Speaker 1: I grew up in rural Alabama, in the small town
of Northport. And I say town, but that may be
stretching it. It was fourteen miles from my childhood home
to the closest red light. Tuscaloosa was a major city
and Northport was a stepchild. In nineteen seventy eight, there
was not a lot to do on rural Highway sixty
nine North. The summers were hot, but the fall brought
on every young man's dream of hunting the big buck
that ate all the peas during the last growing season.
My job at twelve was the defender of my grandmother's garden.
I had a carte blanche on any night to eliminate
any deer we caught rating the pea patch, regardless of
what hunting season it was, and God helped the game
warden who dared question my Pentecostal grandmother on her war
on deer or any other four legged creature who ate
what she sweated to grow. I became exceptional with a firearm,
having spent a lot of time practicing at two hundred
and three hundred yards with my rifle my grandfather bought
me for Christmas when I was eight. I preferred a shotgun, though,
due to the massive undergrowth in the woods surrounding our land.
So in nineteen seventy eight, when the deer have ravaged
my grandmother's peace so badly, she made it clear to
me to put my skills to good use or face
dire consequences. Back then, I had none of the fancy
stuff that you see now. I had no camo, no
tree stand, no deer year in debate them in it
was just me in a pair of quiet sneakers, my rifle,
and my best friend to help me. Together, we weighed
our options for where best to funnel the deer in.
We decided on a place about three miles from my
grandparents' farm. We'd have the best chance to see them
along a well worn trail that extended into the woods
for at least eight miles. It passed by a small
pond that no one ever visited but us. The woods
were all pines along the roadside, but deeper in they
transitioned back to oak and black gum. My pine was
cut periodically, but the hardwood has stood for one hundred
and twenty years or more. Some of those trees are
five feet at the base and well over one hundred
feet tall. We got started early for us on a
cool Saturday morning in September. Bama was playing later, so
we wanted to be back in time to see the game.
We let out for the hardwoods down by the creek.
We planned on taking the long way, but after about
an hour of walking, my best friend wasn't so keen
on wasting his Saturday helping me have a place to
sleep and eat. We stopped where we were and decided
to hunt from a makeshift blind that we threw together
on the spot. It wasn't much more than a couple
of limbs and some well placed leaves, but it gave
us some concealment. It also gave us a great view
of the forty acre valley below us, and we were
perched along an old game trail, high up on a
natural ledge about two hundred feet above. We sat there,
four feet apart with our rifles, something to drink, and
a lot of AMMO for what seemed like hours. We
traded off taking naps, but our butts were getting sore
and our legs were starting to fall asleep. We were
serious about our mission, but I wasn't any happier about
spending my Saturday out there than my friend was at
eleven That morning, I saw something moving in the valley
at my one o'clock. It was just a brownish blur
four hundred yards out and two hundred feet below me.
I tapped my friend and pointed it out. He gave
me the thumbs up and trained to scope on it.
Before I could lift my rifle, twenty codies came racing
out of that same direction with their tails between their legs.
They weren't chasing anything, and they weren't fighting. They were
in a full out run for their lives. I could
think of only one thing in those woods that would
cause this behavior, and I wanted no part of it.
Years earlier, my grandfather and some neighbors had hunted a
two hundred pound mountain lion that laid waste to some
pretty vicious dogs they sent after it. Several had shot
at it, but no one got it. Now a twelve
year old boy and his buddy were going toe to
toe with it. No thanks. I didn't want to run.
I had visions of catching this thing out in the
open and dropping it once and for all. I'd be famous.
I guess I could have mounted it and been the
big hunter. For a while, my buddy tapped my arm
and said, you see that oak at the break in
the pines, by that old dead stump, look through your
scope just above it. The whole time I was straining
to find it, I was steadying myself to take a shot.
Finally I z rode in on it. But it wasn't
a big cat. It had a face. Three hundred yards
from us was something between an ape and a human
that looked like he'd been pumping iron on steroids. He
was down in the push up position and he was
staring back at me. I could see his eyes plain
as day, and his lip would curl up and he
sniffed the air. Yeah, he sniffed the air. He was
trying to wind us like a hound dog will do. Definitely,
he went from prone to squatting, and he moved unbelievably fast.
I don't think he realized I had spotted him yet.
He was still trying to remain covert. My buddy's feet
started trying to run, but its brain hadn't caught up
with him yet. I was trying to keep him from running,
and trying to explain that we weren't going to outrun
that thing. All the while that pack of codies was
bearing down on us. They were less than one hundred
yards away, and I had no idea how they were
going to take to discovering us there. Meanwhile, I made
a fatal era no hunter should ever make. I had
taken my eyes off the hairy thing by the stump
to give my friend his due. He didn't cry or scream,
but a slight panic over whether to choose to fight
or flight had definitely set in. I just wanted to
get out of there without running into whatever that thing was.
Seconds passed and the codies came running straight at us,
like I knew they would. But my only thought was
that thing below and where it was now. I have
cherished every day of my life since that moment. That
was the day that I could have died, and it
would have been no one's fault but my own. Because
of the many arrows that followed we ran. We picked
flight over fight. The chase was on. We were two
and a half miles from the house and a mile
and three quarters to earshot of people working on our farm.
It began in a frenzy fueled by youth and farm living,
the hard work that we put in every day helped
our strengthen stamina. I assumed if we turned into an
area of dense timber that we could out maneuver it.
I was wrong. For the next mile we played a
guessing game of which damn side of us it was
going to be on. We heard footfalls on either side,
and I convinced myself it was my heart beat pounding
in my ears. I knew there was a small gully
coming up that ran for about one hundred yards or so.
It was about ten feet deep and twenty feet wide
in places. I made up my mind that I was
going to do my best impression of Customs Last Stand
right there. We hit the wash with me and the lead,
thinking that we would get to the other end, where
there was one hell of a twelve foot climb out
we could get back up to the top. We'd equal
the odds on size, and then with that thing in
the wash below, we'd fill it full of holes from
the safety above. We reached the end, but it was
so muddy and slimy there was no way we were
coming out that way, and I turned and searched for
a spot where I could grab some roots and climb out.
I found it and made a quick work of getting
out of there, and then I grabbed my buddy and
helped him up. We were exhausted and breathless, and we
sat there for a moment, thinking we'd gotten away. And
then suddenly I looked up and there it was, less
than sixty yards from us. It had been pacing us
the whole time. That was the first, real, honest to God, look,
I got it. This creature. He was seven feet tall
and weighed full hundred pounds, and he was pure lean muscle.
You could plow a lot of corn with a mule
belt like that. He had a metallic smell of old
blood mixed with rotten meat. He was breathing slow and
with a purpose. And there he stood for us to see.
Was he an ape, a man? Or was it a bigfoot?
I had no clue, and I knew nothing about bigfoot
at that time. He had a thick brow, but his
nose was skinnier than a Neanderthal. His hands were huge,
and his breastbone was thick. Large joints connected his limbs,
and the muscles at the top of his legs stood out.
His lights and pecks were well defined, and he was
covered in coarse hair that reflected light like an old
hound's furwell sometimes, and the mouth didn't fit the creature whatsoever.
It protruded because of the teeth, giving the impression that
it came out a few inches more than it should out.
We were taking all this in when something in the
back of my mind told me that he wanted us
to focus on him. Footfalls were coming from somewhere behind us,
and it broke through the dumbfounded trance that we were in.
We heard limbs breaking too close to us, and I
turned to get a glimpse of his buddy doing his
best to hide behind a tree one hundred yards from us.
And he was smaller and had a lighter coat. But
beyond that, I couldn't say. I had enough of being chased.
I decided that people were going to know which one
of these things ate me, because he'd be the one
bleeding the most. Put all your bullets into him, was
all I whispered to my friend while I fired on Johnny,
come lately behind us. My friend opened up on the
big one. I laid down a line of fire that
knocked huge chunks out of the tree that he was
hiding behind, and then I turned and fired on the
big one too. He was running down the wash. It's
time to go, I shouted, and we did a hundred
yard swap out, run cover, run, cover. We'd stop every
so often to listen and catch our breath, and then
we'd go right back to it until we had the
big barn in sight. We hit the long gravel road
and walk from there, and we decided before we got
to the house that this was a story that we'd
never tell anyone, not if we had any hope of
every deer hunting again. For months, we didn't go back
out there, and every time we looked in that direction,
we would decide to play football or something, anything but
go into those woods. I managed to put it all
in the back of my mind, and as the years
have passed, I haven't given it much thought, mainly because
I no longer go in the woods. So there I
was eighteen months ago, and I was sitting in my
yard waiting for my dog to go to the bathroom
in my neighbor's yard at twelve thirty in the morning,
when a fear I haven't known in years ran up
my spine. I live across from a three thousand acre
protected wilderness area. I recognized immediately that I was being stalked.
I was being hunted, and their eyes were on me,
watching my every move. I walked back inside and got
my pistol. I came out and pessed on my mailbox post,
all the while shouting at the woods. I been running
for forty three years, and I ain't gonna do it
no more. Make no mistake, these things mean you harm.
I do not subscribe to the theory that they are harmless,
because they are not. Back in nineteen eighty four, my
family lived on a farm on the edge of town
in the heart of Kentucky. The house sat on a
hilltop with a big black barn behind it in a long,
narrow valley. Beyond that, the house set well above the
roadway and even higher above the valley. The valley sat
even lower and was surrounded by woods. I was sixteen
and feeling pretty low. My girlfriend had just called me
on the phone and broken up with me after two months.
She didn't even give me a reason. It was February,
but the weather was beginning to show signs of spring
after a long winter. The temperature was somewhat in the
mid forties, and there were only a few patches of
snow here and there. I needed to get away and think,
so I headed for my favorite spot, and for me,
that was the woods. I spent a great deal of
time there, and sometimes with friends, but usually alone. My
father had left my mother when I was young, so
the male role models in my life were my two uncles.
They taught me to hunt and fish and to appreciate
the beauty and wonder of nature. In those woods, there
were a couple of gas right guys, and looking back,
I really missed those times that we spent together. I
walked down to the bottom of the valley, like I
generally did. I was deep in thought about why my
girl would break up with me, and I wasn't paying
attention when I heard a thumping sound. It was something
solid hitting the grass covered ground. I looked around and
saw a rock about twenty feet from me rolling uphill.
I figured it was either my sister or my brother
playing a trick on me, so I turned to look
back the way I came, expecting to see one of them,
and I scanned around looking, but they weren't there. As
I turned to my left, still looking for my siblings,
I saw a twenty foot patch of snow with four
human shaped footprints in it. It was a little unnerving
to see the footprints because first, whoever made these prints
wasn't wearing shoes. It wasn't freezing out, but it was
still cold. Walking in the snow would have made it
feel even colder. Second, these prints were huge. I walked
over and compared them to my boot. They were nearly
twice as long as my foot and much wider, and
the stride was a lot longer than I could have made.
I was still examining the footprints when I heard another
rock hit the ground, and I turned in the direction
of the sound, and I saw the rock twenty feet away,
rolling downhill. This time it was bigger than the first,
roughly the size of my fist, and I knew immediately
it couldn't have been my brother or sister. I was
far older and stronger than them, and I doubt I
could have thrown it from any possible hiding spots. I
then thought it might have been one of my friends
who lived close. I knew Tommy was out of town
visiting relatives, and Scotty had been in bed all week
with a bad case of the flu. They were the
only ones who ever came over, so I looked around again.
Who was throwing rocks at me? The tracks probably should
have sent me running home, but I honestly thought someone
was playing a prank on me. My uncle's taught me
that tracks made in the snow will expand when they melt,
so I figured it was just a joke. I walked
forward with a lot of confidence. You better knock it off.
I'm throw rocks too, I said. Another rock was chucked
at me, and this time I saw it in mid flight,
so I knew it was coming from the left corner
of the woods, near the property line. It was two
hundred feet from me, and I thought whoever was throwing
these rocks must have a pretty good arm. Another rock
landed ten feet to my right. I was getting angry now,
so I walked over and picked it up before it
stopped rolling. It was a little bigger than I would
have normally wanted to throw, but in my frustration, I
threw it back. Then I screamed an insult at whoever
this was for good measure. My throw was way off
the It hit the ground well short of the tree line,
so I looked around for another rock to throw. I
found a few in the grass between the patches of snow,
so I picked one up that fitted my hand better.
This time. It hit a tree just inside the woodline.
Then I saw a movement eighty feet to my left,
in the nearest section of trees. It was a lot
closer to me than where the rocks were coming from.
I only got a glimpse, maybe four or five seconds
at most. Most of it was obscured by the thick
brushing trees. I saw a dark upper portion of a
massive right shoulder blade and a huge moving arm about
seven feet off the ground. Also, I saw what looked
like thick legs as it ran behind a tree. It
was completely covered in reddish hair that bounced as it
disappeared into the trees. I was nearly awe struck. Its
movements were so graceful and fluid. It was completely different
from how a deer or a human would move. Now
I knew immediately it wasn't a bear or a cougar.
It was too large. Both bears and cougars are extremely
rare in Kentucky, and neither of them throw rocks. I
barely had time to register what I was seeing when
another rock landed five feet from me. It came from
the same direction as the others. Then I heard heavy
footfalls in the woods from that same direction. There were
definitely more than one of them. To say I wasn't
terrified would be a bold faced lie. I knew I
had to get out of there. I was alone and unarmed.
The nearest house was over half a mile away, on
the other side of the valley and flanked by thick trees.
I knew the elderly couple who lived there. They were
nice people, but they wouldn't have been able to hear
me even if they were outside, which they rarely were.
My house was over three quarters of a mile away.
My mom and siblings had been inside watching TV when
I left. At that moment, I forgot all about my girlfriend.
Survival was my priority. I wanted to run, but I
remembered what my uncles had told me about predators. Never
turn your back on them, and running will kick in
their instinct to chase. Fear turned into anger as I
picked up as many rocks as I could find and
started throwing them back towards the woods as fast as
I could. I at least a string of obscenities and
foul language as I did all the while moving backwards
a few dozen paces at a time. Years later, during
my time in the military, I learned to call that
a tactical retreat. More rocks are being thrown back at
me now, and from two different directions. I switched targets
back and forth as I slowly made my way back
down the valley. Locked in combat with an unseen enemy.
I was out numbered and out gun but I kept
throwing and moving and cussing and cursing. I doubted the
cussing helped me, but it made me feel braver. It
was probably only five minutes before I felt the hill
under my feet, but it felt like hours. That meant
I was closer to the relative safety of home, and
by now those creatures had stopped throwing rocks at me.
My accuracy had dropped off dramatically by then, anyway, and
I scanned the woods once more for movement and listened
for sounds. I didn't see or hear anything, and exhausted
and sweating like i'd run a marathon, I took off
my coat and stood there for another five minutes before
I felt it was safe enough to turn and high
tailor at home. I didn't tell my mother and siblings
what had happened. I didn't want to scare them. The
next day I told one of my uncles, who brought
his shotgun over and slept down into the valley with me,
to retrace my steps. I showed him the tracks in
the snow. There were huge gouges in the hard dirt
where the rocks and landed. We walked into the woodline
where I had seen the one running. That's where I
compared the size and height of the trees to the
spot where I saw the shoulder and the arm. This
thing must have been massive, but we didn't find any
tracks there. We left the area, but not before I
noticed that my uncle was being unusually quiet. After we
got back to the house and well away from my mom,
he told me that he'd had a strange experience there
many years before. My eldest uncle served in Vietnam. He's
a quiet man who rarely shows his emotions or gets upset.
When he came home from the war, he couldn't wait
to get back into his beloved woods where he could
hunt and fish, And then he finally got the chance.
It was a bit sweet experience. It isn't an easy
transition from life of daily combat back to a peaceful
civilian existence. The woods of Kentucky looked nothing like the
jungles of Southeast Asia, but the oppressive feeling of the
dense vegetation and the limited visibility are similar. It took
him quite a while to get over the nagging fear
of someone waiting behind every bush to kill him. Slowly,
he worked his way back to his favorite fishing spots.
Once he was comfortable, he began to hunt again. One day,
he was out hunting squirrels alone with his twenty two rifle.
He was also carrying a revolver in his hip holster.
He walked for hours and saw a few squirrels that
they were too small to trouble with. When he decided
to take a break, he sat down under a large
tree on top of a heavily wooded ridgeline. From there,
he had a clear view down into the nearby holler.
He'd been sitting there for about ten minutes when he
saw movement below. He only saw bushes moving, but he
suspected it was a deer. It was too early for
deer season, but knowing their paths might help him decide
where to build a stand. Later, he decided to go
down check it out. He got up and slowly made
his way down to the holler. The trees and underbrush
made it impossible to get a clear view of whatever
was moving around, but he found a little path that
had made whatever it was. He knew it wasn't a deer.
It looked almost like a small bulldozer had made the path,
like six deer had walked inside by side. He never
seen them move that way, and plus, the vegetation looked
like it had been smashed aside and pulled out of
the way. He didn't find any tracks, but it was
clear that something heavy had walked through here. He told
me he should have left right then and there, but
he was young and curiosity got the better of him.
He moved forward, pondering what kind of critter could make
such a path. Was it a bear? No, Black bears
aren't much whiter than a deer. Besides, he'd never seen
a bear in this part of the state. Cougars and
mountain lions came to mind, but he quickly ruled them
out as well. Suddenly there was a loud crash, like
a tree breaking under a great strain, and it echoed
across the holler. Then the woods grew early quiet. There
were no birds chirping, no bees buzzing, no squirrels or
any other animals making any sounds. Alarmed, and reverting back
to his military training, he quickly veered off the trail
and hid down among the tall grass on his belly.
He lay there in the silence for several minutes, wondering
if his mind was playing tricks on him. He was
about to move away when he heard a sound that
I was familiar with. First there was a thump several
yards away, and then another one a little closer. He
looked up over the tall grass and he saw a
rock coming in his direction. He crawled away, hoping that
that would throw his attacker off his position, and it
almost worked. The next rock landed farther away, but it
was adjusting for his movement. He decided that this thing
must be a human. He couldn't think of anything else
in Kentucky that could throw rocks. With his rifle and pistol,
my uncle felt reasonably assured that he was safe, so
he stood up and he called out. He doesn't remember
what he said, but it was something to the effect
of asking them not to throw rocks. At him, but
no one answered. He then told them that he was
armed and he expected to get an answer, or at
least hear them leave, but he got neither. He began
to make his way out of there. Like me, he
walked backwards, with his eyes scanning for threats. He moved quickly.
It was too late to worry about being quiet. Whatever
it was, it knew exactly where he was. Another rock
hit the ground at his feet and bounced into his
right leg. It didn't hurt him, but it startled him greatly.
He didn't lose his cool. He pulled his rifle up
and scanned the area in a quick three sixty. He
was still convinced it was people, so he threatened to
shoot if another rock was thrown. Well, something moved in
the bushes, but he couldn't see what it was. It
had to be a human. He wasn't prepared to accept
any other alternative. He kept backing up and moving his
head from side to side, and then an incredibly loud
growl broke the silence and reverberated through his chest. He
said he'd never heard anything like it before or since.
At this point, my uncle knew two things. It was
very close and it wasn't. Human instinct kicked in. He
fired into the bushes, shifted position, chambered another round, and
then he fired again. He doubted he hid anything, but
he was hoping to scare it off. And then another
rock flew at him. It landed a little further away
than the last, but that was enough. He turned and
bolted for a nearby grove of trees. It didn't offer
much shelter, but it was better than nothing. He pulled
at his pistol and sat there for maybe an hour,
waiting for another confrontation. His nerves were on edge. He's
not a religious man, but he said he did a
lot of praying that day. But nothing more happened, and
soon the sounds of the woods returned to normal, as
if nothing had ever happened. He was feeling foolish, and
he made his way back to the ridge and looked
over the air one more time. He didn't see anything unusual,
and gladly went home empty handed. He didn't tell anyone
else about his experience for a long time. He didn't
think anyone would believe him. Eventually, he told his brother later.
He told me, in a way, my uncle and I
bonded that day, we both had a strange experience that
we couldn't explain. At least, he'd been armed with throwing
rocks back at something that's throwing rocks at me. Probably
wasn't very smart, but it seemed like my best option
at the time. Fortunately, neither of us has seen anything since.
Now that I'm older and perhaps a bit wiser, I
don't think that whatever was throwing rocks at us was
trying to hurt us. I think it was warning us
to get out of the area. At least that's my
two cents worth. You can believe whatever you choose to believe.