Two thousand and five, I was a fifteen year old growing up in southwestern Virginia. I've spent most of my life in the woods. I still love to be in nature. It's where I believe I have a stronger relationship with my creator. I was sitting under some pines overlooking a deer trail on a cold morning. My uncle had a deer stand in an old tree in the same spot, and he'd killed a few deer from there. Because of that, in the cold front that had come through the night before, I had
a feeling something was going to happen. As I sat there with my old side hammer, muzzleloader loaded and ready for any deer to walk by, I heard the distinct sound of something crunching through the leaves. I put my rifle to my shoulder in anticipation of the deer I knew was about to pop up over the hill. What came over the hill wasn't a deer. It was a man who looked to be in his forties. Right away I noticed he was wearing clothes that weren't from this era. He had on a flat brim
leather hat with metal buttons on the front for decoration. His coat was made with the fur turned to the inside, and his pants were the same, with worn leather on the outside. His shoes were harsh soul moccasins, and he carried a leather possible's bag, the bag Muzzloder hunters carry with everything they need inside. It was across one shoulder, with a powder horn on his opposite shoulder. His rifle was longer than the hawking style rifle I had.
His hair was coarse and brown. His bright blue eyes sized me up from a face covered in a full graying beard. It was as if he had stepped through the mists from a distant past. He had a look of confusion on his face as he approached, but asked in a congenial voice if I had seen anything yet. Perplexed by the fact that someone was hunting the farm that I knew I had sold permission to hunt, I managed only a kurt no. He took another minute to look me up and down, and I
did the same to him. Can I see your gun, he asked. I handed it over, and he passed his to me. He sat down and we each inspected each other's weapon with awe. Although his gun was longer than mine, it was lighter. More impressive to me than the gun was the man's appearance. I was amazed that someone was hunting in full mountain man apparel. Nothing he wore could have been as warm as my modern day insulated clothing. It was a sight I never would have expected to see here in
the Blue Ridge Mountains. But I thought he must be a man who wished to live in a different time, and this was his way of coming as close to that as possible. Still, I couldn't help but wonder at his reaction to me. Maybe he really was from a different time. He handed back our guns and he smiled at me as he stood up. I might have asked him a few questions, but at that moment we both heard the sound of a deer walking. He's coming, the man said, without another
word. The man got behind me and we both watched as a buck came over the hill. The man put his hand on my shoulder and he told me to take a deep breath and squeeze the trigger. I did as I was told. Pop. It wasn't the boom of the rifle, just the pop of the percrussion cap and the powder igniting. It was enough to send the buck running. The man's hand was still on my shoulder. As I turned around to say something, the words died on my lips. Though as
I looked around for him, he wasn't there. I could still feel his hand on my shoulder, but he just wasn't there. I jumped up, and as I did so, the weight of his hand fell away. I decided it was time for me to call it a day. I was confused and frightened, but I didn't feel he meant me any harm, so there was no need to run. I just walked home, reliving those moments in my head, wondering who he could have been or where he might have come
from. When I got home, I put another percussion cap in the gun and fired. This time, the rifle operated properly. I cleaned my gun and put it away. I never got the man's name, nor did I ever figure out where or when he may have come from, and I've never seen him again. I'm thirty now, and I haven't hunted that area since. Sometimes I think about going back just to see if he might be there. There are some old rock walls in that area said to be from the
eighteen hundreds, though no one knows what they were for. Or who built them. I like to think they were his once. I've seen three bigfoots in my life, the first when I was four years old. I can't talk about it though, without first talking about my dad. Dad didn't have more than a ninth grade education, but he joined the Air Force during the Korean Conflict. That led to opportunities that placed him inside Cheyenne Mountain as one
of the first programmers. He was a brilliant man who was respected in both his career and his community. He was my hero and I was his shadow. Where he was, that's where I wanted to be, and what he did, that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to be just like him. He was born in Florida in the first year of the Great Depression. They lived so far out in the sticks it was a four mile walk into town. Even after they got a truck. The condition of those old
sandy roads made travel so difficult. It was still a four mile drive, but it sure beat walking. Back in the nineteen sixties, we lived in Wichita Falls, Texas, where Dad was stationed at Shepherd Air Force Base as a flight electronics instructor. He and my mom ran a restaurant on the side, But his greatest joy was being outside hunting and fishing. Because he worked so much, he usually fished at night when everybody else was asleep. He
loved catfish and had access to all the local ponds and lakes. And that's where I saw my first bigfoot. One evening, Dad was closing down the restaurant when a buddy stopped in and asked if he wanted to go fishing. Of course, my dad said yes, and I beg to go. His buddy had a small five hundred acre cattle ranch where he raised Brahma cattle. I love going out there. Somewhere. There's even a picture of me sitting
on top of one of those big bulls. He made a quick stop at the house to pick up our fishing gear, my dad's twelve gage Ithaca shotgun that he always had with him whenever he was outdoors. A few snacks in my blanket, a lot, changed into my pajamas and we headed to the ranch. And when we got there, Dad made my usual spot on the ground with my blanket and started a small fire to keep me warm and occupied. It was your typical ranch cattle pond built in a draw with an earthen
dam. I laid there by the fire while Dad and his budy fished. They had a few beers and they swapped stories. Suddenly a group of about twenty cows bellowed below us and started running in our direction. Something had spooped them. A small herd of the one ton Brahmas bellowed in the night as their thundering hoofs shook the ground. And that's something that's not easy to forget. Terrified, all I wanted to do was crawl inside my dad's pocket.
I was close to the truck, and he was ten feet away, next to the bank of the river, and he ran over and he scooped me up and he put me in the pickup. Then he grabbed a shotgun and ordered me not to move. I remember peeking my head over the side of the bed and seeing the cattle run by. They were still bellowing and making all kinds of racket, and then I saw something a four year old will never forget. I had no idea what it was, but it was huge,
bigger than the cattle. It was on two legs, and it was ten to fifteen feet behind them. I couldn't see every detail, but the moon must have been bright enough and the fire must have been bigg enough that I could see something. My father's buddy drew his side arm and hollered at it with a whistle and a good cowboy shout. The creature stopped dead in its tracks fifty feet from us, and when it looked in our direction, I could see the eye shine. A few seconds later, he raised a
pistol and fired a shot. The sound made me jump. Just as quickly my dad raised his ithaca and he fired three rounds. I can still close my eyes and see the fire explode from the barrel. All the while both men were shouting something to the effect of get out of here, Get out of here, y'all. It all happened within seconds, but even today, more than fifty years later, it replaces in my mind in slow motion.
The creature quickly bolted away, vanishing from my view in seconds. Both mid now had their weapons leveled in that once they felt it was gone, they moved quickly to break camp. The reels were thrown into the back of the truck, the fire was doused, and I was scooped up and placed in the cab. But not a word was spoken, and when my dad dropped his buddy off at the ranch house. He said, you okay. The man replied with a nod and said, I hate those things. And they
were the only words I remember either of them saying. Well. Curiosity got the better of me on the ride home, and I finally got the nerve to speak. I was only four, and four year olds always have tons of questions. Daddy, what was that? I asked, What's nothing you need to know about? Son? He told me, Well, wasn't a man. It was Harry, I said, but there was no answer. My father was silent, intently staring at the road ahead. Dad, was it a hobo? I pressed? Hoboes were still a thing back in the
nineteen in the sixties. No, Son, that wasn't a hobo. It just wasn't. Well, what was it? And I wanted to know. My dad knew I wasn't going to give up. No four year olds give up on questions. He took a deep breath and said, well, it's kind of a monkey, son, that lives in the woods. They're afraid of people. Well, a four, I didn't know monkeys lived in Texas. Things like that weren't on my radar. But if Dad said it was a monkey. Must have been a monkey. However, even at four,
I recognized that my dad was afraid. Even then, I knew what guns were for hunting and protection, and this wasn't a hunting trip. And then we left real quick, and so I continued my questions, Well, Dad, why was it chasing the cows? Is it mean? Are they poisonous? Which woods does it live in? Well, my dad was used to my interrogations, and he would usually lovingly answer them in ways I could understand,
But this time was different. He was silent, and after a few more minutes of NonStop questions, he pulled the truck over and looked at me with his piercing steel blue eyes. Son, here's the problem. For some reason, the government doesn't want people to know about this monkey. The government was well known in our house. I knew my dad worked for the government. The government owned things. When I was born, my sister asked if
I belonged to the government or to my mom and dad. Well, we didn't know or understand exactly what the government was, but we knew it owned things and it had rules. My dad continued, Because I worked for the government, I have to do as they ask and since you're my son, so do you. You have to help keep this monkey quiet. You can't tell anyone, you understand, You can't even tell your mom. It's your job now to keep this a secret. You can ask me more questions later,
but right now you need to be quiet about it. Do you understand, son, Yes, sir, I will, I assured him, and I did. Until this year, I've never told anyone this story. First I told my wife, then my son, and now I'm telling you. A few years later, during a trout fishing trip in the Colorado Rockies when I was nine, I brought it up again, and that was when my dad explained in detail the creature that he called a skunkate. But that's a
story for another time. I'm a sixty eight year old resident of Central Indiana, where, following a thirty five year career, I retired as a captain of detectives. I've always had a passion for being in the woods. As early as the age twelve, I had a trap line. I loved doing it, and I was good at it. So I spent every free minute in the woods, especially in the late fall and winter. At various times over the years, the price of furs was high, and that was an
added incentive. Every morning, I'd leave my house at four am walk one mile to the large wooded acreage where I trap and run my lines. Sometimes I had more than I could carry in my pack, so I'd have to retrieve the rest after school. In all my years in the police force, I've heard it all from every angle, but I can't say that I ever saw Bigfoot. Back when I was a kid, Bigfoot wasn't even a thought in my head. However, I have heard and seen some very strange things
in the woods that cannot be explained. There were many times in the woods when I had the uncanny feeling of being watched in the darkness. I would hear trees crashing too often to be at random occurrences. And I remember one early weekend morning in particular, when I was looking for a new trail wrapping area adjacent to where my other traps were set, and a hard rain the
week before had flooded the bottom land near the large creek. Afterwards, a deep freeze left pockets of water trapped after the creek receded back into its bank and covered in four inch thick sheets of crystal clear ice. That were like window panes into the many aquatic ecosystems below. As I passed over one of these frozen ponds, I looked down and I saw two large snapping turtles trapped under the ice in suspended animation. Turtle meat was excellent. My father taught
me the art of cleaning a snapping turtle. It can be a difficult task if it isn't done right. So I decided to take these two turtles home for some good eating. I tried stomping the ice with my bootheel, but I couldn't even crack it. I decided that i'd bring a hatchet with me to chop them out. When I came back the next day and went on my way, I made a three mile circle around the area, looking for fur sign and new places to set my traps. The ground was frozen hard.
A couple hours later, as I came back around the little frozen pool with the turtles, I couldn't believe my eyes. Laying on the root ball of a tree were the two turtles. The ice had been smashed, That's how I know it was four inches thick. I could see how thick the chunks were. The turtles had been ripped open from the bottoms to the tops of their shells, and all the flesh was completely gone. I couldn't imagine what could have had the strength to just rip those turtles open like that.
Well that night it snowed again. The following morning, I went back to the down tree. That hard frozen rootball was completely destroyed, with the root and roots strewn all around in the snow. I looked around and found huge tracks leading to a part of the creek that ran too fast to free, and then they disappeared into the water. After all these years, I still
think about those two turtles and the tracks that led into the creek. I have no earthly explanation for what it was, but I hope if you share this story, someone else may have had an encounter similar in relation to Bigfoot, and it will confirm what I think I'll already know.