Cajuns Hunting Bigfoot

hope you guys enjoy this. It's kind of long, it's a little drawn out, but I'm going to read the whole thing because I think it's a good story, So I hope you enjoy it. All. Right, here we go. Growing up, I was into all things outdoors, hunting and fishing and survival and all of that. My dad nurtured my love for hunting. But hunting the season is just that, it's seasonal. What's a boy to do the rest of

the year. My dad said I could do my part in being a good conservationist by controlling the populations of nuisance animals like blackbirds and crows. So I bought a crow call and I went at it. The way it goes. Growing up, you tend to make friends with people who have similar interests. Had a buddy at school who was into hunting as well. One day he told me of

something that was going on around his neighborhood. There had been some sightings of what was described as a big black cat or a panther, So of course we were going to come up with a plan to hunt it down. We never did follow through. It was just one of those things that kids fantasize about. The supposed sightings were one of the things that you want to believe, but deep down you know that this kid is probably making up the whole story, but you entertain the idea anyway

because you want it to be true. Hold on, let me run this hen out of here. Yeah. Shoot, my grandparents lived in the Seymour, Tennessee, which is right on the Knox County line. That damn chicken came right back in here. Yeah yeah, yeah, yet, all right, sorry about that. It's like old times. My grandparents lived in Seymour, Tennessee, which is right on the Knox County line and close

to where my friends lived. I stayed with them one weekend and was out early Saturday morning sitting on a fence line that overlooked a field, and I was doing my best to call in some crows. I had been there an hour, not having any luck getting anything within shotgun range. Most people don't know it, but crows are very smart and then they can see well. I was looking out across the field when I noticed something coming through the opposite fence line about two hundred yards away.

At first I thought it was someone's dog, and as it was going up to a brush pile along the fence and sniffing for game, it was jet black, and in my mind it was a neighbor's lab about hunting around sit. It started working its way up the intersecting fence line where I was sitting at the corner. I was hidden by hunting suckles that had overtaken the fence. As it started getting closer, something started nagging at me that something wasn't right. I guess the first thing that

triggered this feeling was its tail. It wasn't wagging or bobbing straight out like a happy gold lucky dog does when they're hunting. The tail was long and skinny and kind of had a slithering movement. Then I noticed the ears. They weren't long and floppy, but shortened upright and the next thing I noticed was what sent me into a tail spin. It was the eyes that were yellowish green

with black pupils. This thing was not a dog. My mind started trying to explain what I was seeing, but the best I could come up with was that someone's exotic pet had escaped. Being as smart like, I stood up and I yelled at it. Here, kitty kitty, Here, kitty kitty, I shouted, Well, the cat jerked and said toward me, and then turned and took off like a shot, and it ducked under a fence and it was gone. I was left sitting there questioning myself as to whether

or not this actually had happened. Years later, I was taking my little cousin to his hunter safety course and someone brought up a question about black panther sightings that were by this time all over the state. The TWR officer gave his rehearsed answer, which really didn't do his profession any favors in my opinion. He said, in just about every class I do, someone says they've seen one, so I don't want to hear it. You don't see it, and they don't exist, he said, as fog Horn. Leghorn

said that boy. I say that boy is educated far beyond his intelligence. We do have bobcats, codes foxes, and other predators. Why wouldn't there be enough squirrels, rabbits and vons and the like to sustain a small population of big cats. It's just common sense, really. I just wanted to share this story as I can relate in a small way how people feel when they are told they didn't see a sosquatch when they know good and well that they did. Thanks for the indulgence, and now for

my lame bigfoot encounter. When I was in my late twenties, I had a couple of real good friends who were eating up with turkey hunting about as much as I was. Tennessee season is kind of short compared to deer season, so when those few weeks rolled around, we tried to plan a trip every weekend to make the most of it. My buddy's wife would pitch a fit every time we were heading out, though, which tended to put a damper

on the whole thing. One time we had a trip planned to go to Big South Fork for a few days in camp and turkey hunt and just hang out. As expected, when we got to my buddy's house to pick him up. The fight was already on. His wife's grandfather was in the hospital and she didn't want him to go hunting with us. Now, I know it sounds insensitive, but in his mind this was just one more of

her many excuses to keep him on the apron strings. Well, I talked her into letting him go, and if things got worse with her grandfather, she could call and he would come back home right away. I was pretty proud of myself because I came up with a solution and if she said no to that, well, it just looked too much like she was just hard to get along with, which she was. One factor I didn't plan on, however,

was that we drove in one vehicle. Big South Fork is pretty vast, and I had found a spot that was so far in the boonies that I figured we wouldn't be bothered by other hunters. Our camp was at the end of a six miles of a narrow, twisting, curving rival road that dead ended at an old cemetery. It was twenty miles to the nearest town. We were so excited about having the spot all to ourselves and being able to get away for a guy's trip, and we didn't plan on his wife actually calling him to

come back home. The first morning, we were on birds but just couldn't close the deal. And when we returned to our camp, we found a female cop waiting for us. She didn't say why she was there, but she did say, isn't it kind of weird to camp next to a cemetery? Well, it doesn't bother us, I say, in my mind, those dead folks weren't going anywhere until the Lord returned. Anyway, we kind of got the feeling she didn't like us being there, but we had a camping permit, so she

left us alone. Well, now, wouldn't you know it, my buddy got the call. His wife's grandfather had gotten a little worse. My buddy, whose vehicle we drove in, said he would take him back, but that I could stay, and since it was so late in the day, it meant that he wouldn't be back until the following morning. That was okay with me. I didn't mind staying by

myself there. That all sounded good until dark, and then all those werewolf horror movies I shouldn't have watched when I was a kid started creeping up on me, and it was boring with no one to talk to, so I decided to turn in early. I did have my turkey gun loaded and sitting beside my sleeping bag, you know, just in case. I will also admit that when I was a kid, I was infatuated with Bigfoot and I read every book from the library that I could get

my hands on. One of my high school friends and I even had a plan to go to the Pacific Northwest sometime after graduation and hunt isquatch. Well, that never happened, but I would be lying if I said that thoughts of the old Skunk Ape didn't cross my mind that night as I drifted off to sleep. Sometime later in the night, something woke me up. It was a sound of something outside my tent moving around. It wasn't a

small scurrying type noise, but something big and heavy. You could hear gravel crunching under the load as whatever it was stepping on and the foot rolled forward. I had hunted my whole life, and I knew the difference between two and four footed things and what they sounded like when they walked. This had the cadence of a bipedal movement. I knew it was something or someone. My brain cleared from the fog of sleep, and I thought that maybe

my buddy had decided to come back early. But the more I thought about it, I would have heard the truck pull up, and he would have known better than to slink and creep around outside the tent without letting me know he was there. He knew me well enough to know that I would also have a twelve gage in there with me, loaded with three inch magnum turkey loads. Plus the fact that I was camped next to a

cemetery didn't do much in helping me relax. I reached over, and he's my shotgun over onto my chest, you know, just in case. About the time that I did that, I heard whatever it was walk away. The next thing I knew, I was awakened by the sound of my buddy pulling up in his truck at daylight. I told him about my night. We had a good laugh about it and went on to finish our trip. No more bigfoots or turkeys, unfortunately, but we had a great time

just being out there. I'll never know what it was, but it was the closest I can say I ever came to an encounter. When I was growing up, my dad owned his own painting business for a little while. I worked for him during the summers to earn money and keep me out of trouble. I guess at the peak of his career. He had a crew of guys that worked for him, and one fellow was from Louisiana. I was infatuated with Bigfoot as a kid, I guess ever since I saw the six million dollar Man and

Woman episode with Bigfoot in them. Any show or movie or book that had to do with Bigfoot, I was all about that. This guy from Louisiana found out about it and shared his own story with me, And it began with his uncle, who was a renowned big game hunter. This man had been all over the world to take every sort of big game animal known to man. It made a living guiding brown bear and Kodiak bear hunts in Alaska. So it goes without saying that the man

was an alpha, a man's man. He was also from Louisiana and he had moved back after getting tired of his hunting exploits and he needed a break. There was a certain swamp in Louisiana that was legendary for bigfoot activity. All the locals knew it and considered it as part of normal life. They didn't bother this creature, and it didn't bother them. And the uncle heard of it, and he decided that a bigfoot was one trophy he had never taken, so he set out to go into the

swamp and try to bag himself a sasquatch. They found him three days later on the outskirts of the swamp, and he was nearly dead. He had had a heart attack or a stroke. His gear was gone, and his clothes were all torn and ragged. They said it looked like he had aged twenty years and his speech was slurred from then on from one side of his face being paralyzed. It turns out that he had become the hunted instead of the hunter, and a bigfoot had nearly

claimed himself a trophy. His nephew, my dad's employee, decided he and a few of his buddies were going to go back in for some revenge and possibly bag a nice buck. At the same time, it was deer season and this particular swamp was also known to be a great area for big bucks. I guess everyone being afraid to go into the swamp took a little hunting pressure off and allowed the deer time to mature. The uncle tried to talk him out of going, and he warned him.

When he was telling the story, he did his best impression of his uncle's slurred, stuttered speech. Don't go in there. That thing will get you is once alpha man's man. Uncle begged. But he looked up to his uncle and thought, if he could go in there and get the job done, he would be impressed. So he decided to go in spite of the warning. The day came when they planned on leaving, and they loaded their swamp boats with gear and they headed in. He thought, in all reality, a

bigfoot wouldn't mess with a group of men. In a worst case scenario, they would come out of the trip with some nice deer and plenty of tall tales that they could reminisce about for years to come. But little did he know the first night in camp would be one to remember. He said, after the tents were all set up and it was starting to get dark, the bonfire was built and the beer started to flow, and a good time was being had by all. Then things changed,

he said. The swamps were pretty noisy, with frogs and crickets, and this one was no different. But all of a sudden, an eerie silence fell over the area. Everyone noticed and looked at each other, wondering what the hell was going on. And that's when the smell hd them. Some god awful rank odor filled the area. Now I realized that this is a classic symptom of we're about to see sasquatch, and most stories happened like this. And I also realized I would be really easy to copycat these things and

fabricate a story. But this was in the middle of the eighties, when you couldn't just hop on the internet and find out this kind of information. It was also before everyone was a researcher and there were groups groups around every corner that investigated this kind of stuff. Oh god, he is so right. After the foul odor smacked them,

Bigfoot just walked right into camp. He said. There was a brief moment when everyone froze, and he could remember the orange glow of the firelight reflecting off its eyes, and then mass pandemonium erupted. Guys were running and diving in boats, and shots were fired at the animal and blind panic. It was truly a scene to behold. But everyone made it to the swamp boats and the chaos, and they lit out of there, some of them still

in their underwear. He said he didn't know if it ran off as soon as the first shot was fired, or if it was ever even hit with a round. He was too busy trying to get down to where the boats were beached. They did go back a couple of days after they had gathered their courage up to see if they could get their gear. He said. The camp site was totally destroyed, but they salvaged what they could.

They left in a hurry, and they never went back. Now, you could write this off as a guy trying to impress the boss's kid or just humoring me when he found out I was into bigfoot lore. But this guy was a true believer. My dad told me later that a couple of times some of the other guys on the crew had teased him or told him that bigfoot was just a bunch of crap and that this guy would go ballistic. He would even call them outside to fight.

He was that serious about the subject. You typically don't do that if you know you were telling a lie or you don't believe it. Yourself. Heck, I believe there's something to it, but I wouldn't fight over it. Thanks for what you do on your channel. I look forward to the stories every time. God blessed. The man's name is James Man. What a great set of stories. This

is so well written and put together. This intriguing secondhand story, the black cat, the Bigfoot, the steps around, just everything about it was great and I really appreciate James sending this. It's a pleasure to read these kind of stories. Hey, I wanted to let y'all know real quick that this year at the Smoky Mountain Bigfoot Conference, I have not been in two years because every time I go, I lose money. I buy all this these souvenirs and stuff to say, you have to sell something at that place

or they won't let you have a booth. But I'd rent the booth, get hotel rooms. The last time I went, I brought my family, my wife, my granddaughter, my daughter in law, got all them rooms, bought all that stuff for the conference, and I lost about twenty five hundred bucks. And I swore then that I wasn't going to do it again. But they for the first time they called me and They asked if I would come and speak at the Bigfoot conference, and I said, no, I don't.

I don't. I don't do that. I'm not big on standing up in front of people. I mean, I'll do it, but I don't. Uh. It's just not something that lights me up. And then they I said, well, if you did have me speak, what would you what's the what do you want me to talk about? They said, well, we want you to moderate a discussion between researchers. I said, man,

are you crazy? Speak for researchers hate me. They think I make up all these stories and they think, uh, anyway, it's it's pretty common knowledge in the bigfoot world, which I'm not in that the Bigfoot researchers, the real serious ones, they can't stand me. And I said, I'm the worst person in the world to put up there between researchers. And he said, well, we have another thing. It's kind of a lesser responsibility, but you could kind of host

when people get up and tell their own encounters. I said, man, that's right up my alley. This person had never listened to my podcast, so they don't know what I do. I said, that's exactly what I do on my podcast share, I share encounter stories by real people, and I said I would love to do that. And I said that after he said they would cover my hotel room. I think that's all they're covering. But still that's enough. You know, my wife's not coming. It's just going to be me.

I'm trying to find somebody to go with me and sit at my booth with me so when I get up and speak, they can man my booth. And I've asked Da Roberts. I've asked Jeff Crawford, a couple of authors that you all know of that I've read on this channel before, and maybe one or both of them will show up. I hope they do. But I'm just going to be there by myself, and it's just a one day event. I don't I can't. It's at the end of July. Just Google or search engine Smoky Mountain

Bigfoot Conference, Gatlinburg, Tennessee. You can buy tickets there. They sent me an email they wanted me to send a picture of myself to put on their flyer, and I haven't done it yet. Their flyers probably already done, but I'm just so slow about that stuff. I'm probably not the most responsible guy in the world with that stuff. But anyway, I'm going to be there. I'm going to host that as far as I know, unless they have changed their mind. I haven't heard from them since May,

no since February. Maybe they've heard somebody else. I don't know. I'll get in touch them this week, but right now, as it stands, today is April fourteen, twenty twenty five. Gotta file taxes tomorrow, don't y'all forget that. But as of April fourteen, twenty twenty, twenty twenty five, I'm gonna be at the Smoky Mountain Bigfoot Conference in Gatlinburg and late you live twenty twenty five, So if you can be there, I'd love to see you. And I'm gonna have a booth. Come by and say hi. I'm gonna

have some things to sell. I'm not sure what, but probably not much because I don't want to lose money on it. Anyway, I just want to let y'all know that. So I appreciate you listening to the podcast, and we will see you on the next one. Appreciate you