I grew up in rural Alabama, in the small town of Northport. And I say town, but that may be stretching it. It was fourteen miles from my childhood home to the closest red light. Tuscaloosa was a major city and Northport was a stepchild. In nineteen seventy eight, there was not a lot to do on rural Highway sixty nine North. The summers were hot, but the fall brought on every young man's dream of hunting the big buck that ate all the peas during the last growing season.
My job at twelve was the defender of my grandmother's garden. I had a carte blanche on any night to eliminate any deer we caught rating the pea patch, regardless of what hunting season it was, and God helped the game warden who dared question my Pentecostal grandmother on her war on deer or any other four legged creature who ate
what she sweated to grow. I became exceptional with a firearm, having spent a lot of time practicing at two hundred and three hundred yards with my rifle my grandfather bought me for Christmas when I was eight. I preferred a shotgun, though, due to the massive undergrowth in the woods surrounding our land. So in nineteen seventy eight, when the deer have ravaged my grandmother's peace so badly, she made it clear to me to put my skills to good use or face
dire consequences. Back then, I had none of the fancy stuff that you see now. I had no camo, no tree stand, no deer year in debate them in it was just me in a pair of quiet sneakers, my rifle, and my best friend to help me. Together, we weighed our options for where best to funnel the deer in. We decided on a place about three miles from my grandparents' farm. We'd have the best chance to see them along a well worn trail that extended into the woods for at least eight miles. It passed by a small
pond that no one ever visited but us. The woods were all pines along the roadside, but deeper in they transitioned back to oak and black gum. My pine was cut periodically, but the hardwood has stood for one hundred and twenty years or more. Some of those trees are five feet at the base and well over one hundred feet tall. We got started early for us on a cool Saturday morning in September. Bama was playing later, so we wanted to be back in time to see the game.
We let out for the hardwoods down by the creek. We planned on taking the long way, but after about an hour of walking, my best friend wasn't so keen on wasting his Saturday helping me have a place to sleep and eat. We stopped where we were and decided to hunt from a makeshift blind that we threw together on the spot. It wasn't much more than a couple of limbs and some well placed leaves, but it gave
us some concealment. It also gave us a great view of the forty acre valley below us, and we were perched along an old game trail, high up on a natural ledge about two hundred feet above. We sat there, four feet apart with our rifles, something to drink, and a lot of AMMO for what seemed like hours. We traded off taking naps, but our butts were getting sore
and our legs were starting to fall asleep. We were serious about our mission, but I wasn't any happier about spending my Saturday out there than my friend was at eleven That morning, I saw something moving in the valley at my one o'clock. It was just a brownish blur four hundred yards out and two hundred feet below me. I tapped my friend and pointed it out. He gave me the thumbs up and trained to scope on it.
Before I could lift my rifle, twenty codies came racing out of that same direction with their tails between their legs. They weren't chasing anything, and they weren't fighting. They were in a full out run for their lives. I could think of only one thing in those woods that would cause this behavior, and I wanted no part of it. Years earlier, my grandfather and some neighbors had hunted a two hundred pound mountain lion that laid waste to some
pretty vicious dogs they sent after it. Several had shot at it, but no one got it. Now a twelve year old boy and his buddy were going toe to toe with it. No thanks. I didn't want to run. I had visions of catching this thing out in the open and dropping it once and for all. I'd be famous. I guess I could have mounted it and been the big hunter. For a while, my buddy tapped my arm and said, you see that oak at the break in the pines, by that old dead stump, look through your
scope just above it. The whole time I was straining to find it, I was steadying myself to take a shot. Finally I z rode in on it. But it wasn't a big cat. It had a face. Three hundred yards from us was something between an ape and a human that looked like he'd been pumping iron on steroids. He was down in the push up position and he was staring back at me. I could see his eyes plain as day, and his lip would curl up and he sniffed the air. Yeah, he sniffed the air. He was
trying to wind us like a hound dog will do. Definitely, he went from prone to squatting, and he moved unbelievably fast. I don't think he realized I had spotted him yet. He was still trying to remain covert. My buddy's feet started trying to run, but its brain hadn't caught up with him yet. I was trying to keep him from running, and trying to explain that we weren't going to outrun that thing. All the while that pack of codies was
bearing down on us. They were less than one hundred yards away, and I had no idea how they were going to take to discovering us there. Meanwhile, I made a fatal era no hunter should ever make. I had taken my eyes off the hairy thing by the stump to give my friend his due. He didn't cry or scream, but a slight panic over whether to choose to fight or flight had definitely set in. I just wanted to get out of there without running into whatever that thing was.
Seconds passed and the codies came running straight at us, like I knew they would. But my only thought was that thing below and where it was now. I have cherished every day of my life since that moment. That was the day that I could have died, and it would have been no one's fault but my own. Because of the many arrows that followed we ran. We picked
flight over fight. The chase was on. We were two and a half miles from the house and a mile and three quarters to earshot of people working on our farm. It began in a frenzy fueled by youth and farm living, the hard work that we put in every day helped our strengthen stamina. I assumed if we turned into an area of dense timber that we could out maneuver it. I was wrong. For the next mile we played a guessing game of which damn side of us it was
going to be on. We heard footfalls on either side, and I convinced myself it was my heart beat pounding in my ears. I knew there was a small gully coming up that ran for about one hundred yards or so. It was about ten feet deep and twenty feet wide in places. I made up my mind that I was going to do my best impression of Customs Last Stand right there. We hit the wash with me and the lead, thinking that we would get to the other end, where there was one hell of a twelve foot climb out
we could get back up to the top. We'd equal the odds on size, and then with that thing in the wash below, we'd fill it full of holes from the safety above. We reached the end, but it was so muddy and slimy there was no way we were coming out that way, and I turned and searched for a spot where I could grab some roots and climb out. I found it and made a quick work of getting out of there, and then I grabbed my buddy and helped him up. We were exhausted and breathless, and we
sat there for a moment, thinking we'd gotten away. And then suddenly I looked up and there it was, less than sixty yards from us. It had been pacing us the whole time. That was the first, real, honest to God, look, I got it. This creature. He was seven feet tall and weighed full hundred pounds, and he was pure lean muscle. You could plow a lot of corn with a mule belt like that. He had a metallic smell of old blood mixed with rotten meat. He was breathing slow and
with a purpose. And there he stood for us to see. Was he an ape, a man? Or was it a bigfoot? I had no clue, and I knew nothing about bigfoot at that time. He had a thick brow, but his nose was skinnier than a Neanderthal. His hands were huge, and his breastbone was thick. Large joints connected his limbs, and the muscles at the top of his legs stood out.
His lights and pecks were well defined, and he was covered in coarse hair that reflected light like an old hound's furwell sometimes, and the mouth didn't fit the creature whatsoever. It protruded because of the teeth, giving the impression that it came out a few inches more than it should out. We were taking all this in when something in the back of my mind told me that he wanted us
to focus on him. Footfalls were coming from somewhere behind us, and it broke through the dumbfounded trance that we were in. We heard limbs breaking too close to us, and I turned to get a glimpse of his buddy doing his best to hide behind a tree one hundred yards from us. And he was smaller and had a lighter coat. But beyond that, I couldn't say. I had enough of being chased. I decided that people were going to know which one of these things ate me, because he'd be the one
bleeding the most. Put all your bullets into him, was all I whispered to my friend while I fired on Johnny, come lately behind us. My friend opened up on the big one. I laid down a line of fire that knocked huge chunks out of the tree that he was hiding behind, and then I turned and fired on the big one too. He was running down the wash. It's time to go, I shouted, and we did a hundred
yard swap out, run cover, run, cover. We'd stop every so often to listen and catch our breath, and then we'd go right back to it until we had the big barn in sight. We hit the long gravel road and walk from there, and we decided before we got to the house that this was a story that we'd never tell anyone, not if we had any hope of
every deer hunting again. For months, we didn't go back out there, and every time we looked in that direction, we would decide to play football or something, anything but go into those woods. I managed to put it all in the back of my mind, and as the years have passed, I haven't given it much thought, mainly because
I no longer go in the woods. So there I was eighteen months ago, and I was sitting in my yard waiting for my dog to go to the bathroom in my neighbor's yard at twelve thirty in the morning, when a fear I haven't known in years ran up my spine. I live across from a three thousand acre protected wilderness area. I recognized immediately that I was being stalked. I was being hunted, and their eyes were on me, watching my every move. I walked back inside and got
my pistol. I came out and pessed on my mailbox post, all the while shouting at the woods. I been running for forty three years, and I ain't gonna do it no more. Make no mistake, these things mean you harm. I do not subscribe to the theory that they are harmless, because they are not. Back in nineteen eighty four, my family lived on a farm on the edge of town in the heart of Kentucky. The house sat on a hilltop with a big black barn behind it in a long,
narrow valley. Beyond that, the house set well above the roadway and even higher above the valley. The valley sat even lower and was surrounded by woods. I was sixteen and feeling pretty low. My girlfriend had just called me on the phone and broken up with me after two months. She didn't even give me a reason. It was February, but the weather was beginning to show signs of spring after a long winter. The temperature was somewhat in the mid forties, and there were only a few patches of
snow here and there. I needed to get away and think, so I headed for my favorite spot, and for me, that was the woods. I spent a great deal of time there, and sometimes with friends, but usually alone. My father had left my mother when I was young, so the male role models in my life were my two uncles. They taught me to hunt and fish and to appreciate the beauty and wonder of nature. In those woods, there were a couple of gas right guys, and looking back,
I really missed those times that we spent together. I walked down to the bottom of the valley, like I generally did. I was deep in thought about why my girl would break up with me, and I wasn't paying attention when I heard a thumping sound. It was something solid hitting the grass covered ground. I looked around and saw a rock about twenty feet from me rolling uphill.
I figured it was either my sister or my brother playing a trick on me, so I turned to look back the way I came, expecting to see one of them, and I scanned around looking, but they weren't there. As I turned to my left, still looking for my siblings, I saw a twenty foot patch of snow with four human shaped footprints in it. It was a little unnerving to see the footprints because first, whoever made these prints wasn't wearing shoes. It wasn't freezing out, but it was
still cold. Walking in the snow would have made it feel even colder. Second, these prints were huge. I walked over and compared them to my boot. They were nearly twice as long as my foot and much wider, and the stride was a lot longer than I could have made. I was still examining the footprints when I heard another rock hit the ground, and I turned in the direction of the sound, and I saw the rock twenty feet away,
rolling downhill. This time it was bigger than the first, roughly the size of my fist, and I knew immediately it couldn't have been my brother or sister. I was far older and stronger than them, and I doubt I could have thrown it from any possible hiding spots. I then thought it might have been one of my friends who lived close. I knew Tommy was out of town visiting relatives, and Scotty had been in bed all week
with a bad case of the flu. They were the only ones who ever came over, so I looked around again. Who was throwing rocks at me? The tracks probably should have sent me running home, but I honestly thought someone was playing a prank on me. My uncle's taught me that tracks made in the snow will expand when they melt, so I figured it was just a joke. I walked forward with a lot of confidence. You better knock it off.
I'm throw rocks too, I said. Another rock was chucked at me, and this time I saw it in mid flight, so I knew it was coming from the left corner of the woods, near the property line. It was two hundred feet from me, and I thought whoever was throwing these rocks must have a pretty good arm. Another rock landed ten feet to my right. I was getting angry now, so I walked over and picked it up before it
stopped rolling. It was a little bigger than I would have normally wanted to throw, but in my frustration, I threw it back. Then I screamed an insult at whoever this was for good measure. My throw was way off the It hit the ground well short of the tree line, so I looked around for another rock to throw. I found a few in the grass between the patches of snow, so I picked one up that fitted my hand better. This time. It hit a tree just inside the woodline.
Then I saw a movement eighty feet to my left, in the nearest section of trees. It was a lot closer to me than where the rocks were coming from. I only got a glimpse, maybe four or five seconds at most. Most of it was obscured by the thick brushing trees. I saw a dark upper portion of a massive right shoulder blade and a huge moving arm about seven feet off the ground. Also, I saw what looked like thick legs as it ran behind a tree. It was completely covered in reddish hair that bounced as it
disappeared into the trees. I was nearly awe struck. Its movements were so graceful and fluid. It was completely different from how a deer or a human would move. Now I knew immediately it wasn't a bear or a cougar. It was too large. Both bears and cougars are extremely rare in Kentucky, and neither of them throw rocks. I barely had time to register what I was seeing when another rock landed five feet from me. It came from the same direction as the others. Then I heard heavy
footfalls in the woods from that same direction. There were definitely more than one of them. To say I wasn't terrified would be a bold faced lie. I knew I had to get out of there. I was alone and unarmed. The nearest house was over half a mile away, on the other side of the valley and flanked by thick trees. I knew the elderly couple who lived there. They were nice people, but they wouldn't have been able to hear me even if they were outside, which they rarely were.
My house was over three quarters of a mile away. My mom and siblings had been inside watching TV when I left. At that moment, I forgot all about my girlfriend. Survival was my priority. I wanted to run, but I remembered what my uncles had told me about predators. Never turn your back on them, and running will kick in their instinct to chase. Fear turned into anger as I picked up as many rocks as I could find and started throwing them back towards the woods as fast as
I could. I at least a string of obscenities and foul language as I did all the while moving backwards a few dozen paces at a time. Years later, during my time in the military, I learned to call that a tactical retreat. More rocks are being thrown back at me now, and from two different directions. I switched targets back and forth as I slowly made my way back down the valley. Locked in combat with an unseen enemy. I was out numbered and out gun but I kept
throwing and moving and cussing and cursing. I doubted the cussing helped me, but it made me feel braver. It was probably only five minutes before I felt the hill under my feet, but it felt like hours. That meant I was closer to the relative safety of home, and by now those creatures had stopped throwing rocks at me. My accuracy had dropped off dramatically by then, anyway, and I scanned the woods once more for movement and listened
for sounds. I didn't see or hear anything, and exhausted and sweating like i'd run a marathon, I took off my coat and stood there for another five minutes before I felt it was safe enough to turn and high tailor at home. I didn't tell my mother and siblings what had happened. I didn't want to scare them. The next day I told one of my uncles, who brought his shotgun over and slept down into the valley with me, to retrace my steps. I showed him the tracks in
the snow. There were huge gouges in the hard dirt where the rocks and landed. We walked into the woodline where I had seen the one running. That's where I compared the size and height of the trees to the spot where I saw the shoulder and the arm. This thing must have been massive, but we didn't find any tracks there. We left the area, but not before I
noticed that my uncle was being unusually quiet. After we got back to the house and well away from my mom, he told me that he'd had a strange experience there many years before. My eldest uncle served in Vietnam. He's a quiet man who rarely shows his emotions or gets upset. When he came home from the war, he couldn't wait to get back into his beloved woods where he could hunt and fish, And then he finally got the chance.
It was a bit sweet experience. It isn't an easy transition from life of daily combat back to a peaceful civilian existence. The woods of Kentucky looked nothing like the jungles of Southeast Asia, but the oppressive feeling of the dense vegetation and the limited visibility are similar. It took him quite a while to get over the nagging fear of someone waiting behind every bush to kill him. Slowly, he worked his way back to his favorite fishing spots.
Once he was comfortable, he began to hunt again. One day, he was out hunting squirrels alone with his twenty two rifle. He was also carrying a revolver in his hip holster. He walked for hours and saw a few squirrels that they were too small to trouble with. When he decided to take a break, he sat down under a large tree on top of a heavily wooded ridgeline. From there, he had a clear view down into the nearby holler. He'd been sitting there for about ten minutes when he
saw movement below. He only saw bushes moving, but he suspected it was a deer. It was too early for deer season, but knowing their paths might help him decide where to build a stand. Later, he decided to go down check it out. He got up and slowly made his way down to the holler. The trees and underbrush made it impossible to get a clear view of whatever was moving around, but he found a little path that had made whatever it was. He knew it wasn't a deer.
It looked almost like a small bulldozer had made the path, like six deer had walked inside by side. He never seen them move that way, and plus, the vegetation looked like it had been smashed aside and pulled out of the way. He didn't find any tracks, but it was clear that something heavy had walked through here. He told me he should have left right then and there, but he was young and curiosity got the better of him. He moved forward, pondering what kind of critter could make
such a path. Was it a bear? No, Black bears aren't much whiter than a deer. Besides, he'd never seen a bear in this part of the state. Cougars and mountain lions came to mind, but he quickly ruled them out as well. Suddenly there was a loud crash, like a tree breaking under a great strain, and it echoed across the holler. Then the woods grew early quiet. There were no birds chirping, no bees buzzing, no squirrels or
any other animals making any sounds. Alarmed, and reverting back to his military training, he quickly veered off the trail and hid down among the tall grass on his belly. He lay there in the silence for several minutes, wondering if his mind was playing tricks on him. He was about to move away when he heard a sound that I was familiar with. First there was a thump several yards away, and then another one a little closer. He looked up over the tall grass and he saw a
rock coming in his direction. He crawled away, hoping that that would throw his attacker off his position, and it almost worked. The next rock landed farther away, but it was adjusting for his movement. He decided that this thing must be a human. He couldn't think of anything else in Kentucky that could throw rocks. With his rifle and pistol, my uncle felt reasonably assured that he was safe, so he stood up and he called out. He doesn't remember what he said, but it was something to the effect
of asking them not to throw rocks. At him, but no one answered. He then told them that he was armed and he expected to get an answer, or at least hear them leave, but he got neither. He began to make his way out of there. Like me, he walked backwards, with his eyes scanning for threats. He moved quickly. It was too late to worry about being quiet. Whatever it was, it knew exactly where he was. Another rock hit the ground at his feet and bounced into his
right leg. It didn't hurt him, but it startled him greatly. He didn't lose his cool. He pulled his rifle up and scanned the area in a quick three sixty. He was still convinced it was people, so he threatened to shoot if another rock was thrown. Well, something moved in the bushes, but he couldn't see what it was. It had to be a human. He wasn't prepared to accept any other alternative. He kept backing up and moving his head from side to side, and then an incredibly loud
growl broke the silence and reverberated through his chest. He said he'd never heard anything like it before or since. At this point, my uncle knew two things. It was very close and it wasn't. Human instinct kicked in. He fired into the bushes, shifted position, chambered another round, and then he fired again. He doubted he hid anything, but he was hoping to scare it off. And then another rock flew at him. It landed a little further away than the last, but that was enough. He turned and
bolted for a nearby grove of trees. It didn't offer much shelter, but it was better than nothing. He pulled at his pistol and sat there for maybe an hour, waiting for another confrontation. His nerves were on edge. He's not a religious man, but he said he did a lot of praying that day. But nothing more happened, and soon the sounds of the woods returned to normal, as if nothing had ever happened. He was feeling foolish, and he made his way back to the ridge and looked
over the air one more time. He didn't see anything unusual, and gladly went home empty handed. He didn't tell anyone else about his experience for a long time. He didn't think anyone would believe him. Eventually, he told his brother later. He told me, in a way, my uncle and I bonded that day, we both had a strange experience that we couldn't explain. At least, he'd been armed with throwing
rocks back at something that's throwing rocks at me. Probably wasn't very smart, but it seemed like my best option at the time. Fortunately, neither of us has seen anything since. Now that I'm older and perhaps a bit wiser, I don't think that whatever was throwing rocks at us was trying to hurt us. I think it was warning us to get out of the area. At least that's my two cents worth. You can believe whatever you choose to believe.