SO EP:588 A Hunter Shoots Bigfoot!

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out here? Did you see what it was? It was enough out here? Look him do the one down now and I don't need anything. I don't want to go outside. Its fight? Hello, hit the boddy out here? What quin? I'm out there? It's thought of a bitch about text nine. I don't know easy him out there? Yeah, I'm walking right heady.

can count. Well, A man like that trusts his own experience. It's hard not to you think, if something was out here, I'd have seen it. If there was something that big walking these woods, tracks making noise, I would have run across it by now. And maybe you're one of those people. Maybe you've said the same thing. I know I have. I spent the first half of my life believing that, believing that the woods were known territory, that I understood the sounds and the shadows, that if there was something

strange out there, I'd have found it already. But what I've come to understand is this. It's easy to say something doesn't exist when you've never seen it. It's easy to be confident when you've never had to question what's watching you from the trees. It's easy to act brave about something you've never faced. That changes real fast when you do, and when it happens, you realize something. All

the years you spent walking the woods with certainty. All the tracks you followed, all the miles you hiked, they don't prepare you for when something breaks the rules, when something steps out of the tree line that shouldn't be there. Now, for the men in the encounter stories, I'm about to share, that moment came when they were already put to the edge, when they were hunting, not for sport, not for a trophy,

but for survival. And when you're hunting to put food on the table for your kids, When you're out there because you have to be, because you've got mouths to feed and nowhere else to turn, Turning back isn't an option. Even when things don't feel right, even when you hear

something out there you can't explain. A sound that makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck, a whistle that echoes through the holler but there's no one there, A howl that doesn't belong to any animal you've ever heard in all your years out in the woods. You press on, even when you come across a footprint, big barefoot, five toes, but way too big for a man, too wide, too deep. You tell yourself there's got to

be an explanation. You've got work to do, You've got a family back home waiting on you, a freezer that's empty, a promise you made before you left. You press on even when you feel like you're being watched. When the woods go quiet, not the kind of quiet that happens when the sun's going down or a deer's about to step out, but dead quiet, like something heavy is settled over the trees and every living thing knows to stay still. You press on because you have no choice.

a story he never wanted to tell. These are the kinds of stories that make you stop and think, that make you wonder about the things we say aren't possible until they are, and they just might change your mind about what's really out there. I'm not sure why I'm doing this. I don't like talking about it, and I sure as hell don't go looking for attention. But this has been eating at me for a couple of years now,

and maybe writing it down will help. Maybe someone out there has been through something similar and can tell me how to live with it, because I haven't figured that part out yet. My name's Chris. I'm thirty eight years old, live in northern Minnesota. I've been hunting, fishing, and trapping in these woods since I was big enough to walk behind my old man. I'm not some city guy who spooks at shadows. I know what a bear looks like. I know what wolves sound like. I've tracked moose through

the brush so thick you have to crawl. I don't scare easy, and I sure as hell never believed in bigfoot. Yeah, i'd heard the stories. Who hasn't, especially around here, there's always some guy who knows, a guy who saw something. Hell, my own granddad told me about something he saw when he was young, but I chalked that up to old timer talk. You know, a little whiskey and a good story makes a cold night by the fire, A lot warmer. I never thought twice about it, not until I saw

it myself. This was September twenty twenty two bow season. I had a big buck patterned on my trail cams, and I'd been working hard to get in front of him. I was hunting a spot about thirty miles out of town, way back near the Chippewa National Forest. It's not a spot many people go anymore. The roads mostly washed out, and the only reason I knew about it was because my dad used to hunt back there, said it was

a good place to be alone. He wasn't wrong. I hiked in early, around four point thirty in the morning. Full moon helped, but it was cold in the forties, the kind of cold that makes your breath hang in the air like smoke. Right away I noticed it was too quiet. No owls, no crickets, no nothing, just dead silent. I should have paid more attention to that, should have turned around, but I was focused on the buck. By seven am, things seemed normal again, birds, squirrels, I even

had a fox come trotting by. Under my stand, I relaxed a little. Figured the cold snap was throwing things off texted my buddy Dean told him it was a perfect morning. He's the only one I've told about all this in person. He told me to write it down. So here I am. I sat there in the stand, waiting, listening, watching. Around nine, I heard something behind me, heavy footsteps I've heard bear and this wasn't that. It was deliberate, like a person walking slow through the woods. Thud, pause, thud.

I could feel it through the tree I was sitting in. I stayed still, waited, thinking maybe it was another hunter, but nobody comes out that far, not without me knowing about it. And then I caught the smell. It was like wet dog mixed with garbage, like something that had died thence in the sun. It hit me so hard I gagged, my eyes watered, and then I heard breathing, heavy, raspy, like something with lungs twice the size of a human's. I turned slow, just my head fifteen yards back behind

a big pine. There was something standing there. It was huge, eight feet tall, easy built like a linebacker, only leaner, long arms hanging way past where they should, covered in dark brown hair, almost black, matted in places. I couldn't see its face right away, but its eyes caught the light, not like deer eyeshine, different yellowish like headlights through fog. It just stood there, staring at me, not moving, not

making a sound, just breathing heavy and slow. Then it made this noise, a low rumble that turned into a kind of clicking sound, like it was talking, but not words. It vibrated through my chest, made me feel sick, like when you stand too close to those big speakers at a concert and your guts shake. After a minute or maybe ten, I don't know, it turned and walked away, not in a hurry, just casual and quiet. I don't know how something that big moved without a sound, but

it did. It slipped into the trees and was gone. I sat there until noon, couldn't move. My hands were shaking so bad I thought I'd dropped my bow. When I finally climbed down, I ran left my gear. I sat in the cab with the doors locked, shaking. I've never felt that kind of fear before, not even when I flipped my ATV and thought I broke my neck. This was different. This was primal, and the worst part. It made me think about my granddad. He told me

a story once when I was about twelve. We were up at the cabin for deer camp, sitting by the fire. He'd had a couple drinks and he got real quiet. Told me there was something in those woods you didn't mess with. Said. It was nineteen fifty eight. He and his brother were trapping beaver along the Mississippi, not far from where I was hunting. They had a line that ran about five miles through the swamp. One day they found one of their traps torn out of the bank,

steel trap chain and all just gone. Figured it was a bear, But then they found the tracks, big barefoot prints toes arch heel human but huge, way too big. Granddad said his brother wanted to turn back, but they were stubborn. They followed the tracks for a couple miles came to a clearing where they found the remains of a deer. It had been ripped apart, not eaten, just torn to pieces. Then they heard something a howl, but not like a wolf, lower, longer, like it was calling out.

They ran left, the traps, left their gear didn't stop until they hit the truck. Granddad never trapped that line again, said he'd see things out there from time to time. Shadows that didn't belong, eyes in the trees where no animals should be. He never said the word bigfoot, but that's what he meant. I thought it was just an old man scaring a kid. But now now I'm not so sure. Since my encounter, things have changed. I don't hunt that spot anymore. Hell I barely go into the

woods alone these days. When I do, I stay close to the house. My wife thinks I had a panic attack. I haven't told her the whole thing. How do you tell someone you saw something that shouldn't exist. I don't sleep right. I hear things at night. Sometimes I smell that stench even when I'm inside. I've checked every inch of our property, thinking maybe it followed me home. Dean says, I'm paranoid. Maybe I am, but I know what I saw, and it wasn't a bear, it wasn't a man in a suit.

couple years ago. But if you're out there in the deep woods and everything suddenly goes quiet, turn around, get out, hard to imagine, isn't it spending your whole life in the woods, knowing every trail, every sound, and then having all of that torn away in a matter of seconds. What he saw out there in Minnesota wasn't something he could explain away, And even though he made it back to his truck and back to town, a part of him never really came back from those woods. But he's

not the only one. Sometimes it isn't just about what you see out there. Sometimes it's about when it happens you're already at your limit. Life's got you backed into a corner, and you're out there because you have to be, not for sport, not for a trophy, but because there's no other choice. That's where Kevin found himself, deep in the forests of central Oregon, far from the noise of town, far from the safety of people. He was looking for peace,

maybe a little rest. What he found was something else.

a weight strapped to my back. My name's Kevin. I live in La Pine, Oregon. Spent all of my thirty nine years here, except for a brief and regrettable six month stint in Eugene that I don't like to talk about. Small town, lots of woods. You grow up around here. The outdoors gets in your blood. Hunting, fishing, camping. It's just how you live. And stay tuned for more sasquatch ott to see. We'll be right back after these messages. My dad used to say, out there, it's quiet enough

to hear yourself. Think he wasn't wrong. At least that's how it used to be. Now, the quiet makes my skin crawl. Jake and I have been friends since junior year. Of high school. We met in shop class when he caught me looking at the wrong schematic and saved me from cutting through a live wire. After that, we stuck. We weren't the type to sit around and talk about feelings, but we always showed up when it counted. He was best man at my wedding. I was best man at his,

though that didn't work out for him. His ex wife was a piece of work, but he got a great kid out of the deal. Boy's name is Tyler. He's six now, and Jake takes him everywhere hunting, fishing, snowshoeing in the winter. They're tight. Jake's the kind of guy who stays steady. When I lost my job for six months after the housing bubble burst, he lined up odd jobs for me and never made me feel bad about it. When his dad died, he only took one day off work because he said it kept his hands busy. He

doesn't rattle. I say all that because you need to understand something. When Jake gets scared, it's time to get your ass moving. He's not a guy who spooks. He's a guy who handles things, or at least he was. The trip was his idea we'd been working on a house out by Bend, an ugly mansion for some tech money transplant who wanted the cabin esthetic without having to leave his gated community. Framing, siding, roofing, you name it.

We did it twelve hour days, six days a week, the kind of work that makes your back hurt and your head empty. After three months of that, Jake said we need to get out, just us, no cell phones, no other people. I was all in. We planned the trip the way we always did, minimal two nights, deep woods, rifles in case we spotted elk, some beer, some food, a couple of tents, no electronics, no GPS, old school compass and map. We both grew up doing it that way.

He picked the area out past Paulina Lake, but off the beaten path. We found an old forest service road on a map that looked promising. No camp sites, no trails, just raw land. Sounded perfect. We left on a Friday morning in October. The air was cold, but not miserable yet. I drove my truck. He drove his tyler's car seat still clipped into the back, even though the kid was with his mom for the weekend. We made good time. The roads out there get rough after the first twenty miles,

but our trucks could handle it. We had to clear a couple of downed limbs, but that was normal. Jake cracked jokes about how soft people had gotten. Most guys had called this impassable, he said, dragging a log out of the way. That's how Jake was always steady. We found a clearing near a ravine, maybe forty or fifty yards wide. There was a little creek at the bottom, and the trees around it were thick and close lodge poles,

mostly with a few old furs mixed in. There wasn't a mark of other people, no old fire pits, no footprints, no broken bottles, just clean woods, perfect, Jake said. I agreed. We set up camp easy, two tents on opposite sides of a fire ring, food stowed in Jake's truck, rifles within arm's reach. We strung some para cord with wind chimes around the camp, about fifteen feet out knee height. It wasn't for decoration, it was our alarm system. You do enough deep woods camping in Oregon, you pick up

habits like that. We weren't expecting trouble, but it's better to be cautious than stupid. The first night was textbook steak and beans over the fire, a couple of beers each. In quiet conversation, Jake told me about Tyler learning to tie his shoes. That week I told him about my old man's busted knee. We didn't say much, didn't need to. When you've known someone that long words aren't always necessary. We turned in early. No reason to stay up when

you're dead tired and it's pitch black outside. I slept like a baby. Next day we hiked out to a burn area we'd picked off the map, about five miles as the crow flies. We brought the rifles, but weren't serious about hunting. More scouting for later in the season. We found old elk tracks in some bedding areas, but nothing fresh. Jake found an old antler shed, cracked and gray with age. I little think it's a dinosaur bone, he said, tossing it in his pack. On the way back,

we stopped by the creek. Jake dropped a line in and pulled out two brook trout in twenty minutes. We let them go. It wasn't about the fish. We got back to camp just before sunset. The light was golden, filtering through the trees, and for a few minutes everything felt perfect. I remember sitting by the fire later that night, thinking, this is what it's all about. Just two guys in the woods, no noise, no pressure. It was around nine

point thirty when it all changed. We were sitting by the fire, sipping coffee laced with whiskey, talking about hiking up to the ridge at first light. Then we heard it. A scream. It was faint at first, so faint I thought I imagined it, but Jake heard it too. He froze mid sentence and looked at me, his face blank. That's when I knew it was real. Then we heard it again, closer, a long, high pitched scream that dropped into a deep, choking moan. I've heard cougar scream. This

wasn't a cougar. It was worse. It sounded human, but it wasn't. There was something wrong in the tone, like a person screaming underwater. Jake stood up, slow, set his coffee down, without taking his eyes off the dark beyond the firelight. He walked to his truck, popped the door, and pulled out his rifle. I followed grabbed mine. We need to put the fire out, he said. His voice was tight, controlled, but I could see the sweat starting

on his forehead, even though it was cold out. We doused the fire fast, covered the coals with dirt until the glow died out. Then we sat against his truck, rifles across our laps, watching the tree line. The scream came again, closer, then again, this time from a different direction. It was circling us. The forest was dead, silent, The

creek didn't make a sound. Even the wind stopped, and then we heard the footsteps, heavy slow, crunch crunch, crunch through the pine needles and dead branches, fifty yards out, circling wide. We couldn't see anything yet, but we could feel it. It wasn't afraid, it was checking us out. I glanced at Jake. He was breathing slow through his nose, his rifle trained on the dark. If it comes in, he said, shoot, I nodded, but I knew neither of us wanted to pull the trigger. It didn't feel like

it would do any good. That's when we saw the eyes high up nine feet easy, glowing faint orange. They didn't blink, just stared, and then They shifted side to side, swaying like something balancing its weight. We watched for what felt like an hour, could have been five minutes, could have been two hours. Time didn't work right then, and then the eyes vanished, no sound, no movement gone. We didn't move, not until dawn, when the sky turned gray. We packed what we could and left the rest. We

didn't talk. We didn't need to. Jake's hands were shaking when he put his rifle away. I pretended not to see. We drove back in silence, didn't even stop to piss. Two weeks later, Jake called me, said he was going back to get the gear we left. His brother was coming. I told him not to. He didn't listen. They went in midday, full sun. When they got there, they found the tents slashed open, the cooler crushed flat. The trees around the clearing had gouges, four straight deep cuts running

from six feet off the ground to nearly twelve. Jake found tracks by the creek barefoot eighteen inches long, five toes deep enough to hold water. He showed me the pictures once, then he deleted them, said he didn't want Tyler seeing them. By accident. We never went back Since then, Jake different. He still takes Tyler out fishing, but only at the ponds close to town. He doesn't hunt the deep woods anymore. Says it's because of his back. I don't call him on it me. I don't can't past

where the pavement ends if I do. I keep lights on all night and I listen for the scream. Some nights I think I hear it. I lie awake, staring at the ceiling, waiting for it to come closer. I don't know what we saw that night. I don't care if anyone believes me, but I know this. If you're out in the woods and you hear a scream that makes your stomach drop, leave, don't wait. Don't try to be brave. What Kevin went through out there in the Oregon wilderness was the kind of thing that stays with you.

When you spend your whole life feeling like you understand the woods, how they work, what's out there, and then something happens that doesn't fit the picture you've had in your head all those years. It changes you. He didn't go out looking for trouble. He went out looking for quiet, for a break from life. But sometimes the quiet hides something you're not ready for, and sometimes you don't have the luxury of walking away when things don't feel right.

For the man in this next story, there wasn't a choice. He wasn't camping to clear his head. He wasn't out there for sport. He was out there to fill his freezer and feed his family. In the fall of twenty twenty, when the world shut down and work dried up, Luke did what he knew, what his family had always done. He went hunting. But what he found in the pine woods of northern Alabama wasn't the buck he was after. It was something else, something that changed his life forever.

People think they know what they do in a bad situation. They tell themselves they'd be brave, or smart or quick. I used to be one of them. I thought I had it figured out. I thought I was the kind of man who could handle anything. But I was wrong. There's a point where you realize something's bigger than you, that you're not top of the food chain, And when that hits you, really hits you. You change. My name's Luke and I'm from a small town about an hour

outside of Huntsville, Alabama. It's not much, but it's home. I've lived here my whole life. I worked at a machine shop until twenty twenty, when the shutdowns hit. We made precision parts, mostly for farms and a few contracts with construction companies. It was good work, steady work, until it wasn't. One day they called us in, thanked us for our time, and told us the orders had dried up. Just like that, I was out of a job. I've got a wife, Lisa, and two kids, Jared and Ellie.

They were four and six. Back then, we weren't rich, but we got by. Suddenly I had no paycheck coming in, and the stores were damned, near stripped clean. What meat was on the shelves was too expensive to buy and bulk, and the food stamps they signed us up for wouldn't stretch far. So I did what I knew how to do. I loaded up my old Marlin thirty thirty and planned

a hunt. We needed meat in the freezer. Lisa tried to talk me out of going alone, but I told her we didn't have time to wait three days, I said, I'll be back with venison. I headed out to my family's old hunting ground near Bankhead National Forest about two miles west of the Sipsey Wilderness Line. I've hunted there since I was twelve. My granddaddy hunted there my daddy too. It's thick woods, pine and oak, mostly with old logging roads and howlers that never see another soul. I figured

i'd be safe. I figured it'd be like every other hunt I'd ever done. But it wasn't. I left home at first light and hiked in after parking my truck at the old gate where the road gets too washed out to drive. The walk was good, quiet, cool air, and the ground soft underfoot from rain earlier in the week. I was careful with my scent, walking slow and stopping

often to listen. The woods were alive in the usual way, squirrels bouncing through the leaves, birds chattering high up in the canopy, the faint trickle of water in the creeks. I set up camp where I always did a little clearing, with a spring fed creek running through it, tent tarp overhead, fire ring cleaned out. I hung my food bag from a high limb at least ten feet up and double knotted the rope around the trunk. Bears come through sometimes, and you learn to be cautious. I spent the rest

of the day scouting trails and bedding areas. Found a lot of sign, rubs on trees, fresh droppings, hoof prints. A good sized buck had been moving through not two days earlier. My hopes were high, but that night things started feeling wrong. I was sitting by the fire, sipping instant coffee when I heard it. A sharp, high pitched whistle. Not a bird, not an owl. It sounded like someone trying to get your attention from across a parking lot, clear deliberate. I stood up, rifle in hand and scanned

the dark. Nothing, no movement. Then a second whistle from the other direction. I didn't sleep much that night, laid in my bag with my rifle across my chest, listening. Sometime around two am, I heard a howl, low, long, not a coyote, not a dog. It was deep, felt like it rattled my ribs, but nothing came close, and I told myself it was just nerves, just being alone in the woods. I'd be fine come morning. By dawn,

I was in my stand. It's an old homemade platform about twenty feet up a sturdy oak, overlooking a game trail that winds along a ridge, perfect spot. I watched squirrels play tag for the first hour, and a pair of doughs wander past a little before eight. I was thinking maybe I'd take one if no buck showed, But then he came, biggest buck I've ever seen in my life. And stay tuned for more sasquatch out to see. We'll

be right back after these messages. Ten points, thick through the chest and neck, moving slow and easy, like he owned the woods. I waited until he stepped broadside at sixty yards, raised my rifle, slow breath, squeezed the trigger. He dropped where he stood, clean shot. I climbed down fast, heart pounding in my chest. I could already taste the backstrap in my mind. When I reached him, I knelt down, patted his flank, and whispered thanks. That's what we do,

We respect the kill. I pulled my knife out, got ready to address him. That's when I heard it. A grunt, low and deep, like a hog, but more guttural than a whistle. Close too close. I froze, my pulse jumped, my hand tightened on the and then the woods exploded, Branches snapped, heavy footfalls thundered through the brush. I turned, expecting a bear, maybe a feral hog. It wasn't either.

It was something else, something that shouldn't exist. It walked out of the trees like it had every right to be there, eight maybe nine feet tall, broad shoulders, long arms, swinging, low, hair everywhere, dark brown, filthy looking, tangled in places. But what got me was the face. Half man, half ape, but wrong, intelligent, eyes not wild, calculating. It walked straight up to my buck like I wasn't there, reached down, grabbed it by the antlers with one massive hand, and

hoisted it onto its shoulder like it weighed nothing. It glanced at me then, just a quick look, eyes dark and deep. It knew I was there, knew I wasn't a threat. And then it turned and walked back into the woods, slow, unhurried. I stood there for I don't know how long, shaking, My hands were numb. My brain kept trying to make sense of it. Bear man, no, what was it? I had half a mind to pack up and go home, But when I thought about Lisa and the kids, the empty fridge, the bills stacking up,

I stayed. I didn't have a choice. I needed meat, I needed food. I spent the rest of the day checking traps. I'd set out on the way in caught two squirrels. That's it. That night, the woods were wrong again to quiet. Then the whistle started up circling the camp. Then the breathing, heavy, raspy, just beyond the light of my fire, and then I heard the rope snap, the one holding my food bag. I sat by the fire, rifle in hand, stomach twisted in knots. Something out there

was eating my supplies. I heard crunching, snapping, Then something bumped the tarp. I nearly fired, but I held back. I didn't sleep at all. By morning I was done. I packed fast. I had one squirrel left in a can of beans. My water was running low. I was jumpy, my head pounding from no sleep, and I felt watched. As I loaded my pack, I heard movement again, fast closer. I started walking, rifle ready. Every few minutes I heard something pacing me fifty yards out, then thirty, then twenty.

I picked up the pace about a mile from the truck. They showed themselves, three of them. One was the same big one from before, the other two smaller, maybe seven feet tall. They moved through the trees like shadows, flanking me, pushing me. I raised my rifle and fired a shot into the air. They didn't flinch. I turned, aimed at the biggest one's legs and fired the shot. Hit it dropped to one knee with a roar that shook the ground. High, angry, guttural.

The others rushed in. I ran. I ran harder than I ever have in my life. Branches slapped my face, my pack tore on a limb, but I didn't stop. I could hear them behind me, heavy fast, grunting and growling, breaking branches as they chased. I made it to the truck by sheer luck. Threw the rifle in the cab, fired it up, and floored it. Gravel flew as I peeled out. I didn't look back until I was miles down the road. When I finally stopped shaking, I realized

I'd left half my gear behind. Didn't care. I got home just after dark. Lisa took one look at me and knew something was wrong. I told her I didn't get anything, that i'd try again later. She cried. I cried, I haven't hunted that land since I haven't told Lisa or anyone else exactly what happened. How do you ac plain something like that? But I think about it every night, the way it looked at me, like I wasn't worth

its time, like it owned those woods. And I hear them sometimes whistles in the distance at night when the wind's still. If you ever find yourself out in Bankhead National Forest and you hear something whistle from two directions at once, leave, don't wait, because there's something out there and it's not afraid of you. Luke's story is a hard one, not just because of what he saw out there in the Alabama woods, but because of why he

was out there in the first place. Desperation can push a man to take risks he might not otherwise take, and when your miles deep and unfamiliar country, it's easy to feel like you're alone until you realize you're not. Sometimes it's not about how prepared you are or how many years you've hunted. Sometimes it's about something finding you. And that brings us to the next story. You might not think of Texas when you hear about sasquatch encounters.

Most folks picture wide open spaces, flat planes, and cattle ranches stretching out to the horizon. But there's a part of Texas that's nothing like that East Texas. Thick forests, swamps, endless pine thickets that swallow up the light and hold onto their secrets. For one hunter, that patch of Texas was home. He knew the land, knew the game, knew where to set his stand and how to follow a trail.

But all the experience in the world couldn't prepare him for what he was about to see, and after that day, he never hunted again. I've only told this story a handful of times, and every time I do, I feel like I lose a little more sleep over it. But I'll tell it here because maybe someone else has seen what I did. Maybe you've been out there in the woods and felt that same dread creeping up your spine, but you kept it to yourself, thinking nobody would believe you.

I get that I was there once, and if you told me this story five years ago, I would have nodded politely, maybe cracked a joke about drinking too much at deer camp, and gone back to cleaning my rifle. I didn't believe in monsters, and I damn sure didn't believe in Bigfoot, but that was before, back when I still hunted. When people hear Texas, they usually think about tumble weeds, oil rigs, and wide open spaces. I've lived here my whole life, and that's not wrong for West Texas.

But out east it's a different world. Thick pine forests, hardwood bottoms, rivers and creeks cutting through miles of unbroken timber. We've got places so dense you can step in ten feet and feel like you're one hundred miles from the nearest road. That's where this happened, deep in the piney woods east of Lufkin, close to the Sabine River. I hunted out there every fall. It's family land, about two hundred and fifty acres that's been passed down through three generations.

My granddaddy taught me how to hunt deer on that land. Always figured i'd teach my boy the same one day. That was the plan. Anyway. It's good hunting out there, thick cover, plenty of water, springs, creeks, marshy bottoms where the big bucks like to bed, Lots of deer, hogs, and even the occasional black bear. Plenty for something big to live off of if it wanted to I guess I never thought about that part too much until it was too late. It was November of twenty nineteen. I'd

been out of work for a few months. Construction job dried up, and I was trying to get meat in the freezer without spending money. We didn't have my wife, Megan. She was picking up extra shifts at the clinic, and I was feeling like I wasn't pulling my weight. So I planned a solo hunt three days head out Thursday back Saturday night. That'd give me two dawn sets and two evenings to fill a tag. I loaded up my old Chevy with my stand, my Remington two seventy, a

cooler of food and not much else. It's about a two hour drive from my place to the lease, and I made it in good time. Parked at the gate, unlocked it, and drove in as far as I could before the ruts got too deep. Then it was on foot. The weather was perfect, cold mornings, warm afternoons, clear sky, good sign everywhere, rubs on trees, fresh scrapes. I knew

there were bucks moving through. I picked a spot i'd hunted a dozen times before, thick pines to my back, a creek, fifty yards out and an old game trail running between. I set up my ladder stand that afternoon, climbed up to make sure the view was good, and then came back down to set camp about one hundred yards away. Just a simple setup, small tent, fire ring, a line strung between two trees to hang meat if I got lucky. The first night was fine, quiet, no wind.

I stayed up late listening to the owls and coyotes, and turned in when the fire burned down to coals. Right before I crawled in my sleeping bag, I heard something, a kind of knocking sound, two sharp knocks, like wood on wood. It came from across the creek. I froze for a second, listening hard, but nothing else happened. I told myself it was a tree creaking or a branch falling. I went to sleep. I was in the stand before first light, rifle across my lap, thermos of coffee at

my side. The woods were quiet, almost too quiet. Usually you hear the birds wake up, squirrels bouncing around, but it was still dead still a little after sunrise things got back to normal, squirrels moving, a couple of jays squawking. I saw a few doughs pass through mid morning, but no buck. I climbed down around eleven, stretched my legs, and went back to camp for lunch. That afternoon, I headed back to the stand around two. The shadows were

long by four, and that's when I saw him. A big bodied eight point stepped out of the trees on the far side of the creek. He worked a scrape for a minute, then started toward the trail. I raised my rifle and waited for a clean shot. When he turned to broadside, I squeezed off around. He jumped, bolted, and disappeared into the brush. I knew I hit him. I heard the thump, so I waited a few minutes, climbed down and went to look for blood. Found it easy,

good trail. I followed it maybe sixty yards and found him piled up at the edge of the marsh. As I knelt down, I felt uneasy, like someone was watching. The hair on my neck stood up, but there was nothing there. I gutted the buck quick as I could, strung him up, and hauled him back to camp. That night, I cooked a little tender loin over the fire and felt pretty good meat in the cooler. More to cut in the morning. I figured i'd sit again at dawn,

maybe get a hog. But then the knocking came again, louder, this time closer. And then I heard something walking through the brush, heavy, slow, deliberate. I sat by the fire rifle across my knees, listening to it circle my camp. It stayed just out of sight. I'd hear a branch snap, a soft grunt, then silence. At one point, something hit the meat pole hard enough to make the line creak and sway. I stood up, raised my rifle and shouted.

Whatever it was backed off. I thought I heard breathing, deep, heavy, but when I swept my flashlight around, nothing was there. I didn't sleep much that night. I woke up stiff and tired, but determined. I climbed back into the stand before dawn, sat there, watching the wood slowly wake up. At least they should have woken up, but it stayed quiet, too quiet. Around eight I heard something big moving through the pines behind me. Slow steps, crunch, pause, crunch. I

figured it was a hog, or maybe a bear. We get them sometimes, and then it happened movement below, right under me. I held my breath and looked straight down and there it was. It walked in slow from behind, right under my stand, big as hell, eight feet, easy, broad shoulders, arms long enough that its knuckles nearly brushed the ground. It was covered in dark reddish brown hair, thick and matted in places, like it hadn't groomed itself in years. But it was the face that got me.

It wasn't an animal, not a bear, not a gorilla. It was a face like a man and an ape mixed together. Heavy brow, ridge, flat nose, wide mouth, and its eyes dark brown, almost black, but alive, intelligent. It looked up at me, not with curiosity, not with fear, with recognition, like it knew ex exactly what I was. I froze. My rifle was in my hands. I thought about lifting it, I thought about pulling the trigger, but I didn't. I couldn't, because when I looked at that face,

I saw something I wasn't ready for. It wasn't just an animal out in the woods. It was something more, something closer to us than I wanted to admit. I stayed perfectly still, barely breathed, and after a moment, it huffed out of breath, turned and walked off into the pines like it had no reason to rush. I stayed in that stand for two more hours before I climbed down,

and when I did, my knees barely held me. I packed up camp as fast as I could without leaving anything behind, hauled the meat, the stand, everything, and stay tuned for more sasquatch out to see we'll be right back. After these messages, I made it back to the truck by sunset and drove out with white knuckles on the wheel the whole way. When I got home, I put the meat in the freezer, cleaned my rifle, and sat in the garage staring at the wall for a long time.

I haven't hunted since my rifle's still in the safe, but I haven't pulled it out. Every fall, when the leaves turn and the air gets crisp, I feel that old pull to go back out, but I don't. I can't because I know what's out there, and I don't belong in those woods anymore. Four men, four stories, four lives changed forever. They went into the woods with years decades of experience behind them. These weren't greenhorns or weekend campers.

These were seasoned hunters, men who knew the land knew the animals, knew every sound, every track, every pattern of the woods men who trusted their instincts, who believed they'd seen everything there was to see out there until something came along and showed them they were wrong. For the first hunter, it was in the deep forest of Minnesota when something too big, too quiet, and too knowing stood

behind his tree stand watching him. For Kevin, it was the terrifying screams echoing through the Oregon wilderness and the eyes that followed him through the night. Luke went into the Alabama woods to put food on the table for his family and came face to face with something that made him question everything he thought he knew about survival.

And in East Texas, a man who spent his life hunting the pine thickets came home from his last hunt after something stepped out from the shadows and locked eyes with him, something that walked beneath his stand like it had done it one hundred times before. Four men, four encounters, and not one of them has ever been the same.

Since it's easy to say what you do. It's easy to be a skeptic when you've never seen it with your own eyes, But when you're the one in that stand, or by that campfire, or standing on a game trail with something impossible staring back at you. Everything changes. For these men, seeing was believing, and for the rest of us, well, these stories remind us there are still things out there

we don't understand. If you enjoyed tonight's episode, if these encounters made you think twice or had you looking over your shoulder, do me a favor. I don't ask often, but it makes a big difference. Subscribe, follow, and most importantly, turn on auto downloads. That way, you'll never miss a new episode when it drops. And if you like what you hear, please take a moment to rate and review

the show. It helps more than you know. And if you know someone who loves a good story, whether it's your friends, family, co workers, or that one hunting buddy who swears he's seen something but won't talk about it, share the show with them. Help us get these stories out to the folks who'll appreciate them. And if you're hungry for more encounters like these, check out my other podcast,

Backwoods Bigfoot Stories. It's packed with more eyewitness accounts, deep woods encounters, and the kind of stories that'll make you think twice before heading out alone. Lastly, if you are someone you know has a story to tell, if you've seen something you can't explain, send me an email at Brian at Paranormalworldproductions dot com. I'd love to hear it. And if you're listening on Spotify, drop your thoughts in the comments section. I read every single one. Thank you

for your support, for listening, for believing. Until next time, keep your eyes open and be careful out there. Did di in bo