Speaker 1: I was born in nineteen sixty five. My family lived
in a little town in eastern Oklahoma, just a few
miles north of five forty, about thirty five miles from
the Arkansas state line. I grew up hunting, fishing, trapping,
and taking care of our farm animals. My dad was
a prominent mechanic in town, and in his free time,
he loved a coon hunt. We traveled several thousand miles
on foot around our area chasing dogs. My best friend, Slick,
and I love to get out and explore the mountains
to hunt and fish. It was early spring and we
had planned a trip to the Blue Mountains to camp
out and fish the numerous streams and traverse the area.
I loaded up my eighty two Dodge with all we
thought we needed and threw it in a campershell and
set out Friday evening after work. We made the trip
south to the mount Mountains just in time to find
a suitable place to set up camp, which was nothing
more than a fire. After working all day and driving,
we hit the hay early and got a good night's rest.
The property was leased for oil and gas production as
well as logging, and spanned several thousand acres. There were
service roads running through the property and a few cabins
built here and there. There was no electricity running through it,
so there were no full time residents. On the first day,
we fished a stream that meandered several miles, but that
night we camped in a different spot at the crossing
of another creek. We enjoyed the fish that we caught
that day. For dinner, we decided to go to bed
and get an early start. The night was almost uneventful,
except for the rustling and scratching of something outside our
shell camper around three am. Not long after that, I
was woken up to something bumping into the truck and
shaking it. It wasn't a violet shake, just a slight bump,
but it was loud enough to get my attention. I
hit the fender well and I yelled, get out of here.
Nothing more happened. In the morning found us headed out
with a pack full of rations and fishing gear. Slick
and I were gun nuts, so we were armed. We
fished for the better part of eight hours, and we're
casually walking along the creek to head back, when half
a mile from the truck, I was struck with a
feeling that I was being watched. I stopped and looked
at Slick, and I could tell that he had the
same feeling. We heard several solid knocks to the north
of us, and my hair stood on end. Our fighter
flight response kicked in and we drew our weapons, preparing
to high tail at east along the creek to the trucks,
and then massive rocks started hitting the water and made
our decision even more immediate. We were looking up at
the Sheer bluff wall. We could see the top of
a tree moving back and forth, but there was no wind.
I said to hell with this, and I let loose
with eight to ten shots from my weapon, and Slick
touched off a couple from his into the bluff wall,
and then we hauled us and didn't stop until we
were at the truck. We had no more evidence, nor
did we see any physical shape, but things played out
like a lot of other Bigfoot stories I've heard. When
I was twelve years old, I boarded a plane for
Oregon to see my brother. He was logging in the
Mammoth area with a good friend of his who was
a Vietnam Vet. They had a logging camp with trailers
and equipment in the mountains a few miles from town.
I spent the first few days there around the landing
with my brother loading log trucks, but as soon as
the owner found out that I could run equipment, he
put me to work. I was running an old John
Deere four forty skidter, piling treetops and dressing a skid road.
It was small, menial stuff, but for a twelve year
old I was the king of the hill. Several days
went by before any of us went to town, and
then as the weekend rolled around, we rolled up in
crew trucks and headed off the mountain. We hadn't gone
a mile before the truck in front of us came
to a screeching stop, and the guys all piled out,
and we rolled to a stop behind them, and we
bailed out too. When we walked around to the front
of their truck, I was amazed and immediately scared. There
were several enormous barefoot prints leading across and down the road,
apiece easily twenty inches long and pronounced in the deep
dust of the dirt road. These tracks had to be fresh,
because the last logging truck had just left an hour
before us and would have wiped the tracks out. Several
of the guys who were raised in the area had
seen those tracks before, and some had even seen the
creatures themselves. I was young, and I had nightmares for
several days after that. In the summer of nineteen ninety three,
we lived on the Arkansas River. The river was to
our west, and the six hundred and forty thousand acre
Campgruber Military training facility was north south and east of US.
A highway ran through our little town, but even then,
with green Leaf Lake not far away in Camp Gruber,
there was plenty of natural habitat. My brother and I
were members of a bass club at green Leaf Lake,
and we fished in a tournament every Friday night throughout
the summer. One evening during a tournament, there was a
three quarter moon just peeking over the mountain to the east.
We were fishing on the east bank and trolling along
silently and concentrating and not talking and ready for a bike.
We were coming up on a small pocket about sixty
feet wide and two hundred feet long when I noticed
a dark shadow on the edge of it the water.
I thought it was another boat that we hadn't seen,
and I whispered to my brother, I guess we'll cut
across to the other point. When I uttered those words,
the shadow came alive. It let out a deep, guttural
growl and started plowing through the water. This thing was
so powerful that it caused a huge weight as it
headed to the bank thirty feet away. When it reached
the shore, it plowed through the timber and scrub like
a bulldozer. We could hear it for a minute or
so as it headed up the mountain well. We sat
dumbfounded until finally asked my brother what the hell was that.
We came to the conclusion that it had to be
nine feet or taller because the water depth in that
particular spot was six feet deep and it was at
least three feet above the water line. We couldn't make
out any definition, but we both saw the outline as
it got close to the bank, and whatever it was,
this thing was big. This took place about six miles
from another confirmed sighting in the area of ten Killer Lake.
Sosquatch theory did an interview with a lady about it.
We only lived three miles from Green Leaf, so the
next day my brother and I went into detective mode
back to the water to see what we could find.
We found big impressions in the grass and weeds at
the shoreline, but no definitive tracks because the ground was
too hard, and when we ventured into the woods well
healed with forty four mags, we came across several arm
sized limbs that were broken off at the seven foot level.
It was easy to trail by the broken limbs, which
we followed for three hundred yards before returning to the boat. Now,
I haven't told anyone about this encounter because we still
live in this area and I don't want to scare
my two boys away from hunting here. We had black
bears at certain times of the year, usually in the fall.
What my brother and I saw was not a black bear.
I know what it was, and I don't feel that
it's dangerous, maybe curious, but maybe not a threat. Thank
you for the platform to voice our experiences.