SO EP:702 Bigfoot and the Bear Hunter!

was it was? Standing enough? I'm out here looking through the window now and I don't see anything. I don't want to go outside. Jesus Quice, you better hello, get somebody out here. Quent on out there. I thought of a bit of about text forty nine. I don't know. Easy him out there. Yeah, I'm right head.

but to each his own, no judgment there. He was doing a DIY do it yourself bear hunt across catch Mac Bay in the Kenai Mountains. This incident happened about fifteen years ago. Roughly. Michael is in his seventies now and he's wanting to get certain things in his life off his chest. He reached out a while back and we had some hard time getting coordinated on getting a telephonic interview. He had a stroke about five years ago.

He wanted to do an interview, and we attempted a couple of times, but his speech just wasn't conducive to a very good interview. I appreciate his efforts, and so we'll handle it this way. Understand where this guy went black bear hunting, and it was unaware to him for many years. Harry Man Bigfoot wasn't in his wheelhouse up until these days. This area would be northeast to port Lock,

not very far. I would be willing to bet that couple of these creatures in this incident were probably from the same area where the historical thing in Port Lock happened. So what makes this different is it's not just your run of the mill Harryman's scream personal. So let's just get into it. Let me explain to you what was going on. But he was in day three of his hunt.

He had seen a couple black bears, none that he felt were worthy of taking, so he held his shots and just decided he's gonna wait for the one he wanted to get, the good one. So he's on basically an alpine slope going along to berry patches, trying to pick out a black bear at a distance and then spot in stock do his thing. So he's on this particular ridge, and this would be somewhere outside of Port Graham.

I'm sure he's going along. He hears slope plane off in the distance, which is not uncommon, especially in Alaska. So he's just listening to the hum of the plane as he's glassing. He's looking for this bear. He decides, I'm gonna go over this next little ridge and I'm gonna sit in this little saddle that he knew of in between these two little ridges. His little elevated saddle. It's got a dip in it, and he's just gonna nestle down there and potentially camp there and catch something.

First thing morning just below him in this meadow where all these berries were, So he starts working his way up there. It's getting on into dusk, and so he knows he needs to get to it. Now. He's not totally above tree line, he's just almost at tree line elevation wise. So as he's going along, he's getting a little winded, and he decides, I'm going to take a break right here for a minute. I got time to get to where I know I'm going and be good to go. He wasn't planning any fire or anything like.

That's all he had to do is roll out his sleeping bag do his thing. So he gets up, sits down in this area where he got up to, not literally stood up or anything. He gets to this area where he's going to take his break. He's sitting on this mound or tundra. So he sits down and he's sitting there. It's before dusk, it's getting dark. Everything is silhouetted, and he has approximately he guesstimated about eighty yards till the tree line break and then it's just all it's

almost fjord like. You got to understand the terrain. If you look at the Kenai Mountains you can see what I'm talking about. There's some little valleys in there and stuff, but once you get to the base of the mountain, they're fjord like. They just jettison straight up. So he's sitting there and he's trying to figure out what that sound is. He's hearing this sound, and it's the direction he's facing is I guess it would be due east. He's facing due east where he was sitting, it would

be off to his left hand side. He's hearing movement in the trees between him and the end of the tree line on the alpine level, and so he's really curious about this noise. He's thinking, Oh, I wonder if the black bear was above me and maybe stalking me as I was trying to stalk it. So he thought it was comical that, oh Jesus is going to be a story to tell people where I'm stalking a bear, but yet the bears ends up stalking me kind of thing. So he's just kind of chuckles to himself about the

potential situation he's in now. As Michael's sitting there, he decides he's gonna eat one of his granola bars, and he's doing it intentionally, hoping that the rapper sound and the smell will entice this bear to show itself. Seven millimeter mag rifle. He wasn't worried about needing anything else. He gets halfway done with this granola bar and he's trying to ignore the noises off to his left hand side. He's got the rifle right where he can easily grab it.

He's in a spot where he has time to react. He's confident in what he's doing, very confident. Now this noise sounds like he's coming closer and closer, and then he realizes it's more like a pacing, and he starts thinking he's had never known a bear to re paste like that. They'll usually circle around windy or something, try to get eyes on you see if your potential prayer or not. So he decides, I'm going to go straight

at this bear, flush it out. If it breaks the tree line, it's going to be down in an open metal I can at least get a shot on it. Maybe, So he rethinks it because of it getting dark, and he doesn't want to deal with shooting in that kind of light, so he reevaluates on the flang goes, I'm gonna stop trying to flush this, I'm gonna go back down, and I'm gonna continue to my camp. He totally rethinks it as he was moving, so he gets up to

go and then changes his mind. After a couple steps, rethinks it, thinks better of it, grabs his pack, slings it, takes his rifle, and he starts going to where he knows he's going to camp. He gets about from what he said about eight steps into this journey to where he guestimated he was within a quarter to half mile of where this little bench saddled spot is that he was going to be camping out on. So he determines

can get there in probably twenty thirty minutes. So I'm gonna pace myself because he just started and he felt himself trying to rush, so he wanted to calm down, lower his energy level a little bit, and gain focus. He said, what was weird is that eight steps in or whatever, he felt overwhelmingly watched. He felt like he was being watched, so he was taking it as bear's got eyes on me, let me calm him down, so if something happens, I'm not all worked up. But as

he's going along, he's getting more and more anxious. The movement's continuing. The pacing had stopped after he stood up and started moving, and then it's basically pacing him, but off behind him, just a little ways off on his left, always out of view, but back behind him. So he's really nervous about having something behind him behind his direction.

So he's slowing down and hopes that it catches up to him, parallels him, so that way he can at least not have to worry about looking directly behind him or have something behind him. So as he's going along, this movement continues, and it does. It does catch up when he slows down, but it parallels him. There's no other bear like behavior to this right, so he's really thrown off at what's going on. It's getting darker. He finds himself checking to make sure he's got around in

the chamber. Even though he's a discipline hunter, he doesn't like making click noises out in the fields. He knows there's a round in that chamber. He said he was feeling so uneasy, his skin was crawling. Out of all the years, which are very many bear hunting, brown, black, whatever, he never felt this way. So he felt out of place. He felt like he didn't belong there, and he felt very nervous about the situation he was in. He continues on.

He reaches this thicker wooded area and it's just darkness with the light skyline going into dusk. So he decides, man, I don't want to be going through these dark trees. Even though they're small, they're not very big. They're a little thick here, little sparseer over here. He's trying to

evaluate the best plan of accident. So he says, you know what, I'm gonna Instead of camping up on that saddle where I wanted to, I'm gonna go straight down cross this upper alpine meadow of these berry patches and camp down a tree line down further down. So he makes up his mind and he starts creating distance between him and this noise. Now, as he's creating this distance, he's in open now and he's hearing movement up behind him.

It's getting in the dark because he's moving slow. He's very methodical, he said in his twenty twenty hindsight, he thought maybe subconsciously he was trying to draw whatever it was out. He gets about half the distance to where he wants to set up camp instead, and he said it was approximately three hundred yards that he has moved away from where he was eating a snack. There are some broken trees, not broken, but broken up areas of trees. There's a small little patch here, a small little patch

over there, so it was sparse. Once he cleared the area coming down into the alpine metal, he gets out into this open area and immediately he's shaking. He wasn't cold, he felt overwhelmingly nervous. So he decides he's going to take a knee and look up and see what's causing this. So he does so. He takes a knee, and he looks back up, and he said he saw dark movement. It was hard to make out, but whatever it was a lot bigger than any black bear he ever seen.

But it was still pitch black. So he figures, okay, it's the silhouette of a brown bear. It's just in the shade. It's in the dark trees. So I obviously I'm not gonna I'm not after a brown bear. So he decides, thinking about a brown bear, he's just going to continue further on down, not camp where he was gonna the second time, but then pick a different spot further down in the valley. So he's debating himself every movement. Now, should I just continue going straight? Should I break my

line of walking? Should I zig left and then zig back right and see if I could draw this thing out? He wanted to first of all, make sure what he potentially might be shooting at, and just to find out what he might be shooting at right. So he's got all these things he's debating himself in his mind. So he decides, I'm gonna zigzag. So he starts zigzagging a little bit, slow down, speed up, try to be sporadic, trying to invoke some kind of reaction from whatever it

is up the hill from. As he's doing, he notices a weird sound, so he's trying to place what is this weird. It was like a weird kind of hum, a weird kind of motor noise, but it was almost muffled. It was almost distorted in a weird way, and he couldn't figure it out. So he's looking a round and as he's panning to the left of where he last saw this dark figure, he notices a black helicopter above the tree line, and he's astonished. He's totally blown away.

This helicopter should be making a lot more noise at that distance. It should be damn near deafening how close it was, but it wasn't. It was just a weird noise. He couldn't make out. This helicopter had no lights on whatsoever, none, no flashing strobes, no safety strobes or none of that. It was totally blacked out. He could just see it above the trees, and it was a perfect silhouette of that. He didn't know the exact make of the helicopter. He

just said military like. So that really threw him off, and he's I'm not breaking any laws. I have my permit, I have my tag. I'm totally legit. So he decides, whatever's going on, I'm just gonna continue minding my business because I have nothing to do with those guys. He goes on. He ends up things quiet down and stuff. Once he gets further down into this valley, and he finds a little outcropping of trees and decides that's the

spot I'm going to camp. Well, he gets over to it and he's still washing way up the ridge now because he created quite a distance, damn near a mile, and it was well on to get in dark. He heard that weird sound fade away. No sooner than the weird sound faded away, he heard a large crashing boong bang sound up the slope where he last saw what he thought was a brown bear, silhouetted in the darkness. He did not like the feeling he got when he

heard those noises, the crashing and the breaking. Michael said that he wished there was more daylight. He would have just hiked out right then. He felt overwhelmingly compelled to get out of there, so he decides he already knew within himself he wasn't gonna be able to fall asleep. So what he does is he decides he's going to play a counting game and some other mind games just to keep himself from slowly dozing off from being tired.

At this point, he's an older guy. He's been hiking. Yeah, he's been at this for a couple of days already, and he's just it wears on somebody, even someone young and fitpaking about hiking up and down the mountains a few times over a course of a couple of days. It's gonna wear your ass out. I don't care who you are. So he decides, I'm just gonna do these things. I'm gonna have an open line of sight. He had flashlights, he had plenty of batteries, but he preferred not to

use him unless he had to. So, as he's debating on flashlighting, a sound he's been hearing that sounds like he's getting closer and closer, he's, man, let me hold off before I flash this thing with the flashlight ruin my night vision temporarily, and see if it comes closer. If it comes closer, I'm gonna beam it and potentially have to shoot this bear if it's showing any sign of aggression or not going away. I'm just gonna end this crap and shoot this bear and stay tuned for

more sasquatch out to see. We'll be right back after these messages. So the noise continues. He said his level of unwarranted fear was just rising by the minute. He felt like there's this overwhelming fear pressure on him, and it just seems so weird because he had never felt that before. He had been intense situations with brown bears, black bears and whatnot. He couldn't understand and wrap his

mind around why he was feeling this way. So he decides, all right, he takes the safety off his rifle and he's kind of got it cop style, got the flashlight and resting the stock of the gun over his wrist, and he didn't like doing that. He didn't have a better way at the moment. He just thought, I'm going to beam whatever it is going to see the light, get the hell out of dodge. It'll realize I'm human

and not prey. This particular flashlight he had was a Surefire weapons style light nine hundred lumen, pretty bright, but the batteries didn't last too long. So what he does is he lights up the area in which he hears this noise and he gets eye shine back. But the eye shine he gets back is further away than he thought it was, and he thought it was two animals because of how quickly he hit the light. He thought the eye shine the distance between the eye shine was

too far to be just one animal. He thought maybe two, one looking out from one shrub, one looking out from another shrub, and that's why he was seeing the two eye shine. He was trying to wrap his mind around that big of eye shine that far apart. It shouldn't be. He kills the light and he starts contemplating. He's, okay, there's two things. So in his mind he's thinking, there's two things at this moment. So he goes, okay, let

me let him come in closer. Let's see if they leave or if they coming closer after shine a light on them. He sits there, he said, uncomfortably, for about an hour until he hears movement again. And so he stays calm, he stays disciplined, and he waits till this noise is what he's assuming is in a clearing between where he had seen the eye shine versus where he's at. So as soon as he feels confident that this noise is indeed had split the difference heat beams again, he

understands why it was such wide eyeshine. It was a hairy man and it was pitch black. He said. It had a very weird, milky gray kind of complexion to it. He said he looked at it for a brief moment he saw the eye shine he saw this thing look like it was squatted down, which was still really big at the distance right. So immediately he's what the hell and he shoots around off, not directly at it, but just pops around off to try to scare this thing off. It worked, the thing took off to his left, and

he heard it for quite a while. So a little while after this happens, he's panic stricken. He doesn't know what he saw, he doesn't know what the hell he's gonna do, and he decides, I'm not sitting right here. I'm gonna move further down to where this river was and be over there by the river. If I got to escape, I'll jump into the river, do whatever I gotta do. I don't know what the hell that thing is, right,

because again he had no reference points. He had never heard of the Portlock mysteries and all that kind of shit, which a lot of people haven't. He's sitting there and as he's going along, he's replaying what has happened. And trust me, he's moving along. He's not just do It's not a walk in the park. I asked him, I was like, when you saw it with the flashlight, what were your feelings? When you saw it, he said. It was in a position of a linebacker on a line

of scrimmage, getting ready to rush a passer. Fair enough, And I asked him, when you saw it, what exactly did you see? And again he just explained. And the skin on the face looked like a milky off gray, he said, almost like a birch color. And the eyes were eyeshine, of course, and the hair looked to be pitch black, but it looked almost mangy. His light was bright enough to break through the coarseness of the hair and see the skin underneath. He said, it wasn't mangy,

but it wasn't a bear, it wasn't a man. And it took off running right after he popped the shot. So he gets down closer to this river. As he's sitting there, he's borderline terrified. He heard it run off, but again he doesn't know what it is. At this point, he's freaking out, and so he decides, all right, I'm just gonna hunker down. He got himself into a cluster of trees to where something that big would make a lot of noise coming up behind him. So he had an open line of fire in front of him to

back into a corner. Basically, he didn't like the feeling, but that's what he felt he could do in the moment, he admitted himself. The blacksperus and shit behind him were not much of a protection, but it was better than just open air. He puts another round into his rifle as he's sitting here, and he's really worried about what's going to come of this situation. Next day comes, he goes off a little bit just before sunrise. There was no other noises or anything, and as he's waking up,

he feels an overwhelming sense of peace. Low, that was weird what I dealt with, But I think I'm okay. And as he's sitting there, he rubbing his eyes, he's eating another granola bar and he notices a very nice black bear off in the distance eating berries, and he's perfect, that's a good sized boar. It's eating berries, perfect criteria. That's what I want. I'm gonna stalk this bear. So he puts the night before out of his mind as much as he could. He said, he kept always looking around,

almost to the point of it was ruining his hunt. Again. He had no reference. He was still in shock. His words, not mine, he said. If I had been in my right mind, i'd have already been booking it out of there. I saw that bear. Nothing really happened with that. Whatever it was his words, not mine, whatever that was that came in on me, I'm gonna do my thing. I got plenty of daylight now, I can get my bear that I want, and I can get back to the coast,

get back across towards Homer. So he makes up his mind. A resilient guy. Setting his waist, he starts stalking the bear, and he's at a disadvantage. It's up above him. The wind ain't the best. It's like variable. Sometimes it's blowing in his face. Sometimes he feels it blowing past him. He hadn't been winded. So he's just slowly, methodically making his way. And that this is an open train now,

so he's very slow at doing what he's doing. He gets within three hundred and fifty yards of this bear, and as he's doing so, he makes his shot kill shot. Drops it right after he does the kill shot, though he hears he said it's within moments he shot the bear. It tumbled down. It was a good shot. It riled around a little bit and just death throws it was done. So he stands up. He feels accomplished. He's like, yes, I got I came for what I wanted. Looks like a nice rug on it. I got plenty of meat.

He wasn't necessarily there as a trophy hunter. He was there to get himself what he liked, which was that type of bear meat. So he starts slowly making his way up to it, just to make sure it's not going to play possiblely going to jump up and rush him or anything like that. Of course, he's been around. After he closed about half the distance, he starts hearing this weird noise. It was the same noise he had heard the night before when he saw that blacked out helicopter.

He's looking around for this noise and he's not seeing where it's coming from. So he's really thrown off, and he's like, I just need to get my bear meat and get the hell out of here. So he goes and he guts the bear. As he's doing so, he said he was so nervous he couldn't stay focused on the job at hand, right, He couldn't stay focused on what he was doing as he was sitting there. He got it gutted, and he started partially taking the hide off so he could bag the quarters into these game bags.

He's got his packboard. He estimated the bear was probably two hundred and seventy five pounds not dressed out, So once it was dressed out, he estimated one hundred and fifty hundred and seventy pounds roughly. And so he's slowly getting this meat packed onto his packboard, pack right, and he's readjusting things, and he's getting things right so when he loads up he can manage make his way out. As he's doing, he kept getting interrupted by this strange

thought of run right. He just kept getting this thought run, you gotta run now, And so it's startling him. It's not making him feel good. He doesn't know why he's feeling that way outside of the night before thing, but he never felt like he had to just up and run, especially with nothing around in the middle of the day. So he tries to calm himself down. He decides, I'm going to take a break from what I'm doing and

I'm gonna make myself some instant coffee. I'm gonna sit on some coffee and try to figure out what the hell is going on because he just felt all this pressure a flea run go. So as he's doing so, he got a cup of coffee in him. It was taste, even though his instant. He really wanted some coffee, so he made some more. And as he's in the process of making that second cup, he notices back beyond the gut pile and the black bear at the upper tree line, he sees movement and he's what is this And he

takes a look and it's another bear. It was a brown bear and it just was going on about its way, sniffing the air and stuff, and he was like, ah shit, this bear is gonna wind my kill. It heard the gun shot, it's coming to my gun shot. It's winded my kill, and it's just tracking down my bear. I'm gonna have to fight this bear off to keep this bear.

So he decides he wasn't quite done with everything he wanted to do, dressing out this bear and getting on the packboard, but he didn't want to fight a bear for his prize. So he decides, all right, let me take what I got, let me retreat back, make sure this brown bear the area I don't want to have two bears down, especially for nothing. If the bear comes in, he can have what I didn't get. So he's making this plan the whole time, feeling I gotta go. Something's

not right. He watches the brown bear. It goes off. He had backed away from the kill a little further. The bear didn't win him. It didn't appear at all. It continued down to where he was the night before. The little higher was slowly working his way up, and it was just following the outpline tree line, the upper tree line going along, and he just watched it until

it was quite a distance away. He calms down, and he was just about to go and start finished dressing out this bear, and there wasn't much left to do at that point. He stands up. He grabs his knife kit and whatever he's trailed, his hands off again, just keeping the sight as clean as possible, To keep all the bloody could off of himself. He would take one of the game bags and drape it over his legs

so he wasn't getting blood all over his pants. And I'd removed his shirt, the long sleeve one just so he had a T shirt on so he could just try to cover his bases because he was alone. He didn't want to be smelling like fresh blood. So he starts this process. As he's doing so, he hears this wallering coming from the direction the bear was at right

the brown bear way off in the distance. He sees this brown bear run in a half circle, crash up into the trees, running and then turns, comes halfway down until it's about parallel with him in elevation, and turns and bee line straight towards him. Michael said he never was scared of a charging bear ever until this point. And he said the reason he got scared and this bear was at a distance still, but it's not stopped. It sees through Mike is going. It's go button was pushed,

so he backs out of the way. He said what scared him was the bear looked scared, and he said it was about maybe a six hundred pounds soal the bear looked scared, and I was like, at that distance, how could you tell? He goes. It's haunches weren't gristled up, it wasn't in a charging er kind of thing. It was going to get out of my way kind of mode. He said, he just sensed this bear was fleeing, so he backed away, and he figured, Okay, once it gets past me, it's gonna smell my kill and then go

and get on the gut pile or something. He doesn't know what spooked a bear, but he figures that's what's going to go down. He continues to back away, meanwhile dragon his stuff with him, making sure he's trying not to leave anything behind. He said he left a couple of game bags that were draped over him. He immediately grabbed his hoodie and his gear and was backing away because this bear was still coming and it wasn't showing any signs of slowing down, and all this is happening

real fast. Has taken me way more longer to explain it to you than how it went down. So he backs away and he gets back towards, he said, about half the distance to the lower tree line in this metal. He squats down and he's, ah, a bear, don't come towards me. I don't, and I have two down bears. I don't have a tag for a brownie. This bear didn't even pay attention to him, just slum went right on past, didn't give a shit about his kill, didn't care about the fresh blood smelling air. It was gone.

His attention was on this brown bear running just Holland asked, was the damnedest thing he ever seen. He's seen bears run, but this, how everything was transpiring was just to beyond craziness to him. From the night before, the weird helicopter noise, just the whole thing. Once his attention stops focusing on the bear running away because it was already damn near out of sight, his attention goes back to the direction the bear had run from, about the area he was

roughly guestimaning because it was pretty dark. Once he was retreating from that upper area, he's guestimating about the same area he was. He saw that thing again. That thing was standing up, was almost as tall as what he guestimated to be like ten foot spruce trees. Right, the thing was behind some will alders, some spruce trees, and

it was still evident that this thing was hulking behind there. Immediately, the fear from the night before, all the feelings he's been dealing with all day just came to a head and he just couldn't take it, he said. He broke down. He was sobbing. He had to go that direction. He knew he had to go that direction. It's now daytime and this thing is obviously beIN scared of the daylight.

So he steals himself and he goes, all right, I'm just going to act like that thing ain't there, and I'm going to make my way back where I started. He gets up. He said, I felt like a robot. He said. Everything I was doing was just one foot in front of the other, keeping an eye a pill at this thing, bear meat on his pack. He was like, hopefully this thing just is going to go for what I left behind me, versus mess with me on what I got with me. That's what he initially started thinking.

As he's getting closer, he keeps getting the feeling that, Okay, there's a lot of weight in this pack and I'm not going to be able to maneuver like I want to. So he stopped ups and stay tuned for more sasquatch out to sea. We'll be right back after these messages. Still keeping an eye, he drops his pack down, which isn't light. He's got all this extra weight on there packing that meat. So he just starts setting his game bags out. He unloads everything, packs everything, back in the

whole time keeping an eye on this thing. He's hoping for something to happen to break this scenario up. A plane fly by, something, just something that happened where this thing leaves, and he knows what direction it left so he can make a solid just go for it. Right after he's unloaded, he gets his back packed back together, slings it on in this thing. Once he gets the

backpack on and grabs the rifle. As soon as he grabs the rifle and checks it, this thing started swaying back and forth where it had been standing the whole time, just watching him. He said he couldn't make out it was too far to make out facial features, but he felt those eyes burning a whole throm So he decides, Okay, I got a whole box of AMMO and a half box of AMMO. I'm going to boister myself up and

make a show heading the hell out of here. So he gets a handful of rounds in his one hand, and as he's walking along, he'll pop a shot, start screaming on chamber around poem, shoot another one, and then, as he would periodically add a couple more rounds, walk one in poem so he's making a big show, a lot of noise, walking not directly at it, but directly out of there the easiest path he could as he's doing so every time, he said, every time he was shooting,

the sing would do this number and then start the swaying faster and faster. He said, it got to a point to where it started making a noise, a whooping noise, and ripped one of the he said it was about eight to nine foot spruce roots and all just directly out of the ground and chucked it, not at him, just chucked it. He said. It would have been chucked off to his right hand side up into the other trees and stuff. And this thing started making this display,

as he called it, loud stomping, the whooping sound. He was moving around more, staying in the same general area, but more moving around. He felt like it was taking what he was doing with the shooting the gun as a challenge, and he was answering the challenge. So he held off on shooting anymore one of conserve rounds because this thing was huge, and for two, he didn't want to escalate it. He felt like crap I was trying to be bold and all I did was escalate this

thing's reaction to me. So he's trying to think it out. Instead of going the direction he was gonna go, he starts veering away a little bit, not to show any fear, even though he was scared shitless. He wanted to create distance. Smart guy, So he's trying to think logically. He creates

more and more distance. As he passes where this thing is above him, he notices it had calmed and it was squatted, and he said the distance had to have been under two hundred yards, but he said the way it squatted down, it seemed lower than it should be compared to how tall it was. He felt it shouldn't be squatted so low to the ground. At then he

took into consideration the perception he's looking uphill. It could have been on a little bit of a ledge, And then it just looked like it was lower than it actually was. Right, So all this stuff's going on with him. Michael gets to a point to where the game trail breaks into two. The one game trail goes further down by the river, but there's a lot more willows and

alders and stuff, a lot more dense foliage. I have a harder line of sight, and then the upper one was more open, and he decided to take that one. He gets down there and he's looking. This thing is still up there, but at a distance now to where he felt comfortable. He wasn't all puckered up. His expression was, you couldn't have pulled a needle out of my ass with a tractor. So he's calming down a bit because

there's distance and it's daylight. Nothing outside of him escalating in his mind things that calm down, So he's just keeping it calm. As he's going down this trail, he starts hearing this thump sound right, so he's thinking, oh, it's that weird helicopter again. He's looking around, and then he notices it. It's running down the slope behind him into the trees that it's broken up. It's not like one unbroken set of trees, but it's on a line

of trees just offset from the river. So it's like, shit, this thing's coming down behind me, and so he decides to pick up his pace. He starts moving faster, and he's considering, Okay, what do I do if it comes in on me. He's pre planning, how am I going to place my shots. Where am I going to shoot this thing? What am I going to do? He's this exit strategy, he's working it out. He said he was doing that because it was keeping him from freaking out. He said every part of him wanted to run. I

totally understand that. So he's said he got about two hundred yards more and there was no noise. Everything was dead quiet. And he said it was the most eerie pointing in the whole thing, just because of how quiet it was. There was noise when he shot the bear and he was gutting and stuff, there was noises. The bear coming through, there was noises, and then this happened and everything was dead quiet. So it's catching up to

him how quiet it is. So he said he got about two hundred yards further and he's now out in this lower meadow in the open, and he's feeling a lot more comfortable. The sense of dread is fading, still there, but fading. And he said he got about another one hundred or so seventy five yards before some more older willows and stuff were kicked up in front of him along the trail pretty tight, and he didn't like that.

He didn't want to feel closed in by brush. He saw how these things move and how big it was and scary and shit he wanted he didn't want to feel cornered anymore. So he decides he's gonna leave the trail and walk along the tundra and the marsh and go around the stand of trees. And from being there before, he knew it wasn't overly far distance to just break trail and go around the shit. He didn't want to feel closed in by the brush, so he does so.

He breaks trail the whole time, every two seconds. He said he was looking behind him, taking a good hard look at everything behind him, and he said, once he cleared that area and got back onto the trail where it was more wide open again, he said he had to stop. And he said he sat there. He doesn't know how long he sat there, sobbing and crying, him being tired, not sleeping, the trauma of what was going on,

it was all catching up to him. At that point he knew he had to stop what he was doing, stop the sobbing, snap out of it, and continue moving. Before he couldn't move. He felt his body so tired and achy that he knew he had to get up and go. I asked him, when you were spotting for this thing behind you, did you see any signs of whatsoever? And he was like, no, After I saw it coming down the slope behind me making all that noise and everything was dead quiet, that's the last I saw of

it on this particular trail and stuff. So he continues on, and he knows at this one certain junction of a couple trails, he knows he's not all that far from where he was heading to get the hell out of Dodge. As he's moving along, It's funny, I've had conversations with people very recently about this real heavy feeling you get after these kind of experiences. It's like your muscle tension is so high, You're adrenaline dump is so high that once you start coming down off of it, it's just

like a thousand pounds on your back. So once he started explaining this process he was going through, I knew instantly what he had been dealing with. He continues on, but he recognizes he's getting slower and slower, so he decides, I'm gonna not stop, but I'm going to dig your granola bar out start chewing on this granola bar, and as he took the first bite of the granola bar, he said, his stomach got so hungry. It had been upset and he had been fighting off this hunger pain.

But once he ate that piece of granola barnew he needed a meal, you know what I mean, And he knew a meal equal to nap after and he just knew he couldn't do it, so he put the granola bar away. Continues on down, he said he saw caught a glimpse of it one more time at a very great distance, just as he was coming down off the s knoll about to drop down further down towards where

he was going to eventually get picked up. He looked back up the valley a ways, and he said it was several little meadows away, but he saw it moving up towards where he had shot the bear and where he had ended up leaving the game bags and stuff. So he felt confident that it's distracted. It wanted my meat, It didn't necessarily want me. I don't know what the hell's going on with this helicopter shit. So he held

onto this for quite a while. He tried to explain to a couple of his hunting buddies, and then they started teasing them over you eating mushrooms in the meadow and just making little jabs, and so he left alone. I want to thank Michael for sharing it. A lot of these stories, I leave it open ended when I say he got out of there. The reason being is I don't need to go on for a half hour saying he had to wait for a skip to come and all that when it's not necessarily relevant to the

encounter itself. So certain things I omit out of it that aren't necessarily detrimental to the overall experience. I want to thank Michael very much for reaching out, being patient, being willing to attempt a telephonic interview, even with the speech impediment he's dealing with from the stroke. I sincerely appreciate you, man. I don't thank everyone for joining us here. We'll catch you guys on the next one. Did the.