SO EP:624 Let's Get The Hell Outta Here!

It was standing up. I'm out here looking through the window now and I don't see anything. I don't want to go outside. Jesus, quiet, you better Hello, hit somebody out here? What quin? I'm out there's thought of a bit of about sixty fort nine. I don't know. Easy ann out there. Yeah, I'm woking right.

This incident happened approximately fifteen years ago. He's a pilot, not a bush pilot. He's just a recreational pilot. Once he retired, he started flying around in his plane, hitting everywhere he can, just recreationally.

picks this little small amount to land on. He's in a little piper cup. So when he lands, it's fairly early. He had just finished gone from Platinum to Togak Togak he stopped and dealing him, He got fuel, got a couple extra supplies or whatever, and he had a buddy who was going to be coming and checking on him periodically, who happened to be in doing him at the same time he was refueling. So he talked to his buddy, said, Hey,

I'm heading over by the Studiahiver. I'm going to be approximately in this area, So if you're going through there, stop by if you want or whatever, say hi, I check on me or whatever. So his buddy's yeah, sure, Because his friend was just flying back and forth to Iliamna Lake Clark area from dealing him and nack Nick and all that, basically doing the small amounts are free to different little villages on the way or whatever. He

had a good time talking with his buddy. So he takes off and he gets up by the Stueyhawk River. He's seeing plenty of game trails. He saw a little bit of caribou migration going through there, not much though he figured it was a tail in. So he found this spot and he lands. Initially, he's like perfect. There was a nice wind he was landing into and he could see off in the distance and according to the weather predictions that he was going to be socked in

for a day or two. Adrian said when he got out of the plane and was strapping everything down because the winds were picking up a little bit as this system was moving in from the east moving west, he kept having an odd feeling like he was being watched, and he was like, there must be some bears around what it is. So he gets all his gear out, he sets up his little spot right underneath the wing of the little piper cup, just mainly for a wind block and stuff. And as he's doing all this, he

keeps feeling like he's being washed. And Adrian said he a couple times to grab his binoculars and walk around because he's up on this little bit of a little mound a couple hundred feet and he's glassing around to see why he keeps feeling like he's being washed. And just as he's getting done, he would check every once in a while because he kept feeling like he's being washed and it was really starting to creep him out. He never felt that way before, and he's been plenty

of places. So he said he goes around to the front of the plane and he glasses out I believe it would be east northeast of his position. He glasses out with the binoculars and he sees his big brown movement a few hundred yards away, and he goes, ah, that's why I was feeling watched. There's a big old barrel over there. Lucky me, I'm here for bears. So he gets excited. He's like, all right, I'm onto something that I just landed. He does all this stuff, He sets up, and he decides, I got a few hours

before the sunsets. I got time to drop this bear, and then I can skin it out tomorrow. He glasses, he's got his rifle ready. He's using a three thirty eight win mag He's glass around it. It's gone. He surmises that it's over across the way around these other small mouns. He could see that one of the trails cut up in there. So he figured, Okay, what I can do tomorrow is if it's not showing itself in the open I can go back up in there and

maybe find him laying down or something. Which bear hunting. I would always go with two, but teach his own. He felt confident. He had a four fifty four castle chest mounted pistol revolver, and he had a street thirty eight. So he felt really confident that he would any problems, so he said. The next morning he got up and he was doing one of these little quick meals, one of these freeze dried contraptions or whatever, some scrambled eggs

or something. He said, it was horrible when he was eating, and as he was eating, he was looking in the direction he had last seen that bear. And just as he was finishing up what he was doing and packing up his little stove, little Coleman single burner on top of a one pound count of propane, he's looking in that direction and he sees brown movement again, and it's just off to the right hand side of the tallest mound across the way, about three four hundred yards. He

was like, all right, good morning. So he gets everything squared away, he gets his pack, he gots his rifle, and he heads out that way. Now, when he drops down from the mound that he's on, he has to cross a feeder creek into the Stuyhawk River. He said, it was little marshy going through there, and then there was a bit of a deep spot, but he had his hip boots on, and he was able to leap

a cross and make it through. And he was really concerned about making it through because when he got down into the brush line that's next right off the size of this little feeder creek, he got real soft, real fast, and he was real like, oh geez. He thought he might have turned back, but luckily he found a spot made it across. He said, as he came around to where it's basically three four mounds and there's a bigger one, it's like an islet the shape of the trail around it.

As he's getting over there, he's checking for sign on the ground, and he said, the grass, the way it was laid out was real weird. It looked extra stomped down. It just something was off about it. And he kept seeing what looked like double bear prints, and so he was like, wow, there's there must be several large bears around here, so my chances are even better. He starts weaving back up in there. He gets up near where the first mound is, which is a few hundred feet.

He's looking something off, so he decides he's going to start climbing this mound get a higher position because he's getting that uneasy feeling of being watched again. So he gets up there and he's looking on his back trail. He's making sure nun's coming up behind him, which is always smart to do.

was at about his two o'clock and he stops. Out of the corner of his eye he sees very large brown movement one hundred and fifty hundred and sixty yards away, just like right over there basically, and so he says, okay, I'm going to take it easy, and I'm going to turn into this while I'm raising my rifle, and I'm going to be ready. So he clicks off the safety and as he's raising the rifle and he turns, he looks through the scope and he's getting his site pictured

through that scope. He said. The first thing that stuck out was it was like he was looking at a cave man. He was in shock. He said, it looked like a caveman squatted down like a running back, and so he was like, what the hell. He thought maybe the meal that he just ate was giving him hallucinations or something, because he paused, it wasn't moving or anything, and it was up on a different mound, so he felt confident if it came at him, he had time.

So he raises his rifle again and looks, and at this point this thing had turned and is quartering away from him on all fours. That was weird. He's a little bit shooken up by what he had seen. Initially, he said the face was that of a caveman like Neanderthal. The skin was very wrinkled, the eyes were beady black. It was so quick he only got a few real, lasting, ingrained memories of what he looked at. He said, the skin was very dark. Whether it was black or gray,

he couldn't make out, but it's very dark. He noticed a lot of wrinkles right with the black eyes. It was just haunting him. Wow, what the hell? And as this incorded the way, it went down behind this mound where he couldn't see it anymore, Adrian said. At that point, he said, eh, I'm good, I'm good. I'll go somewhere else. He was feeling off about the whole thing. He thought

he was hallucinating. He thought he'd better get back over to his camp, so he starts backtracking out of there, and as he gets back to the point to where he had initially saw all the double bear tracks that he thought were double bear tracks, he started paying more attention, and there was a spot in the mud where he looked down and it was a human type footprint, just wider, a lot larger. He estimated about twenty one inches, give or take, because he laid his rifle down next to

it to gauge it. He was being shocked with that, what the hell, nothing's adding up at this point, he's not thinking about bigfoot. Harry Manner. Now that he's trying to figure out why in the hell he's so off that day, and he's concerned about his health. He thinks

he's losing it. So he's quickly back tracks his way, and as he gets across that little feeder creek, when he gets back to the spot to where he crossed, he gets across there just firing, and as he gets up above the brush, going up on the mound that his plane is parked, he said he got to a point, had to stop and turn right around and look, and on his back trail, he looks back across and where he had seen that track, this thing was squatted down

again like a linebacker, looking right at him. So he lifts his rifle just to get a look at it, and before he can fully get the scope up and get the field of view and the scope, this thing takes off back in the direction he initially seen it. So again he's what the hell because he hasn't gotten a full on clear view of this thing, and he thinks he's hallucinating. So he gets back up to his plane.

He's really contemplating leaving, and just as he's thinking about leaving, that weather system that he was concerned about starts blowing in. So he's got a heavy crosswind kicking up so much so that he loses track of everything going on that morning with the hunt and needs to worry about his plane because his plane was starting to catch wind and stuff. So he was mitigating that and he focused on that for a few hours, just keeping his plane safe and whatnot.

So once the winds died down a little bit, everything calmed down, he starts glassing again and he chalked up that morning to some weird stuff with the meal.

across the way. It was more over by this little feeder creek up the mound from there, and he's looking and he said, at this point it was about three hundred yards way and he's trying to get a look at it with the binoculars and he's not getting anything his spotting scope. Something had happened. He had bumped it. It was misaligned, so he couldn't see anything because it was like a double view all the time. The parallax or whatever was all messed up. He decides, okay, it's

way over there. It's a good distance away. He was estimating like three four hundred yards, and he was like, we'll just see what happens tomorrow. Thinks nothing of it because what he saw was a different color from his memory of the color of this last one he saw, which he said it was like a reddish brown with black, a grizzled kind of look, and this one appeared to be like a lot more brown, reddish color. He said he had a hard time sleeping. There was weird noises

he kept hearing, but he couldn't make it out. He would wake up to the noise like it was some weird noise woke them up. But when he woke up, it was just fading out and he couldn't make out what it was. That's weird. He ran everything through his mind. I know what a loon sounds like, I know what a wolf poal sounds like. I goes through everything and he just he couldn't make it out. And he said

that happened a few times through the night. So when he gets up the next morning, it's before daylight comes up. So he's got his headlamp on and he's trying to brook some coffee. Of course, he's got his four fifty four in his chest and he's got his three thirty eight with him arms reach. Every time he moved, like he said, when he got up to get the coffee out of the pack. He literally leaned the rifle against the pack, unzipped it. When he got to the coffee,

he grabs a rifle. So every movement he did he had his rifle ready, you know what I mean. He said he felt off that second morning heavy. So as he's making Bruna's coffee, he starts hearing noises just down the mouth from where he's at. The brush he said was real wet when he went through there, he said, it is less than forty yards of just al there's willow brush and stuff. When he came out of that, it was real flimsy, moist. It wasn't like it was

a bunch of dead vegetation or anything. And he's hearing the movement down there, and he's, man, that's really weird. Again. It's still dark out. It's light on the horizon, but it ain't light out at all. So he decides he's gonna he digs out his flashlight and he changes the batteries in his headlamp. And he had a fairly decent one for the technology at the time.

he said. He doesn't remember exactly how far, because it all happened real fast. Eye shine. He kind of startles and he kills the flashlight. Handheld flashlight, drops in his pocket and raises his rifle up and by the time he gets the rifle up, the eye shine was gone. He heard movement through the brush and whatever was there is now gone. Spooks him. He goes back to camp. He's nervously drinking coffee until it's daylight out enough, and he's very nervous. He said to go over that mound

and look. He just kept getting a sinking feeling. The wind was calm, there was a slight breeze like a headwind coming towards him. So he's evaluating leaving, so he would have to taxi down and then come back to take off, which no big deal, right. So as he's contemplating what he's going to do, he's feeling very unwell welcome, he said. His reoccurring thought, which was real strange, he said, was that I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't be here.

And way off in the distance at this point, when it's light out, he notices an actual bear like way out. It caught his attention. He's there to bear hunt. Grant you, creepy stuff is happening, he said. But he was seeing maybe that bear he could take off land somewhere else and catch it the next day. While it's heading east

or whatever. He's trying to reevaluate and move right. So as he's glassing this bear, he notices the bear stands up and the bear, he said, was at about four hundred yards and the wind was variable at a certain point. This bear, he thought, winded him. It stands up, looks in his general direction, and drops down and takes off the way it came fast, he said, that bear took off.

He was like, crap, it winded me. So he goes and by this point he had progressed over to the edge of this mouth that drops down, and he said, he caught with that variable wind, he caught the whiff of something horrible. It smelled like rotten me body odor and heavy urine. And he looks down and in the brush. He said, about forty yards a way, there's this thing

looking at him. And he said there was no mistake in what he saw because when he made eye contact with this thing just down the hill from him, down the slope, this thing stood up. He said, when it stood up, he felt like his chest, his heart was just going to break his chest open, because he said it was beaten real hard. He said he froze up. His fight or flight just went haywire, and he was halfway raising the rifle when he just stopped, and he said he was mentally stuck. He couldn't wrap his mind

around what he was seeing down below him. He said it was like fifty sixty yards away tops. He said it had to be. He's six foot coming through that brush. It was taller than him. The brush. This thing is right on the trail that he went through to cross the day before or whatever. So he knew the brush was taller than him by about a foot or so, and this thing, when it stood up, it had to have been over ten feet tall, at least that's a guestimation looking down at it, not having a perspective of

it level. He froze, He freely admitted he froze up. He didn't know what to do. His thumb was on the safety of his rifle, just a little rocker switch back and forth, and he couldn't get himself to break three of that. He said, this thing stood there a few moments, looking at him inquisitively like a dog. And he said, when it move its head, it moved its upper body like this. When it was sizing him up, basically,

it let out a hllacious grunt, guttural scream. He said that was real low but at the same time high pitched. He said it was the weirdest thing he ever heard. That snapped him out of his spider flight like stuck. He said, once that happened, don't run from predators. All that stuff was right out the fucking window. He turned and booked it back to the plane. Now at this point he had been packing stuff up. There was minimal stuff outside his plane. He tossed the rest of it in.

He had some those little cinder blocks for peer pads for decking and whatnot. He had a couple of those, and rope for his tie dounds when he was flying remote just to tie down the wings or whatever. He said, he just cut those lines on both sides. He didn't give a flying rants ass. He jumps in. He has

to warm up the plane. And he said, as he's warming up the plane, he's got his four fifty four out on his lap and he's looking in the direction of where he's seen this thing, right, And so once he gets up to operating temperature, he immediately throttles, turns around, cuts back down. He tied some marker tape trail marker tape, the neon orange stuff onto his struts for his wings so he could gauge where the wind was boring. No grant you, he was gauging the wind before he fired

up the prop. Understand that he's not it you're going to fire it up and of course going to flat back. So he had these streamers up to gauge wind direction before he fired up, and so he had to taxi back down and then come back the direction he was camped to take off. He said. When he turned around to taxi down, he was about halfway down taxiing, and he looks off to his right hand side. When he did, he noticed movement off to his right hand side. He said,

it freaked him out. He almost over correct it. He'd throttled up, was bouncing along pretty damn hard, and didn't know what to do, so he calmed down. He throttled back. He finished his taxi, turned around and just got his ale rounds, all that stuff set and just powered up and just slowly built up speed, heading to towards the end of his mouth. He said, just as he came up and lifted off, he caught a nice little draft and helped lift him further up. He was going through

his thing, he said. He got about three miles away trying to shake off what was going on, so he decided he's going to circle back, which there's quite a few powers that have done that, he said. When he circled back and started coming back, he was basically in shock. He said. He was shaking real hard. And if anyone's been on a piper cut les's literally fly by wire

with your yoke and whatnot. It's literally by wire, so he's bouncing around, but it's his own nerves messing with them, and so he's happened to be flying back towards the direction of delling him. He said. As he was coming back over the spot, he was looking down. He could see where he had been parked, and he could see the cinder blocks one pair of him. The other ones were missing, or maybe he didn't see him or whatever. But yeah, that's what happened with Adrian approximately fifteen years ago.

He said he felt fortunate that it didn't go any further than what it did. He mentioned that the feeling of being watched, that was his biggest thing. He was like, when you share this, reiterate that when you're feeling like you're being watched, you probably are. You gotta trust your intuition in the woods, you just have to. I'm going to thank Adrian for reaching out. It wasn't easy for him.

He hasn't talked to anybody. At one point, he said, he brought it up to his buddy, the other pilot briefly. One time. He broke the ice by bringing up crazy stuff in the woods. The guy wasn't reciprocating any craziness, so he just left it alone. Also a reminder, be aware at the berry patches. There's been a serious uptick in sightings near berry picking places this year, nine within fourteen days. That's quite a bit for people to go out of the way to report. It makes you wonder

what's not reported, So be safe out there. What I wanted to share with you today comes from a couple hunters. Now we'll name them Woody and Harold. Okay, So they were part of a seven man group of hunters. This was five years ago. This was the hunting season before COVID kicked in. They had saved up the money to go with a guide buddy of theirs. It so happened that Harold had his own plane. He doesn't fly that often, but he has his license and he flies enough to

stay current. He freely admits he's not the top level bush pilot by any means. It's strictly recreational and he doesn't get much time for it. So Woody and Harold agreed that they would come in on Harold's plane following their guiding buddy, and so they came in together. They packed fairly light. Their guide buddy had a moose camp already set up, and this is in the interior of Alaska. Asked me not to use the exact location just due to their guide buddy still operates in the area and

so on. So we'll just say it's south of the Brooks Range. Okay, they get there. They get there a couple of days after their friend had been there and things were set up. Harold had a hard time. He had to do the approach for the landing several times. Could you got to skiff on the water and then get on the ground. He wasn't well versed at it. He was really worried about flipping over and stuff like that. So after third fourth try he finally came in and

committed and made it right. No problem. So they get there. The guide buddy had already been there a couple of days. He was getting ready to ferry a couple of clients out. They had other planes come in to pack moose meat out. He was telling them, hey, we had seen bears. There's gut piles over here over there. Just be aware when you guys are out, be aware of those gut piles

because there's probably gonna be bears on them. Fair enough would he experienced hunter, have been out in the woods several times, this is not his first picnic when it comes to going remote for hunting. Harold, on the other hand, was a newbie. He had basically road hunted. Hunt from the road, see something off in the distance, get off the road and spot and stock and shoot a caribou that way or whatever, which hey to each his own. So what he's explaining to Harold, Okay, I want to

check out one of these gut piles. I have a bear tag this year. You okay with potentially hunting a brown bear, And Harold's sure, why not. We're out here, We've committed to this, so we might as well give it a try if it's around. So they decide on

their plan of action. By the time they had gotten there, they really didn't want to commit to all out hunting that evening, so they decided to do a quick scout, glass around, and then come back to the camp and commit right and early in the morning and get out there a glass, spot, stock, do whatever they got to do. They essentially just wanted to find a gut pop, so for that evening they did. They spotted the gut pile there's some camp robbers and other birds around the pile.

So okay, it's right over there. We got it ingrained in the memory. Let's just call it a night, go enjoy the evening. And by time they got back to camp, their guide buddy, who had already been there a couple of days, there was five guys when they got back to camp. When they get back to camp, there was two planes getting ready to take off. It was the last of the moose meat. Before they took off, a couple of the guys parted ways with so now they're down to a total of about five people in camp.

Next morning, as they were getting up getting ready to do their thing, they're enjoying coffee and they're talking to their guide buddy. It was light enough they were getting ready to take a few more of the guys out, so they're like, all right, the hunters are going to be in camp, so they'll be around. Their hunt is done. Basically,

they're just killing time waiting for their ride out. So their guide buddy takes off off they go, and so Woody and Harold they get up on top of this little butte looking down glassing this one particular gut pile well, when they get up there, they're having a hard time finding because there's no birds around yet. There's no birds picking at it. So they decide they're going to walk downhill a little ways down off this little butte and go down and check out the area of the gut

pile and see if there's any even bare sign. Should we even sit here or should we just go look for moose? There's basically, in essence what they were doing. Meanwhile, they're making cow moose calls stuff like that, periodically scraping brush with an old antler and just making moose noises, trying to see because they're there to moose hunt. The bare thing came up. So from what he said, they get about twenty ish feet from this gut pile. It's

right near some willows. As soon as they get closer to the willows rupt with activity and they can't see, but they see a darkness take off like low to the ground foon. It's gone. And it startled them because this bright and early in the morning is daylight, but still shadow in the brush and stuff. So they were like, oh crap, So they retreated back up the butte, decided okay,

that sounded really big, let's back off. Let's let it come back, and maybe we can get a better look at this bear and maybe we could fill that bear tag. So wood he's excited. He's, oh, man, I'm going to get this bear. And they smell the funny smell and stuff like that, but again they're thinking bear, no, biggie.

They get back up the butte. Woody had a hard time sleeping the night before because the hunters they were enjoying themselves with some cold beers and their successful hunt the night before they flew out, so they whooped it up a little bit, and Woody didn't get the best sleep, and so Harold said, hey, I slept just fine. I put in my earbuds and listened to an audio bi I didn't hear none of it, and so I got good rest. I'll keep glassing for this bear to come back.

You catch a net what he's all for it? He said. He laid back on his pack and boom, he was out.

down close enough for Harold to reach, he said. When he got next to Harold and Harold handed him the binoculars and was pointing, he looks down and he's looking just past the gut pile and this thing, this dark, shadowy figure was inside the willows, basically the same spot where they got close and it spooked it and it ran off. So he's really trying to focus in and he can't seem to focus on it. It's dark, he said. It was beyond the darkness of the shadows around it.

It was a silhouette. It looked like a head and shoulders. And Harold kept whispering, is that some guy in a gilly suit? When the like, dang, why would one of the hunters steal in camp come over here knowing we're out to hunt bear. It didn't make sense for someone from their camp, which was the only one around, for someone to be out there, and they're trying to think, did we hear any other planes. They're trying to do the little process of elimination. Who or what is this? Right?

So what he puts his hand up waves nothing, just dead quiet, and he's like, hey, starts yelling down there, what are you doing? You've ruined our hunt? So what he stands up. He's pissed off at this moment, like, who the hell's this asshole out here? What are you doing squadding down by this gut pile trying to get shot? He wasn't threatening to shoot him. When you're playing silly games in the woods, you fuck around and find out, you don't startle somebody out hunting. And so he starts

chastising and yelling. Didn't even grab his gun because he thinks he's dealing with some idiot. He's just walking down and hill, just yelling. And he only went a few feet, just yelling and making all sorts of gestures to the guy. And he turns around. He's coming back up, and Harold stands up real fast, right, and his eyes are huge. So what he turns around to see what's going on, and this thing had stood up. Now what he said, when this thing stood up, he was just down by

this brush he was just there. It was just about head height. Whatoody's six foot two, so he knows the brush is about as tall as him. Now, all of a sudden, this thing is standing up and it's almost twice that He's literally in shock. What the hell? And this thing turns and is going from directly in front of him off to their right. So their camp is off to that right too, but it's three quarters of

a mile away. But this thing starts walking through the brush and it's just a little thin line of brush, and he got open area of muskeg and tundra and stuff back behind it, and there's tundra and a little brush between them and this thing. This thing gets to a certain point and he said it had to have been forty five feet As they're stuck staring like what the hell, and Harold's holding what he's arm because he grabbed his arm when it stood up and was startled.

And the only thing that Snappedoody out of it is Harold squeezing the hell out of his arm like hard, so he breaks the grip. When they're paying attention to it, this thing drops down to all fours, goes zig zaggy back and forth and then takes off on all fours and it looks like it's just going right away from him fast. He said, it was moving out a clip. Nothing was slowing it down. It was just gone. And so they watched it for a little bit until it

just they stopped noticing it. With the little rises and falls of the tundra, he got these little divots and stuff, and it just was gone. They were in shocked sitting there looking at each other and nervously started laughing with each other, and Harold's almost pissed myself, Man, what is that? What is I don't know. They pack up their stuff and they make a hasty retreat back to camp. Right now,

a couple hours gone by since they left. It hadn't been huge expanse of time or anything like that, and they were multiple hours before their guide buddy came back with his plane and whatever else to get the rest of their stuff. And so when they get back to camp, one of the two guys was up. He was a white guy. They were telling him, hey, this craziness happened over here or whatever, and the guy looks at him and he goes, you know what, my hunting partner. He's

a native guy. He lives outside of Bristol Bay. He's getting moving now, let me ask him about it. He had mentioned something about a hairyman and so they were like, what, they never heard of it?

couple days before the first day they got there. This particular native gentleman had spotted it way off in the distance, but immediately knew by its shape and how it was moving it was a hairyman. He had already dealt with stuff before. He warns them, Hey, from my understanding, we're clearing camp today, So you guys need to be safe if you stay here, because it's probably just after the gut piles, and maybe stay away from the gut piles

and go hunt across the way over here. We saw some bull activity over there, so maybe you can get your bull moose over there. Leave it alone. It should leave you alone, kind of advice. Keep your wits about you. And then in a way gave him an ominous premonition of they'll steal you and eat you, is the last

thing he said about. And then he laughs at him and then commits his drinking his coffee and getting ready and packing stuff up, right, because they had to shut down what they were doing to fly out as soon as their guide buddy got back. So Woody and Harold just look at each other and okay, like they didn't know what to do with the information, but they know what they just saw. And it wasn't a freaking bear. It was huge, and it took off. They had their

own plane there, they had their rifles. They felt relatively safe, just uneasy about the unpredictability, the unknowns. They're like, what the hell, and they're like, we're out here. It took off, It was long ways away when we last seen it, and it didn't seem to be slowing down. So let's

go across the way and go look for this bull moose. Right, So, by time they make it across the way, which is a good mile and a half away up onto this other butte, and back behind that was some more swampy muskeg area and some black spruce and some other vegetation where they said this bull moose was hanging around. So once they get up on that butte and they're glassing around, they see the moose. They see the petals of the moose.

It's off at a distance, it's down just below the brush, but every once in a while they could see the antlers move right, so they're like, oh sweet. So they start doing their cow calls. They start brushing the brush with an old piece of antler, just making this sound and doing their calls, and this thing's not responding at all,

which is weird. They're in the rut, so usually they'd at least stand up and come doing this little sauntering thing, swinging their head back and forth, trying to figure out where this female is doing none of that, so they figure, okay, we know where it's at. This regroup down at the bottom of this butte and circle around, keeping the wind in our face, get a better line of sight on this bull moose, and we could bag the moose and we fly out of here today. So they're all for it.

The excitement of the moose hunt kind of clouded what they had just seen, but he had it on the back of his mind because what he said when he was traversing down this butte, there was a couple of times he got an eerie feeling and he would look around and just chalked it up to jittery. He's jumpy from what they witnessed a couple hours ago. So Harold

right behind him. They get down and they get a line of side on the bull moose, and they're looking at it and just it seems off because they're getting a straight line of sight and it appears to be looking right back at them. But every once in a while, the way it was moving its antlers was like it had a tick. It was like the antlers were being pulled to the side and then they'd straighten up, pulled to the side, straighten up, And they can make it

to their something wrong with this. It had it been shot by someone else, And so now they're like, oh, man, I wonder if someone else wounded this bull moose didn't know it was wounded. It run off and now it's sitting here suffering. Harold is hey We can't just leave it there like that. We should go check it out, put it out of its misery, make a note of it the area, and report it. If it's already been shot. We don't know the condition of the meat. We don't

know if it's been poisoned. We don't know, So let's just go check on it. Put it out of its misery, no harm, no foul. So they make their way and they were a good three four hundred yards from the

position of the moose. Where they were at the wind's blown in their face the whole time, and he said, once they got what he had said, Once they got approximately seventy five yards ish from this bull moose, they're thinking it's going to stand up at any among our attempt to, because it appears to be looking every once in a while. Is still the same thing the handlers

with twitch, right, he said. Once they reset seventy five yard mark or whatever, they slowed down real quick, and they cut him with something strange, and they were like, what is that smell? They couldn't make it out. He said. It was like a heavy body odor urine smell, which he had never smelled before dealing with moose or anything. Like that. So he was very intrigued and cautious, especially considering the morning they had. And so Harold starts nudging up, saying, hey,

do you see that what? He's looking right at the moose. So he's yeah, I say, it's right there. I see it. Harold's and all behind it in the brush. Look, look, And so he's trying to look, and Harold had on the binoculars what he had some in his backpack, but he hadn't dug him out or whatever, right, they had just been passing him back and forth. Harold passes them

the binoculars and he looks through. What he's not seeing it what he's seeing the moose, and he's staring at the tree, not seeing the forest, so to speak, or seeing the forest, not the tree. So Harold goes and points, he goes off what would be the right paddle of the moose's antlers. Just be that, just straight back from that from our spot. You'll see what I'm talking about. So what he takes his time and he lines it

up and he's looking and then he sees it. He sees something very dark but had a little more of a like a cinnamon red tinge to it. And he thinks, oh, a brown bear is on a dead moose. Score, that's my bear. We got lucky the errors in our face. That explains a funky smell. So he starts getting excited about a bear. Harold, I don't feel good about it. What is now will be okay. We're already in a good position. Let's move forward just a little bit more to get this thing to move out into the open.

So they move forward about another twenty yards. What he said, and he gave a cow call, a moose cow call. As soon as he did that, he said, this thing stood up from behind the moose, and it wasn't as big as the last one they had seen a few miles away. This one, he said, was between six seven foot tall. Real skinny, he said. You could tell it had muscle mass, but it was real lean. It was real, real lean, real shaggy looking, real haggard kind of hair, and it had a lot of gray towards the bottom

of it. But the upper part, off the shoulders and off the head was this reddish brown, kind of grizzled color. He said. The lower part of the arms were real dark as far as the hair. When it stood up, it looked right at them and started doing this number, twitching back and forth, and as they're staring at it, they're stuck again. This time Harold is freaked out and he raises his rifle and points it in the direction

of this thing. Right as soon as that rifle was pointed at this thing, what he said, because he watched Harold lift his rifle out of the corner of his eye as he was transfixed staring at this thing, he said, as soon as Harold lifted that rifle up in that direction, this thing dropped to the ground and they didn't see it again. He said, he just dropped out of the way. They didn't hear a peep, a noise or anything, no

brushes moving, nothing. It dropped down and was gone. Once it dropped down, he was in shock, and he was like, don't shoot. We don't know what that is. We don't know what that is. And he goes, it's a hairy man whatever. He's repeating some of the warnings that the native guy had given him a few hours ago at camp. But we got it. Let's go over there, Let's go over there. It wasn't that big. Let's go over there. I think we'll be all right, what are you not

knowing any better? They get over right up on this moose and it is half picked apart. He said. It looked like pieces of the fur and skin were folded back out of the way of the ribs. A lot of the innerds were already speeled out. The liver was missing, the heart, the intestines were just stacked off to the side. So it looked like whoever was in there this thing

was picking and choosing what it was eating. And as he's looking, he realizes it has no back legs, right, the back legs are gone, and so he's just in awe. What he's looking at just torn a power or moose is just right there, and he's staring. And as that's happening, they're hearing noise and they're trying to figure out where they're hearing it from. So Harold looks behind them, and this thing had dropped down out of view, and somehow

it quietly got directly behind he said. When he turned around and saw this thing, it had the most curious look on its face, he said. Seeing it out away from the brush, it had to have been just below six foot tall. His guestimation, because it's all happening a lot faster than I'm telling you. But when he looked at it, he got startled because it was something that shouldn't be He said. The skin appeared to be like almost black. He said, it looked more of a dirty

versus a permanent pigment. Right, it looked like it just weathered dirty face said, looked more tan in the creases and stuff like that, said for something that looked young in the eyes around the eyes. It had a lot of wrinkles on his face still, and it wasn't that big, but he said, when they were looking at it, the way it was looking back at him, he could tell

it was sizing them up. So at that point, Harold had lifted his rifle again almost immediately, and this thing didn't take off running, right, So Woody lifts his rifle because they don't know what this thing is going to do.

one they saw earlier that day in the morning. It walked off about forty yards, dropped down to all fours, and just gone, just hauling butt on all fours. He said he had never seen anything look so awkward moving but yet move so fast. He said the hips gyrated, rotting around and stuff, and he said it was gone. Once that happened, he would he said, I'm done. Harold was like, I'm done, screw this, let's go. They get back to camp. His guide buddy hadn't made it back yet,

and they told the native dude what happened. And the native guy just nodded acknowledgment and was like, yeah, you gotta be careful. The other hunting buddy was this already serious? Are you guys messing with us? What's the point of this? And they're telling them, look, this is what happened. We're getting the hell out of here. So what they ended up doing is packing up their stuff. So they got

packed up relatively quickly. They had Harold's planeloaded and they had it turned around for taxi for takeoff.

to take off. As that's going on, their guide buddy comes in and lands right, so Harold let's whitty out what He crawls out from behind the backseat of the super cub, crawls runs over there, tells his guide buddy what's going on. As guy buddy he could tell was just like what tell me about it later, and he goes, look, we're just waiting for the wind to change and we're out of here. The guy buddy lets him know, Hey, there's no other planes coming in, so when you guys

get your wind, feel free. What they had done is they had taken basically an old pole and they'd stuck it in the ground and kept it upright with rocks, and it had streamer tape on it, which is a common thing, trail marker tape. It's lightweight and you'll pick up the direction of the wind right. So as soon as that wind change happened, Harold fired up and they flew out of there. He said. Once they got up to elevation. What he was like, let's go see if we could spot them. Let's go see if we could

take a look at these things. Harold wasn't having none of it. He goes, I got enough fuel to get home. Just left it at that. I want to thank Woody and Harold. Harold I talked to briefly. He really didn't want to talk much about it. Woody, I appreciate you. I want to thank you guys for joining me today. We'll catch you here in the very near future. They say, you don't gotta go home, but you can't stay.