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Speaker 1: Dogmanencounters dot com Forward Slash Podcast. Tonight's guest is Bruno Thompson. Bruno,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Oh, you're welcome. Bruno. Please give us a brief bio
Speaker 1: on yourself.
Speaker 2: A brief bio on myself. Okay, I'm fifty four years old.
Speaker 2: I live in central Wisconsin, Adams County, which is forty
Speaker 2: minutes north of the Wisconsin Dells. I like to hunt, fish, trap,
Speaker 2: anything outdoors. In my younger years, I did a lot
Speaker 2: of sports, high school baseball, certain things like that. I
Speaker 2: worked for the Wisconsin Conservation Corps for two years from
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety two to ninety three, and that involved building
Speaker 2: birdhouses or woodduck houses, and planting trees and just doing
Speaker 2: all kinds of things. We actually took third graders on
Speaker 2: field trips, planted trees with them, taught them about trees. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I did that for so I was twenty one at
Speaker 2: that time. I just kind of fast forward here, but yeah,
Speaker 2: and I learned a lot doing that, just wanting to
Speaker 2: be in the outdoors. It didn't pay a lot. The
Speaker 2: reason I took the job was because I found out
Speaker 2: I could get a scholarship from the state, because I
Speaker 2: ended up getting my ged I moved around a lot
Speaker 2: as a kid. We talked yesterday and I told you
Speaker 2: about I lived in five different states, you know, growing
Speaker 2: up Florida, Wisconsin, Alaska, Utah, and Michigan. So I moved
Speaker 2: around and went to quite a few different schools, and
Speaker 2: you know, but when I was finally fifteen, I pretty
Speaker 2: much stayed with my grandma and didn't live with my mom.
Speaker 2: But anyway, back to the Wisconsin Conservation Corps. I finished
Speaker 2: out my time there. I got my scholarship from them,
Speaker 2: and I went to MATC and I studied Ohm's law
Speaker 2: for about six months, and I got a job with
Speaker 2: Able Electric in Green Bay. I worked with them for
Speaker 2: a while, got a job with CC Electric, a Platinum Electric,
Speaker 2: but I basically ended up moving on from there and
Speaker 2: going into factory work. And that's just kind of like
Speaker 2: what I do now. And I only do electrical work
Speaker 2: on side jobs. I do do it, but I just
Speaker 2: do it as side jobs. So basically about me. I
Speaker 2: just love hunting, fishing, being outdoors, kayaking, trapping. Right now,
Speaker 2: I'm trying to go for a pilot's license. I was
Speaker 2: talking about that yesterday, building a small single seat aircraft.
Speaker 2: I live on ten acres up here. It's really nice.
Speaker 2: I only work ten minutes away, and I do a
Speaker 2: lot of reloading, building birdhouses, you know, just tinkering, like
Speaker 2: doing carpentry and target practice. So yeah, I just come
Speaker 2: from a family that they all did hunting.
Speaker 3: And fishing, and my grandma, my grandpa, they all went
Speaker 3: out to Wyoming and they shot antelope and mule deer
Speaker 3: and all that.
Speaker 2: And when I was growing up, you know, I was
Speaker 2: kind of wanted to be like my grandpa. So I
Speaker 2: don't know, that's really about it.
Speaker 1: That must have been great growing up with your family,
Speaker 1: with your extended family being so interested in the outdoors.
Speaker 1: That'd be great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, definitely. Like so, when I was six years old,
Speaker 2: I got my first geebe gun from my grandpa. I mean,
Speaker 2: I guess that's pretty young for a kid. My mom
Speaker 2: really didn't like it. And another story is when I
Speaker 2: was I mean, if you could imagine this, I got
Speaker 2: a ten twenty two ruger car. Being at eight years old,
Speaker 2: so I had to walk to school every day because
Speaker 2: I was a latch key kid, you know, I had
Speaker 2: to carry your house key around your neck because your
Speaker 2: parents both worked or whatever and you had to basically
Speaker 2: take care of yourself. Well, I walked to school and
Speaker 2: I was just going down the steps into the playground.
Speaker 2: And this was in Milwaukee, nineteen eighty February tenth. It
Speaker 2: was cold outside, and all of a sudden, I hear
Speaker 2: beep beep, and I look around. I don't see nothing.
Speaker 2: And the school I went to, there's a cools parking
Speaker 2: lot right across the street. And I look over and
Speaker 2: there's one car over. I don't see nobody, so I
Speaker 2: just start going on the steps again. Then I hear
Speaker 2: somebody yell hey, Bubba, and that's my grandpa called me.
Speaker 2: He called me bubb or Bubba. So I look up
Speaker 2: and there he is like waving out the window to me.
Speaker 2: I was like, oh my god. So I go running
Speaker 2: over there and he's like, hey, I brought you your
Speaker 2: birthday president. I was like what. He's like, yeah, jump in,
Speaker 2: and so I jump in the car and he hands
Speaker 2: me this big box and puts it on my lap.
Speaker 2: I'm like, what is it? He's open it up, you know,
Speaker 2: and I didn't know, but it was shaped like a gun,
Speaker 2: you know, in a big box. So I'm just like wow.
Speaker 2: I mean, I ripped that thing open so fast, and
Speaker 2: I had it out of the box and I'm looking
Speaker 2: down the sites and I had the gun out the window,
Speaker 2: aiming at the street light. You know. I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is so cool. And he engraved on it to
Speaker 2: Bubba with love Papa, February tenth, nineteen eighty, you know,
Speaker 2: on a little gold plated plaque that he had attached
Speaker 2: to the to the right side of the stock so
Speaker 2: when you cheeked it, the plate wouldn't touch your face.
Speaker 2: It would be on the opposite side. And my uncle Mark,
Speaker 2: he was one year younger than me because my grandma
Speaker 2: had him at forty years old. My mom had me
Speaker 2: at sixty. So my grandma had her last kid late
Speaker 2: in life and my mom had me really young, so
Speaker 2: we were like brothers. So he got a ten twenty
Speaker 2: two ruger carbing with one serial number off and his
Speaker 2: engraved plate that said to Mark, you know, with love
Speaker 2: Dad on his birthday, right, So they were like a
Speaker 2: matching set, and he ordered him that way. But that
Speaker 2: was like one of the greatest birthday presents I ever had.
Speaker 2: I wasn't able to tell my mom about it because
Speaker 2: back then it's kind of a long story. I really
Speaker 2: don't want to get into that today. But I lived
Speaker 2: with my grandma and grandpa until I was five, and
Speaker 2: then my mom kind of took me away from there
Speaker 2: and she didn't want me seeing my grandma and grandpa.
Speaker 2: So this was kind of a surprise visit. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it was like the best birthday president ever. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: was a nice time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it sounds like it. And I'll bet your mom
Speaker 1: would have freaked out if she would have known.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Back in nineteen or so, two years later,
Speaker 2: when we were living in Florida, my mom said something
Speaker 2: to me one day and I was like, well, I
Speaker 2: already got a gun. No you don't.
Speaker 1: Oh no, I.
Speaker 2: Told her. You know, I was twelve, So I'm like, yeah, where,
Speaker 2: I said, in Milwaukee? Who's got I said, Grandma's got it?
Speaker 2: What who got it for you? I said, Papa did.
Speaker 2: When I was like on my birthday, way back when
Speaker 2: when I wasn't supposed to talk to him. Oh, sneak,
Speaker 2: you know. I mean she really didn't care too much
Speaker 2: because my grandpa got sick and died in eighty three,
Speaker 2: so that was kind of a rough thing. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it brought her family back together because my mom didn't
Speaker 2: really want to talk to them, and when my grandpa
Speaker 2: got sick, then it we all, I don't know, got
Speaker 2: back together.
Speaker 1: Well I hate the fact that he passed away, but
Speaker 1: I'm glad at least your family got together after that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, Brinda, please tell us about your encounter. Now
Speaker 1: give us ever last detail that comes to mind.
Speaker 2: Okay, this was November seventeenth, nineteen ninety five. It was
Speaker 2: the day before opening day of rifle season in Wisconsin,
Speaker 2: and this happened around nine pm to ten thirty. I'm
Speaker 2: not positive on the time. I just kind of know
Speaker 2: what time. Me and my uncle Tony left the trailer
Speaker 2: and we went for a ride, and we went to
Speaker 2: pick up some beer and food and snacks and lan
Speaker 2: Jaeger's and jerky that we would take out in the
Speaker 2: woods with us. So, yeah, everybody was already up here.
Speaker 2: A lot of my family members that live about well,
Speaker 2: they don't live. They have a cabin a mile from
Speaker 2: us on fourteenth A in Adams County, where just I'm
Speaker 2: just off Highway thirteen north towards the Wisconsin Rapids and Adams, Wisconsin,
Speaker 2: so that's where I'm at. And anyways, so we're back
Speaker 2: here and my uncle Tony's like, hey, you want to
Speaker 2: go for a ride and pick all this stuff up
Speaker 2: and do this and that, and and I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 2: let's go, you know, and He's He's somebody that I
Speaker 2: just he was my closest uncle. I always got along
Speaker 2: with them. He inspired me a lot of ways too,
Speaker 2: because he played baseball in school and I like baseball
Speaker 2: and all that. And he actually had a draft letter
Speaker 2: for tryout for the Cincinnati Reds back in nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 2: So anyway, we just me and him were like peanut,
Speaker 2: Butter and Jelly. Whenever there was a family reunion, they'd
Speaker 2: be like, where's Bruno. He's hanging out with unkin Tony.
Speaker 2: So we were just always together. We hunted together, we
Speaker 2: thought alike everything, even though there was like a eight
Speaker 2: year difference, which I guess isn't that much for an
Speaker 2: uncle and a nephew. But anyway, I go with him.
Speaker 2: We jump in his little geometro and we go for
Speaker 2: a ride, and I'm trying to remember if it was mine.
Speaker 2: I think it was his idea. He's like, hey, let's
Speaker 2: let's go drive through the hunting land. And I'm debating
Speaker 2: with him, like, well, I don't know if it's a
Speaker 2: very good idea, and why you know, we really never
Speaker 2: did that. We drove around other areas to look at
Speaker 2: where the deer are crossing the night before, you know,
Speaker 2: looking for signs and stuff. But I didn't want to
Speaker 2: go in there because I'm like, yeah, driving in there
Speaker 2: spooking them, you know. I mean we're going in there
Speaker 2: at nine to ten thirty at night. We're going to
Speaker 2: be in those woods at five six am, you know,
Speaker 2: we don't really want to scare them and stuff. He's
Speaker 2: just like, ah, that's not going to one car. It's
Speaker 2: not like we're chasing them down or we're doing donuts
Speaker 2: or going really fast. So I'm like I finally agree
Speaker 2: on it. I'm like, okay, So we go in and
Speaker 2: this is it's seven hundred and sixty acres of public land.
Speaker 2: And to describe this place to you is it's really
Speaker 2: it was really nice. We hunted it from nineteen six
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty till the year twenty fifteen. Yeah, and it
Speaker 2: got clear cutted and the DNR ended up selling the
Speaker 2: land to some farmers and now it's farm fields. But
Speaker 2: back then it was really nice. It had everything that
Speaker 2: you wanted, like rolling oak ridges, big huge oak trees
Speaker 2: with falling acorns and tamarack. It had lot like a
Speaker 2: spot there where it had all these tamaracks and thickets
Speaker 2: and dogwood where deer could hide and kind of like
Speaker 2: a I don't know, it would be a peat moss,
Speaker 2: but it's kind of a swampy. I wouldn't say swamp,
Speaker 2: but it's wetter in that area. So there's a few
Speaker 2: spots in there in this seven hundred and sixty acres
Speaker 2: that has kind of a wetter area, and it's jackpines
Speaker 2: in there, white pine, Scotch pine, just different kinds of
Speaker 2: trees and wild hazel nuts. We got hazel nuts galore.
Speaker 2: You really can't even harvest them around here because the
Speaker 2: deer eat them before they get right. Like I'll go
Speaker 2: out and I'll see them and I'll be like, yeah,
Speaker 2: those will be ready in another two weeks. I go
Speaker 2: out to get them, and you can see the deer
Speaker 2: nibbled him and ate him right off. So wild blueberries, raspberries,
Speaker 2: just everything. And something that I talked to you yesterday
Speaker 2: I forgot to tell you was in these encounters people
Speaker 2: say they've seen that it's happened by water. I forgot
Speaker 2: to tell you that that it's not that far away
Speaker 2: from a thing called dead Horse Creek. Dead Horse Creek
Speaker 2: is actually eight blocks. Now. I wouldn't even call it
Speaker 2: blocks because I'm in the country. It's it's a five
Speaker 2: or ten minute walk from my house. I can go
Speaker 2: to dead Horse Creek and it runs for a long
Speaker 2: ways and runs into Big Rascha Cree or Little Raschakree Lake.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's just a really nice place to hunt
Speaker 2: that We've always shot deer there. We had places there
Speaker 2: that we nicknamed them certain spots, like seven point corners
Speaker 2: because there's seven corners there. The roads they're logging trails,
Speaker 2: they go different ways, and a lot of our family
Speaker 2: members or friends of the family shot deer there and
Speaker 2: never shot any dough. They always shot a seven point
Speaker 2: buck and it happened many times, so we called it
Speaker 2: seven point corners or seven points. So anyway we're we
Speaker 2: go in by Mike Bubla's because he has a an
Speaker 2: easement that goes in either you can get in another way,
Speaker 2: but you got to go way around and take Highway
Speaker 2: thirteen and kind of go around one of the lakes
Speaker 2: and come in the back way, and we just didn't
Speaker 2: like doing that. And we knew Mike Bubla since the sixties.
Speaker 2: He was friends with my grandma and grandpa, and he
Speaker 2: would open up his property for us to drive through
Speaker 2: there to get in, and so we go in there
Speaker 2: after we already picked our stuff up from the store.
Speaker 2: So this was just kind of a we were just
Speaker 2: going to go in there, take one lap around, kind
Speaker 2: of look around. You know. We weren't even really going
Speaker 2: to get out of the car because we just didn't
Speaker 2: want to. We just kind of wanted to go in
Speaker 2: there and have the brights on and the road these
Speaker 2: logging roads too. To give you some idea, are you
Speaker 2: can see down some of these roads twelve hundred yards.
Speaker 2: If seven hundred and sixty acres is twelve hundred yards,
Speaker 2: it probably is. I think I put a rangefinder on
Speaker 2: it a couple times, and it's beyond that. But the
Speaker 2: road is at some points thirty feet wide to fifty
Speaker 2: feet wide from woods to woods because the seven hundred
Speaker 2: and sixty acres butts up to another property that some
Speaker 2: people own. So it really works out good because people
Speaker 2: that we don't hunt with will be hunting in there
Speaker 2: part of the woods on the logging roads, and they'll
Speaker 2: chase the deer out into ours and they get shot
Speaker 2: at and run back into theirs, and it's a back
Speaker 2: and forth thing. So, and the road itself is maybe
Speaker 2: fifteen feet wide, twelve to fifteen feet wide, and we're
Speaker 2: just going down this road, you know, got the music
Speaker 2: really low, we got the windows up and we're just
Speaker 2: looking and he's got the uh, the bright's on, so
Speaker 2: we can see a long long ways and we weren't
Speaker 2: planning on shining or anything like that. You're not supposed
Speaker 2: to have guns in your vehicle twenty four hours prior
Speaker 2: to the rifle deer season. You're not supposed to shine
Speaker 2: deer twenty four hours prior to the deer season, and
Speaker 2: that includes shining with your headlights. So if you see
Speaker 2: deer in a field you're not really you'd probably get
Speaker 2: ticketed for turning around and using your car to to
Speaker 2: look at him, even if you don't have a gun,
Speaker 2: so we were trying to stay within rules and just
Speaker 2: take a look around. And it's, like I said, it's
Speaker 2: something we never did. I never remember one time that
Speaker 2: we ever went there the night before or the day
Speaker 2: before the season, just because that was always in our thought.
Speaker 2: And if we would have said something to my grandma,
Speaker 2: my grandma would say, no, stay the heck out of there.
Speaker 2: I don't want to spooking my dear or whatever, you know.
Speaker 2: So we did it. Anyway, We're going down the road
Speaker 2: and we get up till about seven point corners there,
Speaker 2: and we just kept going straight because we were taking
Speaker 2: a lap around. We were already down by a place
Speaker 2: called Reese's Field, which a farmer owns, and that's more
Speaker 2: on the south end. Yeah, and so we're up there,
Speaker 2: we're just going along, going along, and out of the blue,
Speaker 2: I mean, we're both got, we're both looking forward and
Speaker 2: for people listening too to think, you know, some people
Speaker 2: got didn't see something right, or it happened really fast.
Speaker 2: This did happen really fast. But I had my I
Speaker 2: have paperwork even showing it that back in ninety five
Speaker 2: I had twenty thirteen vision. The doctor said, he said,
Speaker 2: you got twenty thirteen visions. I thought something was wrong
Speaker 2: with my eyes, and he said no, he's like, I've
Speaker 2: never seen anybody be able to read those letters that
Speaker 2: you just read off there on that bottom chart. He's like,
Speaker 2: in twenty two or twenty six years whatever that he's
Speaker 2: been the doctor, he's never seen somebody read something like
Speaker 2: that fine print. So I'm just letting you know that
Speaker 2: I know what I've seen, even though it was a
Speaker 2: fraction of a second. And almost everybody in my family
Speaker 2: just nobody wears glasses unless they're over forty and they
Speaker 2: need them for reading. But everybody had really good long
Speaker 2: range vision. And the doctor told me, well, what you
Speaker 2: what somebody with twenty twenty vision can see? You can
Speaker 2: see it seven feet further away. I'm like, really, huh, no,
Speaker 2: wonder you know? I didn't know. So we're looking ahead
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden, from right to left, you
Speaker 2: see this. It took up the whole road. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: was far away. I would I would guesstimate two hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty to three hundred yards, probably three hundred yards,
Speaker 2: but we were kind of at the top. These these
Speaker 2: logging roads go up and down a lot, so you
Speaker 2: once you get to a top of one. You can
Speaker 2: see all the way to the end of the logging
Speaker 2: road where it hits the woods, which is probably beyond
Speaker 2: what most people can shoot. But anyway, I'm looking. Mount
Speaker 2: Patony's looking too. He's driving. I'm a passenger, and from
Speaker 2: right to left we just see this whole big, giant
Speaker 2: brown mountain lion. And I'm just gonna tell you right
Speaker 2: now mountain lion, because it took up the whole road.
Speaker 2: The tail was like four or five feet long. I
Speaker 2: don't know how long their tails are, but it was.
Speaker 2: It was so long, and it was so low to
Speaker 2: the ground that it was just hauling. But I mean,
Speaker 2: this thing, it cleared the whole fifty foot road, or
Speaker 2: maybe it was thirty foot at that point, but it
Speaker 2: was one leap. It like came out of the woods
Speaker 2: on the right side and it just leapt over the
Speaker 2: road all stretched out. You could see its front legs
Speaker 2: all the way out like Superman, and its back legs
Speaker 2: stretched out like it was flying across the road. And
Speaker 2: it was so low to the ground, but it was
Speaker 2: so big. It was like it looked like it was
Speaker 2: twelve feet long with that tail, and it was like
Speaker 2: that you know it happened in a flash, right, But
Speaker 2: we're trying to compute what we just saw. And my
Speaker 2: uncle Tony actually looks over and he's like, what, what
Speaker 2: in the heck did you just see? And I said,
Speaker 2: I saw a mountain lion. He's like, Okay, I'm just
Speaker 2: checking because that's what I saw too, And I'm like,
Speaker 2: they weren't. Just like, we can't believe it. You know,
Speaker 2: wolves weren't even I guess reintroduced here in the state
Speaker 2: until the early nineties. They put a small pack in,
Speaker 2: so I didn't even see a wolf in Wisconsin yet.
Speaker 2: And I've seen fissures and Pine Martin bobcats. I have
Speaker 2: never seen, you know, links in Wisconsin, but they say
Speaker 2: they have them too. But this wasn't a links. It
Speaker 2: wasn't a bobcat. It wasn't a house cat. It was
Speaker 2: a mountain lion. It was like two hundred pounds and
Speaker 2: it had the longest tail, just like a mountain lion.
Speaker 2: I mean. And the only mountain lion that I seen
Speaker 2: in the whild was this one. So I've seen him
Speaker 2: in zoos and I know they look like and We're
Speaker 2: just sitting there going like, oh my god, dude, we
Speaker 2: saw a mountain lion. You know, nobody's gonna believe us,
Speaker 2: and only maybe twenty to maybe. I was trying to
Speaker 2: think of the time yesterday when I talked to you, victim,
Speaker 2: it was probably twenty seconds to a minute. It's just
Speaker 2: hard to say the time, because it's everything slowed down.
Speaker 2: It's like it slowed down and sped up because it
Speaker 2: slowed down that we saw a mountain lion that I've
Speaker 2: never seen a mountain lion, you know, in nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: five in Wisconsin, and nobody nobody even said anything about them,
Speaker 2: and dn R didn't say anything, and it was just
Speaker 2: like all these things going through her mind, like, you know,
Speaker 2: we gotta tell them back then at the cabin when
Speaker 2: we get back, but they're not gonna believe us. And
Speaker 2: then Graham was gonna be like, why were you over
Speaker 2: on the hunting property and scaring dear Da Da Da
Speaker 2: da da, And it wasn't it wasn't but twenty seconds
Speaker 2: to him. Sixty seconds maybe after that, And when you
Speaker 2: seeing them out in mine, we were still going and
Speaker 2: we were only going ten to fifteen miles an hour,
Speaker 2: so we probably closed the distance another one hundred yards.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: We could have been going even slower. I'm not positive,
Speaker 2: but we weren't going fast at all. We're just kind
Speaker 2: of at a crawl through there, and we're just like,
Speaker 2: I can't we saw a mountainline. My uncle Tony was saying,
Speaker 2: a cougar, but yeah, cougar, mountain lion, same thing. And
Speaker 2: we're just trying to get over the fact that that's
Speaker 2: that's what we've seen and how how are we going
Speaker 2: to explain this and nobody is going to believe it,
Speaker 2: no one, no one is gonna believe it. And so
Speaker 2: we're now we're about one hundred yards closer. We're probably
Speaker 2: two hundred yards away from where this thing we think
Speaker 2: crossed where we seen it kind of cross and then
Speaker 2: we kind of took a mental image. And we've all
Speaker 2: always done that. My grandma taught me that, like when
Speaker 2: you shoot a deer and it runs somewhere, don't get
Speaker 2: so excited that you lose track of where it ran
Speaker 2: in the woods. You want to keep your cool and
Speaker 2: your calm. And if you see it running somewhere market
Speaker 2: that's the last place you've seen it, or if it
Speaker 2: makes it into the woods, keep your eye on it
Speaker 2: until you can see that. You don't see the tail anymore,
Speaker 2: you don't see the deer, and remember, you know, stay
Speaker 2: sitted there and keep an eye on. Okay, that's the
Speaker 2: last place I've seen it, because if we have to
Speaker 2: track it, you might have to sit in that spot
Speaker 2: and tell the other person, Nope, go to the right,
Speaker 2: go to the left. Yep, right there is the last
Speaker 2: place I seen it, because it's hard to see it
Speaker 2: from when you get over there. Anyway, we're just about
Speaker 2: one hundred yards closer, and all of a sudden, from
Speaker 2: the same spot that we can tell that that mountain
Speaker 2: lion came jumping out and clearing the road in one leap,
Speaker 2: a giant black wolf's head comes out of the woods. So,
Speaker 2: like I said, the woods can be the woods can
Speaker 2: be maybe so fifteen feet fifty seven and a half feet,
Speaker 2: if you want to get technical, the woods can be
Speaker 2: seven and a half feet from the edge of the
Speaker 2: road up to fifteen feet or yeah, or twelve feet maybe.
Speaker 2: Because there's hazel nut bushes that grow along there, blueberries,
Speaker 2: all kinds of red raspberries, and tangles and just stuff
Speaker 2: like that that grows on the side of the row.
Speaker 2: Of these logging trails. Nobody goes out there and cuts it,
Speaker 2: so kind of grows wild. So when this head came out,
Speaker 2: it's I've seen its left paw come out first, touched
Speaker 2: just before, just before the edge of the road, and
Speaker 2: it had its ears back, so I couldn't see any
Speaker 2: ears sticking up, but I could tell. I thought it
Speaker 2: was a dog, for a giant, big dog, because that's
Speaker 2: what my uncle said, whose dog, you know? And it
Speaker 2: was like we barely got those words out and it
Speaker 2: was like, no, that's a wolf. Oh my god, there's
Speaker 2: a wolf. And just after getting those words out, it
Speaker 2: transition from So the mountain lion was like I said,
Speaker 2: maybe thirty inches. I mean, I guess when it was
Speaker 2: leaping across the road it looked taller off the ground.
Speaker 2: But this, this big black head you could tell, was
Speaker 2: probably two feet higher up than as far as the
Speaker 2: mountain lion jumped right. So when the head came out
Speaker 2: like that, you could tell how big it was. It
Speaker 2: was like, oh my god, do that is you know? Yeah,
Speaker 2: we're another one hundred yards closer too, maybe, you know,
Speaker 2: which made it look bigger, but it was just way
Speaker 2: beyond big than what I thought, and just all black.
Speaker 2: And I've never seen an all black wolf. The only
Speaker 2: black ones I seen were like in captivity, and they
Speaker 2: had really long legs and kind of were skinny looking.
Speaker 2: And this one wasn't like that. As we got out
Speaker 2: those words about like, oh it's a wolf, it's a
Speaker 2: it's like, you know, what's that doing out here? It
Speaker 2: was whose farmer? Whose dog is out? It just stood
Speaker 2: up from the four leg I didn't see the other
Speaker 2: legs because they were the back legs were in the
Speaker 2: woods yet, and just the front leg or I, like
Speaker 2: I said to Vic, I said, the paws weren't really
Speaker 2: pause people say raccoon hands or whatever. I call them
Speaker 2: pans like they were a cross between a paw and
Speaker 2: a hand, because I actually saw like hair on the
Speaker 2: fingers and long claws, but it kind of looked like
Speaker 2: a paw a little bit where the wrist kind of hinges,
Speaker 2: and so it when it stood up and stepped out,
Speaker 2: it stepped out. Yeah, yeah, I seen both legs. It
Speaker 2: stepped out and stood right up. And this thing was
Speaker 2: like easily my uncle Tony said the same thing. He
Speaker 2: might have gauged it a foot taller than me. I said,
Speaker 2: it was like seven or eight feet tall, because we
Speaker 2: were looking at some of the trees that had some
Speaker 2: overhanging branches. And I'll get to that later on. But
Speaker 2: the next day we did go back and check it
Speaker 2: some of the heights but it stood up. But oh wait,
Speaker 2: before it stood up, though, I forgot it actually from
Speaker 2: the car like shining toward it. I forgot to say,
Speaker 2: it turned its head. And this is when its ears
Speaker 2: were still down, so it tears were still down, and
Speaker 2: it was like stalking.
Speaker 4: Like like like anybody's anybody ever seen a wire hair
Speaker 4: pointer or a German short hair pointer the way they
Speaker 4: point birds.
Speaker 2: That's how it came out of the woods like it
Speaker 2: was like like it was stalking something like like a
Speaker 2: cat does sometimes gets down real slow and sneaks. That's
Speaker 2: how it looked. And its ears were down like that,
Speaker 2: and it's paw and it just turned its head, not
Speaker 2: ninety degrees at us. It only turned it like forty
Speaker 2: five degrees just to turn. Because I mean, we had
Speaker 2: bright shining all it lit up the whole road. The
Speaker 2: light was shining off the trees and actually some of
Speaker 2: the trees drape over the road, the branches overhang the road.
Speaker 2: So it's like a tunnel. So that's how bright it was.
Speaker 2: There was no problem seeing anything. And when it turned
Speaker 2: its head and looked like toward the car, you could
Speaker 2: just see I saw golden glowing hives. They weren't yellow,
Speaker 2: they weren't red, they weren't it wasn't eyeshine, it was golden.
Speaker 2: I didn't see a pupil. I didn't. I just saw
Speaker 2: a big round, golden glowing eyes, like almost like a
Speaker 2: mini flashlight that was coming out of there. But so
Speaker 2: it just kind of looked at us, like how do
Speaker 2: I wouldn't even say it looked. It just kind of
Speaker 2: looked that way for a second, like maybe I was thinking,
Speaker 2: like what's that coming? Or where what's that light? You know,
Speaker 2: That's kind of the way it looked. And then it
Speaker 2: just looked straight back ahead again to where that mountain
Speaker 2: lion we saw a run and that's when it stood up.
Speaker 2: And when it stood up, it took two steps to
Speaker 2: clear the road, so it was like one step and
Speaker 2: I could see both legs in the back, and the
Speaker 2: legs to me were just the upper legs looked like
Speaker 2: a running back's legs for like the NFL. I could
Speaker 2: see the muscles in them. I mean, yeah, two hundred
Speaker 2: yards is of distance. But I could see it clear
Speaker 2: as day with the high beams on it and everything.
Speaker 2: And when it stepped with the first foot, I could
Speaker 2: see the definition and the split between the leg the
Speaker 2: way when it stepped, I could see the muscles in
Speaker 2: between the upper quad or I guess that's what it's called,
Speaker 2: just kind of you could see the definition of the
Speaker 2: lines in it like a muscle. And then I could
Speaker 2: see it had that double I don't know, I guess
Speaker 2: it would be called a double hinged foot or whatever
Speaker 2: they call that, where it has a knee, but then
Speaker 2: it has that second leg just like a dog or
Speaker 2: even a rabbit. It's kind of longer leg, and you
Speaker 2: could I couldn't see those looked more like paused me,
Speaker 2: but just oversized paws. I didn't see like long finger
Speaker 2: claws like or cat claws on the bottom of the feet.
Speaker 2: It just looked like oversized giant feet. But it stood
Speaker 2: up like like, yeah, it's crazy the way it stood up.
Speaker 2: And when I explained it yesterday, I didn't explain it
Speaker 2: right either. I said it took two steps across the road.
Speaker 2: These steps were kind of like a leaping a leaping,
Speaker 2: gliding step. It's kind of hard to explain. Now. It
Speaker 2: wasn't floating, it wasn't paranormal like, but it was. It
Speaker 2: was so graceful and effortless. That's how it made it
Speaker 2: look like. The body mechanics of it, the way it
Speaker 2: was able to just take those two steps, and the
Speaker 2: way it stood up. Yeah, it stood up all the way,
Speaker 2: but it's still when it was stood up to me,
Speaker 2: it was still kind of hunched over a little bit
Speaker 2: the top of the shoulders, and I could I only
Speaker 2: seen the left arm and the left hand. My uncle
Speaker 2: said he saw both arms. Maybe because I was sitting
Speaker 2: in the passenger seat. He was in the driver's seat.
Speaker 2: The angle I had, I maybe couldn't see the other
Speaker 2: arm and the way it swung when and plus I
Speaker 2: was looking at the feet and the head and the ears,
Speaker 2: and but when it stood up, that's when the ears
Speaker 2: went up. The ears went up straight, and I could
Speaker 2: see like the tufts like on a linx, like they
Speaker 2: say a link, you know, links has those little pieces
Speaker 2: of fur up there. I could also see this before
Speaker 2: it stood up too tight. I could see its kind
Speaker 2: of ears moving around like it was trying to pick
Speaker 2: up noise or hone in on something. Sometimes a dogg
Speaker 2: will hear a noise and you'll see its ears kind
Speaker 2: of twitch around like where that come from. It was
Speaker 2: kind of like a radar. It was looked like it
Speaker 2: was doing, you know. But when it stood up like that,
Speaker 2: its ears definitely moved left and right and not. It
Speaker 2: wasn't even like uh at the same time. It was
Speaker 2: like one kind of went left, one kind of went right,
Speaker 2: one kind of like went upward and backward, and the
Speaker 2: other one is kind of like tilting forward and left
Speaker 2: and just a couple of funny things. And then it
Speaker 2: took those that other step, and like I said it,
Speaker 2: the way the way it took those steps was just
Speaker 2: it was effortless. It was just a gliding. It didn't
Speaker 2: even try to jump or run. It's just two effortless.
Speaker 2: I don't even really even know how to explain it,
Speaker 2: because it kind of almost you would say it looked floating,
Speaker 2: but it wasn't. It just like kind of like stepped
Speaker 2: with its leg, but as it stepped, it kind of
Speaker 2: like swung it along the ground, and it almost looked
Speaker 2: like one leg was floating. And then it touched and
Speaker 2: then the other leg was kind of like flung out
Speaker 2: and dragged and stepped. But then it got to the
Speaker 2: the left side of the road and had got into
Speaker 2: the woods. That's when when it stood up and I
Speaker 2: seen that and the glowing eyes. And it was after
Speaker 2: the glowing eyes I said to my uncle, that's a werewolf,
Speaker 2: because that's all I could think of, you know, I'm like,
Speaker 2: that's a were wolf. And he's like, no, that's not
Speaker 2: a were wolf. And know, I'm like, that is a werewolf,
Speaker 2: and he was actually said something like, that's somebody in
Speaker 2: a costume. Nobody is out here in the middle of
Speaker 2: nowhere at night in a costume. He's like, I know,
Speaker 2: I know. I'm just trying to.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: We're just kind of debating back and forth, like what
Speaker 2: the heck is it. We got to go see what
Speaker 2: that is. I'm not getting out of this car, he said,
Speaker 2: I'm not getting out of it either, But we got
Speaker 2: to go up there and look, you know. And we
Speaker 2: were planning on doing that anyway, because for a second
Speaker 2: we said, well before them, before we even seen the
Speaker 2: dog man come out, we said, well, when we get
Speaker 2: up there, we're gonna look at those tracks. And we
Speaker 2: were gonna throw a soda can out on the side
Speaker 2: of the road even if we didn't see nothing, and
Speaker 2: look at it in the morning the next day after
Speaker 2: we were done hunting, to see if we could see
Speaker 2: those mountain lion tracks. Right, that was our plan. Well,
Speaker 2: after seeing the dog man, we're not throwing it out.
Speaker 2: We're not getting out, you know. We kind of marked
Speaker 2: it and got up to there, and we drove over.
Speaker 2: We looked into the woods. We didn't see anything. We
Speaker 2: couldn't see any tracks. There was a lot of leaves
Speaker 2: on the ground, and it was kind of a colder
Speaker 2: night too, I believe, and you really couldn't see much.
Speaker 2: And I don't even know if the mountain lion and
Speaker 2: left any tracks from the side of the road where
Speaker 2: it's grassy and like berries, and I don't know if
Speaker 2: it would even dig in well it left across, I
Speaker 2: don't know. Their paws are pretty soft. But I was thinking, well,
Speaker 2: the dog man, there's no way he's got to leave something.
Speaker 2: But when he had stepped on the road, I literally
Speaker 2: think the first step he took with his leg landed
Speaker 2: in the middle of the road, so there's like a
Speaker 2: six foot stride, so if the road's twelve to fifteen
Speaker 2: feet and he was on the edge of the road
Speaker 2: when he took the first step, he is in the
Speaker 2: middle of the road. Well, these roads aren't all sand.
Speaker 2: They're actually sand where the tires are, where the tires go,
Speaker 2: but in the middle it's all grass because people don't
Speaker 2: drive back there that much, so then you got grass
Speaker 2: and whatever. And sometimes in the middle of the roads
Speaker 2: there's wild strawberries that grow just in that little area patch.
Speaker 2: So the car's driving, you know, in the tire tracks,
Speaker 2: but underneath the car in the middle of the road
Speaker 2: there's wild strawberries that grow. Sometimes not in November, I'm sure,
Speaker 2: but but that's what I thought. I'm like, well, it
Speaker 2: should have left something. And then I thought, at the
Speaker 2: next step it took before it got into the woods,
Speaker 2: there's got to be some steps there. But we couldn't
Speaker 2: see anything. It was dark, I mean not dark dark,
Speaker 2: but when we got up to the spot, our brights
Speaker 2: are shining forward. We're kind of past the point of
Speaker 2: where we've seen it. So we kind of stopped with
Speaker 2: the headlights and the bumper just passed where it crossed.
Speaker 2: So it's tire. The tires were probably in line where
Speaker 2: we thought it crossed. I'm looking out my window. I'm like,
Speaker 2: I don't see anything. He's looking out his window, he
Speaker 2: don't see anything. Then we're both telling everybody, like, you know,
Speaker 2: we can't go back telling people we saw a dog
Speaker 2: man and no one's even gonna believe. We see it
Speaker 2: in a mountain lion. And they're just going to laugh
Speaker 2: at us, because every deer season somebody gets picked on.
Speaker 2: They just do. Like. We also have a rule. It's
Speaker 2: called shirttails if you miss a deer. If you shoot
Speaker 2: and you miss a deer, we cut a piece of
Speaker 2: your shirttail off. So the shirt you're wearing at camp
Speaker 2: gets a little piece cut off it, you know, so
Speaker 2: everybody gets weird stories or you know, we've had all
Speaker 2: kinds of crazy things happen for a deer season that
Speaker 2: people just do. You know, it's shooting a deer and
Speaker 2: find one drop of blood and they don't get it, well,
Speaker 2: you missed, that's a shirttail. So we're sitting there thinking,
Speaker 2: I mean, well, we're going to have to tell them
Speaker 2: we saw the mountain lion. We have to because that
Speaker 2: thing's going to be out here. Hunting, and I have
Speaker 2: a couple family members that are not in the greatest
Speaker 2: shape at the time. Like one of my aunts is,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of overweight. She doesn't go very far
Speaker 2: from the car, and she has foster kids that she
Speaker 2: takes out hunting because she was you know, she was
Speaker 2: growing up in that way with our family too, like
Speaker 2: take a good kid hunting, teach them some responsibility, teach
Speaker 2: them safety things like that. You know, I think keeping
Speaker 2: guns away from kids, no, you can't, you can't touch it,
Speaker 2: you know, creates a you know, it's just like, don't
Speaker 2: ever do that, And well it makes you want to
Speaker 2: do it because the parents said, why can't you do it?
Speaker 2: You know, but if you teach them a safe way,
Speaker 2: well anyway, that's why I'm sitting there thinking, we got
Speaker 2: to tell them we saw a mountain lion. And he's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we'll do that, but they're not going to believe it.
Speaker 2: And my cousin Dennis had like abum knee and he's
Speaker 2: twenty some years in the National Guard, and I'm just
Speaker 2: it's like my grandma. I wasn't worried about her because
Speaker 2: she's been hunting her whole life and she shot antelope
Speaker 2: and mule deer and white tail and wild boars. And
Speaker 2: she shot almost all animals except over in Africa. But
Speaker 2: and she didn't even she was she didn't even hunt
Speaker 2: over in that area. She was hunting on the opposite end.
Speaker 2: And just I thought about some of the kids. Though.
Speaker 2: Some of these foster kids are only twelve, the sixteen,
Speaker 2: you know, So I'm like, oh, they could be out there,
Speaker 2: and who knows, you know, she she don't think there's
Speaker 2: a mountain lying around. Yeah, go ahead and take a pee,
Speaker 2: but make it fast, and you never know. I mean,
Speaker 2: they could snatch up a kid. One of her kids
Speaker 2: that she had up was very small. She was only
Speaker 2: like twelve years old and eighty pounds, a very small
Speaker 2: girl that she had that she took out hunting. So
Speaker 2: we're just trying to sit there and debate on who
Speaker 2: we're gonna tell and how we're gonna tell them. And
Speaker 2: then now we're gonna get in trouble for going back
Speaker 2: there and maybe scaring deer the day before deer season,
Speaker 2: and you know, they don't really like us doing that,
Speaker 2: and that I was against it and got it d
Speaker 2: da da, And then we're then and then we're sitting
Speaker 2: there thinking about, well, we got a hunt here tomorrow too,
Speaker 2: what if this thing is still around? That's what I
Speaker 2: was telling my uncle Tony. And he's like, well, I
Speaker 2: don't know, man, there's gonna be like twenty of us
Speaker 2: back here, and there's at least another dozen people that
Speaker 2: come up from Illinois, and I mean all these guns
Speaker 2: going off. He's like, that thing's not going to be around,
Speaker 2: or that mountain lion, it's long gone. And I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I hope. So I mean start killing deer and there's
Speaker 2: gut piles laying around, it might it might stick around. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I wasn't thinking of that. You know, maybe it'll come
Speaker 2: back at night, you know, and some of us come
Speaker 2: hunting at you know. I always like to get in
Speaker 2: the woods before the sun comes up. I go in
Speaker 2: with a flashlight all the time, and even now I will,
Speaker 2: but I'm usually with somebody if I do that. So
Speaker 2: it was just crazy just trying to go through. They're
Speaker 2: not gonna believe we saw a mountain lion. There's no
Speaker 2: way we can even tell them we saw. I called
Speaker 2: it a werewolf because ninety five I don't think there
Speaker 2: was We knew about a dog man or anything like
Speaker 2: I was saying to Vic. I told him I believed
Speaker 2: in Sasquatch. I saw the video when I was a
Speaker 2: little kid. And my uncle Herman, He's he was a
Speaker 2: guy that like would go out and just camp in
Speaker 2: the Wasatch Mountains for like a whole month just to
Speaker 2: say he did it. He did a lot of crazy things.
Speaker 2: And he told me he saw a couple sasquatch before
Speaker 2: they even came into his camp and stuff like that. Well,
Speaker 2: he was one of the first I told before I
Speaker 2: told my grandma. I told my grandma, like I think
Speaker 2: it was. I think it was a year or two later,
Speaker 2: or I might have told her after your season about
Speaker 2: the dog band thing too, but I'm not positive. I
Speaker 2: did tell my uncle Hermit no, and he told me,
Speaker 2: He's like, you can't. You can't go around telling people
Speaker 2: that they're gonna think you're nuts like me. And I'm
Speaker 2: just like laughing, and I'm like, well whatever. So me
Speaker 2: and my uncle Tony we finally decide, well, we're gonna
Speaker 2: tell him that we saw mom and we have to
Speaker 2: because we saw it. There's no ifsands or butts, you know.
Speaker 2: And I was concerned a lot about the other one
Speaker 2: because mountain lions I know about. I know that they
Speaker 2: liked the stock up on, you know, things smaller than
Speaker 2: them and snatch them up and run off. And they're
Speaker 2: pretty silent and things like that, and or they could
Speaker 2: sit up in a tree and pounce down on you.
Speaker 2: But I don't know about a werewolf for a dog man,
Speaker 2: or how it hunts or what it does. So that
Speaker 2: was concerning for me too. So when we did get
Speaker 2: back and came inside and I told my aunt or
Speaker 2: I told, we told everybody were like where were you guys? Well,
Speaker 2: we went to get some land Jaeger's and beef jerky
Speaker 2: and some beer for after hunting tomorrow. And we went
Speaker 2: over by the hunting property over by Boublas. My Grandma's like,
Speaker 2: what he's supposed to go in there? And well, yeah,
Speaker 2: we only took one lap around. We only went like
Speaker 2: ten or fifteen miles an hour. But we got to
Speaker 2: tell you, you know, when we saw them outlining blah
Speaker 2: blah blah, They're just like, you guys are so full
Speaker 2: of crap. It's like, no, we really did. I swear,
Speaker 2: you know, mynt Tony's like, I swear to God, I
Speaker 2: swear to God, we did. And my cousin Ray, he
Speaker 2: was in Vietnam. He took three tours of Vietnam. He
Speaker 2: wasn't really scared of anything. He kept signing up to
Speaker 2: go back and he just I don't know, I can't
Speaker 2: believe he made it through one tour and then he
Speaker 2: went two more tours. But he wasn't scared of it.
Speaker 2: He's like, well, you know, if you're scared of them,
Speaker 2: you know, then they're gonna come after you. If you're
Speaker 2: not scared of them, and you want to look bigger
Speaker 2: than them and just don't put your in a sofa situation.
Speaker 2: He's trying to say, well, there hasn't been a mountain
Speaker 2: lion sighting in Wisconsin since way back in the eighteen
Speaker 2: hundreds or something like that. He was saying, we saw them,
Speaker 2: and he sure it wasn't a no, I said, links
Speaker 2: and bobcats don't have four or five foot tails. You know.
Speaker 2: It was like the same mountain lions almost looked the
Speaker 2: same color as a deer. They got the same brownish
Speaker 2: tan color or whatever. Yeah, they just they didn't want
Speaker 2: to believe it. Well, there was a few jokes going
Speaker 2: on to my aunt. My aunt was saying, well, I'm
Speaker 2: not going to go out of fire in the woods anyway.
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna sit over here by the road. And
Speaker 2: that's when I said, well, that's kind of where I
Speaker 2: saw it, where this is where we've seen it cross
Speaker 2: right here. And I really didn't want to feel comfortable
Speaker 2: with her sitting there, you know, watching the road. But
Speaker 2: nothing happened. Nobody ever seen it again. We didn't see
Speaker 2: it again. I never got any kind of fear out
Speaker 2: of it, like some people say, and I attribute that
Speaker 2: to I was in the car, the windows were up,
Speaker 2: they were locked. I felt pretty safe. Yeah. I didn't
Speaker 2: have a gun, but I had a knife, I had
Speaker 2: a flashlight. My uncle Tony was with me. I felt
Speaker 2: like if something like tried to get us, he'd be
Speaker 2: able to you know, outrun it or run it over
Speaker 2: or whatever, and we'd be able to get away. I
Speaker 2: didn't get that fear, but I did get the wow
Speaker 2: factor when it looked our way out of the corner
Speaker 2: of its eyes and they just I've never seen anything
Speaker 2: shine yellow like not glow, well, yeah, glowing and shining.
Speaker 2: It was almost like it had many lights inside its eyes,
Speaker 2: like it was crazy. That wowed me. I was like speechless,
Speaker 2: and then the ears came up and it stood up,
Speaker 2: and it went from being just a wolf to something that, hey, man,
Speaker 2: these ain't real, you know. The only thing next to
Speaker 2: sea is you know, a vampire trying to get us
Speaker 2: or something. It's just crazy that we see a mountain
Speaker 2: lion and then within a minute a dog man or
Speaker 2: a werewolf. That's like I said, that's what I call.
Speaker 2: My uncle Tony called it a werewolf too. He didn't
Speaker 2: know what it was, but every year after that, before
Speaker 2: deer season, we would talk about it, like if we
Speaker 2: see that thing and blah blah blah. And something I
Speaker 2: forgot to tell Vic yesterday was after that incident happened.
Speaker 2: My uncle Tony always hunted with a thirty thirty Winchester. Well,
Speaker 2: I have a three hundred weather be mag that my
Speaker 2: grandpa left me when he died. It was one of
Speaker 2: the older models, a really nice one, the Mark five
Speaker 2: action with the rosewood tips on it and got it
Speaker 2: out really really nice gun. A three hundred weather be
Speaker 2: mag would a scope and all that. He switched from
Speaker 2: the thirty thirty to the three hundred weather Be opening
Speaker 2: morning because he said, if I see it I want
Speaker 2: to have some extra firepower to knock it down, you know.
Speaker 2: And I use the two seventy Winchester, which I know
Speaker 2: is enough to take anything. I mean, I've shot deer
Speaker 2: four hundred and fifty five hundred yards with it and
Speaker 2: dropped them right there. So plus I handload my own AMMO,
Speaker 2: and I even handloaded for the weather Be. I handloaded
Speaker 2: for the thirty thirty. But yeah, it was that was
Speaker 2: just something that I forgot to tell Vic yesterday about.
Speaker 2: My uncle Tony was definitely concerned about that, and he's like, hey,
Speaker 2: can I use the Can I use your three hundred
Speaker 2: weather Be? And that that gun was like, it's sentimental
Speaker 2: to me, very sentimental. And it was made in like
Speaker 2: I believe late fifties or early sixties when Roy Weatherby
Speaker 2: first started making them, so it only had a four
Speaker 2: digit serial number. I was kind of apprehensive. I don't
Speaker 2: want I'm scratching in or falling. No, No, I won't,
Speaker 2: I won't. Yeah, okay, fine, Yeah, I let him hunt
Speaker 2: with it just because of that, and I was I
Speaker 2: was definitely more aware when I was out there, but
Speaker 2: it really didn't affect my hunting. And another thing that's
Speaker 2: strange is I saw twenty three deer opening day, not
Speaker 2: one buck. I had twenty three deer come out some
Speaker 2: of them, so there was actually a herd of like
Speaker 2: six of them. All those they stood within fifty yards
Speaker 2: of me watching another hunter that was going into his standard,
Speaker 2: walking into the woods, and they didn't even see me,
Speaker 2: and I had them each one. I'm lying up looking
Speaker 2: at him in my scope. Yeah, oh boy, I'd like
Speaker 2: to take you who you're fat one. And there was
Speaker 2: probably like seven people that had a Hunter's Choice that
Speaker 2: year in our party, but nobody wanted their deer shot
Speaker 2: for him. Opening weekend. They said no, no, no, we
Speaker 2: want to shoot our own. I was like, well, you
Speaker 2: guys are going to be eating tag soup then, because
Speaker 2: it gets harder to see deer after O weekend. Opening weekend,
Speaker 2: they don't know what to do. They're running everywhere because
Speaker 2: they're getting shot at, and then they finally find sanctuary
Speaker 2: to hide and that's what they do. And yeah, it's
Speaker 2: gonna get harder to get one. And yeah, twenty three
Speaker 2: to year opening day. Fortunately me and my uncle Tony
Speaker 2: though we did. Everybody went home on Sunday night and
Speaker 2: came back up after Thanksgiving, me and my uncle Tony
Speaker 2: and my grandma stayed up the whole week, the whole
Speaker 2: nine days, and my grandma shot a doe. We were
Speaker 2: Me and my uncle Tony did a small drive on
Speaker 2: by our property and did the small drive. My grandma
Speaker 2: got a doe, my uncle Tony shot a doe. And
Speaker 2: then on Thanksgiving Day, me and my uncle Tony went
Speaker 2: back on the neighbor's property behind us, who owns eighty
Speaker 2: acres and mountcle Tony said, well, I'm gonna walk all
Speaker 2: around bow across dead Horse Creek, and then I'm gonna
Speaker 2: sneak back see if I can push something to you.
Speaker 2: Two hours go by and I don't see him. I'm like,
Speaker 2: what the heck's going on? There's a long drive. Well,
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, I hear a shot go off,
Speaker 2: and I see out of the corner of my eye
Speaker 2: a white flag and it's a deer. It's a deer coming.
Speaker 2: It's running toward me from far away, I mean, way
Speaker 2: across this eighty acres of oak, and I was up
Speaker 2: in a big tree stand that I kind of just
Speaker 2: comming deer for that day. I did have permission to
Speaker 2: hunt back there. He wasn't back there, the owner, but
Speaker 2: this deer came running toward me and it stopped and
Speaker 2: it was looking around, and all of a sudden, a
Speaker 2: shot goes off. Uncle Tony shot at it, and the
Speaker 2: deer just runs about within one hundred yards of me,
Speaker 2: and I shoot and I drop it, and he was like,
Speaker 2: but he was yelling, it's coming your way, It's coming
Speaker 2: your way, and this deer was just running. Man. That
Speaker 2: thing was really out of breath by the time it
Speaker 2: got to me, and it was a five point fuck
Speaker 2: and my grandma was back making Thanksgiving dinner that day.
Speaker 2: But yeah, so we got three deer that year. That
Speaker 2: was like one of our worst years. And I me
Speaker 2: and my uncle Tony, we attributed that to that dog
Speaker 2: man wolf where wolf Mountain lion thing is like just
Speaker 2: bad luck because we never shot that few of deer
Speaker 2: in a season out of usually is seventeen to twenty
Speaker 2: five people hunting, and I think that year we had
Speaker 2: twenty people, twenty one people, and we only got four deer.
Speaker 2: Usually we get at least half ten, you know, twelve
Speaker 2: thirteen deer, and we only got that the whole season,
Speaker 2: so it was like and we didn't even shoot any
Speaker 2: deer over there. And that's the first year before or
Speaker 2: since that we've seen that sighting of that thing. Years
Speaker 2: after that, no problem. We've got lots of deer in there,
Speaker 2: but that year, Nope, didn't get anything. So I mean
Speaker 2: that's that's pretty much what happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is a big number of hunters to only
Speaker 1: come out with. So if you deer, I agree. If
Speaker 1: you've had a dog mean encounter that you need help
Speaker 1: dealing with, or if you'd like to be a guest
Speaker 1: on the show, please go to Dogmanencounters dot com and
Speaker 1: submit a report. If you've had a bigfoot sighting, we'd
Speaker 1: like to be a guest on one of my two
Speaker 1: big foot podcasts, please go to my Bigfoot Sighting dot com.
Speaker 1: What's the understory that woods?
Speaker 2: Like? The understory?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Is there a lot of brush or is it
Speaker 1: pretty open?
Speaker 2: Well? I said, it has oak rolling ridges with big
Speaker 2: oak trees with rolling ridges in there. It has spots
Speaker 2: where it's dogwood and tamarack. I don't know what you
Speaker 2: if you know what that is, it's uh, they kind
Speaker 2: of look like birch trees. They're white, but they really
Speaker 2: don't get much bigger around than your wrist or your forearm,
Speaker 2: and they're really close together, you know, they're like really
Speaker 2: close together, Like I mean, a deer can squeeze in
Speaker 2: through it. And there's probably a section of it that's
Speaker 2: probably well, I don't know, twenty acres of it, and
Speaker 2: it's the area in there where it's kind of swampy
Speaker 2: or pete mossy like on the other end of it,
Speaker 2: there's like a lot of pine trees and stuff, and
Speaker 2: then there's a few open areas, you know, but it's
Speaker 2: the perfect place to hunt, like I said, with the
Speaker 2: stream that runs through there too, they got water. And
Speaker 2: then on the on the end of it by Reese's Field,
Speaker 2: which is would have been behind us when we were
Speaker 2: going down the road. Reese's Field. That guy he planted
Speaker 2: corn there every year and they lived in Chicago and
Speaker 2: they only came up opening weekend, so the would have
Speaker 2: corn and just acorns galore too. I mean, you wouldn't
Speaker 2: believe how many acorns would be all over that place
Speaker 2: that these deer were eating. So it's sure to see
Speaker 2: twenty three deer opening morning, I was just astounded. I
Speaker 2: never seen that many deer, but it's like I didn't
Speaker 2: see any books. I've never seen twenty three deer before,
Speaker 2: so it was kind of like a blessing and a
Speaker 2: curse all at once. I could have shot almost every
Speaker 2: single one of them, but everyone's like no. I was like,
Speaker 2: I saw so when I took my break and I
Speaker 2: went back for hot chocolate and coffee and something like that,
Speaker 2: I went back to the car at well, I don't know,
Speaker 2: ten o'clock or something, and I'm like, yeah, I saw
Speaker 2: like eight deer already. Why don't you shoot it? Well,
Speaker 2: nobody wants to. They said they didn't want the tag
Speaker 2: filled yet, and they're like, oh, well, yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2: You know it is opening weekend, it's early. I'm like, well,
Speaker 2: that's what I said. You guys are going to be
Speaker 2: eating tag soup, and when you're gonna be crying that,
Speaker 2: you know you should have me shoot it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that they would be. And yet you did mention
Speaker 1: that the woods had all those small trees and that brush,
Speaker 1: but you never did say how denseil was. So that's
Speaker 1: why I didn't know. Did the dog Man come out
Speaker 1: of the woods at the exact same spot where the
Speaker 1: Mountain Lion did, or a little bit different of a
Speaker 1: place it did?
Speaker 2: Come out at the from what we could tell. When
Speaker 2: we went back the next day we measured it up.
Speaker 2: We couldn't see any tracks. We couldn't see nothing because
Speaker 2: we didn't go there like when light was up. We
Speaker 2: actually went to our hunting spots, to our stands. Even
Speaker 2: though I wanted to look at that and check it out,
Speaker 2: I just felt like, well, there's not a lot of
Speaker 2: people driving down the road. We only seem like maybe
Speaker 2: uh two vehicles maybe that day, and they didn't even
Speaker 2: go so if they would have crossed the tracks, they
Speaker 2: didn't go back that way out, so they went across
Speaker 2: it once and then they can actually turn into their property.
Speaker 2: They were probably from over there. And then another one
Speaker 2: turned over by seven point corners and then went out
Speaker 2: that way toward Mike Boubla's property, which is the way
Speaker 2: out of the property. But me and my uncle Tony
Speaker 2: around the afternoon after we sat and I saw a
Speaker 2: deer and I was like, man, and I told him too,
Speaker 2: and he saw a bunch of dose too, And he
Speaker 2: didn't have a tag. I didn't have a tag and
Speaker 2: all that. That was the year too that he was
Speaker 2: getting married and he didn't have a lot of money.
Speaker 2: And I actually paid for his hunting license, which was
Speaker 2: one hundred dollars, so out of state was like one
Speaker 2: hundred bucks. And he's like, well, I really can't come
Speaker 2: down unless you're gonna pay for my I was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I got you, man, I got you. So yeah, we
Speaker 2: went back and we looked and looked and looked, and
Speaker 2: we couldn't see nothing. And like I said, the ground
Speaker 2: was really hard too. It was, Yeah, it is sand,
Speaker 2: but it's like hard sands, it's not kind of like
Speaker 2: we got a few spots around. Maybe just down the
Speaker 2: road from me, there's another part that the DNR owns,
Speaker 2: and this is probably like maybe fifteen hundred acres. It's
Speaker 2: probably twice as big as this place. But they've already
Speaker 2: clear cut it twice, and they planted like pine trees
Speaker 2: in rows, but they did leave some bigger oaks so
Speaker 2: to kind of leave it like an old growth forest.
Speaker 2: But the place we hunted at was old growth forests.
Speaker 2: This place probably wasn't clear cut for eighty or one
Speaker 2: hundred years or something like that, you know, so it
Speaker 2: had a lot. It was like, this is the best
Speaker 2: hunting ever.
Speaker 1: Sounds like a nice woods. I saw that dog man
Speaker 1: how long did it take you to start thinking about
Speaker 1: all the time you'd spent in those woods without even
Speaker 1: knowing what could have been out.
Speaker 2: There Opening Day? That night, when I got back home,
Speaker 2: it was pretty hard to sleep because I was thinking
Speaker 2: about the next day. I mean, in the early eighties,
Speaker 2: we all sat, you know. My grandma basically taught me
Speaker 2: to sit on a stump or a log or something
Speaker 2: like that. We didn't really have deer stands in the eighties.
Speaker 2: They did for bow hunting, but not for rifle hunters.
Speaker 2: Nineties came along, everybody started stand hunting. I was one
Speaker 2: of the first to stand hunt, so in ninety five
Speaker 2: I was in a stand. A lot of my other
Speaker 2: party members didn't hunt and stand yet, so I felt
Speaker 2: pretty safe being in the stand. And my stand was
Speaker 2: like eighteen feet I mean, I like, I said, that's
Speaker 2: probably not too high up for a werewolf, dog man
Speaker 2: to get me or a mount lion. But usually I
Speaker 2: hunt in an area where I can see pretty good
Speaker 2: because I like to shoot more of a distance. So yeah,
Speaker 2: that Opening day, I was just man, you know, thinking, well,
Speaker 2: if it comes up on me, what am I gonna do?
Speaker 2: You know? And yeah, it's just now I know a
Speaker 2: little more about it, but back then it was very
Speaker 2: It was. It was just concerning. That's why I told
Speaker 2: you I was worried about other family members, like where
Speaker 2: they were sitting. And you know, not only the Mountain Lion,
Speaker 2: it was that dog man. Because I don't know anything
Speaker 2: about it. They don't tell you. Well, in my greats
Speaker 2: tier every year, and you know, it has these many
Speaker 2: pups and they weigh such and such, and you know
Speaker 2: they like the taste of people. I don't know, you know,
Speaker 2: So yeah, not knowing that it was the biggest thing
Speaker 2: in my mind, not knowing do they want to get you?
Speaker 2: Could they snatch you up and run away and nobody
Speaker 2: see you again? From what I seen, like I said,
Speaker 2: with them legs on it, it had legs like a
Speaker 2: running back like I don't know, not like an Emmitt Smith,
Speaker 2: but like a Terrelle Davis. I mean, big, huge, muscular,
Speaker 2: just cut legs. I could see the definition and the
Speaker 2: tone and the ripples in it, even in the shoulder,
Speaker 2: in the arm. You know, I probably didn't state that before.
Speaker 2: But and then the fur from the neck that came
Speaker 2: down was like a smoky grit. Well, yeah, it was
Speaker 2: like a black, all black until it got down to
Speaker 2: the waist and then marked towards the feet. I could
Speaker 2: see like a gray or a silver white. Even when
Speaker 2: certain people get gray hairs, they get white hairs instead,
Speaker 2: kind of like that. But it was a salt and
Speaker 2: pepper but it was mostly all black, like they say,
Speaker 2: it's like charcoal black that it blends in with the
Speaker 2: It was almost looked like a shadow like you know,
Speaker 2: like like they would say paranormal, but I could tell
Speaker 2: it wasn't paranormal. I could see it breathe. I could
Speaker 2: see it take a breath too, when you know, it
Speaker 2: stood up and stepped across the road and just all that.
Speaker 2: I mean, I didn't see big teeth or a yawn
Speaker 2: or a grin or nothing, because we were pretty far
Speaker 2: down the road. I'm sure our lights, I would think
Speaker 2: our lights were blinding it. It didn't know, And we
Speaker 2: were in a little Geometro three cylinder car that doesn't
Speaker 2: make a lot of noise and gets super gas mileage,
Speaker 2: so it's not very loud, so you can't even really
Speaker 2: hear it running. I'm like existing running, you know, so
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm sure we have better hearing, but yeah,
Speaker 2: it was I don't know, just yeah, I definitely thought
Speaker 2: about it, and me and my uncle Tony, we talked
Speaker 2: about it every year. That's why we're like, man, we
Speaker 2: should go hunt that thing one day. And you know,
Speaker 2: it wasn't until like year two thousand. I think it
Speaker 2: was about that two thousand and two thousand and one
Speaker 2: that I actually might have been ninety nine. Yeah, when
Speaker 2: I had a computer. I got my own computer, and
Speaker 2: I was looking it up and doing research on it.
Speaker 2: That's when I was saying that I'm like, we should
Speaker 2: go hunt that thing, and then if we get one,
Speaker 2: you know, we could turn it in and prove to
Speaker 2: everybody they do exist and then make sure not everybody's
Speaker 2: out there killing them or blah blah blah. Maybe they
Speaker 2: could study it or Yeah. Another story I had too
Speaker 2: is it's kind of funny, is when I was a kid,
Speaker 2: I got to be plus on it. My teacher said
Speaker 2: she wanted us to write a story on what we
Speaker 2: want to be when we grow up. Well, I wrote
Speaker 2: down that I was gonna get a sasquatch, turn it
Speaker 2: in and I would be rich off it, you know,
Speaker 2: and go on the news and all that donated to
Speaker 2: the museum. And she gave me credit for originality and stuff,
Speaker 2: but she said I should probably shoot for something more realistic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd say so. Well, I tell you what, Bruno,
Speaker 1: We're about out of time. But before we get out
Speaker 1: of here, do you haveney clothes and comments you want
Speaker 1: to put out there for us?
Speaker 2: No, just that you know, I I came on here
Speaker 2: because not that I was traumatized from it. And again
Speaker 2: I may have been if I was in a different situation,
Speaker 2: if I was outside the car, or sitting in the
Speaker 2: woods all by myself like some of these people, or
Speaker 2: taking my dog out to go to the bathroom, and
Speaker 2: you see it, especially unarmed, I would feel Yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't know, but I mean I saw it way longer
Speaker 2: than I saw the mountain lion, right, And I know
Speaker 2: for a fact I saw a mountain lion, so I
Speaker 2: had to have seen a dog man. And my uncle
Speaker 2: was with me, and I wish he was still alive
Speaker 2: he died in twenty fourteen, because he would have told
Speaker 2: you the same story that just about to the tee,
Speaker 2: the exact same because you know, I mean we both
Speaker 2: described it the same way. He saw a few other
Speaker 2: things details that I didn't see, like he saw the
Speaker 2: right arm. He saw a couple other things I can't
Speaker 2: remember off hand, but that he noticed that I didn't,
Speaker 2: and of how big it was. That's why he switched
Speaker 2: to a different gun. And that's why I'm on here
Speaker 2: to let people know that I've told so with you,
Speaker 2: it's you're the eighth person I've ever told this story too,
Speaker 2: since nineteen ninety five, And the only other people I
Speaker 2: told were really close friends, So I never really got
Speaker 2: drunk at a party and like, hey, why aren't tell
Speaker 2: you a story? Where old? But I saw no. I mean,
Speaker 2: the only people I ever told were like, really really
Speaker 2: close friends, and I know they believed the cougar the
Speaker 2: mountain lion, and they did. A couple of them did
Speaker 2: tell me they believe me. They believed I saw it,
Speaker 2: but a couple of them was like, I don't know, man,
Speaker 2: I don't know. But it's just that I feel like
Speaker 2: people should know what I saw exist and if it
Speaker 2: was an apparition that looked like it was flesh and blood,
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know what they are or
Speaker 2: I've never seen one since. I mean, there's so much
Speaker 2: unexplained that you just don't know. We don't have one,
Speaker 2: so we can't tell, but I know I saw it.
Speaker 2: You know, I've never seen a ghost, but I've seen this,
Speaker 2: and I've seen a mountain lion, and I've seen a moose,
Speaker 2: and i've seen an elk. You know, I'm seeing black beers,
Speaker 2: grizzly bears, porcupines, all that stuff. And I just want
Speaker 2: people to know that it is real. It's it's as
Speaker 2: real as you and me and me. And you had
Speaker 2: that talk too, and I said, well, you know, I
Speaker 2: think if I ever went out to try to hunt
Speaker 2: one or catch one or shoot it or whatever, and
Speaker 2: you're like, well, when they don't want to be seen,
Speaker 2: they don't want to be seen, And yeah, that may
Speaker 2: be true, but you know, I think if it is
Speaker 2: flesh and blood and it does bleed, you can kill it,
Speaker 2: but you know, you got to hit it in the
Speaker 2: right spot. And I think some of these people that say,
Speaker 2: well I shot it, I know I hit it. I
Speaker 2: know there's people that say they shot a deer, but
Speaker 2: we never found any blood. We never found a deer.
Speaker 2: And you got to remember, too, you're gonna shoot it
Speaker 2: something that doesn't exist. So if you don't believe it exists,
Speaker 2: how can you believe you can shoot it. You have
Speaker 2: to accept that it exists before you're gonna be able
Speaker 2: to hit it. That's my thoughts. I don't know, that's
Speaker 2: just if you don't believe it's real. I don't know
Speaker 2: if you're gonna believe you're gonna be able to hit
Speaker 2: it or believe you're gonna be able to kill it.
Speaker 2: I think you have to believe that it is real,
Speaker 2: and you need to take the extra steps, you know,
Speaker 2: just like they tell you, you know, take the safety off,
Speaker 2: take a nice breath, let it out, you know, don't
Speaker 2: jerk the trigger, don't yank the trigger. I've seen people
Speaker 2: shoot at a ten point buck one time with an
Speaker 2: m one car being and they had buck fever and
Speaker 2: they emptied all fifteen rounds out of the clip because
Speaker 2: there's a rear peep site and a front blade site.
Speaker 2: They looked over the front peep site and just looked
Speaker 2: at the front post and emptied their clip. So nerves happen, man,
Speaker 2: and something like that. I could see it definitely happen.
Speaker 2: If you didn't find blood. I just if they can
Speaker 2: bleed and they can die and they are flesh and blood.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you see something like that. It does make it
Speaker 1: that much more difficult to get an accurate shot on.
Speaker 2: That's why I thought about that a lot too. I thought,
Speaker 2: if I was in the woods, I talk a big game,
Speaker 2: you know, would I be able to pull off keeping
Speaker 2: us steady? You know? That's my grandma taught me though.
Speaker 2: She's like, you don't look at the horns. You see
Speaker 2: a big buck out there, you aim your shot, you
Speaker 2: put it in there. You go for the right and
Speaker 2: the boilers and the lungs or in the heart. You
Speaker 2: go through your steps, you take your shot, and then
Speaker 2: when you're done hitting it, then you can do you're
Speaker 2: celebrating or look at the horns or your trophy or whatever.
Speaker 2: That's just a bonus. But you want to make a
Speaker 2: good shot, and that's you got to be the bullet,
Speaker 2: I guess, is what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Well, easier said than done when you're shooting at some
Speaker 1: like that. But Bruno, I can't thank you enough for
Speaker 1: coming on to share the details of that experience with us.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I hope it makes somebody be more aware and
Speaker 2: cautious when they go out. I don't know, with these
Speaker 2: missing four one to one things and or not even that,
Speaker 2: but just people going missing or getting lost. You know,
Speaker 2: carry a compass, carry a sidearm, or have somebody with you,
Speaker 2: carry a side arm, some kind of protection. You know,
Speaker 2: be prepared. The mother nature is not something to mess
Speaker 2: around with. And when you're out there, then you're susceptible
Speaker 2: to father time and he doesn't play either. So I
Speaker 2: don't know. I just feel like it's not like you're
Speaker 2: not at a grocery store. You're not at your house.
Speaker 2: You can't just call nine one one. You might not
Speaker 2: get a signal on your phone, or so many things
Speaker 2: could happen. You could cut your leg open and bleed
Speaker 2: to death before anybody gets to you, not even just
Speaker 2: a dog man. I don't know. I'm just saying, be more,
Speaker 2: be more vigilant, pay attention more when you're out there.
Speaker 2: I wish I would have paid attention more for some
Speaker 2: other times too, because some other strange things happened that
Speaker 2: I kind of just wrote off, and I'm like, I
Speaker 2: wonder if that was maybe something, But you know, you
Speaker 2: don't know now because you didn't pay attention to those
Speaker 2: signs before.
Speaker 1: So well, you can't be faulted for that. I mean,
Speaker 1: we've all done, things like that where we should have
Speaker 1: turned left when we turned right, so don't be too
Speaker 1: hard on yourself. But having said that, thanks again so
Speaker 1: much for your time Bruno, and have a great night.