I'll go by the name Eric to tell this story, and I'll go as far as to say that I'm in South Central Kentucky, but that's as far as I'm going. The river where we had our big-foot meeting is a designated wild and scenic stretch, and the last thing it needs is more people out there stomping around looking for big-foot. Here's the run-up of the facts as you asked me for when you emailed me back.
The date was September 30, 2023. Best as I can remember, the big-foot encounter was somewhere around 3.15 to 4 o'clock that afternoon. The weather was clear that day with temperatures in the low 70s. The water was colder, though I don't know about the temperature. It was just me and my friend Tom, which is not his real name either. We were out on a canoe trip. We were in a 16-foot old-town canoe.
We had with us just two paddles, two personal flotation devices, a small dry bag, and because we had planned to stay on the water and do nothing else. We had no fire arms or weapons. I'm going to add that there was no alcohol use or any other kind of use of something that could alter our perception either before the trip or during. We were both stone-cold sober and neither was sleep deprived. We both grew up in this region and we've been friends since we were young boys.
We paddled both white water and flat water since those boyhood days. We learned together from our families and traveling with each other's families. We've kind of been through it all together, fishing, hunting, canoeing, all the things that were usual for boys in the wild parts of Kentucky growing up. We know bear, hogs, deer, and we've been on trips to hunt out Weston in the south.
We've been up against elk, moose, mule deer, and even once, I helped a guy I knew from back in my Marine Corps days, hunt down a problem alligator in the Achifalaya swamp in Louisiana. He was and is a parish deputy down there. I really learned a lot from him. All I'm saying is I'm pretty familiar with the regular wildlife throughout Kentucky and much farther afield, so I have no possibility of this being mistaken identity. Now I'll get on with telling you what happened.
This river is mostly easy current with some class one and two shoals. The only section people warn you about is a tight, right hand bend with a log jam that changes from year to year. Now we had seen the warnings about this particular stretch. The last report we found online said that you could still sneak past that jam on the inside of the bend if the water level was right. If not, you either had a portage or pick your way through a side shoot, which they called "iffy."
And that's the word they used to describe it, "iffy." We put in around 10.30 that morning and we made good time. We knew what they called dead-fall bend was roughly past mile nine. When we hit mile eight, we really started paying attention. The river narrated a little bit and the bank got steeper, maybe eight to ten feet of dirt and roots straight up from the water with overhanging brush.
About a quarter mile before the bend, we started hearing the sound of faster water and there was wood knocking under pressure. We passed a small gravel bar on the left where you could theoretically take out and scout, but we were both confident that we would find room to maneuver around. That was our first in a series of mistakes of decision making. We rounded a slight left and we saw dead-fall bend straight ahead. The river was turning hard right.
The far bank was stacked with downed trees in a big pile. The main current went right into that mess. On the inside of the bend to our right, there was a narrow channel between a root ball and a wheel of smaller logs barely canew wide. We were already committed to going ahead when we saw the full picture. There wasn't time to pull over and walk around it. Our decision making window was less than five seconds. Inside line, I called up to Tom. Stay right, stay straight.
Tom in the bow said, "Yeah, I see it, and we both dug in with paddles." The current accelerated into the turn, pushing the canoe toward the outer jam while we tried to hold the inside track. For the first bit, everything was fine. The bow went right into the narrow channel, brushing a root mass on the right, and the stern keeping clear the worst of the wood. Then it all went wrong. An underwater branch that we couldn't see caught the downstream gunwheel just as the bow kissed acrosswise log.
The canoe pinned instantly. Turn slightly sideways, bow loft against the log. Stern shoved hard toward the jam by the current. The canoe didn't flip. No, it did something worse. It stayed stuck there as the river kept moving. We were good and truly pinned up in that jam. The bow rode up onto the log about a foot. Tom got thrown forward, caught himself with both hands on the wood. The stern swung down river and slapped against another half-submerged log.
Water pushed around and under us, hitting mid-thigh height on me where I sat. We were now sideways, broadside to the current, jammed between two logs with the river flowing fast under us. "Don't lean downstream," I said out of reflex. Even though there wasn't any little lean that felt safe, if we rolled, we'd go under and into that tangle of logs. And as most of you probably know, that is how people die and what they think are easy rivers. They go under and they get trapped under the wood.
I yelled out to Tom. Stay low. Don't stand up. We're all right for a minute. Well, we weren't all right. But the canoe was holding, at least for the moment. Water was pushing hard enough that I could feel the aluminum flex under my knees. I put my paddle blade down into the current on the upstream side to brace. The current tried to rip it out of my hands. We had maybe six or seven feet of open air to our right toward the inside bank. The left side was all dead fall.
The right bank was a vertical mud wall about as high as my mid-chest when seated in the canoe, with roots and brush hanging over it. We were effectively trapped in a slot between the log jam and the bank. There was no good footing. There was no eddy. I ran the options in my head, climbed forward onto the jam and tried to pull the bow free, which is also how you often get sucked under the water. My second choice was to try to rock the canoe and slide off the submerged branch. Third option?
Climb out on the bank, then try to free the canoe from the land and the logs. We didn't have time for a long debate. The whole flexing noise was getting worse, a low, complaining, constant creek. I told Tom, "I'm going to get out on the right. Stay put. Don't shift unless I say." If we flip, swim hard, downstream and away from the logs. Don't fight the boat. He nodded. I tick a breath, swung my right leg over the gun-wheel, felt for the bottom with my foot.
The water beside us was deeper than it looked. My foot found nothing. I extended out further, halfway out of the canoe, holding onto the gun-wheel with both hands. Finally, my toes touched something. It was mud covering a smooth rock. The water was thigh-deep and it was moving fast and strong. But I was committed. Both legs out. I dropped into the water beside the canoe, thighs instantly numb from the cold water.
The current slammed into my right side, wanting to push me into the boat and then under the log. I locked both hands on the gun-wheel and leaned my weight outward, bracing my left shoulder into the bank to keep from being swept under. That gave me exactly one free moment to realize we were not alone. At my eye level, maybe six or seven feet away, there was a narrow, muddy shelf just above the waterline, a ledge of roots and slick earth between the river and the vertical bank.
I had been staring at the water in the canoe. Now because I had turned my head to plant my shoulder against the dirt, I now had a clear view of that shelf. We were not alone. Something was standing there, partially in the shadow watching us. For a second, my brain refused to work with it and to give it any kind of meaning. It was just a solid, vertical mass where there shouldn't have been anything. But then it shifted.
A bag moved. A knee bent. A bear, dark foot, replanted itself in the mud, toes gripping. Then the rest of it came into my focus. A thick, dark-covered leg. A big, heavy thigh and hip. Then the bulk of a torso above it, that filled most of the space under the brush. I didn't see the body as a whole right away. I saw sections, a hand hanging down near its knee. Fingers spread wide just a little. Another leg set back for balance.
A portion of the chest were the hair-lay and rough streams, all wet and clumped up in places. It was upright. This was not a bear standing on some slope. And it wasn't driftwood, and it sure wasn't some other paddler. This was too massive, too thick front to back, and the proportions were way off to be a human. The knee joint was in the wrong place for that height. The forearm was too long, the elbow in the wrong place. It had been standing there silently as we fought the canoe and the river.
It was standing with the water coming right up to its toes, with both feet firmly in the mud and roots on that little stripper ground between the flowing water and the true vertical bank. When I registered that it was there and that it was looking at us, my grip on the gun whale tightened enough to hurt. "Don't move," I said to Tom. My voice came out quieter than I had meant for it, too.
The thing on the shelf shifted its weight forward of fraction, like it was leaning in to get a better look at us. A small motion brought more of its upper body into the light. The canopy overhead was broken up enough that sunlight filtered in. It wasn't dark under there. It was just lower contrast, but details were visible. From my position in the water, my eyes were almost level with its waist. Towering above me but within what felt like arms reached was a very massive torso.
The hair covering it was a dark brown, almost black when wet. It lay mostly downward, following the shape underneath. It was not uniform, like some kind of fur or cloth. It had subtle waves and minor tangles in it. The chest was broad and thick. When it inhaled, I could see the expansion across the ribs through that hair. The stomach area was not bulging. It was more like a thick and solid column. The shoulders were wider than any person's I've ever met.
The arms hung low, and from this angle I could see the muscle bulge of the upper arm through the hairs it shifted its stance. That was real weight and muscle I saw moving under that hair. I finally made myself look higher up. The way the head was set, I couldn't see a neck. It was like the head was sitting down on the shoulders and the chin was resting on the chest. I had a slight angle from that view, so I was able to see the outline of the skull to the back.
It was rounded and came down with almost no taper. The face had less hair. I could see skin around the eyes, the nose and the mouth. The skin tone looked grayish brown, like old weathered leather. The brow bone was thick and stuck out from the face. It was so big and thick it cast a shadow down over the eyes from the light filtering down from above. I couldn't see eye color just that there were eyes there.
Other than that I could see they were far apart, way more than mine or most people's, and they looked deep set in the head. The nose was broad and flat against the face with wide nostrils. The mouth was closed. The lips were not very distinct. I can't say that I actually saw them. It was more like seeing a wide dimple in the face. At no point did I see any teeth, not that that made me feel any safer. From my eyes up to its face the distance was eight feet at the minimum.
If it had taken just one long step forward and down it would have been right on top of me in the water. I did get a smell from it, but nothing terrible, just a wet and musky odor. Like a dog that just comes in from the rain, you bend down to tell it dry, but you catch it smell. That's what it was like. It made a low sound then, like it was exhaling through its nose in a short burst. It's hard to describe, but it didn't seem like a friendly sound.
Telling me Tom said, "What is that?" He had turned partially in the canoe and now he could see it. "Don't stand up," I said. "Actually, don't move at all." At this point I'd seen enough that I was pretty sure I was looking at a true Kentucky legend. Bigfoot, the original wood booger. There wasn't a single second where I thought, "Oh man, someone's out here pranking me. Good costume." "No, not even once, did I think that.
You ever get that close to one of these, and you will know, and you will have no doubts." Then the bigfoot shifted again, putting its weight more onto the forward leg, flexing the knee. The hand nearest me, opened and closed, tightened slightly. I saw the fingers curl then relax again and again. The river kept pushing against me, pushing me up against the boat. My shoulder burned from bracing. My legs were starting to lose all feeling from the cold.
But all of that had faded into the background for me. The problem before me was really simple. I was in moving water with my hands occupied holding onto the canoe and my body was fully exposed. Some was half straddling the bow on a jammed log, also with nowhere to go. And something very large and strong enough to pick either or both of us up was standing within arm's reach. At least its arm's reach. And it seemed unbothered by the cold water, the current, and it had the high ground.
Unlike most things I run into out in the wild, we didn't matter to it enough for it to run away. And that sort of scared me. If it had crashed away into the brush, I would have just filed it under, "Well, whatever that was, it didn't want human contact." And I'd have let it go with that. But oh no, it held its position and watched us. That suggested either curiosity or a lack of fear. Neither of which is good in something that big.
Eric, Tom said to me quietly, "What do we do?" "Don't splash," I said. "Don't yell. I'm going to try to get us off this log. Just keep your weight low and centered." I really didn't know whether sound or sudden movement would trigger the big foot. I still don't. I simply made a choice based on nothing other than instinct. And that was, to act like we weren't a threat or prey, and to get the canoe free as fast as possible, with little thrashing around.
I shifted my grip on the gunwale, testing how much give there was. The hull creaked. The current shoved harder against my hips. The big foot tipped its head slightly, like it was tracking the sound and was curious. It didn't step forward or backwards. It sort of just stood its ground. Now maybe it was my paranoia, but it seemed like the way it looked at us suddenly intensified.
I kept my eyes mostly on the canoe and the log, but I was using my peripheral vision to track the big foot on the mud shelf. Every time I glanced up, it was still staring right at us. It wasn't looking around us past us or over us. This gaze was on us. I worked the downstream side first, trying to lift and rock the stern, off the underwater branch while the current tried to pin it back there even harder. That movement made the boat shudder. Tom whispered, "It's moving." I looked up quickly.
It had taken a half step along the bank, parallel to the canoe, staying just under the brush line. It was now closer to the center of the boat, directly opposite where Tom was crouched. From this slightly different angle I could see more of its back and shoulder. The hair there had a few lighter streaks, might have been mud or maybe some old scars. Its hand reached out toward the bank wall, finger-spread wide as if it was testing the firmness of the root mat before stepping forward.
It then positioned itself alongside us, but it still kept a certain distance. "I," for the record, was scared, "you know what, Lifts." There was only one way out of this, and that was getting the canoe free, so I went back to work. I worked the stern up and down in tiny increments, using my body weight against the current. My legs were shaking from the extreme cold and the effort. The canoe would shift half an inch, then it would slam right back into the log.
At one point I lost my footing, and I dropped deeper, water hitting just below my shoulders and arm pits. In a panic I sucked in a breath and grabbed the gun wheel with everything I had. The sudden drop in my body height put my head almost level with the water line. I knew I had almost gone down. And that happened. The big foot sort of reacted. It bent its upper body down a little, its knees flexing, and its head angling to follow my movement, yet it got as close as it could to look.
The scale of it from that lower perspective was terrifying. It filled the gap between the bank and the brush completely. There was no space around it. It was so much closer now, and it was terrifying. I got my feet back under me, and forced myself not to lunge away. Really there was nowhere safer for me to go. I don't know exactly how long we stayed pinned like this. Time shrank and yet at the same time threaded out for what felt like hours.
If I had to guess it's something real, I would say it was between five and ten minutes from the first sighting to when the canoe finally broke free. But while it was going on, it really did feel like hours that just never ended. Then there came a second, when the stern lifted just enough that the current got under the hull and spun it. I felt that shift, and I was flooded with relief. I knew we now had a chance. "Now," I said to Tom, "leann up stream slowly." He did. The canoe rocked, groaned.
And then it slid sideways off the downstream log. For a second we were totally loose, sideways to the current, the hull quivering. I shoved with everything I had on the gunwale, pushing the boat stern away from the jam and toward the open water. I half swam, half stumbled, using the current as much as fighting it. The canoe spun downstream, the stern swinging out. I grabbed the side and managed to haul myself up. Chester over the gunwale, legs dragging. I heard Tom's paddle hit the water.
While all of that was happening, I took one last look at the big foot on the bank. As the canoe came clear and started to accelerate, it straightened out to full height. Looking up at its full body was one thing. But looking at it, with a little bit of distance, really made me understand its immense size. From feet planted in the mud to the top of its head, it was significantly taller than I am, and I am six feet even.
I said earlier that when I looked at it, that it was at least eight feet tall, I stand by that, and it might even have a few more inches than just eight feet. It proportions from full view confirmed the height, the wide and muscular body, and that there was no visible neck. It also showed me that the torso was as long as it looked, and the long arms and the legs were not my imagination, nor was the full hair covering it everywhere.
As we spun out into the main flow of the river, I kept looking at the big foot. It didn't come after us or anything. It just stood there, tracking our movement as we floated away. It rotated its body, keeping its eyes on us until we rounded out of the little slot. Then the banks slid past, and it was gone from sight. We shot out of the bend, half sideways, and scrambled to get the canoe straight. Downstream was cleaner. No more major obstructions.
The adrenaline crash hit only once we were in slower water. "Bank," I said to Tom, right side. We paddled to a small gravel bar, grounded the canoe, and we both got out shaking. Between the numbing cold from the water that still had my legs numb, and the adrenaline crash, my legs were truly shaking like wobbly jello, barely keeping me upright. We neither one talked for probably a full minute. We just stood there breathing great gasp in, looking back upstream at the bend that we had come through.
Finally, Tom said, "Are we going to tell someone about this?" I looked at him for a minute, and then I nodded, "Yes." "Now who that would be? I didn't know. I knew nothing about the world of big foot at that moment." We didn't stay there long, maybe two or three minutes, just enough to catch our breath. We were both very aware that it could have followed right along with the canoe, and maybe we didn't even know it. So we had our quick breather, then we finished the run.
It was another three miles to the takeout. Now, I can't swear that the big foot followed us, but there were several times we both were sure. Now something large and dark keeping pace with us just inside the trees. Now maybe it wasn't there, and we were just seeing what we feared the most, and maybe it really was there. I cannot swear to either. At takeout, we loaded the canoe and sat in the truck with the doors closed and locked, and we went over what each of us had seen.
Our descriptions matched in all the important points. It was upright, heavily built, north of eight feet, massively broad shoulders, long arms, long legs, dark brown to almost black hair, two to four inches long, lying mostly flat. The face had a heavy brow, deep set eyes, broad flat nose, and a wide mouth with lips we could not really see. There was no clothing, no gear, and no sign of any other human nearby.
The behavior was calm, controlled, and it was intent on close range observation of us, and kept repositioning along the bank to maintain an angle on us. Nothing about this felt like other encounters that I've had with things in the wild. It didn't run from us at all. In fact it came closer, and it watched us like a kid watching ants on the sidewalk. One person asked if I thought that when it came closer it was going to help us. No, no I did not. I never once thought it was there to help.
I'm not saying it was there to hurt either. It was watching us though with a burning intensity. Like I said, it was just the way kids get really interested when they watch insects. Now if you or your listeners don't believe that this really happened, okay then you can do that. But I'm here to tell you, it did happen. When Tom asked me if we were going to tell someone, I just nodded yes, but really I didn't know. Since then we've both read things all over the internet.
In the end we decided to send it in to you and to a couple other channels. We don't have a need to make it official. We just wanted people to know what happened. We've been listening to the Buckeye Bigfoot podcast. Find more stories, hundreds more, over on our YouTube channel. Just look for Buckeye Bigfoot. [ Silence ]