This is where I'm supposed to tell you how I'm a lifelong hunter and a hog trapper and a pretty good cowboy. Well i am, but that's not important. But the fact that I had recently gone through a divorce and our son and two foster sons are all grown up is a little more relevant, because that is what got me in the wrong place at the wrong time. Having never had an empty nest before, I got what the Canadians called the cabin fever. Suddenly I had extra time and extra money, and I swear
I didn't know what to do with myself. I needed a new hobby or three, and I ended up following a young fellow from East Texas that likes to take long kayak trips on these beautiful hill country rivers and pitch a tent or string a hammock between two trees on a sandbar. He and his buddies all used go pros, and they fill their weekends and memory cards with adventure. They do a fine job of editing their content after each trip, and I figured that I would do the same. I bought a good fishing kayak
in a three man tent. It was designed for alpine hikers and it weighs almost nothing. Now I hit the lower Quadaloupe, figuring a night or two on a sandbar eating fresh fish would teach me what else I might want out of life, or, better yet, what I didn't want. While kayaking rapids, less weight is the goals, so you don't want to get top heavy and find yourself upside down. It was still a little early in the spring of twenty twenty one, so the water was cold. But the good
news was is that I had the entire hill country to myself. Well that's how it seemed at the time anyway. The first day was a blast. I covered a lot of miles and I camped on some private owned campground. It was deserted all the way down to the river. But on the other side of this parcel, which was a couple of hundred acres, I could see some fancy fifth wheel campers with more pullouts than you can count. We call these winter Texans. That evening, I had the river front to myself,
and it was great. Now. I pitched camp about twenty five feet from the water, and I cooked up a day's catch. Just as I finished eating in the coals from my fire burned down. I heard a commotion. Some wild ducks had shared my camp site, and we're taking advantage of some lily pads right off the bank. I moved slowly so I wouldn't spook them, but a change in menu went through my mind as I observed them
splashing away in the water. You better be happy I got a belly full of fish, because one good jump from the shoreline and I would have a waterfowl for breakfast. It would prove ironic because, as it turns out, someone or something must have had similar thoughts. It was right at dusk, and I had done a lot of kayak dragging and paddling all day, and about the time I got in the tent and my head hit the pillow, I went straight to sleep. The usual night sounds like frogs chirping and codies
hoiling in the distance locked me like an outdoorsman's lullaby. I didn't check the time, but I know it was in the middle of the night. When I woke up. A noise had jarred me out of my deep sleep. The frogs and the bugs and the codies must have run out of breath and gone to bed too, because it was as silent as a graveyard. Suddenly I heard something that clearly was very large take a couple of running steps and splash into the river. It sounded like a cow hitting the water. Well.
The ducks panicked and they took flight, and then suddenly let out one of the most god awful noises I've ever heard. It was like a combination of a giant venting frustration like Homer simps and on steroids spouting doe, mixed with the roar of a lion in the sand out of a passing freight train. That sound vibrated the fabric on my tent. I cannot even begin to replicate what I heard, but I was sure I will never forget it either.
At this time, every hair on my body and head and everywhere else was standing on in Think of the silhouette cut out of the Halloween Cat. That's about how confident I felt at that moment, and I'm generally a confident guy. In Texas City said that God created all men, but it was actually Samuel Coate who made them all equal. Well, my fight or flight instinct kicked in and it must have agreed with that little saying, because I
didn't even have a conscious thought about what I was doing. I tilted my ears in the direction of the river while my hand went for the three P fifty seven mag that I travel with, and once it was in my hand, I held my breath and I cocked the hammer back as silently as one can cock a hammer back. I was trying to be quiet, but whatever it was heard me. It was walking out of the water toward my tent. I was hearing twin footsteps hitting the ground, not four of a typical
forest animal. It got so close I could hear it breathing, and it sounded enormous. I was all nerved up, and I was trying to call myself by rationalizing that this thing was only trying to score some supper and as long as I wasn't on the menu. I squeezed my buddy sam coat with my shooting hand, and I told myself that my visitor was just that, just a visitor at this point. But if he did so much as poke a paul through the door flap of my tent, I was going to put
two in the chest and one in the head. That would still leave me with three shots, and I could do the same thing again if I needed to. I was hoping in praying it wouldn't come to that. Well, thankfully it didn't, and after what seemed like an eternity, it shuffled his feet and started to walk away. It must have been big, by judging its great thudding footsteps that reverberated through my tent, that thing was just one
itchy trigger finger away from having a bad night. The next morning, I looked around for tracks, and I could see some deep impressions, but that was it. I packed up my outfit and I set sail, thinking about last night's little battle of wits. And I didn't know who or what it was for sure, but I had places to go, and I accepted this standoff as a draw. Even as I was floating into the sunrise, and in my mind I was sitting on a great horse and riding off into the
sunset. I wasn't coming back anytime soon either. I can assure you of that, and it still gives me the hebgbis to this day. Well, I made it back to civilization, and curiosity got the best of me, and I got online and I listened to every wildlife recording that I could find. I knew nothing else that could make a sound like what I heard that night by the river, let alone walk upright and hunt ducks without a twelve gage. That is until I stumbled onto some of Ronald Moorehead's Sierra sounds.
And I'm telling you, the very skin on my body wanted to crawl off and go hide under the bed. That's some creepy stuff. And I don't mind admitting that this big, tough guy does not need to hear any more of that nonsense. Heck, I already could hardly sleep at night before all of this. Anyway, Well, one thing led to another, and I ended up on a website that keeps track of bigfoot sightings, and I was shocked to hear that there's a little hotbed of activity reported near Canyon Lake,
close to where I was. I continued down the rabbit hole, trying to educate myself, and I found some interesting channels on YouTube. The more I learned, the more I was faced with the fact that I now know something exist. And worse yet, there are millions of people, some who get paid with tax money, no less, who have been lying to us,
what a cow pie sandwich for all of us to munch on. Guys like Judge roy Bean and Sam Colt and me think suppressing the truth approaches fraud and criminal behavior, and I myself have not overly prone to violence, though sometimes I'd like to smack the smirk from the government type's face in the media, and of course most of the entertainers who are so vocal in ridiculing people that
report the kind of things I experienced and now know are out there. As I sit here typing, I occasionally reach up and make sure that my wide brimmed tenfol cowboy hat is sitting on my head straight. There is so much I distrust now in channels like yours make me feel right at home and a little more comfortable with what I witnessed that night. My eyes couldn't see a thing, but my ears new. The old timers around here never use terms
like bigfoot and sasquatch or skunk ape. In Texas, we call these things boogers. I'm not sure how to spell it, but there's a lot of things I can't spell, and what I can do is tossure any and all that there are some things that go bump in the night, but maybe it isn't all bad. As long as they hunt ducks and not me. That won't have to meet with my friend Sam Colt. He and I are basically
insuperable now, but he's old like me. If you ever hear of some poor soul climbing the walls thinking they're crazy for believing in Bigfoot, you can give them my number. I was in that lonely place once in my mind and my mood were dark, and it's a place to visit, but I decided not to live there, and I would want anyone else to live there either. You are sharp and probably noticed I'm not feeling the need to discuss the exact location of my little campsite. I'm also going to ask you to
use my nickname, which is Lefty. Some things are just nobody's business. Peace from a kayaking hippie and an old Cowpuncture from the Texas Hill Country.