Speaker 1: I was born on the family farm in Virginia, and
Speaker 1: I worked there all my life. The events I'm about
Speaker 1: to tell you happened on this farm. Repairing fences is
Speaker 1: a typical job on our place. They keep livestock on
Speaker 1: our property as well as keep our neighbors animals out
Speaker 1: of our fields. Two weeks prior to this event, I
Speaker 1: had worked for a week to restring an old fence
Speaker 1: that needed repair, and it's not the most difficult work,
Speaker 1: but it's not the easiest. While working on a piece
Speaker 1: of equipment in the shed, one of my hands drove
Speaker 1: up and skidded to a stop and frantically ran over
Speaker 1: to me, saying he had knocked a deer down a
Speaker 1: few minutes ago. Well, that wasn't odd news, not so
Speaker 1: that he would be sweating and speaking so fast that
Speaker 1: I hardly understood half of what he was saying. I
Speaker 1: asked him to slow down and catch his breast that
Speaker 1: I could follow, and he took a few minutes and
Speaker 1: appeared to lower his heart rate and get control of
Speaker 1: his breathing. All right, there was a nice group of
Speaker 1: those that walked out of the trees in the south
Speaker 1: field where I've been hunting. This year. The season's almost
Speaker 1: over and we need some meat, so I killed her,
Speaker 1: he said. He looked at his feet for several seconds,
Speaker 1: and I thought he was done, And then his breathing
Speaker 1: began coming in shallow heaves again. Come over here and
Speaker 1: sit down and relax, I said, pointing to an old
Speaker 1: log stool next to the barn door. Now catch a breath,
Speaker 1: and let's start over. He sat down and took several
Speaker 1: deep breaths, and he continued, I didn't hit that dough
Speaker 1: right little above her heart. I think she jumped straight
Speaker 1: up in the air and ran back to the tree line,
Speaker 1: and when she tried to jump the fence, her rear
Speaker 1: legs caught on the top wire and she went down. Well,
Speaker 1: I sat there until she was dead, and I climbed
Speaker 1: out of the shooting house. And when I turned away
Speaker 1: from the lighter to go get her, there was a
Speaker 1: huge bear standing over her. Now I don't know where
Speaker 1: it came from. I haven't seen a bear all year,
Speaker 1: but there it was, honkered over her. Now yelled at
Speaker 1: it to run it off my deer, and it stood
Speaker 1: up on its rear legs and it looked right at me.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't a bear. It was a giant, hairy monster.
Speaker 1: I think. I took a step forward, and as soon
Speaker 1: as I moved, it bent down and threw that dough
Speaker 1: over its shoulder, and he walked up into the trees.
Speaker 1: I stood there for several minutes until I couldn't see
Speaker 1: it anymore. That thing took the whole fence with it
Speaker 1: when it stepped over. I guess it got its leg
Speaker 1: hung up in the barbs, and it took a few
Speaker 1: posts with it and then started snapping staples out of
Speaker 1: the post. Well, he was way up in the woods
Speaker 1: when I saw the fence go slack. Now I think
Speaker 1: he either broke the wire or got himself untangled. There
Speaker 1: was a long silence that I broke. Well, how far
Speaker 1: was the deer from the shooting house? I asked, maybe
Speaker 1: forty yards. He said, let's go look at the fence.
Speaker 1: I said, I'm not going back down there. He said,
Speaker 1: you can go, but not me. I drove on down there,
Speaker 1: and sure enough he was telling the truth about the fence.
Speaker 1: I don't know what dragged that fence up into those trees.
Speaker 1: I couldn't have done it without a tractor. No human
Speaker 1: or even a bear could have done that. Much damage.
Speaker 1: He said it was an animal. Well, it must have
Speaker 1: been a big one. A few months later, I was
Speaker 1: supposed to meet one of my hands in a field
Speaker 1: to repair another fence. I got to the site and
Speaker 1: I gathered my tools and material and I walked through
Speaker 1: a ravine to the area that we were to work.
Speaker 1: He should have been there waiting on me. I was
Speaker 1: ten minutes late. I waited another thirty minutes and here
Speaker 1: he came running down the slope straight at me. What's
Speaker 1: your rush, I asked, Why? Part next to your truck?
Speaker 1: He said, And I got out and I shut the door,
Speaker 1: and I looked over the bed of the truck about
Speaker 1: to get my tools out, and out walks this giant,
Speaker 1: hairy monster from the trees. He walked across that ditch
Speaker 1: right there and straight through the field and down into
Speaker 1: the swampy area on the low end of the field.
Speaker 1: I didn't know what that thing was, so I laid
Speaker 1: down on the grass behind my truck so he couldn't
Speaker 1: see me, and I watched him walk right down into
Speaker 1: that slough from under my truck. All right, show me
Speaker 1: where he was, I said. The guy was not afraid
Speaker 1: as the other one who wouldn't go back to the
Speaker 1: spot where he killed the deer. And we walked to
Speaker 1: the trucks and down to the edge of the mud
Speaker 1: where the wetlands started. You see that big limb laying
Speaker 1: there in the water, He said, yeah, what about it?
Speaker 1: I asked. He bumped his head on that limb when
Speaker 1: he walked under that tree, and he acted like the
Speaker 1: limb pissed him off. And he reached up and yanked
Speaker 1: that limb off with one hand and through it where
Speaker 1: it's laying now. Man, that limb must weigh two hundred pounds.
Speaker 1: I said. It was a big limb that I would
Speaker 1: have had to cut up to even move it. You
Speaker 1: say he threw that thing. Damn right, he did. That's
Speaker 1: why I said it was a monster. Let's get out
Speaker 1: of here. I'm getting the creeps, he said. Truthfully, I
Speaker 1: was getting the wheelies too, So I agreed and we
Speaker 1: went back to work. My father once told me that
Speaker 1: he and some teenage friends were raccoon hunting on a cold,
Speaker 1: moonlit night in the nineteen twenties. In those days, their
Speaker 1: equipment was made up of a miner's lamp, a twenty
Speaker 1: two single shot rifle, and a pack of raccoon dogs.
Speaker 1: The dogs had treed a raccoon, or so they thought.
Speaker 1: It took them a while to get to the dogs,
Speaker 1: but when they got there and shine their light into
Speaker 1: the tree, there wasn't a coon. The dogs weren't jumping
Speaker 1: up in the tree like normal. They kind of hung
Speaker 1: back and they just kept barking. My father lowered his
Speaker 1: leg to ground level, and standing there behind the tree
Speaker 1: was a creature, he said, looked like a giant wolf
Speaker 1: on two legs. The creature lunged at the dogs and
Speaker 1: they took off back to the truck, with my father
Speaker 1: and his friends right behind him. My father said he
Speaker 1: didn't know if that thing was chasing him, but they
Speaker 1: sure ran like it was. They never hunted that area again,
Speaker 1: but then he saw it again two weeks later on
Speaker 1: a cold night, running across the field, not too far
Speaker 1: from where the dogs had it cornered over. Twenty years later,
Speaker 1: while driving Old Leesburg Pike or Route seven in northern Virginia,
Speaker 1: he and my mother were driving across the bridge over
Speaker 1: Goose Creek. In the middle of the bridge, he thought
Speaker 1: he could see a man standing there. When he was
Speaker 1: closer and the lights illuminated the man better, he saw
Speaker 1: that it wasn't a man. It was a tall, lanky,
Speaker 1: apparently covered in hair creature. His mind went back to
Speaker 1: those nights in the nineteen twenties when he was a teenager.
Speaker 1: My father made the decision not to back out of
Speaker 1: that bridge and instead to speed past this thing. As
Speaker 1: the car approached, the creature left onto the railing to
Speaker 1: avoid being hit, and as they passed, it swiped at
Speaker 1: the car. I don't remember my mother ever talking about
Speaker 1: this night, maybe she wanted to forget it. In nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty nine, the year I was born, my father saw
Speaker 1: it again, crossing a field at night on our family farm.
Speaker 1: I don't know what this creature is. Maybe there are
Speaker 1: more than one, but my family and friends have seen
Speaker 1: it many times through the last years. Whatever it is,
Speaker 1: it must have a long lifespan or we're seeing its
Speaker 1: offspring over time. They appear to stay well hidden and
Speaker 1: away from humans, and I assume it is by chance
Speaker 1: or that the odds are good that some humans will
Speaker 1: catch a rare sight of them while they move around
Speaker 1: at night. Last year, on June the second, I was
Speaker 1: writing into one of our base camps that we use
Speaker 1: for elk hunting. My younger brother and myself operate a
Speaker 1: guide service that we inherited from our father and his
Speaker 1: father before that. We lease out hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 1: acres in several states and don't have any need to
Speaker 1: advertise or ask for clients because we're now booked out
Speaker 1: for five years in advance. We have professional athletes, billionaires, actors,
Speaker 1: and politicians as clients. Any one of these clients will
Speaker 1: pay sixy digits for a record book bull ELK Now,
Speaker 1: I really don't want to give my name because it
Speaker 1: could be devastating to my business if it was discovered
Speaker 1: what I'm about to tell you. The only other person
Speaker 1: I've told was my brother, who I had to confide in.
Speaker 1: Arrived in the early afternoon after a pleasant two day
Speaker 1: ride on horseback. There are two ways into our camps,
Speaker 1: and that is horseback or helicopter, which we've had a
Speaker 1: couple of our clients opt to do. I crossed the
Speaker 1: bridge that my father and grandfather built over the fast
Speaker 1: moving narrow river that was still flowing quick from the
Speaker 1: snow melt from the higher altitudes. I rode right into
Speaker 1: the makeshift corral with Dusty and the two pack mules
Speaker 1: that only offered an illusion of containment, because we wanted
Speaker 1: to give the horses a chance to run if a
Speaker 1: bear or cougar visited while we weren't around. We didn't
Speaker 1: worry much about the horses or mules running off because
Speaker 1: they were like big dogs rather than horses, and they
Speaker 1: would come back when we called them, and they wouldn't
Speaker 1: travel far away even if there was danger present. I
Speaker 1: quickly took inventory of the camp and raised the coolers
Speaker 1: off the ground, as they had two weeks worth of
Speaker 1: food in them and I didn't want the local bear
Speaker 1: population getting to feel comfortable visiting the camp, and I
Speaker 1: cooked up dinner and I turned in for the night.
Speaker 1: For the next two days, I began to scout the
Speaker 1: area for elk sign, but I didn't find so much
Speaker 1: as a hoof print, even in the watering holes that
Speaker 1: the bulls loved to dig up. Arriving back at the camp,
Speaker 1: I discovered my camp torn to bits and the coolers
Speaker 1: had been pulled down and emptied, only leaving a single
Speaker 1: pack of bacon in some bottles of frozen water. The
Speaker 1: mules didn't appear to be concerned whatsoever about the visitors,
Speaker 1: and in fact looked like someone had tried to braid
Speaker 1: their manes and tails. Well. To me, this trip was
Speaker 1: over and I was going to head back to the
Speaker 1: truck the next day, but I decided that I would
Speaker 1: give this bear or people something to think about before
Speaker 1: I left. In the morning, I was up before sun
Speaker 1: up and ready to investigate the crime of stealing my food,
Speaker 1: and I snuck off into the woods. I was able
Speaker 1: to track something for a distance and even found some
Speaker 1: of the wrappers from the meat that I had brought,
Speaker 1: But by noon the trail had gone cold, and I
Speaker 1: knew I had to get on the trail if I
Speaker 1: was going to make it back to the truck sometime tomorrow.
Speaker 1: I was being quiet as I approached the camp, and
Speaker 1: I could tell that something was amiss. At the edge,
Speaker 1: I could see something big and hairy in the corral
Speaker 1: with a horse, but they weren't excited like they were
Speaker 1: in danger. They were just standing there. This animal still
Speaker 1: had a winter coat on it, and it was brown
Speaker 1: and it was four to six inches long. And I
Speaker 1: reached down to my side and grabbed my lever Action
Speaker 1: twelve gage and loaded a staggered buckshot deer slug combination
Speaker 1: for protection from bears or cougars. The first shot would
Speaker 1: be buckshot and it would tear up and knock it backwards,
Speaker 1: and then the slug would kill it, and I would
Speaker 1: repeat it over two times. I had it in my
Speaker 1: grip now, and I flipped off the set with the
Speaker 1: most subtle click. But I was heard, and this animal
Speaker 1: began to raise up on its feet. It was in
Speaker 1: that moment that I realized that this creature was standing
Speaker 1: over eight foot tall, and it wasn't a bear. It
Speaker 1: was a sy squatch. Well, I was in shot as
Speaker 1: this thing turned toward me and it smiled at me.
Speaker 1: But when I smiled back at it, I guess I
Speaker 1: must have done something wrong, because it leaned forward and
Speaker 1: it roared at me. Now, I have been roared at
Speaker 1: by grizzly bears and cougars quite often, but none that
Speaker 1: could match the volume or the duration of the roar,
Speaker 1: even in the slightest I snapped the gun up and
Speaker 1: was about to squeeze off the first shot when I
Speaker 1: was struck by another beast that was hiding just a
Speaker 1: couple of feet to my left. The force of the
Speaker 1: impact knocked me ass over ears, through the air and
Speaker 1: into the river. Suddenly I was being swept downstream in
Speaker 1: this cold water faster than you could dream. But I
Speaker 1: was glad to see how fast I was moving because
Speaker 1: I saw the two creatures running along the bank trying
Speaker 1: to catch up to me. I knew that I had
Speaker 1: been in the water over twenty minutes, and I knew
Speaker 1: that I needed to get out soon or I would
Speaker 1: freeze to death in this sixty degree water. I had
Speaker 1: not seen the creatures for some time now, but I
Speaker 1: decided to make my way to the other bank just
Speaker 1: to be safe. As I got to the bank, I
Speaker 1: realized that I was having trouble breathing and my left
Speaker 1: arm was stiff. I decided to head back to the truck,
Speaker 1: which would take me four to five days on foot,
Speaker 1: and I was going to have to be really careful
Speaker 1: because I lost my phone in shotgun and I only
Speaker 1: had the forty caliber ruger on my hip. In fifteen rounds,
Speaker 1: I had walked two hours and stopped to build a
Speaker 1: fire to drive the rest of the way before dark
Speaker 1: sat in and the temperatures drop, and I had managed
Speaker 1: to doze off when I heard that roar again off
Speaker 1: in the distance, and it was answered other roars from
Speaker 1: different locations. There was no time to rest. Now I
Speaker 1: had to go. But I was hurting, and I mean
Speaker 1: I was hurting. But I sucked it up and I
Speaker 1: started trotting off to the east. Anyone else would have
Speaker 1: been lost and running around in the darkness until sunrise
Speaker 1: when the sun popped over the horizon. But I've been
Speaker 1: hunting this area for the past forty years, and I
Speaker 1: knew it better than the ranchers that owned it. I
Speaker 1: continued to hear the roars that night, and something breaking
Speaker 1: limbs against tree up until the sky began to lighten up.
Speaker 1: But I never stopped, and I kept moving, and I
Speaker 1: only stopped a couple of times at some small lakes
Speaker 1: to take a drink of water. And I traveled well
Speaker 1: into the afternoon, and I stopped against a tree and
Speaker 1: I was asleep in seconds. I was jarred awake by
Speaker 1: thunder in the distance, and I wondered if those creatures
Speaker 1: were still following me, and I forced myself to my
Speaker 1: feet and I started making tracks again after midnight, when
Speaker 1: the storm had passed and everything finally quieted down, which
Speaker 1: was when I heard another roar, and it was about
Speaker 1: half the distance away that I was the evening before well.
Speaker 1: This gave me motivation to push harder, and I picked
Speaker 1: up the past, forcing myself to the extreme, knowing that
Speaker 1: if I didn't get out, they would be on me
Speaker 1: by morning. That night was the scariest twelve hours on
Speaker 1: the planet for me. The roarers became more frequent and closer,
Speaker 1: and just a couple of hours before the sun popped
Speaker 1: up in the east, I started to get hit with
Speaker 1: rocks and sticks with amazing accuracy. I had no idea
Speaker 1: where they were being thrown from or how far away,
Speaker 1: so I kept going afraid to stop, thinking I would
Speaker 1: be dinner or I'd be torn apart. But I refrained
Speaker 1: from reaching for my pistol because I believed that that
Speaker 1: was the trigger that set the attack off the other day,
Speaker 1: and I was hoping that they were just trying to
Speaker 1: push me out of their home range. I was relieved
Speaker 1: to see the sun crest the horizon that morning, and
Speaker 1: I knew it was about another twelve hours away from
Speaker 1: my truck. The good news was soon turned bitter, though,
Speaker 1: as I began to cough up blood and I realized
Speaker 1: now that I had a broken rib that must have
Speaker 1: punctured my lung and I was bleeding internally, and doubt
Speaker 1: swept in. I began to think of my two boys
Speaker 1: at home and my lovely wife, and I was wondering
Speaker 1: if they would ever find me out here before the
Speaker 1: wolves or bears discovered my body. And then I became
Speaker 1: concerned about my brother because he would surely come looking
Speaker 1: for me, and I wondered what was going to happen
Speaker 1: to him if the creature saw another human in their area.
Speaker 1: All this gave me more strength than I thought was
Speaker 1: possible for one human to have, and I was nearing
Speaker 1: the top of a ridge about four hours from the
Speaker 1: truck when I heard it. It was the sound of
Speaker 1: a truck nearby, and to my delight, I recognized it
Speaker 1: as one of the ranch trucks, but it was starting
Speaker 1: to pull away, and my heart sink into my stomach.
Speaker 1: I grabbed my ruger forty cow and I started popping
Speaker 1: off rounds as fast as I could, and then everything
Speaker 1: went black. I woke up in the hospital in Denver,
Speaker 1: where I had been flown in by a helicopter after
Speaker 1: the ranch hands came to my rescue and call the medics.
Speaker 1: It was very expensive, but it was covered by a
Speaker 1: couple of our clients with deep pockets, which I'm extremely
Speaker 1: grateful to. My family was all there and they were
Speaker 1: excited to see me wake up. I had just been
Speaker 1: through an eight hour surgery on top of everything else,
Speaker 1: to remove part of my lung and one of my kidneys.
Speaker 1: Everyone had assumed that I had been thrown from my
Speaker 1: horse and hurt myself during the fall, but I knew
Speaker 1: better than to correct them and tell them what had
Speaker 1: really happened. I asked my brother to stay back as
Speaker 1: everyone left to get rest, and I told him the
Speaker 1: story about what really happened. I don't think he can
Speaker 1: completely believed me, but he promised me that he would
Speaker 1: not go back to that site without several of our
Speaker 1: friends with him. Two weeks later, my brother came back
Speaker 1: from recovering the mules in Dusty and to tell me
Speaker 1: about what he had found. He said that the camp
Speaker 1: was completely destroyed, along with the corral and the bridge.
Speaker 1: He found Dusty and the mules a short distance away,
Speaker 1: which came running when he called to them, and he
Speaker 1: also found huge footprints in the mud around the camp,
Speaker 1: and then the rocks started being thrown at them and
Speaker 1: they fled the area, riding all night long to get
Speaker 1: back to the trucks and the trailer. Now he believes
Speaker 1: me I wasn't physically able to guide last year. Now
Speaker 1: I wonder if I'll be able to guide mentally now.
Speaker 1: I decided to take on an apprentice to help me
Speaker 1: scout out other leases that we have, but I don't
Speaker 1: think we'll ever return to the bridge camp. Here is
Speaker 1: what I'm confused about. Why didn't they mess with the
Speaker 1: horses and the mules, and what did I do wrong
Speaker 1: to warrant the aggressive roar. I do understand that my
Speaker 1: reaction to that roar, by pointing my shotgun at the creature,
Speaker 1: was perceived as a threat, and that is probably what
Speaker 1: caused a second animal attack on me. I also believed
Speaker 1: that they could have caught me at any time that
Speaker 1: they would have desired, so I think they were just
Speaker 1: motivating me to leave as quickly as possible. And I
Speaker 1: also wonder if they had driven out all the local wildlife,
Speaker 1: because I never found any tracks of anything on that trip.