You're listening to Bigfoot 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, big the Society. You've got the privilege of talking to mister Jack Bowers today. Jack is an individual who likes to refer to himself as a collector of Bigfoot stories from out in the great state of Washington. And welcome to the show, Jack. How are you doing today?
Doing fine? Doing fine?
Thank you absolutely.
You know I'm a big fan of You've had a few episodes over on the Salish Sasquatch Channel. We're good friends to that channel over here. Your love love those guys Jonathan and Sarah Brown, great great people. But you know you've reached out and we got connected, and it's a privilege to have you on the show today to have a conversation about what you have collected over the years with your stories. But you know, let's start with this Jack. Is there something that first got you into
the subject. Do you remember when you first started getting into bigfoot in your life?
Oh? Yeah, very much so. My aunt spokes lived in Fort Bragg, California, and they had an experience with Bigfoot, mister Bigfoot on their property where the animal and I refer to them as animal. I don't know if we've made that connection exactly yet, but anyway, it poked his head right in the screen door and they were about two feet away from it, and they shared that with me. That was hook enough. I've been on it ever since. And that is nineteen sixty two, so we go back a bit.
Oh my goodness. So that incident was I mean pre Patterson Gimlin film by about seven years.
Yes, or five years, sorry, five years. I want to get into that and talk about it a little bit. It's because it's kind of interesting. It was, if you don't mind. It was nineteen fifty eight when Jerry Cruz, who was a bulldozer operator in California, in that near area run across the set of footprints in the dust after I think he was walking the grade after he bulldozed, or it was the first thing in the morning or some such. Anyway, he came across the footprints and they
intrigued him enough. He had no idea what they were, just like a lot of us, and he got ahold of the gentleman from the He was another guy with a journalist at the Humboldt Times and the Buff Creek Times. His name was Andrew Gizzoli, and he came out there, took pictures, wrote up an article on it. And that was nineteen fifty eight, and so that kind of started the local interest anyway in Bigfoot. And by the way,
that was the year that Jeff Meldrum was born. And I hate to see his passion because he's he was a superb individual.
He really was.
Yeah, rest in peace, definitely, Yeah.
Yep, absolutely. In nineteen sixty two, still, I mean, there was an occasional story with leak out and around, but nobody, nobody had really took it to heart, you might say, matter of fact. Really, in fact, it hasn't been until the last few years that and some of the some of the TV programs and movies and whatnot, really have launched into a more complete dissertation, you might say, of what's going on in the Bigfoot community. They've been there
all along. They've been there in antiquity, probably much longer than you and I have been part of the scene. So in any event, my in laws lived in Fort Bragg, California, and that's right on the coast, real coast of the coast. Matter of fact, careful you you'll get your face washed
right there. But anyway, and they looked out of town a little bit, and their names Bud and Angie Jenkins and her brother Bud kind of shared the same house from time to time because Bud and Bob would team up on trucking adventures of sorts, hauling preate and went on, and so to make things work, Bobby come over and spend the night, and they'd get up together and go anyway, it was in February of sixty two that Angie had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night,
about three o'clock I guess it was, she says, and got up. I was heading for the bathroom. She happened to look out the living room door, I mean window rather, and she saw something towering above their six foot fence, and she thought it was a bear, and so she didn't want that cred or whatever it was in her garden. And she went back to.
The bedroom and told Bud, get up, get the shotgunners a bear in my in my garden and in course of the vegetable garden, a little bit of everything.
And so he's kind of groggy and everything's just he was sound asleep when he woke him up, and he wanted to know where the shotgun was. Well, she had moved it for one reason or another. So he's in there fumbling around looking for the shotgun. In the meantime, Bob, who was on the couch in the front room, woke up, and she expressed her interest in having that animal run
out of her garden. And he said, I'll just run out here and yell at it, screamed at it, whatever it takes, and it'll be gone and we'll be okay. So he went through the front door and out down the side of the house in the meantime. In the meantime, Bud came out and he says, I got the shotgun where's the shells? And she says, I don't know. I put him somewhere and sounds like home to me. But anyway, the upshot is he says, well, where's Bob? And then she says, he went down the out around the back.
He's going to yell at that bear, get rid of it and scare it off or whatever. And so they both walked up to the door. There was a there was the main door and then the screen door, and they pushed the screen door, well the other doors open.
She puts the screen door open, and they both looked down the sidewalk on the side of the house and here comes Bob literally on his hands and knees, kind of almost lower than that, if you can imagine, He's crawling up the sidewalk, and right behind him, literally right behind him, is this animal towering over him and just walking along watching them, watching Bob crawl along, and Bud and Angie they went into kind of a shock. They
didn't know what to do. Bob crawled into the house and they're trying to shut the door, and they couldn't get the door shut, and the animal would be and there's a reason for that animal had was right there at the door, bent over and looking at him from two feet maybe three at the most. I mean they're right on top of each other. Two of them are trying to get the door shut, and Bigfoot standing and are looking at him. And they said it had a
very interesting look on its face. It had that look of pure curiosity and not anything of an aggravating or a caustic whatever look to it. Anyway, it had to bend over to look inside. An average door is seventy eight inches, and so so you take seventy eight inches and it still had to bend over to look in. I'm sure we're talking about an eighth foot specimen and
that type of thing. Anyway, the upshot of the whole thing was that, thank you, they couldn't shut the screen door because because mister Bigfoot had hands on the sill and it was banging, the door frame was banging on the hand the screen door frame, and they couldn't get the door shut, and so without thinking, they backed up a little bit and shut the main door. It did shut. They're understanding there in shock, and the animal walked off,
And I hope nobody gets all excited excited. I'm eighty years old enough I want to call it an animal, will I mean, I know that there's some talk about relic common it's and I'll buy that. I don't I don't have a problem with all that. But my general frame of reference is an animal. So anyway, the upshot is it wandered off back down the sidewalk side of the house, and the angie called the police right away from from Fort Bragg, and they didn't get out there
until about four o'clock or better. And there's footprints, they cast the footprints and everything else of that nature. And there was a print on the on the door frame, post or whatever you would want to call it, and they left that there because the critter had his hands in the dirt somewhere on the line and left a dirty mark on the door. And that marked from heel to the tip of the fingers was eleven and a
half inches. That's that's that's a big span. And anyway, Bob finally got his wits about him, but he couldn't hold a cup of coffee, they said, for about half an hour. He was just shaken so bad. And it happened fast enough for button Anchie himself. But they didn't know what to think about it. They know at that time. I doubt if there's very very few people who were
versed in anything as it regards to big pot. But in any event, the sheriff came out, they cast the prints and that type of thing, and was apparently had been raining. That's February and on the seaquelst like that. It didn't have to rain very much to to dampen things up because the snow and not the snow, but the ocean currents are bringing it in all the time, especially that time of year. But most of the casting didn't The footprints didn't last all that long, and they
weren't thinking in terms of keeping. It was the Sheriff's department and wanted the cast, so they did that, took the took the report and and all that, this, that and the other thing, and they finally got settled down
and back to a normal routine. And within two weeks they noticed and this goes on where other other parts of the story are not told, but within a couple of weeks they had other incident there where where Bud would go out to the chicken coop and they kept a bag of a big bag of dog food there and they kept the chickens, of course, and the chicken feed, and a two by four rail along the inside wall.
They had a egg carton and when the egg carton they would put the eggs in there every day or every other day, and when the egg carton got filled up or closal full, they'd bring it in the house and put a new fresh carton out there. Well, they he'd gone out there and fed the dog one day and there was half a dozen eggs in there, and he left him. The next morning when he went out to do it again, there were no eggs, and it was it was clean. In other words, there was no
broken shells, nothing of that sort at all. It was just they were just gone, disappeared. Well, at the same time, he had a large forty to fifty pound bag of dog pud there and it went from almost full down to about half full overnight, and that type of thing. So they it occurred to and there was no mess. You know, if the bear were to have gotten in that or something of that nature, it would have been a mess, and just how those animals are anyway, But
this was gone. And then they realized that mister Bigfoot was coming back from time to time and helping himself, and they just decided when and she would be alone for two or three days at her time, Angie. So they decided that that was not a good place for them, and they and they moved and so that that left that out. In the meantime, mister edwards from Ashland, Oregon, which is north from there, of course, and he had heard about this. And I don't know how how he
actually had heard about it. I'm still kind of up in the air on that one, but that he was a an art professor of sorts, and he got wind of it, and and and very he was very interested in all things big. But and he came down and drew h drew up a sketch of what where the animal would have set and where this that and the other thing. And he traced the literal tracing of the handprint on the on the door sill or the post, one of the two right in there, and uh, and
measured it and all that kind of stuff. And I would love to get my hands on that, on that print, but Cliff Barrickman has I don't think he's got the original by mistake, and he may have. I have seen I've seen a print down there, but I don't know that it's the original or if it was just a drawing off a drawing. So but in any event, uh, and then and then a person, a normal person's hand was overlaid on the print, so they can get a good comparison. Very interesting, Okay, very interesting.
So that this makes yeah, because I was like, man, I've heard I've heard this somewhere, so that makes sense. So it may be called out in the NABC museum, you're saying, but I also found this was in the news. This is a pretty big deal. I was in the Madeira Tribune, and I'll have the link to that article in the show notes for this episode. And I've been reading the article along while you've been telling the story, and I mean, yeah, they they pretty much got what
happened in that article. Yeah, it's just it's a fascinating story. And I'm not surprised that that puts you down the road to more Bigfoot for sure.
Oh yeah, Well, at the time, we lived in Federal Way, Washington, which is it wasn't much of a community between Seattle
and Tacoma and bud Nanjie had their daughter. My aunt lived up in that area, des Moines, and they came up to see her within a day or two and shared the story with their daughter, and at the same time it was intriguing enough for to them obviously that they came over to our home in Fedderway and we all sat there and I think I was sixteen or seventeen at the time, and to be sixteen or seventeen again anyway at the time, and they shared the story and there was no equivocating it was. It was what
it was. It was. It was an honest portrayal of the events of that night and court, which is interesting to me because I started out on the positive. I never had a negative thought about whether it was or wasn't. My aunt's fokes came up, they explained what was going on, the whole story. They later all out there and there was no place it out. I mean, it was there.
It was what it was. And I know that there's people that they'll get all excited and say, well, it's just a hoax or something different, or who knows what, and okay, God bless them, they can believe what they want to believe. But I know these folks well up until they're passing, well enough to know that they weren't playing games with this event, and so that adds a little predility credulity to what I understand. And like I said,
I started out positive. I never doubted the fact from that point on because I'd never heard about it before that there was such a critter and he was real, and that he was out there. Now, there wasn't a lot of mubviously, at least so far as we were concerned. But at least I started on the positive and not on the negative side of that. So that's been a help for me as I go along. I can disregard any number of accounts over the years that I've heard and that are over dramatic. You can just kind of
tell that things have been added and everything. And I'm not picking on other people, that's their business. But my dad and I used to hunt together a lot, and when we hunt, when we were hunting, if it was if the animal was such and such, we didn't embellish that it was such and such, it was so tall, so big, this that and the other thing. And we had elected a long long time ago just to tell
the truth exactly way it was. And that's how we were quite frankly, that's how I lived my own life now, and so I don't have to I don't have to apologize. Somebody says, well, that's not right, this is this is how it was. That's not the.
Case, right, you know how it is?
Yeah? Absolutely, yeah, And you have a sense of being able to read right through other things. But anyway, go ahead.
So Jack, you're you're around sixteen seventeen at this time, and it really affects you. Did it affect you in the way where you started to go out looking for yourself or you just started noticing more and more people telling their bigfoot stories.
Well, yeah, well there wasn't a lot of big foot stories out there. It wasn't there was. I was not in a physical position, you know, lived close to the woods or something like that, or had that type of thing. Matter of fact, anytime I would relay that story, and I was in high school, of course I would relate that story. They would do to me the same thing
they're doing to any number of books today. They figure it was just all cow squeezings, you know, nothing, nothing real, and so you can only get to go so far with that, and you and you stop talking about it because it doesn't do any good. And I think that most of us realize you're in the big Foot community. That that's which has happened across the board. There's been so many situations that people get tired of being called liars or hoaxers or any number of other things, or
maybe insane. I might get that anyway, insane, So we just clam up. Well, here I am in high school and working my way through there, and I'm chasing girls just like every other red blooded American boy and going through the motions there. And so I just put it on the back burner for a while, and time to time a story would come up and I would I would read about it, think about it, but they're pretty thin out there. I have wondered about other situations there
as far as big Foot was concerned. Let me get into it this way. Jerry Cruz was was the bulldozer operator in California up on the I think it was in the Bluff Creek area, and that's where he first found the footprint, Like I mentioned before, and and and uh what's his name? Andrew Giaroli kind of uh uh designed around it as verbiage. There a big thoat and it just kind of snowball from there. As as a name.
I'm wondering if h Roger Patterson, of the of that fame, if he didn't come in contact with somebody or heard about or something the connection between my relatives and Bigfoot, and if you followed it up on that, because I know it was keenly interested in anything big butt, but I don't know if that was. Excuse me that my our episode in sixty two had anything to do with his interest in sixty seven. So that and of course they're all dead now, well.
Except for Bob came on.
But yeah, Roger Patterson passed away pretty early.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, he had other other things going. But anyway, so you get the idea that, well, I've always been curious about it, and I wish somebody was around where I could talk to him, say where did you come up with this? Right, and would be able to fill in those blanks, But they'll never be filled so far as I know. But anyway, and that's is what it is,
what it is. So anyway, so nineteen fifty eight and nineteen sixty two was our my family's incident with that particular critter, and they never talked about it after that, although my near aunt her Angie's daughter and I were well, she was eleven years older than I was at the time, and her and my uncle Hawley, they would talk about this, they get together, but they never went outside the family. They kept it kind of in the family area. And even up to her death, her just a year or
so ago, they never never equivocated at all. It is what it is, and they talked about it, and there's a certain amount of family pride, you might say, in the fact that it even happened to them or with them anyway. So with that, they come up five years later, nineteen sixty seven as a Bob Gimblin Roger Patterson event Creek thing and the film and all that kind of stuff. Well, in nineteen sixty seven, I had just got home from Vietnam, Okay,
and I'm kind of unwinding my mind. From that time on, did a lot of hunting, did a lot of climbing in the hills. Still Bigfoot was not on my agenda. Actually, it was just hunting and fishing and all that kind of stuff. And I was out of the service by the way. I came home and that was it. And then at the same time I started dating this crazy lady that I'm married. We've been together now fifty seven years.
So anyway, so my interests, I don't know if you can follow that, but my interest was off in one in another direction, and I can't remember where it was. That all along I would catch a news paper article or some glimpse of something that was going on in the big fifth community, and they were kind of uh tight, you might say, they weren't out there just spreading the news, and even if they did, nobody would believe anyway most
of the time. So that was all of that. But then I started reading by Green and Steenbergh, Cramps, vnder Nagel, all those people. I started absorbing the books that they had out, and their and their newspaper articles. All of that started to backfill what what I already knew a little bit. And and then as I went along then I would hear other stories, other situations that would kind of buoy up my my area of understanding or lack
of excuse me, and all of that. So and so the last I'd say, ten to fifteen years now again I'm I'm almost what I think I got some big foot bur in my throat the last fifteen years or so, the interesting Bigfoot has bossomed and gone. That's gone kind of wild. Quite frankly, I wonder about some of that, well, where it's coming from, and who's filling in some gaps.
And I have heard of, like you have heard of these incidences from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific and the Gulf and the Canadian border beyond, and now they're starting to you hear it all over the place, and you see very reputable incidences in situations, some not so reputable, I'm sure, but that type of thing. And I'm hearing all about this, and I'm reading all about it, and as we go along here, I'm filling in the gaps. There was the other gentleman we don't talk about very much,
mostly because he's passed away as well. It's Harry Truman of Mount Saint Helen's fame.
And can we make a quick just real quick, because it's going to confuse some people that don't know what we're talking about. Not the president, right, no, no, no, no, not the president.
Harry Truman was a name that this gentleman had and he was a character. Yeah, I'm sorry, yeah, I think quite frankly, he had a number of notables come up to his Spirit Lake Lodge. But whether the president himself ever made it, I don't know. But Harry Truman was a different It was a person of a different, different sort lately and many once. And he the visual of who he was matched the the the rumors of who he was as well. He's one of those two guys
get one would overlay the other very nicely. We grew up. My wife and I and the kids. We'd drew book to Spirit Lake one time and he he was outside, we're talking, man. He would he gruff, Oh my goodness. He'd almost stare you down. What are you doing here? Kind of a thing? I said, well, is this Spare Lake? Yes it is, you know. And he would go through those that kind of thing until you said, if you got a little store up here, we could buy some ice cream or something. He melt, oh yeah, I could.
He wanted to. He wanted the money to come through. But there's a book. I think it's called Harry. I'd have to look up the name of the book again. Tell us about that. And his his experience is with Bigfoot, and he had them, but he wouldn't. He didn't put him out there too much, except for a few people that he trusted, and Harry was all forever in the back country, take his horses and they'd go for a couple of weeks and be gone, and he would take
outsiders with him. They're paying the bill, so he would. He would go with them and different things. And from time to time you'd hear him or you'd hear about him mentioning Bigfoot, the big Harry guy, whatever you want to call him. As far as I'm out saying, Helen's and everything, and he never had any that I'm aware of, anything negative to pass along. I think we've created our own negativity when it comes to Bigfoot in the main, I don't you take eight foot twelve, six hundred pounds animal.
And if he wanted to be violent toward us all the time or as a normal thing, we would have to wage war. There'd be no way around it. But it's only when we put them in in some strange positions they want to protect your family or they don't want us in a particular area, that I think that they expose themselves to us in such a way that the design is that we will leave. And those places are getting smaller and smaller and harder and harder. We're putting the pressure on them, not vice versa.
Oh, I agree one hundred percent.
I do want to go back to mister Truman for a minute, just to chat a little bit about that. So a lot of people know about Harry Truman. They'll probably have heard about him because he didn't leave his home leading up to the Mount Saint Helens eruption on May eighteen, nineteen eighty and he was actually unfortunately the pyroclastic flow overtook his lodge and he was buried and lost his life.
Correct yep, yep, six hundred feet deep they say.
That, and his cats right absolutely.
When he he I think I think psychologically, of course, he loved the mountain and where he lived. The mountain protected him from outside sources, outside situations. He had had a I don't want to call it a checkered pass. That's not fair for me to say that. But he was involved with all kinds of different things that you and I would say, wow, I can't do that, But that's what he did. And he was a matter of survival and he kind of you might say, he wrapped
the mountain or on him. When you thought about Mount Saint Helens, it was Harry Crewman when he was a character to finish that story, by the way, after we talked to him a little bit and everything else like that. I'm still I was younger. That's forty five years ago, or actually more than that, forty by six seven years ago, when I was there before the mountain picked its stets up and that type of thing. And we were just up on a on a trip out there, poking around
and see what we could see. My wife and I have a hobby. We turned the wheels on that car. We're gone all the time. We poked down down logging roads, up in corners, everywhere we can go. We dated that way for Pete's sakes, Let's go for a drive. And we would do that and not come back till late at night, and wherever we went, and that was our that was how we did think. So when we had our kids, we would just put him in the car when they were young, of course, and off we'd go.
And we got up to the lake there and everything, and I asked, Harry, I says, I says, is there a way for me to go from here back to Randall without going on the main road. He looked at me with a twinkle in his eye, says, just keep going down that road right over there. And I thought at the time, I don't recall it, there's a road right over there, but sure not, there was. It was a it was a logging grade where they you know, they scalped out a bit of a road, and I thought.
We got down in there for a few miles, and I told myself that Grascow has got me so turned around, I'll never get out of here. I was, and he did. That was a wark for him. But I told him I found it. I found a grade down through there, and you kept going and I dropped down the one and I mean over to another, and pretty soon I did make it to Randle, and that was forty five miles away. I made it down through there, down the Ryan Lake. I don't know if you ever heard of Ryan Lake.
It's it's a bit famous itself. But anyway, all the way down I made out of there. But I didn't go back for a second shot at it, I'll tell you that. And we had little dots in two ten and they're low, and I was a prod to debt. I'd get down here and get all hung up and couldn't get out. And that made me a little bit nervous. I have a family, you.
Know, absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah, you've got the kids with you.
Yeah, absolutely yeah. And anyway, that was interesting and I at the time, I consider him not a friend, right, Yeah, after the fact, I decided, you know, he's passed away, and my guns be by guns. And he did what he wanted to do, and and uh, you know I considered a treasure, yes, and dealings with him at all.
So it's so cool to be able to think of, you know, having a connection with an individual like that from us kind of full history. Do you remember any of those Bigfoot stories that Harry would would talk about, No.
I don't. His his daughter, well, it was his stepdaughter that wrote up the book. It's called Harry Kerry Truman or something. It's easy to find, all right, and she wrote about it, but I don't. And and she spent summers out at Spirit Lake and everything else like that. It was. That's an intriguing book all by itself, but I don't think she wanted to get too deep into that part of it. First of all, I'm not sure certain that she knew. I'm reasonably sure she didn't know
the nuance of the things that Harry went through. But he did have he did have clients literally, clients come up and go hunting, clients come up and do this, that and the other thing. And the Bigfoot was mentioned in it from time to time. So it's not a it wasn't a secret. It was just kind of kept on the low, you know what I mean. And it didn't push that issue, and she didn't know enough to go too deep into it either.
Right, absolutely, Yeah, the critter.
Was there and he never he never once that I'm aware of, at least in the writings and in the people around them, discounted that at all. It was it was a real thing. Yeah.
Mount Saint Helen's is such an interesting thing when it comes to bigfoot because the whole area is totally wild with Bigfoot accounts and interactions. You always have it brought up though, how after the mountain blew, you know, you have these stories about like, oh, they were the Bigfoot, were found hurt and they came for help and they were helicopters off. But you can never talk to the people that actually have the reports, right, you know what I mean.
Well, I have a theory on that that is my life is as good as the next guys. But it's a theory. First of all, I was around people who went in on the helicopters to pick up people, okay, and after the right after the Mountain Blue, and which was quite an event in itself, But they they went around out uh what do you call it? The helicopters went around. They were looking for survivors. They were looking
for this, that and the other thing. And there were animals that they would get and pile and everything else like that. And the story goes, and I have no reason to doubt it, and I'll tell you why in a minute. But the story goes that there was a guy or two that was told to guard a particular I don't know if there's a whole pile of them or a number of whatever it was. They had a tarp over at the top of it and they say, don't ever say anything to anybody. This will cost you
if you do. And that was one of the that was one of the more interesting things, what I And so after the fact, nobody would say anything until now, all these years later, the the find points of that particular story kind of get washed away, and you're not sure which way to go with it. Personally, I believe every john and tittle of that particular story because I heard it when it was fresh and and remember those
kind of things. At the same time, they when they were whatever it was was underneath that canvas, was was they were, They were bigfoot period, end of the subject. But they were also picked up and they were brought to somewhere over to eastern Washington somewhere, and I believe it was they didn't want those carcasses laying around out there for people to get and get the idea, even having a casual understanding, the big Book might actually be real.
So all of that, all of that gets into that matrix of thought process and everything else like that there's there today as we sit here and talk. There are any number of people who will swear that, first of all, there's no big flight. That's their business. I don't care what they think. But there's also a body of thought that there's been no carcasses ever, nothing, none of them ever been killed, none of them ever been had their hands on Well, I happen to know of just by reading.
I happen to know of anywhere from four to six different accounts where where people have killed them, or they have been killed from other purposes and and had their hands on the carcass. Well, it's pretty hard. It's pretty hard to discredit that if in fact, you've had your hand on the carcass, if you've actually been there and seen it and touched it, moved body parts around, it's pretty hard to discount that. I think. I think, when it comes to truth, the arbiture of truth is not
our government, and I don't want to. I love my country, I love the patriot but I think I think they oftentimes go off in directions that they would be far better off just to say, yeah, we we we located six of these or whatever a big foot that were killed during the blash at Mount Saint Helens, or this guy run over to one with the truck and all that kind. Why don't they just be on us transport transparent? What is the game? You know? And I've got theories on that too, but I believe it all it is.
I don't want to. I don't want to go down trails that I can't I can't back up. It really drives me nuts. Jack.
You mentioned that you've heard a few stories about bigfoot that have been killed and the person has actually had the hand on the creature. Are those stories that you'd be able to share it all.
Or a little bit? A little bit on The one that fascinates me the most is some young guy and it was not it was I don't know if it was Green's book or Krantz or who but the or maybe it was just an article. I can't remember that part with apologies to your listeners, but this I do remember. Well, there's two one of Daniel Boone for beeat's sakes, but and I'll get into that in a minute real quick. Like what the other is a young lady in Canada that would shoot a moose occasionally and give it to
a native village. Think it was his excuse to go poach. That's my that's my reading of what was going somewhere. I don't think he'd appreciate the count saying that. But one time he shot a moose and the moose took off and he didn't get it on the first shot, and that type of thing. So anyway, so he tracked it down. He's falling the blood trail, going through the motions and he gets up. He's wandering through and he looks up in front of him, and there's a moves
and it looks like he hasn't got down yet. So he pulled the trigger on it one more time and down it went and that was the end of that. He walks up on it. It wasn't a moose. It was a bigfoot on the mooseh and he it kind of overwhelmed obviously would overwhelm you a little. But he he looked over every part of that animal. He looked at the feet, he looked at the hands, he looked
at the head. He pushed things around. It was it was dead as a mackerel, and he wanted to know more about it, but he had second thoughts about telling anybody about that until years later, of course. And but anyway, because he didn't want to get in trouble. He's after poach and you're not going to go through those motions. And I tell myself a thousand times over it. Yeah,
this guy made a big mistake. Yeah. So yeah, So you think about that and just the fact that you could walk up on one uh uh some and put your hands on the carcass itself and tell yourself, this is what the story the native stories are all about. This is this is the critter we've been hearing about talking about. You know, I'm here, I have I've killed it, and I'm you know, I'm not I'm not condoning or
condemning either way. It was it was happening, and I think that fantastic, just just a shame, you know, those things happen. There's a there's another one at a miner's camp that they actually took a picture of it. Everybody says, now, that's this, that's the other thing. They're not such and such.
But they actually had a cameraman came and this is an eighteen I'm an hazard I guess in the middle to the late eighteen hundreds, okay, and the guy came out through this when the photography was in its infancy. But the owner of the mining camp had the guy come out. Apparently the bigfoot had been fishing on the on the river system that was close to the camp and he got killed. They shot it apparently. And you know these right now, these are all foggy kind of stories.
You really can't put your hand your head around, and it just drives me nuts. But anyway, they actually took a number of pictures and they had the guy that guys snuck one of the pictures out after the fact, and he wasn't supposed to take it, but he had it out and it was it was printed up, and of course everybody says, no, that's just it's just a bunch of garbage. That's a bear, that's nothing, this, that
and the other thing. So it leaves it up to it leaves it up to those of us who are a little more discerning to say, you know, a bear wouldn't look like that bear. This isn't right, that isn't right, whatever the case is. So it has to be something different. And the only only thing different that would fit the the matrix of what you're looking at is a big fight. So anyway, that's that kind of thing. And of course you can look at the Daniel Boone thing, which I
thought was extremely fascinating. That's another another issue. And had the Daniel Boone himself I've been here, he would have lost his son because that big slam.
Absolutely, yeah, that's a classic story.
Yeah, it is a class And why would he lie about something like that? If he didn't lie about other things, why would he lie about this? You know? And that wasn't Apparently that wasn't the character of the man to begin with. That wasn't his way of doing business. So uh, you know, he drives me nuts. So anyway, anyway, anyway, Uh,
let's see. You know, like I say, I've been collecting stories forever and pretty I like to think I'm fairly discerning when I talk to people about their incidence, and I kind of catch them off guard a lot of times, and I don't think it rings true. And you have a sense that I don't dismiss the person or the story out of the hand, but I just don't pass it along and keep it to myself. And they've be done with it. But let's see, where do you want to go?
Well, I got a question for you here. So you had mentioned that, you know, you've heard so many things over the years, and as you said a few times, you know, some of them don't really come up to snuff. But some of them you're like, Okay, this feels legit. Are there any that really stick out in your mind that you're like, Wow, this account, there's something about this account that is one good to go.
Yeah, I'll give you one. I'll give you one. I've got a friend whose son and the son is now. I got to be close to fifty anyway, and he and his partner hunting partner. If you if you take a map of the park, we call it the park, it's Mountain International Park. What part of the country you're from, by.
Jeremia, I'm from Central Iowa.
I've been out to Oregon a few times, and I know exactly what you're talking about when you say right here, yeah.
Okay, okay, I wanted to put it in perspective. But if you take them if you took the map of the Mountain International Park and you drew a line from the north west corner to the southwest corner, there is that is all timberland, just on the edge of the park, and so the park itself becomes a sanctuary for anything that's in and around it, Okay, outside of outside of in the timberlands there. I used to hunt that a lot when I was a kid, and that's been a
thousand years ago. When I was a kid, one hundred that was eight thousands and thousands and thousands of acres And for the most part, you walked in, you didn't get the ride. You didn't get to ride in in a truck. For a few years you did and then they close that off. But anyways, so it was itself a sanctuary for these animals. And during the elk seed, during and elk season that the lumberunt timber cunt companies rather wouldn't let people go in there on anything with wheels.
You had to walk, and they didn't want you overnight. Well, now that's very limiting. There's just one patch of ground one hundred and thirty thousand acres. You're not going to cover much of that on foot in the course of one day and didn't have to be back out again. So that was what was going on. And there was an area there close to the park about mid stream on that map north and south that the Mawich River, the pew all Up River, and in between them the
Russian Water. It came off the glacier. I don't know what they called it a river or a creek, but it was a pretty good go and it came out through a flat and and that's where the elk would hang out, the deer would hang out, and during that time of that type of year or time of year either and we would we would start at three in the morning and walk in or hunt like pools and didn't come out in the dark every time. I almost
lost my life going through those motions once. But anyway, and in doing that, some of the guys would pack in a light, tense and sleeping bag and a little bit of food and they would they would make a night of it, and they weren't supposed to, but it did anyway. And this, uh, this one gentleman who whom I know very well because I've known his I know I've known his dad for Oh I write at fifty years that fact, it might be fifty years, come think
of it. Anyway, they were in there and there's the ground cover in that particular area is waist high or better. And this large flat had algers in it and whatnot, and you could see pretty good through there. But at that in the evening, when this gentleman went out, he said, I'm going to go out and take a look around.
I don't think the season was actually open until the next morning, but he wanted to go take a look around and see if the elk were in the area, what was going on and this, that and the other thing. So he took awful and left his partner back at what they would call their campsite, and he's walking up this trail through there. We used to call it the water spur because when the old railroads logging railroads ran up through there, they had to get water for their
for the engines and whatnot. When that was done right there anyway, But it's all grown up. So he's walking along and the ground fog was such that it's hard to see, and in the evening and and everything else like that. So he's poking around, not paying a lot of attention to anything other than elk that, looking for elk rather, and he's looking down, he's looking for tracks
of this, that and the other thing. He looks up and about seventy five yards away here is bigfoot standing here, both just a bowld as a sunrise and with I think both of them were a little bit surprised. But the big foot never never moved a muscle and looked right at him. And this gentleman he put raised the rifle, put the crosshairs right on the head, and he he could have shot. It would have been easy enough, and it was a three hundred Winchester, so it would have
went down like a like a sack of crap. Quite frankly, but anyway, he he looked at it, and he says, it was just too too human too. It was out of his range of thought, and and he didn't know what to think. So so he lowered his rifle and he turned around to leave, and he made a few steps, and and then he said to himself, this is stupid turning my back on this thing. And he turned and it was all of the eight foot tall variety, which is pretty common. Anyway, he turned around and it was
not there, and it had just disappeared. And I don't I don't believe, and I let other people have their thoughts. I don't believe that they just disappear in that context. They'll drop down, they'll step behind a stamp, they'll, depending on where that they can, do all kinds of things to not be seen. And they moved fast enough that in the few steps that this other other guy made to get away, if big Butt had made that corresponding steps in the other direction, other direction, left or right,
you wouldn't have seen him either. I mean, I've I've stood right there and watched bull out practically disappear in the same in the same situation, and deer and bear and everything else I've I've hunted the deer bear come out and got all of them, and I'm very familiar with what they are capable of doing. And they will shut it will surprise you, absolutely surprise you to know what they what they could do. Anybody's hunting, any any kind of hunting at all for very long, will come
up with situations. Yet, uh, they they have to. They don't know what to think. You know, we didn't just disappeared to daperize. You know, he's took three steps in one trink or roup down in a hole. Now, there's other all kinds of stories out there where these critters are dropped down into a hole completely and you did see them at all, but it wasn't because it disappeared, because it went out of site. And there's there's a whole different genre. I thought on that one as well.
Oh sure, that's a whole a whole different chat you could have. Can they camouflage? Can they just drop down a hole like you said, I mean you can go there. A lot of stories have a lot of different ways of looking at it. For sure that that's a wild account of that happening. And Mountaineer National Park, So have you heard.
Of the International Park is full of that type of thing. Oh absolutely, not just that one, all of it in the park, outside of the park, around the park, around the eastern side of it, it's more open, but there's as many or more sightings over there as there is anywhere else. And it just happens to be that it's more of a sanctuary because the park has no spiritual
thing going on. It just it's left alone. With the exception of I don't know how many millions of people literally drive in and out of the park, but they stay right on the road. They don't go very far. There's a handful of people that are actually better than that. They go up and down trails. But even those places, there's any number of places that are just still wilderness.
You can get lost on a city park area or a square block and some of that kind of stuff where you know, you never know anyway.
Have you heard anything that's happened on the west side of the park over by Ashford, Washington, Well.
That's part of this. Ashford is very rich. The busy wild is runs. There's a creek and a road system that runs right up to Ashford going that'd be west to east and then the Mineral and Ashford Mineral, Ashford and LB are all kind of a triplex in that same area within a eight to ten mile air circle. Okay, and there's forever stories about about those. I don't have to I have to, well, I knew a gall that
was graduated two years ahead of me. Both my wife and I graduated from Federalay High School right after we got off the arc. I think sixty you get the idea sixty four, sixty four and sixty six. But anyway, and she I think she got she graduated sixty two. She had a little home, had a little home business there right in the Ashford area, right on the highway. And I think it was her or a neighbor friend of hers that they were actually habituating Bigfoot for a while,
So that that's an ongoing thing. Mineral, the next town over, they've they've seen those any number of times. I've not actually talk to anybody's that was close enough to an actual account there that that I can fill in details other than they're forever saying, well, I've got a friend that's you know, the next town over would be south would be Morton. You've heard of Morton. I would assume.
Oh yeah, because that the Highway twelfth quarter, you know, I mean that's their story upon.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, anyway, my buddy's got thirty some acres up what we call Summit Creek right at the top there, and he's there from time to time he goes. He uses it for firewood and camping what but he doesn't live there because snows too deep in there in the winter and kind of and it's kind
of isolated a little bit. But anyway, they've had a right on the edge of his property across the road, then right down into it a place they called storm Cane Mountain on the other side, and that's and that's not terribly common, but it certainly isn't income uncommon. Rather, they're in there. All of that country is tied to all of the rest of the country. There, there's the fingers of that. Very few places that are other than town itself wouldn't support a big put And then you
go to board. Now this next not this weekend, but the following weekend, we're having a big foot round you kind of a thing squatch watch, I think they call it. And out of Brandle and I'll be a speaker there and so this is a good tune up for that. Anyway, I'll be speaker there along with Sarah and John and course and a whole bunch of those guys from that area. But right right, I know of I counted it up the other day, fifteen or sixteen different accounts from there.
For on the west side, west end of that Highway twelve up to up to the start of the pass is less than forty miles, and I've kind of a fifteen or sixteen different accounts that I'm aware of in that area. Anywhere you go, once you start, once you crack that nut, you find that there's all kinds of stuff going on.
Oh absolutely, I mean, and the Browns have a fantastic documentary about Highway twelve. I know you're in that one as well, right, yeah, yeah, it's great.
Yeah, I'm the ugly guy with the mustard colored coat anyway, and I take my take my ugliness with a certain amount of pride. I mean, I'm eighty years old. Where to get it worked hard for that?
There you go, Jack, I've got one more question for you, and thank you so much for spending so much time with us today. I hear a lot about from the Packwood area. Is that really as active as people will say?
Do you think?
Or more so? Wow? Well that we for twenty one years. My wife and I went, like I say, we're always out and we bought a piece of property three miles west of Packwood and so we lived there. We built an off grade home buyers in an isolated place on Forest Road twenty Do you ever get up that direction? It's it's not the home today that it wasn't when we built it. You know, people don't take care of
things the same. But anyway, and that the world we lived on them At thirteen miles, I'll give you this story. We were at thirteen miles to the top, and the top is at Jackpot Lake is forty five hundred feet. There's a lake up there, same level as as White Pass, and it's up and down at rugged country. I had been in there and I hunted in there. I was a bow hunter for thirty years and we hunted all of that country all the time. Did we ever see that big clip? No? Was I ever run out of
the country, because I think there was one. Absolutely, there's places within I just walk from my home and I'd be up on a ridge line and going hunting in there, and something would stop. I've never been stopped by a bear or a cougar. Those things don't bother me. I just keep it going. But something stopped me a couple
of times on that one. And then farther up on the ridge, my wife and I both were on a trail that we it was common to us, and we got part of the way up there, and we looked at each other and said, we don't belong here, and we left. And but the next time up we can go right on through up at the lake when there's a pot whole lake called jackpot at the very top I was telling you about. I had my canoe out there back when I could use it. Don't get old if you can help it. And if you do get old,
stay young with it, will you? Anyway? The eppshot is I'm on the leg. There was not a sound, There's not a puff of wind. There was not a bug or a bird or nothing. And I'm trying to fish, and I'm a fly fisherman, and I'm thinking this, you know, this is this spooky Today It was getting towards the evening, and I like the evening fishing anyway, And all of a sudden, for no reason, this tree, and I don't know how big it was, but I figured it had to be six eight ten inches diameter anyway to make
that kind of noise when it fell. And we're in the tall timber. We're in a patch of timber that is pristine. And so I thought to myself, so why don't you take your canoe up to the other end of the lake where you can see what happened. So I'm paddling along. I get right up there to the shore, and I'm looking up to the timber up there, and it was reasonably clear. There was no wind. There was no reason for that tree to just up and fall over dead, And and I had that saying you don't
belong here feeling. I turned the canoe and I went home. That happened and another story that here and this this is as true as the gospel, and it reminds me, well, anyway, uh, this this gentleman who hunted all the hills around there, I ended his physical prowess. He was able to do what he wanted to do and go where he wanted to do. Some of those things I could do at the time went not near like he could do anyway.
He was up beyond the lake, and the only way to get out is to come back down the same road he went in thirteen miles long, and he came up to a place and out in front, he's coming back. He's trying to come back and looks in the road in front, and there's a big foot stand right in a road. And he was maybe seventy five eighty yards who knows, I don't know what it was close enough
that he could see everything he needed to see. And the animal was just standing there, bellering, just he had something in his hand and he would go back and forth, and he's like, I don't think he would be beating on his chest, but he was irritated and yelling and screaming and everything. It scared this guy so bad. He didn't know whether he's going to get either or not,
just sitting there in the car. And so after a while, I think the big puts kind of settled down a little bit and realized that he was in the road and he didn't want to be there. And the animals carrying something apart, okay, And when he was done it was he left it on the ground. It went over the bank, the animal went over the bank, down through the steaming, down through the timber and everything. And so finally the guy says, I got to go home. The only way go home s keep going. So he drove up.
He stopped right there where the animal had crossed the road because he wanted. He opened the door enough to look down to see what what what the animal had in his hand, And it happened to be a feminine napkin. And for some reason that well, I think I think we guess the reason. But it had enraged him or drove him nuts of some sort, and he went crazy on there. But the guy that then he finally he finally got out of there, went home, and talking to him later, he says, that's one place I will never
go again. I'm not hunting there. And he'd hunter all the country and you wouldn't. He would not go. He wouldn't take a chance. My thinking on that, too, though, is where can you go that you're not going to run into eventually run into something like that. I don't deal with that. I just I would go ahead and go, but I would keep my head on a swivel. I know that, you know, and not because and not because I think that you're inherently dangerous. They are, respect in
one respect, they're huge. You talk about eight an eight foot something that weighs six hundred pounds and then literally tear your head off. Well if if that was what they wanted to do. But all that I think, all they really want to do is, you know, make a little space, leave me alone. And I look at it
from that perspective. I have been in so many places even as we're talking, and different situations are coming up in my mind that I've talked to people about places and and uh and then and then you have people that have had those experiences, and they won't they won't go beyond the fact that I'm pretty sure I saw one and that's where they stopped. They won't into the details because there's too many people out there ready to pick apart their their story and none of us like that.
I finally, I just get numbed over to it. I figure, he does the picture. You's got to be a big foot, all the clear ones dark.
There you go especially today with Yeah, I get it, I get Jack, What what a conversation? I mean, You've got a lifetime of listening to people share their encounters and thank you for sharing some of those today and uh, you know, stuff that is very interesting from one side of the Washington to the other. And thank you for coming on the show. I hope you're uh randall goes well for you. That's coming up in a few weeks the uh, I believe.
It's weekend, two weeks too week.
Yep Sasquatch beyond the footprint And if if this is out afterwards, people need to make sure they go next year too, because it's I mean, it's going to be a great festival from what it looks like, a lot of good people there.
But yeah, yeah, but I think so we're looking we're looking forward to there will be near enough time to share all the stories.
Oh yeah absolutely, yea, but yeah, Jack, thank you so much for coming on the show.
And we'll have to keep in touch. Thank you.
Yeah, don't believe yet or you'll sign yourself off. Whatever you need to do. I need to get your phone number because I want to call you right back for something else. Can I do that? Oh?
Actually, how about this. I'm going to go ahead and stop the recording and then we'll continue to chat. Okay, Oh, thank you for listening to this episode. Of the Bigfoot Society Podcast. Every encounter we share reminds us that the world is bigger and stranger than we think, and that the truth is often hiding just beyond the tree line. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to subscribe to the channel on YouTube hit the bell so you don't miss the next episode, and share this with a
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