You're listening to BIGFA Society, and I'm Jeremiah Byron. In this show, we go beyond the campfire stories to bring you first hand encounters from people who say they've seen something impossible. From backwoods trails and remote mountain haulers to quiet farms and crowded highways. The stories come from everywhere, and each one leaves us with more questions than answers. These are the voices of the people who've lived it.
To settle in, because today you'll hear another account that just might change the way you see the woods forever. So stay with us, all right, pick the Society. You've got the privilege of talking to Eric today. Eric is an outdoorsman from just outside the Willamette National Forest, in an area that's between sisters in Eugene. I had the pleasure of meeting Eric at the first Sasquatch Summer Fest in Oakridge, Oregon, July of twenty twenty four, just for
future listeners, and we had a good chat. Then we've been keeping in touch over the last year or so and there's been some really interesting things that been happening to Eric up where he's at. Welcome to the show, Eric, how are you doing today, sir.
I'm doing great, Jeremiah. Thanks for thanks for having me and good to talk to you again.
Absolutely, it's a thing where I remember when I was talking to you down there in Oakridge, and I was like, man, someday we're going to have a We got to have a chat with Eric on the show, and I'm glad that it finally happened. But we definitely have a bit of ground to cover today. Feel free to take us back to when you first started experiencing Bigfoot related interactions.
A little bit of history. Raised my kids here in the Northwest. I'm an older gentleman now, but the wife introduced me to camping. We met in high school and that was my first opportunity to ever camp in the Northwest.
I'd actually have run around in the woods.
I was fortunate to live next to some state woodland, and so I actually had free run and the last of seven kids, so the folks gave me they were ready to retire from kids, so they didn't keep too close an eye on me. So that gave me a lot of time in the wilds. And so I wanted my kids to have the same opportunity to be out out in the woods, so we did a lot.
Of bundok camping.
I think we had one opportunity to stay at a state park, but other than that, we were always out in the wild. But it wasn't until after they grew up and went out on their own. I don't recollect any sort of weird incident, any sort of situation that would make me question their safety, my safety, or if anything was out there, not even any bear. But later on the wife and I we love camping, and so we.
Got a couple of I got my first jeep, Rubicon.
Outfitted it rooftop ten and I built a utility trailer and outfitted it with everything you would need for living out in the wilderness for a while. And so we started started heading out deeper and deeper into the Willamett National Forest, and we spent a lot of time way out where people don't go. That was the whole point of getting the jeeps. We camp year round, rain, snow, summer. The first real eyebrow raising situation was late October twenty
twenty two. The wife and I alone went up into the Sant Diem that's part of the Willamett National Forests. So this little quartz creek. You follow it on up and it goes way back. I believe it goes all the way up into the cast does go into the Cascade Range, but where its origins exactly are, I'm not sure. But we were way back up in there and found a beautiful little spot. All of the year, the maples and all the trees are turning color, and just found
this beautiful spot and it was a flat area. So I set up our wall tent, got the stove going. There's a creek bed below us about twenty thirty feet, so we had clean water. And so that first first night we call it a night early. It was already dark, but I could hear whistling up on the hillside. Of course, it's heavily wooded with Douglas fir and maple and whatnot. But the whistle was very sharp, very clear, very powerful, and came up from the hillside.
We're in at that point, a very.
Narrow canyon, and swhistle just echoed through the canyon and it wasn't disconcerting. I just didn't know what it was. And every once in a while there'd be a whistle up on the hillside. And I'm a light sleeper, the wife. She doesn't hear so good, so she fell asleep. I fell asleep, and I woke up to more whistling, but this time it was the same place up on the hillside. But then a return whistle came from the creek bed below us.
And man, that's communication.
That's strange. I don't know what's at that time, I didn't know what was causing it, of course, but then I started hearing rocks getting turned over in the creek bed, and some of those rocks were the size where I could actually feel them. I'm on a cot in a tent twenty five ish feet above the creek bed, and I could feel these rocks getting turned over, and the whistles go back and forth. Every few minutes, there'd be a whistle up above and then down below in the
creek bed. And then I'm realizing. At first I was thinking bear bit the bear, although they don't hibernate that time of year, but they really don't hibernate in this area. That I wasn't really thinking. I didn't know what to think, actually, but I knew something was going on, something powerful, because I could feel these rocks.
Getting rolled around back and forth.
And then I'm realizing the whistle up above is a lookout and the family or whoever is down in the creek dead collecting dinner, and they're going after crayfish snails. So there's lots of stuff, lots of fish and little fish in that creek. So I'm thinking they're the ones watching out making sure we don't come out of the tent or do anything, do anything stupid. Well, the rest of them eat their meal and didn't feel any threat, no fear, no nothing, no smell, no no. I honestly
fell back asleep and I woke up. It was some time later, but I woke up, and I woke up to footfalls right next to my wall tent. I had a canvas military canvas tent that turned not tent tarp that I laid down to keep the inside of the tent plane while it extended out by about five feet outside the tent, And something was walking past the tent on that tarp. I could hear the footfalls tarp. And so that next morning I woke up and you told the wife about it, and why didn't you.
Wake me up? You were sleeping.
But that was really And then nothing happened at that site. After that, I did look around the next morning at the trail and there wasn't anything obvious. Look down in the creek bed. Obviously some of the rocks had been turned over, some of the sizeable rocks had been turned over a bit. Again, nothing to indicate what it was or who it was.
Wow, Eric, that's an intense first experience. Are you able to not to put you on the spot, but are you able to try to do a rep Maybe it was something that sounded like the kind of whistle that you were hearing. Is that anything you're able to replicate?
Gosh, I suck at whistling, I really do. I'm jealous of people who can really whist allowed. But it was a high pitched, very sharp, very powerful whistle. And I've hunted elk. I know what an elk sounds like when it squeals, whistles, whatever it is they do. It was nothing like a and you could tell it was far enough up on the hillside. It was the ways up there, but yet the whistle was sharp and clear. You could
definitely hear it down where we were at. And I really, again I was just baffled as to what was actually happening. But I think By the end of that night, I had a pretty clear idea that, you know, what was up there was probably a family unit of bigfoot sasquatch, whatever you want to call them. I didn't have any evidence, but you're laying in bed in the middle of the night and you can hear these things happening.
A bear. We don't have any bear that big round here.
To roll rocks of that size over there. Was It just seemed like something would need to have hands and a lot of power behind those hands to roll those walks over.
Absolutely, did it sound anything like I'm going to try it on my side. I'm just curious because I'm curious if it sounded like something I heard. Was it like a.
Yes? Okay?
But it it was longer, sharper, very powerful. It's nothing I could even come close to replicating.
Okay, guys, yes, I think very similar to that.
So similar, but not. It wasn't a type of deal where it was like replicating a bird sound or a bird call.
Oh no, not at all. Gotcha? All right? Cool?
And that's Listeners can listen to the Oakridge episodes I've done. I'm not going to retell that story now, but sometimes they replicate bird calls. We heard that in Oakridge, So that's why can you give me an estimate of it? Not to give you know anything away, but like how far back did you have to drive to get to this area where you're at? Was it really far away from the main road where this area is?
Gosh, yeah, we're probably thirty forty miles back in there.
Okay.
We had never camped that far back in before.
Like I said, we had always had the kids, and I wanted the kids to experience wilderness, but I didn't want to take them so far out that if something happened, we couldn't get too medic or you got kids, you don't get too dumb. But a couple of old people, you don't worry about it too much. Really nature, So we the older we get, the further we venture out. Honestly,
we get brave and get out there. And that's the whole point of the rigs and the outfitting them like we do so that if something does happen, we've got pretty much the gear to handle medical situation too. We could probably live out of what we've outfitted in our rigs for probably thirty days easy. So if we get stranded in the snow, we've got fuel, we've got different cooking methods. We've got two different tents. We've got the rooftop tent, have the wall tent with the camp stove
or a wood stove. We've got two different camp stoves on board gallons of white fuel form. Were outfitted pretty good. We get out there and that was probably one of the first times we had the tent and the stove.
I had just built those. So we.
Were out there, and I think in Pacific Northwest the PNW listeners will get that. I don't know if all the listeners will get that. So you have to be aware that. For example, when I was driving out in areas like this last July, I was driving from let's say Eugene over to Sisters or up to Detroit, and you're not seeing any There's like maybe one ranger you see that, there's no police officers. It's like you are literally in charge of keeping yourself, like you got to
be able to take care of yourself. And so the way that Eric is doing it, I think that's a super smart move. You're the only one that's going to be able to protect you and your wife out there. You're not going to be available to rely on calling nine to one one. Really, in this first encounter, did you jump directly to bigfoot or were you now at the point where you're like, I'm not really sure what happened to us out there. We're gonna have to figure this out.
Either.
Yes, I suspected it was probably Bigfoot. I just wanted to rule other things out.
And I've got a work construction. So all.
All of these guys hunt and are out in the wilderness. So I asked them if they had any similar experiences, and on the face of it, nobody would say anything. I described the whistle to them and they're like, oh, that's an elk. No, I'm sorry, it wasn't an elk. Although elk are very powerful their lung capacity just man that whistle or whistles back and forth. They were very powerful, that an elk isn't gonna kick rocks over rocks the size of a a chair figure. These things were rumbling
the ground as they rolled away. But no, the main focus was just camping. I enjoy it, we love it. And although this was a weird experience, it was the only real experience we've had so.
There was it was just okay.
Moving on yep, moving on absolutely. So then after this, what was the next thing that you had encountered?
So shortly after that? So that happened in October. In November of that year, we got a pretty heavy snowfall up the McKenzie River valley here and I had I was actually alone that Thanksgiving, so I thought, this is a perfect opportunity to just get up there in the snow zone and try out the wall tent in the snow.
And so I had.
Cooked up a turkey and got all the goodies together to make a turkey soup up at camp.
So I headed up and I think it was.
Gosh around forty eight hundred feet by the time I finally got into snow that I couldn't plow through with that jeep and trailer.
I found a nice.
Flat area and I realized that the wall tint isn't actually going to cut it, and it was already getting dark by the time I had made where I was going to camp. So I decided I'll throw the water up the rooftop tent up. So I got it all set up in the same setting. I had a creek bed that was blow me. I could hear it surrounded by Doug fur and so I couldn't really see the creek bed, but I could hear it down There was
probably thirty fifty feet below me. And then to the other side of the flat was a steep mountain side that went up at a pretty aggressive angle. And I'm getting set up and it's getting darker and darker. I got a bunch of flashlights. I didn't want to trip and stumble, so I positioned these flashlights in kind of a perimeter around just so I could walk around and not trip over something. And made my dinner and crawled up in the rooftop tent and called it a night.
And I thought, I don't think there's bear that if I hear something because I left, I'm sorry. I left the soup what was left of it on the on the cookstove. I thought, man, I should put that away, but it was still hot, so I just figured out this lot of cool out there. I don't think I knew there was a cougar in the area. I saw the tracks, but I didn't see any bear track or anything like that.
So I just figured, yeah, if.
I hear one older shoe shit away, And then I heard it. It was a whistle way up on the hillside, just like the one before. A sharp crisp echoed through the area, and then a return down in the creek, the exact same scenario.
I camp my whole life.
I've never heard this before, never experienced this before, and now, basically a month apart, it's happening again.
And so.
I listened to it, same thing, and I could hear the rocks getting turned over in the creek bed, and you could hear them rumbling, and but you know, no vocalization, no no screaming, no yelling, just a whistle back and forth. And I was tired, so I fell asleep. I'm a light sleeper, but I love my sleep. So the cool mountain air it was, I don't know, somewhere around twenty five degrees, and I sleep really well in the cold.
So I fell asleep, and I have no idea.
What time it was, early morning, probably two three o'clock in the morning. I woke up from a dead sleep to the most horrific smell I've ever smelled in my life, and it cracks me up every time somebody tries to describe it for me. If you've ever been around like a farm animal or a dog that has an infection and it's in the fur, and so you just have this very pungent, very rough smell. And I was laying
there awake, and I could smell this. It was just saturating, and like I said, it woke me up from a dead sleep. And I had left my lights on in that perimeter around the vehicle, and I thought, man, what is going on? And all of a sudden, the light that I had placed on the front driver's side bumper of my.
Jeep, it was picked up.
And keep in mind, I can't really see out I've got everything zipped up and didn't hear anything, but the flashlight got picked up and was shining around, and then it shined across the tent itself, and fully I got something out there, and again the whistling rolling rocks. This time there's this smell and something is articulating. This is picking up this flashlight, and I thought, man, I want to slowly and zip one of the windows so I could get a look. I knew that the second I
make noise, whatever's out there is going to scatter. So I just laid there and listened, and it eventually went away, and I fell asleep again, and when I woke up later that morning, it was raining ice, and I knew that was not good because the snow was deep enough where it was going to be with a sheet of ice on top of that, it was going to be troubled. So I got up and quickly started breaking down camp. And although I didn't look for tracks intentionally, I did.
I did glance around to see I saw nothing.
I had stomped the snow down pretty good, but my intention was to not get myself into trouble and get stuck up there, because honestly, nobody knew I was up there, which kind of dumb. But in any case, I got camp packed up and headed down the mountain, and even inside the cab of the jeep, which was sealed up, I could smell this thing, and I'm like, man, this is rough. But on the way back to where I lived, I got to thinking, if if I can smell this as good as I do, I wonder what a dog
would do. And so my daughter and my son in law they have two German shepherds. So I got my son in law on the phone. I'm like, hey, I want to try something, I said, and he said, don't want to see how your dogs react to something.
Okay.
I didn't really fill him in on what I was up to. And the closer I got to their house, the more I thought about it.
So I called him back.
I'm like, hey, so when I get there, have your dogs on their leash and hang on, hang on to them. I don't know how they're going to react. He's okay, and so I'm like, man, I'm serious. So I pull up in front of their house, call them again, Hey, I'm here.
Make sure you got your hands on dogs. Yeah. Yeah.
So I go up to the door and then the dog scrambled to the door because I hear somebody at the door, of course, and he opens the door. He doesn't have his hands on the dogs, and the male extremely aggressive. I've never seen him like that. He's an aggressive dog anyway, but he got a whiff of that and just.
Went crazy, lunged at me.
Was just going crazy, and the other dog, she was kind of holding back. She really didn't react too much. So I got her and I thought I took her over to the jeep and opened up the jeep and see if she reacted or could smell anything, But she didn't really, she didn't really care. But the male dog, he was of course, he's the alpha, he's he was protecting the family, and he knew what that smell was.
So that was I'm sorry that that was the end of that one, real real quick.
I've never stayed in the rooftop ten I for they freaked me out a little bit. But when you were up there and then, man, I can't imagine being up there realizing something has my flashlight and then it because it's like what happens if it starts pushing the jeep or it like pushes it over, like you're done.
Yeah, the thought never crossed my mind. And I didn't feel threatened at all at all in both these encounters. It was just again, it just I don't know if it's accurate or not, but it just seemed like a family unit and they they were doing their thing. I was doing my thing, and so it wasn't it wasn't necessarily a hostile situation.
Sure, yeah, absolutely I didn't feel a threat. They didn't.
The smell was overwhelming. That was the only thing that was shocking. I've never I've smelled horses and animals that have serious infections and they smell pretty rough and that's the big part of what that kind of smell was really rough.
Oh did you get that flashlight back? Was there anything weird with the flashlight? When you got it back?
I did it set it back down on my bumper pretty much in the same position that it had found it, And they didn't, near as I can tell anyway, they didn't mess with my dinner. They didn't mess with any of the other flashlights or any of the other gear I had sitting out, so near as I can tell, it was just curious about the flashlight.
That's a huge point is really it was more curious than it was hungry, which is that's pretty cool to think about. I didn't even touch your turkey soup.
August of the following year, twenty twenty three, eight canyon was now on the bucket list, and we packed up the jeep and the wife and I hit it up to a Mount Saint Helens. I had looked at the area to find the best possible camp I could find, and then I always have a plan B and Plan C in case the primary fails, which in this particular case it did. They had a gate across one of
the access points, so that was out. But we did end up staying at the foot of eight Canyon, and so we set up camp and I can't necessarily I don't know what did this, but it was interesting. I'm going to note it anyway. But that evening I was We looked around all day and found a good place to camp and settled in. I was grumpy because the gate was closed and I couldn't get to our primary. All of the secondary was really nice too, but I was grumpy, and I had set up kind of late.
It was already getting dark, and so on the trailer that I built, I've got a countertop that I can put out, and so I set up the stoves and started preparing two steaks. And so I had opened this package of steaks and pulled out two steaks out of a package of six, and I got my back to the woodline and I heard a growl and it was a deep, guttur old growl.
Bear. I didn't know what it was, but.
I turned around and looked, and I had a flashlight on me. I scanned the woodline. Nothing, So I want to get dinner done, so I turned back around and a few seconds later, this thing starts growling again. I shine the woodlight the woodline again.
Nothing.
I don't see anything, no eye shine, no nothing. I turn around and start working on my stakes again, putting seasoning on, and I hear the growl again. By this time, I'm like, this isn't going to stop. I grab a flashlight and head over to the tree line. I'm walking to the tree line this time and kind of rushing it, trying to listen to see if I can hear anything breaking brush or whatever.
Nothing.
I didn't hear anything breaking brush, didn't see anything. I'm looking pretty intently at this point to see what's there, and nothing like all right. So I go back to my stakes and I look over in that package of steaks that I had there. There's one of them missing. But it wasn't the first one that you could easily grab. It was one that was under the cellophane behind the first stake of the second of the four remaining steaks.
Something had to have lifted that cellophane and grab that that steak at it there.
And the growling stop. Never heard it again.
So something growling in the woodline got my attention. While something went over there and grabbed one of the steaks.
Patty was there.
She didn't hear anything, completely oblivious to the whole situation.
Wow, weird, And so that was.
I can't attribute that to anything. I have no idea. Maybe I don't know. I don't even know what to chalk that one up to.
Just a weird one.
But eight Canyon is off the bucket list now, So we got that done.
You got that out of there. So was it hard to get down to where you guys camped because you said it was the like down at the base.
No, we were just in that particular case.
We were it was just a bucketless item, so we just camped. It was on one of the back roads, so it was just off a forest service road.
So it was just like.
Old staging area for like fier equipment or something like that. It wasn't anything fancy, but.
Yeah, it was beautiful up there. It was awesome. That was.
Again, I wasn't scared this thing was growling, but it wasn't. I don't know, just it wasn't like I don't think it was trying to scare me as much as get my attention to get me away from those steaks so something else could get in there and grab one of the steaks.
It's kind of weird, absolutely, and it really lines up with you hear these common threads where sometimes they'll be more than one. They'll try to get your attention over to another area so that one could get away or in this case steal your food, which is that's wild man. That would have messed with me for a long time. When you're in a situation where something had to have hands in order to do what it did, I think that really does change you. But very cool story, very
cool area, the Ape Canyon area. But y'all feel free to continue.
Eric Fall.
So it was October of twenty twenty four. We're back up the McKinsey River Valley. We had a fire that year. Pretty much got a fire every year now it seems. But by October the fire was out and the most of the equipment and the manpower everybody had moved out. The wife and I we jumped in the rig to hit some of the back for service roads just measure the damage and see what areas were affected, what wasn't.
And some of it was pretty shocking. Some of it was intact, which was really good as forest fires are very disconcerting. This one was pretty close to where we are and so it keeps the anxiety high all year, or not all year, but all summer long. So we got up in back up in there, and as we're headed back in there, I look over and here's an area of devastation. But it's not devastation by fire. It's trees,
not old growth, not huge trees. But they were probably six to eight inch diameter trees that were snapped off. Some of them were like pulled out of the ground. Some of them were broke off. Measured at fourteen feet up in the air. They were broke off, And I walked back in there because it was just so odd. I actually walked back in there and see if they were sawcat, if machinery had pushed them down.
This whole area, which was probably the size of a.
Maybe half a football field, There wasn't anything really standing. They were leaning over on each other. Some of them were just pushed over onto other ones, but the whole thing was surrounded by standing trees. There were there was the trees were so close. You're not going to get equipment in there. And even if you could, the trees were not They weren't damaged in such a way as where a grappler or a saw or anything left marks on it.
None of this was saw cut.
It was all just snapped off and just a very bizarre and realistic scene.
There was.
Really no way, even wind surrounded. Although it is on a hillside, we hadn't had any wind, definitely no snowlad because this was going in to fall. It wasn't a snowlad issue. So it was like something got in there and through a temper tantrum is the best way I describe it, and just walk back to the jeep. And we traveled on around to see where the fire actually had burned, and on our way back down and has been.
My go to just for.
Just for giggles, I'll stop in a remote area like that and shut the rig down and I'll whoop.
I don't know why, I don't know where I picked it up.
I don't even remember when I started doing it. But so we pull up there and I'm sorry, we're back at this area where all these trees were.
Down, and I whoop and nothing, And so.
I get ready to start the jeep back up, and I hear a whoop and I look at my wife, who, like I mentioned, is she doesn't hear so good. And she heard it, and she goes do that again, So a whoop again, and this one back and forth.
For about fifteen minutes I.
Had whoop, and then the awkward amount of time would go by and I would get a reply a whoop, and the reply whoop was getting farther and farther. The sound was the same, the distance was the same, but the length of time it was taking longer to respond, and so again I just chalked it up to that's.
Really weird, and I started.
I went to start up the jeep and the final whoop was loud enough to I could hear it over the GEP. And then so I look over out the window to this blowdown area and this.
Side of I don't.
I call it a blowdown area, but the tree line this side of that area, this huge black object, human shape thing just darted out and went from my right to my left and gone. It just it was so fast, just almost like a blur. And I've heard accounts of people saying they've had a rifle and tried to tried to get a shot at one of these things and try to swing the rifle as fast as they could to try to get a shot, and they couldn't keep up with it. And that's exactly what this was. I
wouldn't believe it. I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. It was just and it was right there. It was throwing its voice off into the distance, making it sound like it was further away than it was.
It was right there. Oh wow, the speed of it.
Was just what what blew my mind? I was just I couldn't believe something that big could move that quick. There wasn't any fear. It was just there. We were just having fun, whooping back and forth. No idea what I was saying to it. There was no smell, no nothing. Of course, it was far enough away that the wind would have had been coming right at us to be able to smell it.
But yeah, I was. That was the first time I had actually.
Seen something heard him smell them that. That's the first time I've actually seen him. Even that wasn't very clear.
How far away from you both was it approximately.
So it was up an incline, but probably, oh, probably close.
To fifty feet. Wow.
Okay, man, I.
Thought I knew something was there.
I didn't know what it was, but I knew something was there, But I had no idea it was that close. It sounded like it was off in a distance. I guess that it was throwing its voice or throwing the whoop away from us, but it was loud enough to where you could still hear it.
I don't know it.
To me, it showed intelligence, it didn't want to give itself up. But it really makes me wonder because I started the jeep and it whooped again, and we're getting ready to leave. So white blow your cover, so to speak, because it was behind behind a a grouping of trees to where I couldn't see it.
I don't know. It just makes me wonder anyway, why I blow your cover? Yeah?
Absolutely, So it's for listeners. So if we're talking like fifty feet that an example of that is like a little over half the length of a basketball court, is what fifty feet is. Yeah, so you saw it ron as a blur, you dart out, were you able to get a sense of how tall whatever you saw was?
Not? Really? But I'd like to said it was on an incline. It was uphill from me, so I'm looking up.
At it, so it maybe it looked bigger than it actually was.
But I didn't go up there a measure. I didn't get out. I went home, so I knew actually laying eyes.
On something for reals these this time, all the sounds, all the weird stuff that's happened in the past, it's all for this picture. And he's you can chalk up a lot of the experiences I've had to whatever when you actually see something moving like that, and maybe it was a human whooping at me, but there is no human on planet or ever that could move like that.
Zero There is a zero chance.
Like I said, I've listened to guys recount swinging a rifle at one and not being able to keep up, and that's exactly what this was. There was if you would have drawn on this thing, there's no way you could have fired at it.
Wild stuff.
So this is now.
You're in the time where you've actually had a sighting of something and there's no coming back from that. From what I've gathered talking to people over the years, I haven't had that yet myself. But Eric, let's continue with what you've experienced as we go along here.
Like I mentioned earlier, that fire happened in twenty four. We had another fire this year, wasn't near as aggressive. This late summer was rainy, so it helped well some of the fire danger, but it also brought in thunderstorms which ignited some of the fires.
And these firefighters up here have.
Been doing an amazing job of getting on top of these fires very rapidly and getting them out. But unfortunately, this big called it the fully Ridge fire out of got out of control. It got away from them, and several a couple of days had gone by of this fire burning, and it looked like they weren't going to get it out, and it had grown pretty aggressively.
Over the course of two days.
We lived right near there, and so we thought we probably better.
Get eyes on this, and because you.
Don't want to be evacuating at a moment's notice, you want to plant ahead it. Later in the evening it was still daylight, but later in the evening we went up to that area and pulled off the road and it's pretty aggressive terrain, pretty thick, pretty thick brush. Again, you're in a mix of old growth dug fur and some younger dug fur, and then of course there's other
lots of scrub brush and whatnot. But you could see the fire off oh gosh, probably eighth of a mile off the road as it inclines up the mountainside, and fortunately it really didn't look as bad as what they were saying, and we're relieved by that, and we just watch the choppers come in and vomit, and then it got towards evening and we're just I wanted to get
some pictures of it at night with my phone. I've got a nice phone and as a night shot feature on it where you can get thermal It doesn't have thermal imaging on it as far as I know, but it does take real good pictures of ambient light at night, so if there's any light out there, phone picks up on it. So I figured we'd be able to see hotspots real well and get a pretty good scope of where the fire is, and then we'd come back subsequent nights and get updates and see how fast it's progressing.
It's well after dark at this point, Fire Cruise had gone home, the choppers were long gone, and I let out a whoop, like I always do getting ready to go home. So I let out a whoop, and way up above the fire, to the left where the fire had not gone yet, I'm standing outside the jeep Patty is my wife. She's sitting in the passenger seat. I
let out the whoop, and this huge dug fur. It was like within five seconds of me doing a whoop, this huge dug fur comes crashing down and I turn around to look at the wife and I'm just in shock. I asked her, did you hear that? And she's like, yes, I heard that. And I didn't get turned back around to the woodline before the second huge dug fur got up pushed down. I'd find out later it was pushed down, and so that was enough that scared me. I was
finally scared. We got out of there, and we're talking about coincidences. What was that? And we both know that was outside the burn, so it wasn't burn trees coming down. That was well outside where the fire was or even had been, So that didn't add up. And so we went back and I don't know how many days had passed, It may have been a day, maybe two days after that, we went back up just to check on the progress
of the fire. Again, it's at night, right at dusk, and so I'd get some pictures, some night pictures of the fire, and again I whoop, and again a tree comes down again within seconds after I whoop, and this was been the same approximate area where the other two trees came down. It was outside the burn and another massive tree. And shortly after that there was a whoop a reply that came back. And as you're looking at
the mountain side, it was to my right. The trees came down to my left up the mountain side, so the whoop came from my right, and so I whooped back and got a whoop again to my right, and this went on back and forth for probably about forty five minutes. We did start working our way down because it was getting late. We did start working our way down down the road. But as we were working down, I'd pull over and whoop and get a whoop back.
And I had assumed it was firefighters up in there that were camped out up in there, that were just messing around like I was messing around. But we found out the next day that no, the.
Firefighters pull out before.
Dark and go to their camp that was I don't know, about five or six miles away, so there was nobody up in there. And that's when I realized that we got something. For reals, He's going on here, and so I mentioned it to a friend of mine that I work with, and he was very interested to experience this for himself. So I took him up there. This is again several days later. Again we go up there and I whoop, and this time I've got the camera rolling. And just before that, you could hear something in the
tree line. I couldn't see it, but you could hear something trying to be quiet moving through the tree line. And I asked him, do you hear that? He hadn't heard it, and I said, there's something in there. And I tell him I'm going to whoop, and so I whoop and another massive tree comes down and that was it. I don't know, it scared him.
Go ahead, let's I think it'd be good. We can play that sound right now. Actually, you have you provided the video audio for that, So I'm going to go ahead. We'll put it in here and so people can hear exactly what happened.
There's something in there, I think, so I can hear it, hear it. Yeah, hung gonna whoop? Yeah.
Uh, some wild stuff, man. I can't imagine experiencing that in real life. That would be absolutely wild.
Yeah.
The first couple of times. It's a little disconcerting. This thing has to be massive. I couldn't imagine how how big this thing has to be pushing trees like that. Now, if this has happened, I gosh, I'm I lost count, but probably at least nine times, ten times now maybe one.
I'd go up there.
And I've taken a couple of different people up with me, and it's shocking. It's shocking the first time it happens, it's hard to believe that it's actually happening. But I took a gentleman up there with me this this last week, and he brought a large pit ball with him. And when we got in there, there wasn't there wasn't really a whole lot of activity.
At first, I had.
Heard some we had heard some tree knocks, and I did a whoop like I always due, and a tree came down way off in the distance, and so we thought maybe we should move in that direction, and so we did. We got in our rigs and moved down in that direction and whoop, I whooped again. And we're outside the rigs. It's pitch black. There's no moon, no stars,
it's dark, absolutely dark. I'm at the rear of his rig, and he's outside the rig and I can't hardly even see him, it's so dark, but he had his dog outside the rig, and within literal minute or two, his dog was very anxious and wanted She was pawing at him, wanting back in the rig. And so he verbalized that to me that his dog is very anxious and wants to back in the rig. So he put her back in the rig, and she goes and sits in the front seat, the driver's seat, where she absolutely doesn't belong,
and I whoop, and we heard some some noises. I don't know if it was a tree knock or some sort of popping sound anyway, But then for the first time, I heard feet stomping, and you could tell this thing was huge, but it was often a distance, but it was like six steps, just stomping hard into the into the ground up.
On the hillside. So this thing was evidently.
Not happy that there was a dog present. What I read it as maybe not, I don't know, but that's the first time anything like that has ever happened where it's stomped. But I think, honestly, I think they're moving out of the out of the area. I went up there this weekend. I went up there. Of course, we had a storm moving in and so it's hard to hear with the wind and the rain coming down. That was raining pretty aggressively, but it's hard to hear, so
I might have missed something. But I've gone up there two nights now and I haven't heard anything, And so I'm thinking they're moving out because the sounds we're getting further and further off in the distance, and the fire is I'm assuming it has to be out by now with.
All the rain that we've been getting.
There might be a few smokers out there, but for the most part the fires out that I have to really kind of wonder. These things seem to be attracted to these fires, and I don't know if they're just keeping an eye on them, or we had fire crews out there, we had helicopters bombing. Is that the human attention to the fire that they're watching or are they watching the fire? I don't really know.
They seem to be around these fires. Not sure. I don't know what your thoughts are on it, but.
Eric, I completely agree with you. So, just for example Oakridge, the first year I was in Oakridge, we had those fires really close to Oakridge and the activity was wild out in the woods that was being experienced this last year, a little bit of activity, but not nearly as much. So I think when you have a fire involved, it
really can kick off the things that you experience. And if you're going out, if listeners are going out when there's fires around, be careful of those, but also be aware you could find yourself in a really interesting situation like Eric has been experiencing, where whooping and then have a tree get pushed over. One time that's a coincidence, but like nine to ten times that's not a coincidence. That is something that's just completely wild.
That that's within a within a very short time of the whoop. And there's been there's been times in that exact same area where all whoop tree comes down and then we hear owls all over the place, like the proverbial eight hundred pound owl. They're on the hillside on up the mountain to the right, to the left, and then we're hearing them behind us, so we're we've got them all around us. And there was one night.
I have audio of that as well, that.
These things just wouldn't stop. They were seemingly upset about something. I can't say that I was really that concerned about. I wasn't scared. It's not like they're projecting fear or anything. But that night that that thing stomped off, that's a pretty clear indication that big guys upset.
Sure, absolute.
That got me a little concerned. Pushing the trees down off in the distance, that's impressive. That's impressive, but scary. Yeah, it scared me the first, the first time or two, but after that it's old hat, as they say. But if he wanted to, he could push a tree down on us.
He didn't.
Absolutely, there was no rock throwing, no smell, no, no whistling, no did whoop.
Got whoops back.
But other than that, it's you can hear them going through the brush. You until they're trying to be stealthy, but you can still hear them.
Eric, It's really some fascinating encounters you've been having over the years, and I would say, please continue to keep us in the loop if you do continue to have things going on. Even if you don't, that's data too if things stop and then they start up in the half a year or something. But thank you so much for coming on the show today and sharing what you've experienced in a really active area of Oregon and just a really beautiful area as well.
Hey, thank you my pleasure. I'm enjoyed sharing.
Definitely not going out looking for this who just this stuff is just out there happening, and I'm going to keep on keeping on.
Definitely going camping. And I think the.
More remote you get, probably the more the more you're gonna be in their area, and they as long as you're not a threat to them. I don't think they're going to be a threat to you.
And you never know. I don't purford to.
Understand the psychology of these things. I live next to one point seven million acres of forest land, old doug for, old growth, to you name it. It's out here, rough terrain, beautiful country. Like you said, that's why I'm here. But yeah, the main thing is camping. I love getting out there. Going to keep on keeping on.
Excellent. Thank you again, Eric. All right, sir, have a good dick.
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