was hunting the farm
that I knew I had sold permission to hunt, I managed only a kurt
no. He took another minute to look me up and down, and I
did the same to him. Can I see your gun, he asked.
I handed it over, and he passed his to me. He sat down
and we each inspected each other's weapon with awe. Although his gun was longer
than mine, it was lighter. More impressive to me than the gun was
the man's appearance. I was amazed that someone was hunting in full mountain man
apparel. Nothing he wore could have been as warm as my modern day insulated
clothing. It was a sight I never would have expected to see here in
the Blue Ridge Mountains. But I thought he must be a man who wished
to live in a different time, and this was his way of coming as
close to that as possible. Still, I couldn't help but wonder at his
reaction to me. Maybe he really was from a different time. He handed
back our guns and he smiled at me as he stood up. I might
have asked him a few questions, but at that moment we both heard the
sound of a deer walking. He's coming, the man said, without another
word. The man got behind me and we both watched as a buck came
over the hill. The man put his hand on my shoulder and he told
me to take a deep breath and squeeze the trigger. I did as I
was told. Pop. It wasn't the boom of the rifle, just the
pop of the percrussion cap and the powder igniting. It was enough to send
the buck running. The man's hand was still on my shoulder. As I
turned around to say something, the words died on my lips. Though as
I looked around for him, he wasn't there. I could still feel his
hand on my shoulder, but he just wasn't there. I jumped up,
and as I did so, the weight of his hand fell away. I
decided it was time for me to call it a day. I was confused
and frightened, but I didn't feel he meant me any harm, so there
was no need to run. I just walked home, reliving those moments in
my head, wondering who he could have been or where he might have come
from. When I got home, I put another percussion cap in the gun
and fired. This time, the rifle operated properly. I cleaned my gun
and put it away. I never got the man's name, nor did I
ever figure out where or when he may have come from, and I've never
seen him again. I'm thirty now, and I haven't hunted that area since.
Sometimes I think about going back just to see if he might be there.
There are some old rock walls in that area said to be from the
eighteen hundreds, though no one knows what they were for. Or who built
them. I like to think they were his once. I've seen three bigfoots
in my life, the first when I was four years old. I can't
talk about it though, without first talking about my dad. Dad didn't have
more than a ninth grade education, but he joined the Air Force during the
Korean Conflict. That led to opportunities that placed him inside Cheyenne Mountain as one
of the first programmers. He was a brilliant man who was respected in both
his career and his community. He was my hero and I was his shadow.
Where he was, that's where I wanted to be, and what he
did, that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to be just like
him. He was born in Florida in the first year of the Great Depression.
They lived so far out in the sticks it was a four mile walk
into town. Even after they got a truck. The condition of those old
sandy roads made travel so difficult. It was still a four mile drive,
but it sure beat walking. Back in the nineteen sixties, we lived in
Wichita Falls, Texas, where Dad was stationed at Shepherd Air Force Base as
a flight electronics instructor. He and my mom ran a restaurant on the side,
But his greatest joy was being outside hunting and fishing. Because he worked
so much, he usually fished at night when everybody else was asleep. He
loved catfish and had access to all the local ponds and lakes. And that's
where I saw my first bigfoot. One evening, Dad was closing down the
restaurant when a buddy stopped in and asked if he wanted to go fishing.
Of course, my dad said yes, and I beg to go. His
buddy had a small five hundred acre cattle ranch where he raised Brahma cattle.
I love going out there. Somewhere. There's even a picture of me sitting
on top of one of those big bulls. He made a quick stop at
the house to pick up our fishing gear, my dad's twelve gage Ithaca shotgun
that he always had with him whenever he was outdoors. A few snacks in
my blanket, a lot, changed into my pajamas and we headed to the
ranch. And when we got there, Dad made my usual spot on the
ground with my blanket and started a small fire to keep me warm and occupied.
It was your typical ranch cattle pond built in a draw with an earthen
dam. I laid there by the fire while Dad and his budy fished.
They had a few beers and they swapped stories. Suddenly a group of about
twenty cows bellowed below us and started running in our direction. Something had spooped
them. A small herd of the one ton Brahmas bellowed in the night as
their thundering hoofs shook the ground. And that's something that's not easy to forget.
Terrified, all I wanted to do was crawl inside my dad's pocket.
I was close to the truck, and he was ten feet away, next
to the bank of the river, and he ran over and he scooped me
up and he put me in the pickup. Then he grabbed a shotgun and
ordered me not to move. I remember peeking my head over the side of
the bed and seeing the cattle run by. They were still bellowing and making
all kinds of racket, and then I saw something a four year old will
never forget. I had no idea what it was, but it was huge,
bigger than the cattle. It was on two legs, and it was
ten to fifteen feet behind them. I couldn't see every detail, but the
moon must have been bright enough and the fire must have been bigg enough that
I could see something. My father's buddy drew his side arm and hollered at
it with a whistle and a good cowboy shout. The creature stopped dead in
its tracks fifty feet from us, and when it looked in our direction,
I could see the eye shine. A few seconds later, he raised a
pistol and fired a shot. The sound made me jump. Just as quickly
my dad raised his ithaca and he fired three rounds. I can still close
my eyes and see the fire explode from the barrel. All the while both
men were shouting something to the effect of get out of here, Get out
of here, y'all. It all happened within seconds, but even today,
more than fifty years later, it replaces in my mind in slow motion.
The creature quickly bolted away, vanishing from my view in seconds. Both mid
now had their weapons leveled in that once they felt it was gone, they
moved quickly to break camp. The reels were thrown into the back of the
truck, the fire was doused, and I was scooped up and placed in
the cab. But not a word was spoken, and when my dad dropped
his buddy off at the ranch house. He said, you okay. The
man replied with a nod and said, I hate those things. And they
were the only words I remember either of them saying. Well. Curiosity got
the better of me on the ride home, and I finally got the nerve
to speak. I was only four, and four year olds always have tons
of questions. Daddy, what was that? I asked, What's nothing you
need to know about? Son? He told me, Well, wasn't a
man. It was Harry, I said, but there was no answer.
My father was silent, intently staring at the road ahead. Dad, was
it a hobo? I pressed? Hoboes were still a thing back in the
nineteen in the sixties. No, Son, that wasn't a hobo. It
just wasn't. Well, what was it? And I wanted to know.
My dad knew I wasn't going to give up. No four year olds give
up on questions. He took a deep breath and said, well, it's
kind of a monkey, son, that lives in the woods. They're afraid
of people. Well, a four, I didn't know monkeys lived in Texas.
Things like that weren't on my radar. But if Dad said it was
a monkey. Must have been a monkey. However, even at four,
I recognized that my dad was afraid. Even then, I knew what guns
were for hunting and protection, and this wasn't a hunting trip. And then
we left real quick, and so I continued my questions, Well, Dad,
why was it chasing the cows? Is it mean? Are they poisonous?
Which woods does it live in? Well, my dad was used to
my interrogations, and he would usually lovingly answer them in ways I could understand,
But this time was different. He was silent, and after a few
more minutes of NonStop questions, he pulled the truck over and looked at me
with his piercing steel blue eyes. Son, here's the problem. For some
reason, the government doesn't want people to know about this monkey. The government
was well known in our house. I knew my dad worked for the government.
The government owned things. When I was born, my sister asked if
I belonged to the government or to my mom and dad. Well, we
didn't know or understand exactly what the government was, but we knew it owned
things and it had rules. My dad continued, Because I worked for the
government, I have to do as they ask and since you're my son,
so do you. You have to help keep this monkey quiet. You can't
tell anyone, you understand, You can't even tell your mom. It's your
job now to keep this a secret. You can ask me more questions later,
but right now you need to be quiet about it. Do you understand,
son, Yes, sir, I will, I assured him, and
I did. Until this year, I've never told anyone this story. First
I told my wife, then my son, and now I'm telling you.
A few years later, during a trout fishing trip in the Colorado Rockies when
I was nine, I brought it up again, and that was when my
dad explained in detail the creature that he called a skunkate. But that's a
story for another time. I'm a sixty eight year old resident of Central Indiana,
where, following a thirty five year career, I retired as a captain
of detectives. I've always had a passion for being in the woods. As
early as the age twelve, I had a trap line. I loved doing
it, and I was good at it. So I spent every free minute
in the woods, especially in the late fall and winter. At various times
over the years, the price of furs was high, and that was an
added incentive. Every morning, I'd leave my house at four am walk one
mile to the large wooded acreage where I trap and run my lines. Sometimes
I had more than I could carry in my pack, so I'd have to
retrieve the rest after school. In all my years in the police force,
I've heard it all from every angle, but I can't say that I ever
saw Bigfoot. Back when I was a kid, Bigfoot wasn't even a thought
in my head. However, I have heard and seen some very strange things
in the woods that cannot be explained. There were many times in the woods
when I had the uncanny feeling of being watched in the darkness. I would
hear trees crashing too often to be at random occurrences. And I remember one
early weekend morning in particular, when I was looking for a new trail wrapping
area adjacent to where my other traps were set, and a hard rain the
week before had flooded the bottom land near the large creek. Afterwards, a
deep freeze left pockets of water trapped after the creek receded back into its bank
and covered in four inch thick sheets of crystal clear ice. That were like
window panes into the many aquatic ecosystems below. As I passed over one of
these frozen ponds, I looked down and I saw two large snapping turtles trapped
under the ice in suspended animation. Turtle meat was excellent. My father taught
me the art of cleaning a snapping turtle. It can be a difficult task
if it isn't done right. So I decided to take these two turtles home
for some good eating. I tried stomping the ice with my bootheel, but
I couldn't even crack it. I decided that i'd bring a hatchet with me
to chop them out. When I came back the next day and went on
my way, I made a three mile circle around the area, looking for
fur sign and new places to set my traps. The ground was frozen hard.
A couple hours later, as I came back around the little frozen pool
with the turtles, I couldn't believe my eyes. Laying on the root ball
of a tree were the two turtles. The ice had been smashed, That's
how I know it was four inches thick. I could see how thick the
chunks were. The turtles had been ripped open from the bottoms to the tops
of their shells, and all the flesh was completely gone. I couldn't imagine
what could have had the strength to just rip those turtles open like that.
Well that night it snowed again. The following morning, I went back to
the down tree. That hard frozen rootball was completely destroyed, with the root
and roots strewn all around in the snow. I looked around and found huge
tracks leading to a part of the creek that ran too fast to free,
and then they disappeared into the water. After all these years, I still
think about those two turtles and the tracks that led into the creek. I
have no earthly explanation for what it was, but I hope if you share
this story, someone else may have had an encounter similar in relation to Bigfoot,
and it will confirm what I think I'll already know.