Ep:59 Giants Of Illinois

If you'd like to talk about your own big Foot encounter, or if you're
looking for help from a big Foot investigator in your area, email me at
Bigfoot Crossroads at gmail dot com. No sasquats were harmed in the recording of
this podcast. Down Welcome to Bigfoot Crossroads, sir, How are you very
good? Matt? Thank you for having me. So you're in Illinois,
We're not going to give away too many details. Do you know any Bigfoot
history from the state of Illinois. I'm not really familiar with a lot of
Bigfoot stories from that stage. Oh yeah, I'm familiar with some as a
result of my own experiences. I sort of dug back a little into history,
and they have stories going back to the fifties, potentially even into the
forties and earlier about this creature, these creatures or singular creature in an area
called the wood Smoke Ranch. And this was occurring back in the Native American
times, and then when pioneers bought that property, this is a north west
central Illinois, they themselves, the pioneers were starting to have these strange encounters
of these shadow like individuals creatures visiting their campfires at wood Smoke Ranch. And
sort of and this isn't far from where I eventually started doing my own investigations
in an area that's replete with a lot of encounters even listed on the BFRRO.
I met some of the people who had made reportings to the BFR,
and my myself met a couple of those individuals, and one brought me to
that location and and then I had my firsthand encounters, which were, you
know, surprising to me. I didn't expect that, of course, and
that happened probably about I want to say, five five years ago. But
previously that I had been exploring or researching big foot outside of Illinois. It's
just that I didn't think they would be so close to home where I live
now in Illinois. This area is probably a half hour thirty five forty minute
from where I live. This area around wood Smoke Ranch where they have these
have had these encounters back into the forties and fifties and even thirties, and
then previous to that, Native Americans had pretty similar stories about they have a
fire going out, you know, in the environment, they had a campfire
going and these creatures would come up on this camp fire and and they would
stick there. They claim their tails in the ashes and ember is to stir
it. Tills they had their tails, yes, and it was sort of
weird. They always described them as a shadow type black figure would stick their
tails and the ember is to stir it. And of course I have to
consider the eyewitnesses that basically gave these accounts if then became Indian law or legend.
And and I've been to these areas in there people that live now around
these areas that have bigfoot sightings. So I always had to consider is one
being merged with the other or are these separative accounts of something that I'm not
aware of. Yeah, that may be in the you know, a paranormal
type phenomena. See, I can't discount that, but that's not where I
don't. I'm not into the paranormal realm. I don't. That's not what
I search for. That's not what I investigate. But I can't discount it,
obviously because I don't know enough about it. Now. Is this something
you've always had an interest in or is it something fairly recent in your life
that you've picked up going out and looking for bigfoot? It's uh no,
it isn't a recent interest. It all started in nineteen seventy eight, and
then seventy nine was sort of the pivotal moment that changed everything, that made
me realize there's something really seriously serious going on in the outdoors that I was
not familiar with. And it happened like again in seventy nine. I was
twenty eight twenty seven years old at the time. I was in New Mexico
and had an encounter in the mountains out there that in an episode where I
spent I was planning and spend two nights on a weekend in the mountains.
When I on my weekend off a Friday night and a Saturday night before returning
to work Monday morning, and I just ended up being surrounded. Hiked down
the mountains. And I've told the story before to other people, but I
hiked down the mountains, set up a camp, and and just be just
about nightfall, this creature, or at first I thought it was a person,
a human being, walking down the mountain side. You can hear it
walking in the in the scree which is like the shale on the bottom part
of the mountain. There was actually screw all over the side of the mountain
where I had walked down, and I could hear it displacing the scree as
it was walking and walked down eventually into my camp. Total darkness and just
me and my dog, and I even yelled out to it, who is
that? And no flashlight? Total darkness. I'm in this mountain valley.
I had walked approximately ten and a half to eleven miles? Did you get
to this location from where my car was parked? And I just couldn't imagine
anybody walking in total darkness without a flashlight. So that was the encounter that
went on pretty much all night until just before sunset when this which I later
believed now are multiple, were multiple individuals left my camp silently when it came
in. One came in pretty abruptly, a lot. It was just walking
in, just like you, didn't care if I heard it. And then
at four thirty in the morning, which would have been I'd say it started
about nine thirty about four thirty am that morning, they left left or they
left and they just disappeared silently. I'd never heard him walk up. But
during that seven six seven hours of constant walking around me, circling me during
the night, I never got any sleep. And yeah, I was scared.
I was like just sort of just didn't know what that was going on.
Sure, you know, I was like, what, I even saw
a shadow, the shadows of these creatures or this particular individual, all that
I kept seeing just beyond my flashlight beam but taller than me behind some of
the junipers and scrub oaks that were surrounding my campsite at the base of this
mountain. And uh and initially when it walked in at about nine thirty quarters
of ten, when it was starting to get you get that sort of that
that part of dusk right before the sun, right after the sun disappears below
the horizon, you get that we're sort of that that area time after sunset
were it's you can barely see but it's not quite black. That's that's when
the thing descended the mountain and then walked. I had a creek about thirty
five forty feet from where my campsite was, and I just heard, you
know, kerplash, kerplashes. This thing bipetally walked across the creek bed to
my campsite. Once across the creek, it's it was at about the thirty
five foot position from my campfire, and I my campfire just consisted of a
bedroll, my diminishing campfire, me and my dog, and a backpack about
twenty five feet from where I was hung up in a tree with with I
had some snacks and some food in there that I hung back back up in
the tree to prevent bearers black bears from getting into my backpack. How did
your dog react at the time, Oh, it's uh. He he had
this deep throated growl, baring of teeth, but never left my side.
He was glued to my side. And he was a samoy, which is
he got it to about eighty five pounds, as big as a German show
uppard mail. But he uh yeah. I had my hand on his collar
the whole time, and he never was straining to like to pull away and
go after it. Now, I've had him go after Paul efforts and uh
and wildlife like go after coyouts and even chase after black bear and things like
that. Dogs are notorious for doing that, and he never, you know,
I kept thinking, I hope it's a bear. I hope it's a
cougar. But then when I saw the shadow beyond, just beyond, it
stayed always stayed just beyond the beam of my flashlight, I could just make
out a shadow, and I kept thinking to myself, is is that a
bear on its hind feet? And how is it doing that? How is
it moving so fast that it's at my twelve o'clock position? And the next
thing I know, it's behind me in a matter of a split second.
So this thing, you know, I'm assuming when individual is circling me.
And then weeks probably not even a week, two weeks after the event,
and I was processing it. I was realizing, wait a second, or
might have been maybe two to three individuals, because I couldn't make sense out
of how I could hear him in front of me and then almost within a
fraction of a second, I would hear it behind me. So I came
to the conclusion they were just you know, later on, I was just
being messed with. I was just being I think they were just triggering me.
And maybe the only reason they might not have come into camp is my
dog was with me and he was growling. I mean, you couldn't You
could stand twenty feet away and you wouldn't hear my dog growl. But you
get within a couple feet of where he was with me, and then you
could hear it, so his growling was just sort of like almost like a
growling like he was like he himself was scared. I mean, I would
assume that your dog had probably never encountered anything like that before either. Yeah,
I had to go by that assumption too, because I didn't know.
I really didn't know what Bigfoot was. I had heard some things about Bigfoot
from TV, but that was what was on my mind at that moment.
I was like, I was scared and not thinking as or Mountline black Bear
trying to come into camp trying to get to me because it couldn't get to
my backpack, and I just couldn't understand my dog's reluctance to go after it,
and I was just it got to the point where it was signed.
I could hear every now and then I could hear this breathing like somebody had
asthma, real breathing, almost like it was what I described as somebody with
cop D. Nowadays it has lung edgues, but it was like not like
I've been around black Bear where they do that sort of like blowing or they'll
sniff something and then they'll blow out their mouth and their nose. You'll hear
that blowing was nothing like that. It sounded like a really big, big
person. And I even at one point, I like I said, when
it was approaching and crossing the creek, that's when I took my I got
got on my guard and I said, hey, who is that? You
know? And I even even said I've heard people in the military say who
goes there? I even use that term. I go who goes there?
And I had my little crappy D cell flashlight I think it took two D
cells and a little like yellow marine flashlight that I used to use when I
went fishing in a boat, so if it hit the water, it would
float, so that it didn't really throw that good of a you know,
I had a little incandescent bulb and it didn't really throw much of a beam.
And uh and as I used it during the course of the first probably
I of not even twenty minutes a half hour, I apparently realized I hadn't
put new batteries in it. After about twenty minutes of use, that started
getting dim on me, and and that sort of added to the I guess
at the time I would have called it excitement. It was like, oh
shit, you know, what's going on here? Light's going out? Yeah,
lights going out? And also they add to it, Matt, the
fire I had during the daytime, I had I had got a bunch of
wood from under some of these scrub oaks and dried just a lot of dried
wood, nothing big, nothing bigger than a couple inches in diameter, and
had had I was getting you ready when this scene came in to go out
with my flashlight gather more wood. Well that never happened, so within I
probably not even an hour of for that thing approaching me. After start circling,
it took an hour from my campfire to dine down to just embers.
And so now I have members, an almost dead flashlight and just basically me
and my dog dealing with this for the next and nine thirty quarter to ten
until four thirty the next morning when everything they all did this disappeared whatever it
was. So I was on my knees for the whole night, never got
a wink of sleep. The next morning, I just packed all my stuff
up and got the hell out of there. Didn't even think to look for
prints, because that was not where my mind was at, you know.
That was sort of the trigger moment that later on caused me to decide,
Hey, I'm gonna find out more about this because what I just experienced,
I found out later was probably almost a classic Bigfoot visiting camp encounter experience.
Yeah, but after that, I mean, you said this happened in the
late seventies. How much time passed before you started pursuing answers? Oh,
probably months, not even probably within a couple of months. After I had
talked to some people that I worked with that had actually told me about Bigfoot.
I worked for a guy who had a ranch and Heala, New Mexico.
Actually it was it was in Cliff, which is right next to a
small not far from the town of Heila. But I, and you have
to understand, where I was at was actually not far from the cliff dwelling.
So I was actually in Black Range Mountains, which is near a town
called Members Membres m I m BRS. And I had got to an overlook
called the Kneely Nun Observation Point where you look out from this observation point and
you can see from several miles away this rock formation that looks like a knee
nuns. So they called the Kneely Nun Monument. While I had hiked down
from that that upper ridge, that that summit of that mountain pass and hiked
down to the valley below. That was about a good eleven eleven mile walk.
But later on I had heard the guy worked for the rancher telling me
about his bigfoot experience before that, and I never equated when he told me
about seeing bigfoot sitting in I guess the cliffs overlooking this one road that he
drove down. I didn't when he never when he mentioned bigfoot. I the
only thing I could even sort of connect the dots too was the in Search
of Video or in Search of episode with Lighter Nimoy talking about I think it
might have been the Patterson Gimblin film, so that that I was sort of
connecting to that, and I was thinking, does this guy tell him either
here, you know, New Mexico, not far from his ranch, or
is he talking about somebody that's is it a person who's just living off the
land, some kind of homeless person. I didn't know, you know,
And so it didn't like it sort of went in one ear and out the
other, and I never really gave it much thought until after it had happened
to me, and uh, and then I I'd asked him again afterwards about
that story, and he told me a second story about how him and his
family had gone into the Healing National Wilderness Eerie Hill and National Forest, and
they had set up. They had brought a bunch of food. They were
gonna have a picnic, him and his wife, his son, and his
daughter. And he said they could hear the wind blowing through the quaking aspens,
and they were setting up. They're gonna had the grill and they were
gonna start cooking food, and they had the tablecloth they threw over the picnic
table or whatever, and he says, they're getting ready. He is all
of a sudden, everything got quiet. All the bugs, the birds.
He says, everything got quiet, and he says everybody and his family took
notice, and him and his wife got they got scared. And he told
me, he says, we just packed up everything and we left. And
I go why. He says, because he said he thought it was unusual.
And he never said Bigfoot, but I think he was alluding to the
time he saw Bigfoot swaying on these cliffs that overlooked this one road he would
drive down to get to his ranch. He told me that story, said
he looked up and he saw this from several hundred yards away, sitting up
on these rocky summits on a ledge, as creature sitting in there, swaying.
So when he told me the second story, I was like, he
is, He's saying that's is this connected to that? But I I know
my ears perked up, and I'm thinking, maybe never I might not camp
alone anymore, because he didn't tell me that too. He says, don't
camp alone. I said, want to bring him my dog, and he
goes, well, that's better than nothing. And then afterwards I realized,
no, I'm not going to do that again. But I did. I
did. I continued to camp on myself and many times didn't bring my pet
with me, and and things did occur, and I've been fortunate that I'm
still here to talk about it, you know. And I did have before
I left in New Mexico. I did live in Illinois previous to that,
and it was in seventy eight that I did have another encounter. In seventy
eight during the daytime, and I always never could figure that one out myself.
But after the New Mexico encounter. I realized, holy crap, what
happened to me the year before in Illinois apparently could have been a big foot.
Was it the same type situation? No, I wasn't even camping.
I was like around April into May and into early June. We have what
we call morale season. I don't know if you're familiar with that. Yeah,
yeah, that's when you know, everybody goes out hunting those type of
mushrooms. You know. I was morrell hunting. I believe this was in
It was in early spring, and I believe it was either the end of
May or beginning of April. And I was walking and this was what I
had a different dog with me. I had a German shepherd, a female
German shepherd, and we were walking down game trails, were actually bushwhacking through
brush. I usually go morel hunting in an area. It's about it's north
west central Illinois. It's not even twenty minutes from where I live currently,
and I was It's a conservation area. I was bushwhacking with my dog and
hunting from morrels. It was going bush whacking U off trail and there were
game trails back there from deer and in coyotes and what have you. And
I'm walking through a section that I was new to me, I had never
been in before, and it was basically a game trail, a deer trail,
fairly narrow, brushing on both sides, samplings, and quite a bit
of trees. And as I'm approaching this curve and this like game trail curving
to the left. Just beyond that curve, maybe not even twenty five feet
beyond that curve to the left was this huge, I want to say it
was a giant oak tree, like a giant white or yellow oak. And
it was so huge and overgrown that the branches on the bottom of it were
touching the ground. It was like a giant like if I was ever in
a storm or it was a white out, I would have probably taken cover
under this tree. So I'm coming her up to this curve to sort of
curve her onto my left. As I'm approaching this tree, and my dog
is probably not even ten paces ahead of me. He gets past the curve
before I do. And the next thing, the next thing I know,
something behind this tree comes crashing through the foliage on this tree. Now,
mind you, the branches are touching the ground. And I didn't know if
I think in myself, we have no elk in this part of Illinois.
But it sounded like a rhinoceros just crashing through the foliage toward me. So
immediately stopped, and I'm looking at these branches and just moving and just this
like this erupting as the scenes crashing through the tree, and it stops,
I want to say, thirty five to forty feet short just me seeing it,
I mean I could see through the probably the first layer of the branches
on that tree, and then beyond it, I could just see like a
silhouette of shadow. And again this was something standing on two legs, but
I couldn't quite make out exactly what it was. And definitely by the sound,
it sounded bigger than me. And when this happened, my dog,
right when the scene crashed forward, my dog just get in a bout face
and like it actually it galloped or whatever. It ran back to me and
just just came back to me. And then I tried to go like between
my legs, you know. And so the first thing I did is I
just grabbed grabbed her collar and pulled her off to the side and uh stood
there, and we stood. I stood there right at the curve of this
trail where I could see this tree, and I stood there. It was
almost like a standoff. I stood there for forty five seconds, if not
a minute, waiting for the scene to make a move and just like come
out into the open, and it would not, and something inside me said,
don't don't, don't go forward, don't like walk toward it. So
it meanwhile, it's totally it's not moving at all. In my mind,
I'm going, oh, that's just a big buck deer, you know.
It just doesn't look like it from where I'm standing. So I'm trying to
like calm myself down, and I'm thinking, what the And I never,
in my wildest dreams even thought of bigfoot. I'm thinking this is something I
don't know what's going on here. So after that, I just turned around,
after the sort of standoff of forty five seconds, and I turned out,
turned around, and I walked I walked away, and I walked away
with a sense of yeah, whatever that was sure didn't want me there,
So I'm probably going to leave it alone, whatever the hell it was.
And I'm thinking to myself, is there somebody you know, it's after Vietnam.
I'm thinking to myself, this is nineteen seventy eight. Is there somebody
you know living back there and they just don't want to be bothered? But
there's nobody could be living back there because it's a it's a state owned public
area, it's a conservation area, is what I call it, and nobody's
supposed to be there, and so I just I just sort of put that
in the back of my memory forgot about it until my encounter a little over
a year later in nineteen seventy nine, when I had my encounter in the
Black Range Mountains in New Mexico. Their members and that's when that all came
flighting back and go, I'm going, what the hell there? They must
be in Illinois too, So at that point, that's when this whole thing
started for me. About a month after my New Mexico excursion, when I
just went basically primitive camping every place I went after that, whether I was
hiking, fishing, camp and I was just like I had my eyes off
for evidence. I was looking for footprints. Knew nothing about structure. All
I knew is they must be here if they're not just in if they're in
Illinois, and now I've discovered them potentially in New Mexico. They could be
anywhere, because I always was of the opinion that was they were up in
Canada, yeah, you know, or the Northwest, you know, Pacific
Northwest. And I was really not too concerned about you know, I figured
New Mexico, Arizona, what are they being, you know, why would
they be in the semi desert of New Mexico. I just like, I
couldn't wrap my mind around it. And then I realized the guy worked for
on weekends, the rancher very well, was probably telling me a good bit
of truth, and I just was not. I was you know, I
was dismissive of the guy. He would tell me and I would be like,
yeah, whatever, And then I realized, well, apparently there's some
truth to what he's telling me, so that's what actually. I moved back
to Illinois and continued to do my own investigations until eventually the digital age came
forward and I had the ability to go out there with a little better technology
like camp quorders and cell phones and eventually night vision and thermal and enable to
actually prove what I suspected all along was going on, which I eventually did,
and I was realizing that it wasn't a pipe dream, you know,
it wasn't something that I just I was imagining, and therefore I was chasing,
you know, a shadow that I could never prove it and the technology
didn't make a difference. Plus the visual signing being in areas were there's a
history of activity of these big food or sasquatch. I was able to see
them at nighttime in Illinois and that's been in the last five years or this.
My I sort of increased my my activity as far as going out and
doing research and started going out with other people that had been doing this longer
than me, So it allowed me to sort of gather evidence based on other
people's personal encounters or personal anecdotal stories that they told me, so that that
that helped me tremendously in realizing that they're this This is not fiction, this
is not folklore that very well, the legend and folklore that I heard about
is based on actual stories. And as a result, I ended up even
getting in touch with people that had been doing this way longer than to just
sort of get there take on what I was experienced in it, and I
ended up messaging people like Melbourne Catchum to just find out what what's going on
is this behavior of this unknown creature, and just to get her sort of
you know, her you know, her take on what was going on,
and she was able to recommend something. She was able to actually, uh,
you know, take away any filters I had and say, well,
you know, blatantly, this is what I know, and this is what
I've experienced, and and I was able to sort of apply some of that
when I did go out into the field to sort of sort of allow me
to dial down on my investigative techniques what I was looking for and and and
and give giving me a sort of a leg up and not just fumbling through
it, woundering around and not knowing what to look for, because I was,
you know, even after nineteen seventy nine, I was still not knowing
how to go about. You know, I'm more of a doer as opposed
to listening to other people tell me what I need to know who they themselves
don't know. I thought, well, the only way I'm going to find
out is to search for the truth myself. So therefore I took the responsibility
on myself to go out there and find out and I've been doing that ever
since. So are you primarily focused on this same area that you mentioned at
the beginning that had sightings dating back to the forties and fifties. Yeah,
that one area is still on the radar, and I still go out there,
and I'll probably be going out there pretty soon within the next two to
three weeks because I have another person I do research with who just recently was
out there and he showed me some pretty interesting thermal footage which shows again allegedly,
I have to say, because I can't say it's one definitely bigfoot,
but some questionable images that he sent me. And that's one of the half
dozen locations in the you know, in and around where I live where I
have activity my one I concentrate on one of those half dozen sights that gets
probably ninety percent of my attention because on learning behavior, the patterns of how
frequently they come through that area, and I've had success in them getting if
you want to say, indifferent to my presence and not giving a crap that
I'm there other than occasionally when I push it, I get rock throws.
Rock throws at me on two three Asians in the last couple of years where
I push it and uh and after the rock throws, I get wouldn't a
wood knock in one case, two wood knocks letting others know, not me,
that hey, we gotta you know this guy forty feet from me?
And I felt at that point, I was like I could have walked forty
feet through this thicket and they this individual, if not more than one,
was already there. So I was been going into this one. Like I
said, the side, that one side I spent ninety percent of my effort
in developing. I won't even say it's a rapport, just sort of becoming
part of the woodwork. I guess should say where they're just sort of they
don't care about me. I don't pressure it. I got one, if
you want to call it. On one occasion in the last four or four
and a half years, on one occasion, I pushed it. I decided,
and they can be act I don't care what anybody says. You can
track them. And I decided to try. One day I decided was I
put it in my mind, I'm gonna track one and see track and see
where because I knew pretty much where they were coming from, and I knew
how to follow the trace evidence in the science, and so I was doing
it that one day, and I got as far as a thick row of
the trees along the river, and if you want to call it a bluff
charge, very similar to what I had happened to me in nineteen seventy nine,
just saying, came crashing through the tree line and stop just edge,
just to the point where it stopped, just short of coming through the edge
of the tree line, to this brushy area that was between me and this
hill. I was actually on the top of a hill looking down to this
brushy area, and then just probably fifty five sixty yards beyond the breshy area
was the beginning of this, if you want to call it a microforest,
or this huge section of trees, and the scene came crashing through there,
just stopped short, as if to say, okay, that's as far as
you go and so. And it was just as my battery ran out of
my camera. I was actually walking forward and I realized my camera was shutting
down, and I just kept going walking in the scene. Basically you want
to call the bluff charge charged towards me, stopped short and I'm straining to
see actually absolutely nothing other than to know that something just let me know.
I mean, it was loud. It was like a truck coming through the
woods. And I just at that point I turned around, walked probably ten
to fifteen yards back to a spot where I had there was a fall down
a big tree that had been pushed over by assumed by weather, and I
set my camera up on there and I started proceeded to change the battery and
and I think in that video I even described that I just experienced a left
charge and missed recording it, at least the audio portion of it. So
then I left, and uh, and after that, I thought, you
know, I'm just not going to do that anymore. And so now when
I go in, I go in, they hear me walking in. I
don't go deep in. I'll hear them. They'll generally approach, get to
a point where I'm sure they have a goodvantage point of where I'm at,
and I hear them, and they hear me, and I usually can usually
pick up some of the audio with my parabolic and uh, in some cases,
UH get a little too close and they can do the rock throws just
to let me know, Hey, don't come any closer, and if I
get a little too close, I get it. I'll get a would knock,
usually single or a double woodknock. I don't think it's directed at me.
I think it's they're letting each other know, hey, this guy's getting
close and that just might take of it. And again it's only opinion,
and I can only say it's I'm speculating how this is going. You know
what I think is happening, But based on repeatability, I can confirm it
happens over and over again, so I realize it's going beyond the point of
just theory. At this point, well, it sounds like it's a situation
where well, yes, it's theory and opinion. It's not random occurrences.
It's based on your own behavior that you can control, so you know what
you're doing whenever these events happen. And it's repeatability. Also, I can
go if I know they're in this area. There's always a certain time of
the year in the spring and again in the fall where we have groves of
hickory and walnut trees, and if you try to walk into that area,
it's like walking on big marbles are everywhere they usually go in there and they
just post up, and I can only assume they're eating the walnuts and hickory
nuts, because when I at that time of the year, it's repeatable.
When I go in there, they're in there. And when I get close
enough, I usually get sticks, walnuts, or pebbles thrown at me.
Nothing to hurt me, but it comes close, and I can in a
couple occasions, I've seen him zipping by me within a few feet of me.
I know they could probably if they wanted to, they could probably you
know, hit me with them, but they're always just up. They whizz
by me. And in one occasion, I decided to pick up a short
stick that I think they threw at me, and I threw it back at
him. I thought I was having sort of a gutsy moment, and I
threw it back at him. And after I threw it back, I took
about ten ten to fifteen paces into the tree line where this creature was sitting
and I immediately heard it get up like it had been squatting or sitting down,
got get up, and it just casually walked up like up. He's
coming in. And I think that I was a one I was able to
bluff him. I was like, I said to me, that's a human
characteristic. You play that game of where you're basically playing a chicken. And
I was lucky. I sort of fooled it, I said. I even
said, I said, here I come. And I took about ten fifteen
paces in and I heard something stand up like a person and just walk and
it was just beyond I knew if I would have taken forty to fifty paces
in, I probably would have seen it and walked away. And that happened
at the same location again, this time what was in the fall, and
I decided to walk in from an opposite side of that very location, from
just instead of the west side. I walked in from the east side,
the creek bedside, and walked in immediately got something thrown at me, and
then about ten to twelve seconds later, I got a double knock within probably
it sounded like it was forty It wasn't a lob knock, it wasn't a
soft knock. It was just like it was like somebody it was forty feet
away from me and I'm not, you know. And when I heard the
knock, I'm thinking to myself, you know these knocks are so convenient that
I've come to my own thoughts on that that it may not necessarily be I
would knock that this may be a type of vocalization where they're producing the knock
vocally, and I had some reasons to feel that or think that way.
But anyhow, that so because of that repeatability, I now, wait,
I get into the area, I listen, I'll hear them walking. They
don't they don't cover up, they're walking, they don't cover up. There
the fact that they're moving around. I notice when I approach it, that's
when I get the repeatability. I get the rock throws and then usually a
confirmation knock of some kinds. So at that point, I'm I'm just getting
close. I hear them walking around, and then if I feel they have
to hear them up both sides of me, it's time for me to leave.
Are you finding stick structures and formations in this area? Oh? Yeah,
what kind of stuff are you finding? I'm finding h bent over trees
that are pinned. How to create these? Some big arches, little arches
of trees, all shapes on sizes. I have trees that are they're mostly
deciduous, but I find some occasionally pine trees and coniferous trees that are bent
over. I find leans. I find uh this, uh this like a
lean to structure. Like there were two logs laid over parallel to each other
on the edge of a creek bank, and they had twenty foot in what
I would say, twelve foot long branches laid up stacked neatly along on these
two double logs to create like a shelter underneath it. I have that in
a video, sticks balanced on trees like, uh, you know, right
at the fulcrum, so you know something that you know, It's very hard
for me to say nature did that, you know, I asked, question
that. And then of course strange leans xes. I find the the x's
crossed bottom crossing x's top crossing xs xes that are crossed in the middle.
Some of the xes are laid on the ground, some are perched up again
two trees and up in the air. And then I even find uh ground
glyphs in this one area they go into every spring they put a consistently put
a ground glyph right in a section where the trail wise off either can go
to the left or right, and there's a ground glypt right there. Almost
had to indicate to others of their kind that hey, we're in the area.
And so I always look for the ground glyphs and and I found also
prints tracks at the bottom of the creek that's right there. I found tracks,
uh, in the leaf litter, and in some cases in the in
the p gravel or the h the finer gravel. On the bottom of some
of these creeks, I find what appears to be impressions of somebody that isn't
wearing a shoe. What's your theories about these stick structures and stuff? Do
you have any meaning that you've applied to any certain ones or anything. No,
Until I have, I guess you'd call it the the Rosutta stone.
Explaining this, I've talked to dozens of other investigators, and they all have
their own what they claim to be their own translation of each structure, right,
And when I look at it, I can only say, you can
mean any one of these, you know, I guess if you get fifty
people in a room, all researchers all come up with their you'll come up
with fifty different explanations. So I've decided that until I don't, I just
don't know. I mean the exs can mean a lot of things, and
I thought about it, but again it's it's opinion only, it's theory or
speculation. And I'm sure it is a symbol or a sign language of sorts.
And to sort of uh in the in the and it is sort of
has a meaning. I think some of it can be artistic license, in
a lot of it may not be. Or I should say all of the
above that is artistic license, and it is sign language or a symbol language.
And so I always refer back to this tribe of Malaysian Aborigines that have
their own stick language, that use it effectively to show like a two hundreds
leave the village and they're gone for three days, and the chief son's one
of his couple of his trackers to see how successful the hunting party is.
And the hunt hunting party gets a half day out and finds two or three
sticks leaned up against a log, and one stick may have two branches broken
off of it, forming basically three three nibs on the side of the branch,
meaning where three you know, three kilometers in that direction. And then
the third stick may have a leaf attached to it, which means we have
game and then one of the you know, the other stick may say that
they they have their camping at this location next to a river based on the
placement of the stick. So these are Aborigines, these are native people doing
this. So to say that they're doing something similar that I feel definitely is
I can almost say is happening, But without having the Rosetta stone to you
know, translate it and say specifically what they're meaning by these structures, I
can't. I can't, you know, to me, opinion is just it's
wasted to tell people that because then they tried to conflate it into this is
what I said or mean, and I'm just making suggestions, and you know,
so I stay away from that if I can't. Once you were,
you know, into your research career so to speak, and you had been
going out and had more of an understanding of these creatures, have you ever
found yourself in a position where you felt like you were in danger? Yeah?
I guess if I look through other people's eyes and how they would handle
it, they would perceive it as danger. I didn't really look at it
like that because maybe being in the moment, the adventure of it being somewhat
somewhat excited to recognize what's going on. You're you're not fearful. I mean,
yeah, I think having fear, we all have it. Uh.
Maybe my ability to control it has been my has helped me because I'm able
to sort of quiet myself and not let it like control me. But I
don't I tell people that I said that doesn't mean I'm not fearful. I
I use it sort of as a register of you know, one to ten,
you know how how back in this get. But on a couple occasions
where I've had him crawl into camp we do cold camps. We had one
crawl within thirty feet of us. Another one crawl within thirty five forty feet
of us on a different occasion, different location. And uh. And then
both of those times we saw and the first one we saw it with our
naked eye, me and another guy, Me and another researcher named Dave,
we saw crawl into camp at nighttime. I think it was a eleven thirty
quarter to twelve at night. We saw the same client just crawl into camp,
get within thirty feet of us, and we both stood up and in
Uh, and I go and go, Dave, do you see that he
was standing next to me. We both stood up pretty much simultaneously, and
he goes, who is that? And it just crawled backwards like a crab.
On the other occasion, we had our flair and we saw it with
our thermal. We looked at it with our thermal and it crawled past us
within I'd say again thirty five forty feet, going from right to left.
Using a clock face to determine how the position we were sitting at, we're
facing twelve o'clock. I pick up this thing on all fours at my ten
o'clock, crawling from my ten o'clock to like my eight o'clock on all fours,
and we're seeing it through brush. It's eighteen inches to two feet tall,
fairly thickly brushed. Again. This was in mid to late fall.
Temperatures were probably thirty eight degrees that night. It got pretty cool, and
I handed my partner, I said, look, look look at this,
and I handed it to him and said look right there, and he sees
the same thing. I see this thing crawling on all fours, going from
right to left, and he followed it right down between a draw between two
hills and it went directly behind a brush pile, and meanwhile he's describing it.
He goes, it's crawling between a draw I see it's back, it's
shoulders, it's the top of its like hunches, and and then he goes,
it's disappeared behind the brush pile. And then the next thing he's telling
me, I just seen his head pop up behind the brush pile. It's
tall. It either climbed up on the back side of the brush pile or
was standing behind the brush pile. So and that same night we saw it
could have been the same individual or a different individual ninety five hundred feet from
us at our twelve o'clock. Again, with thermal leaning out from a tree,
you could not mistake what it was. It was so obvious. I
mean, even he's an artist. He drew a sketch of or that big
foot, and we did a comparison the next morning, and we figured it
was seven and a half to the eighth foot mark. But from where we
were sitting on the ground with our backs against a down tree, we didn't
realize that that tree was sort of coming out of a bottoms area that was
below where we were sitting, below elevation. So we're assuming this creature we
saw from I want to say just above the upper thigh to its head leaning
out from the tree, was probably six six and a half feet tall,
So we assumed it was probably maybe a little taller than us. But when
we went and did a comparison high comparison the next morning, we realized,
wait a second, it was standing in an area that's sort of a depression
or below where we were sitting. So we didn't know that till we walked
out ninety five two hund feet toward that tree that it was leaning out from.
We realized, Wow, much taller than we realized at the time.
So that's that's what you know. Uh. Probably the only time I should
have been scared and I wasn't was on another occasion when we were doing an
investigation in Wisconsin and who we believe one or two came into camp and one
of these individuals crawled right up to my tent and basically pushed pushed me through
my tent. I was laying on my side, on my right side with
my back I would say inches from the back wall of my tent, and
at four thirty am in the morning, Now it was earlier than I want
to say It was probably closer to four o'clock quarter three forty five. I
hear this creature. I thought at first it was one of our own people,
because there were four of us in camp that night. But I hear
just something casually walk up to the back of my tent. I just hear
thump, thump, thump, thump, And the next thing I know,
I feel something on my back and it rolls me over onto my stomach.
It actually pushed me that hard. No man, no, no, no,
yea every big footer's nightmare. Well, my jaw dropped open. My
jaw dropped open, Matt and I thinking to myself, should I say anything?
But because I don't know if because of the excitement of the moment,
I was like, oh, I got my dream came true. I got
big Foot to touch me. Yeah. Maybe not the way I wanted,
but I was wasn't like I was being dragged out by my ankle. That's
true. Could have been worse, Yeah, it could have been worse,
but it was just uh. And then the next morning I discussed it with
my camp mates and they told me, yeah, we had something. One
guy, another investigator, he goes, yeah, he had something scratching Yeah,
on the rich Stock Nyland, I was tent. He could feel something
raking. It's like nails across the outside of his tent and he he and
he said that happened, And I said, well, either it's the same
one that pushed me over or it's a different one. So we came to
the opinion there were potentially I say the word potentially with emphasis juveniles in the
camp going from because there was four tents. There's four of us and the
fifth guy. I believe he ended up sleeping in his truck that night because
he had like one of these what I call a mummy tent. It's a
special ops or people and special forces use them. It's basically you put your
your sleeping bag, your mummy bag, inside of a little sort of basically
it's a little bigger than your sleeping bag and it protects you from the wind
and the rain. And I guess he was uncomfortable and man, he got
up at some point during the night and he ended up sleeping in his truck.
But I believe that was the same night. So there there was originally
a five of us and then left a day early. But yeah, that
happened that night. We had four tenths and then Mitch, I believe,
ended up in his truck that same night. He was the fifth person.
So we we we're sort of a small, loosely fit group of guys that
just we live all over the United States. We get together when we can,
and we travel to other people's you know, the other person's location when
we can afford to or get together and sort of sort of we're a loose
knit group of investigators that we've all experienced different things regarding Bigfoot. So that
was one of the ones that when I shared it with the guys, he
are all like, how did you feel? And I'm like, I felt
excited, and I'm thinking, but maybe I'm just being too damn positive about
it, because it could have gone south. He always called it counting coup
Native Americans a long time ago, that you know, young warriors wanting to
prove their bravery would go in and put a mark on the enemy or something
to show, look how close I got to you. I could have killed
you, but I didn't. They obviously know from their behavior that you're inside
the tent, you're in their sleeping They can mess with you, and they
can get away before you can get out of that tent. Yeah, why
do you think they do it? Why do you think, you know,
for a creature that spends all of its time hiding from humans. And I
know it's just speculation, but why do you think they risk at all to
come in and do things like that? I think I have to agree with
that. I think if their juveniles and they want to impress the elders of
their family group or clan, who I think are probably sitting in the woods
not far from maybe witnessing all this going on. I thought, Uh,
it's very likely they're counting coupor. They're doing something very similar that you know,
Aborigines native people do something similar all over in tribes all over the world.
So of course that that that I thought about that I said, is
this what's going on? Is it like teenagers that I remember when I was
younger, a group of teenagers we had a train that went through town where
I lived and where I used to live, and they would try to as
the trains approaching the The object of the game was who could be the one
that could jump and across the tracks closest to the engine before getting hit.
And so I always thought this bigfoot doing something similar when they're in camp are
they are they testing not just our metal, testing their own metal. Yeah.
You know, obviously there's a lot of people that tell stories and write
books about, you know, the horrible dangers of bigfoot kidnapping people and killing
them and everything else. Do you think they are responsible for people disappearing in
the woods? Do you think they go that far with it? I would
say, based on now I'm basing this on my discussions with the slash Much
Genome project and the catch Them study that if there's if this is accurate as
I believe it is, and based on my discussions with her, that if
the mitochondrial DNA is Homo sapien sapien, which is us, and that they
are hybridized creatures going back as recently fifteen thousand years ago, the hybridization was
still going on. That all you have to do is look at the population
of ourselves, look at ourselves in the mirror, and look at the humans
that have stopped to help you change the tire on your car because you had
a flat tire or a totally different human you know, another person would stop
and rob you because you're you're you're helpless, defenseless, you can't, you're
trapped. And still others that would go as far as as kidnapping you and
doing who knows what with you. You know, we have a society made
up of people of all different personalities. So then if you attribute that,
you know, as far as just the variation of Bigfoot personalities, the human
side of Bigfoot personalities, which we won't know about. You don't have to
be a psychiatrist to know how people, how dark people can be, and
how and also how good people can be, and even how neutral or dismissing
people can be. And realize that maybe Bigfoot some that are starving and having
a hard time, some that are sick, possibly others that are just hateful
toward humans because of maybe bad encounters that happen to members of their family or
clan or themselves confronted with an opportunity, definitely would kill or take a human.
Others might have a different reason for taking a perpetuation of the species.
And still others may do what I encountered. Let's see how close we can
get and mess with them and see who can win. You know, be
the bravest in our clan, Be the one that you know, as you
said, counting coup and get the closest and just being playing a harmless if
you want to call it a game, or maybe it's part of their culture.
So I did consider this, and I thought, yes, you know,
can they all be ambivalent in all neutral and all friendly and all just
indifferent. I don't believe that. I wouldn't be. I wouldn't be using
common sense or logic if I looked at it that way, you know.
And I'm not casting dispersions on people unfortunately in the Bigfoot community or whatever you
want to anti community, whatever you want to call it, that think that
I feel that that's sad that they come to the conclusion they're all friendly and
harmless and or the other extreme where they're all dangerous and can't be trusted.
I look at it, it's all of the above. It's all of those
and everything in between. So I never go under the assumption when I'm out
doing my investigations that just because I ran into a group that were dismissive of
me and maybe occasionally throw a pebble at me to let me know, hey,
don't come any further, that when I go back three weeks later,
that that's going to be the same ones I encountered previously. I never go
on that assumption. I always use caution, not fear, and go with
the precondition that they could be different ones. They could be more dangerous,
they could be aware that you're there and not care and be indifferent, or
they may be willing to interact. I've had more of the dismissive and indifference
and so far the ones that are willing to somewhat interact, maybe reluctantly.
And that's so so that's what's taken me now forty years to come to and
I feel I've been lucky or fortunate that I might self I'm still around to
talk about it because I think there were opportunities where even I could have probably
I could have get hurt. I could have been hurt. I did establish
a pattern, or I should say, a strategy of whenever I go in
deep or going to an area where I'm going to be in for an period
of time, to not go alone. I always believe there is safety and
numbers, and I always take a second or a third person with me.
But even areas where I go in where I only going fifty to sixty yards
in there, you're still taking a chance have you ever experienced anything in the
paranormal realm whenever you were out researching these creatures. Nothing like psychic, nothing
telepathic, nothing paranormal that I can put my finger other than my gut reaction,
which is something I learned from growing up in the city. I'm more
of a country boy now, but I grew up in near Chicago, in
a large city, and I could always tell if I was in a bad
neighborhood. If I was around a group of people, I could sense,
you know, it was a gut reaction. I could sense I could trust
them. But I could be in that same neighborhood and encounter a different group
of people and just something inside me would say, hey, this is not
this is a bad situation. You need to leave or something bad will happen,
and my gut reaction is certain you. I guess some people call it
intuition that has served me well, and I find it with I get the
same reaction with Bigfoot. If I go into an area and I start to
walk in and I have a sense of I just feel like it's just dicey
and it's just not I feel like a sense of that got reaction, Like
I feel like I'm taking a chance I'm not wanted or whatever. I'll leave
And other times they'll go in and I know they're there, I sense they're
there, and I don't feel that like, I don't feel that reaction like
something bad's going to happen. And I've had this happen where I've been in
bad neighborhoods and in the city. And I had that happen with a friend
of mine, close friend of mine, and I said, we need to
leave now, and he goes, no, it's fine. I go,
no, we got to leave now. I said, we're going to be
robbed. I just sensed it and we Uh. He didn't. He didn't
believe me, and he was a driver in the car. I was in
the front seat with him, and he wouldn't listen to me, and we
ended up being robbed at gunpoint. And later on he says, uh,
so, I think whatever you want to call that, I sense it now
when I'm I'm in areas where I know they're at. If I feel a
sense of like A, I get that same feeling, I leave and it's
not because I'm going to get robbed at gunpoint either A right, I mean,
I'd say it's certainly better to err on the side of caution and just
listen to those instincts. Yeah, every time I've done that, my instinct
served me well, or my intuition has always allowed me to live the next
day. So I listened to it. It's I think all humans have it.
I think it's part of our survival instinct, or it's part of our
genetics. Some people that don't listen to it, they end up getting hurt,
killed sometimes, you know, whatever the situation is. They realize later,
boy, I should have listened to that my gut, my gut reaction
and just left. I find that every time I have ignored it, I've
ended up in a bad situation. But ninety nine percent of the time I
listened to it and it has served me well. And so that would be
the advice I'd give anybody who is thinking of going into something like this.
Listen to that inner voice. I'm not I'm not saying it's stilepathy, and
I'm definitely not saying it's paranormal. I just think it's just you know,
it's been around for you know, thousands of years generations, and I think
it's a human survival instinct and why wouldn't you listen to it? What are
your thoughts on You know, obviously you've seen the same thing I have over
the years. People refer to it as the WU crowd or whatever you want
to call, you know, the paranormal believers and claimers whenever it comes to
Bigfoot. What are your thoughts on that? Well, I'm not going to
make a lot of friends when I say this. Hey, your opinion is
yours and you are entitled to it. Yeah. Yeah, just an opinion
only, And I don't mean to disrespect anybody. People. They have to
have their own path and they have to evolve on it and learn from their
mistakes or learn period. So my thoughts on what your question just stated pretty
clearly was on the paranormal in that crowd is Unfortunately, I think Houdini had
it right. There's a lot of Charlatans and fakers and people that want to
bring attention to themselves and who are want to anchornize and pretend they're better than
what they really are, and in doing so, they're ruining the research.
They're ruining the science behind this, They're they're muddying the waters and they're making
it. It's unfortunate they're actually actually scaring people and making it. It's a
form also a fear mongering, but to that degree, there also pretending their
pretenders, and so unfortunately people that listen to that they think that's truthful,
and unfortunately they come to believe it. And I my my continuing thought on
that is it makes for lazy research because if all you have to do is
pull up into an area that you think bigfoot are at, and you don't
even have to leave your car and just do the mind speak thing or have
dreams or visions of what you think they're communicating to you, well, then
you never have to go into the field and gather evidence and do the hard
part, the physical part. I've slept in cold nights in areas where it
was rain soaked, in areas where I had a leaky tent and cabins that
had no heat, and uh in low freezing sitting up in the middle of
the night, cold camping, no fire, no flashlights because when we cold
camp we don't use flashlights. We use if we have to use the light,
we use a red light. But we pretty much it's not a cakewalk.
It's it's not it's it's not pretty, it's dirty, it's not easy,
and it's not fun. But if you can just be in indulge into
the paranormal and the psychic only, and that's where you want to put all
your energy energy into. To me, that's that's lazy. That's lazy research
because you can always pretend to find answers and you can always assume it's this
or that, and you could do it from the living room your house.
You never have to leave your couch. You could just say, hey,
I've had a you know, this is my vision. I'm remote viewing,
this is where they are. And and I'm not saying that doesn't exist,
and I'm not saying there's that may yield fruit. But in reality, the
way they talk about it in the Bigfoot what I call anti community, is
like every every fourth person you talk to has a paranormal experience, telepathic experience.
You would think, you know, thirty percent of people that do Bickfoot
research are all psychic. And I just find the out a ferry that that
just without using any expletive deletive is hard for me to swallow. Do you
think this thing will ever be proven? Oh? Yes, I think it's
going to happen. I think the science. As we get better with science
and better with being true human beings and we evolved not like we are now,
we'll learn to accept that there are other human species on this planet other
than Homo sapien sapient. But right now, it's easier just to consider this
a North American primate somewhat of an animal. It's easier to put it into
that category because then you can have dominion over it. You can control it,
you can control the release of information regarding it, and you can poo
poo the people like me that say, well, no, there are people,
there are tribal people very well may have not just a language, but
what's inextricably linked to language culture. Once you lose your language, you lose
your culture. So I think I have to give ops to people like Scott
Nelson, who who hopefully, if his research continues to stay in the you
know, freely available on the internet in the Worldwide Web, maybe in the
next generation they'll be able to take what he's provided and provide even provide answers
that may get to the bottom of this and it won't be a mystery.
And I don't believe it is a mystery. I think people want there's a
lot of people that want to keep it a mystery and a cliffhanger because it
finance. It's to their benefit to do that. Whether it's the government,
the various industries who are plundering our resources or protecting what they think are protecting
our resources. They don't want to They don't want people to know there's potentially
wild people that are living in wilderness areas that that have have resources that we
want to use and plunder. They don't want they don't want that to become
a you know, people the population to be aware of that. I think
the population slowly waking up to that. They're finding out wall. You know,
Bigfoot is not just an entertainment thing. It's an actuality, it's a
reality, but the paranormal thing is sort of it's I think unfortunately it's dumming
everybody down to easily accept that, you know, Bigfoot walk through my wall.
Bigfoot, you know, showed up and did this and gave you know,
I just find it very difficult to to believe that. I'm not saying
they they aren't capable of telepathy. Every well may be the case. I
just think the people that are putting this forward. Don't know the difference between
the voice in their head they're listening to in something that they claim is external
that's coming to them from a population of hairy people. I find how they're
not making the distinction. You know a lot of people talk about government suppression
of information whenever it comes to this topic. But do you think there are
disinformation agents at work in the bigfoot community itself? I think in every avenue
where you have discoveries being made, you're going to have elements of, if
you want to call it, disferent information as agents misinformation being put out there.
Because the people that control the information, they control the wealth they can,
and as a result of that, they control the information and they control
all the whether it's whether it's structures on Mars, secrets hidden in the Great
Pyramids, giants, bigfoot, everything that would change the history of mankind,
effectively change the history of mankind. I think you have disinformation from government agencies
that try to suppress or or or call that prevent it from coming up into
the human consciousness and saying that just there's more things than we know that history.
I think, what's I like to I watch a channel called what school
won't tell you. And that says a lot to me that one sense what
school won't tell you because you think about all the things you've learned. If
you got out of school and you realized school has told not told you a
lot. And there's a reason why we've been inculcated or indoctrinated with certain things
going to school. We're here to be produce, to be recipients of to
basically be buyers, and you know, be part of the system, productive
members of society, consumers. Consumers are trying to be consumers and to participate
in what they call the Great American Experiment. I can only talk about the
West, but I think it's it's got into the European Union and it's all
over Western eure too. And as a result, that's the good soldier.
You you're trained to be a participating member of society, and you're not productive
if you try to unsuppress whatever it may be. Let's suppress the bad things
that have done been done by the military, the government, whether you're Jillian
Ossians or or Snowden, or you're anybody like uh Patterson Orkimlin or trying to
unsuppress things that they try to dumb it down and say, well, yeah,
they're just a dumb ape and that's all you need to know. So
I think, yeah, there is there is an element of that going on.
I don't think Bigfoot is the biggest I guess you'd say the biggest worry
in their trove of of facts or hidden things that they don't want us to
know about. I think it's one of those things. It's just not I
don't think it's mind uh. I don't think it would. It would totally
undermine the world or people's way they live if they were find to find out
tomorrow that yes, Bigfoot is, you know, another civilization of wild humans
living alongside humanity and wilderness areas all over the world. I don't think it
would just upset the apple cart to that degree. I think there's way out
there's more things and other things that would do that. So I think,
yeah, there's there's disinformation agents or people that track and keep track of what
you're unsuppressing. And I think if you get a little too close to the
truth, things happen, and you would probably just attribute it. If it
happened to yourself, you would just attribute it to coincidence, or if it
was on purpose, you would just learned to like not say say anymore about
it and probably take take their threats seriously, you know whatever. And I'm
sure that's happened enough times in the past regarding even this subject matter. I've
got one more question for you before we wrap things up here. It's a
question that I've been wanting to ask you since you and I first met over
the internet. You have a photo on your social media of I believe it's
a donkey. Yes, what's the story behind that photo? Well, this
is sort of that fringe area that reaches into touches on what the government wants
you to believe happened. And so the story behind that photo is a friend
of mine who I used to do research with, who's been at many of
these locations with me to do active research in bigfoot. He was given that
photo. He was somebody sent him that image. A person knew. He
did contract work for the i DNR, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.
What I mean by contract work, he would do what they call removal of
coyotes and problem wild animals. He was basically they call him in and he
would remove that animal. He would he'd shoot it call it from because it
was killing lasstock or whatever. Well, he got this picture and the guy
who signed it to him, he sug yes, this is her recent kill.
We actually went to that site later on to this location where this donkey
was killed, and his daughter had a sighting what she described near there.
This was weeks later of a boss. She was going home and a bobcat
crossed the road in front of her, and she says, this huge creature
came out of the ditch on the right side of the road, crossed in
front of her within seconds of seeing the bobcat in her headlights, and it
looked like what she described is what we would probably call it dog man.
I'm not that familiar with dog man, but that was her story. So
then you'll go back to that picture. And the owner of that property,
who had those donkeys fenced in on his property, claimed that receding the death
of that donkey, that he had seen this large wolf, like bigger than
a normal wolf, what he described as very tall. And when I asked
Dave who provided the image, she says the owner of the properties had told
DNA or that he said there was this huge wolf, like a mega wolf
that had been circling the fenced in area where his donkeys were. And he
tried to tell DNA that and they said, no, you didn't see a
wolf. You saw that was a cougar kill. You didn't witness that.
You you know, like you didn't see what you saw more or less.
And so I showed that picture to a friend of mine who's sort of into
dogman research, and he goes, yeah, he says, that's typical of
a dog man kill. He says it would have been like shredded by coyotes,
and the bones and the limbs and would have been in the flesh,
would have been everywhere, all over the place, even with wolves. But
he says, this is like allegedly a dog man kills. What my friend
told me and the other guy, the guy who got the picture, Dave,
he said yes, he says. The owner of the property he told
DNR they had saw a huge wolf, like along the size of like a
small pony, I think is what he used as a comparison size, you
know, like a Shetland pony. And I was like, really that big
and he goes yes, And so we just sort of didn't really go into
We went and drove around that area. We found the area where this creature
followed this creek bed under the road that had crossed to follow the bobcat that
his daughter was an eyewitness too, and found this creek bed goes right past
this farm where the donkeys. Actually it's on the edge of the property of
this farm where this donkey was killed. And so Rolla had several months and
he gets a call from DNR. They said they had some problem predators in
the area that they wanted him to take care of. And I'm recounting the
story as he told me. He said, so he knew where the predators
were coming in from, and the DNA told them they were two wolves that
were coming in. He described one I believe as a black one and the
other one was lighter colored, more of a blonde to twenty color. It
was coming into the area in the farms and we're taking livestock and killing killing
their livestock. So the DNA knew right where these creatures were coming in,
and he took me to that location and he says, here's where I set
up my I think he had a three o eight or something like that with
a scope on it or whatever, but he he set up his gun or
oh no, he had I take that back. He had a different caliber.
But he said he set up his gun, he sided it everything,
and he said he did get injured. I believe it was an injured fun
call. And he says he's on a hill overlooking a cornfield like one hundred
and fifty yards deep, maybe more, and just beyond the edge of that
cornfield was the forest. And he says he saw something, he heard something
or saw I believe on the scope something from a distance coming through the cornfield.
And I believe the cornfield that ti time it was before July. It
might have been June, so it wasn't the corn wasn't quite I believe in
Wisconsin today say knee knee high by the fourth of July. But it was
taller than that. I want to say. It was probably waste to maybe
shoulder high for like a five and a half foot man. He said he
saw the cornstocks starting to like move, like something was running through it,
and he did he did the phone call a few times, and what he
saw through the scope is a wolf raise up on its hind legs to look
over the top of the corn to see to get a location or at least
get eyes on where the call was coming from. And he realized and I
asked him, I said, Donald, was that an actual wolfer? Was
a dog man? He goes, No, this was a wolf. This
was a rare, very tall wolf, and he shot it. He was
able to get get his scope on it. At one point I guess it
stopped or slowed down, and he was able to get a good beat on
it. And he showed me the result of that shot later on when he
showed me the pelt. But he got he shot it right between the eyes.
I mean, this guy's an incredible hunter. Yeah, it was an
incredible hunter. And the reason I say shot between the eyes is later I
weren't talking to him. I'm at his house and I go, well,
he asked me to come to his house, but we had the conversation.
He shows me this pelt and I go, that you got the pelt.
He got everything. He got the pelt, It was everything, the legs,
they had, the whole pelt of this wolf. And I go,
what happened to the rest of it? He goes, they said they they
would give him. You know, that was part of the payment, you
know, whatever they whatever, The conversation was that he asked. He said,
I want to have the wolf, or at least he thought he would
get the whole wolf. And they said, no, we'll give you the
pelt. You can take everything, but we're going to take the pause,
the skull, all the internal organs, everything, the skeleton. Ever will
take everything. You can have the pelt only. So he says, weight
right here, and I'm waiting in this one room he has in his house.
And he goes back and he brings out the pelt. The paws were
cut off, all four paws were cut off, but the head was there
and everything else, tail, everything else, but everything else was gone.
The DNR would not let him have anything else because for obvious reasons. I'm
sure they also told him he had to sign an NDA. So in a
way, I'm blowing his cover by sharing the story. So he then went
on to tell me. He says, let's simulate its size one five ten.
So he simulated the wolf standing on its hind legs. We estimated where
it cut they cut off its paws, so we added another at least five
to six inches there. We were being conservative, and we added and then
he simulated it standing on its hind legs with its paws on my shoulders,
and where its head would be, which was above my head. We simulate.
We determined this wolf, standing on its high legs, was close to
six and a half to seven feet tall. So my first thing was,
I started searching for really big wolves. And I've seen timber wolves. We
have him down here in Illinois. We have a nature preserve where they have
the timber wolves that you would see like in Minnesota or Wisconsin, and they're
big, but they don't get that big. So where these wolves came from,
I can't tell you. Are they being confused with dogmen? Very possibly?
I think that's a definite. And why are they so big? That's
the whole question. That's why. I think they were being introduced by the
biologists to keep the deer, to call the deer, to keep the deer
pie population down here in Illinois. And I think they just started getting big
for whatever reason. But when I saw when I saw this thing, this
pelt and it was a female, Dave determined he would he was a taxidermist
when he was younger. He says this was still not full grown. He
says, this was still not fully fully developed female. It was still growing,
so we had to determine it was still getting bigger. And at that
point I said to him, I says, you know what, I says,
The first thing that came to my mind. I says, is there
a breeding population of wolves that are reminding me of the Mackenzie wolf of the
Mackenzie Valley that are from north the northwest part of Canada. These are wolves
that are their legendary and they get huge, they get they get big like
ponies. And I'm thinking, what are they doing here in Illinois if in
fact this is the same breed of waves, or is this just a you
know, a result of having just a genetic throwback to a time when wolves
were maybe what I would consider megafauna, because it was really bigger than what
I would consider a wolf to be. Yeah, and you know the whole
reason I brought the donkey photo. I mean, obviously people can't see it
that are listening, but the head and part of the spine is ripped off
of the body and laying I don't know how far that is, thirty feet
or so away from the body. The only thing that I could think of
is like a large bear kill or something. I don't really know of too
many animals that could do that the way it was splayed out, and you
know, the head and part of the spine was ripped off, and we
will see it up in the upper I think, right in the corner of
one of my one of the images, and then the legs and the chest
are splayed open, and uh, you know, being a bigfoot investigator,
you know, my first my first uh I guess insight was to think that
to bigfoot do this. But then the owner of that farm he described this
huge walls, and later on they found out there were a pair of these
walls, a black one and a lighter colored one, that were released in
Illinois and they they might have just got bigger, and you know, and
the course is this what's going on concerning the dog man question. Are these
misidentifications of these mega wolves that it might be in areas they shouldn't be in
and Illinois is not known for wolves or bear We usually everybody has cited cougars
and wolves in Illinois and the DNA will deny it. They'll say, well,
it's really a rogue wolf or a rogue bear that just sort of got
you know, lost its bearings and was going from Wisconsin to southern Indiana and
just sort of got discovered in Illinois. No, we feel there's a breeding
population of wolves, and definitely in the riverbeds that I do my investigations in
the watersheds, I found several cougar tracks and dnare will tell you in our
state. Well, no, no, there's not a breeding population of cougars.
That just like a one off situation. So again, is a government
suppression? Oh definitely. Do they have stories that they had to tell,
meaning they're scripted? Oh definitely, well done. I appreciate you coming on
and sharing your stories and your information. Do you have some of your evidence
posted somewhere where people could find it? Yeah, you can go to you
my YouTube channel unacknowledged and unknown. Those are three words, all starting with
capital letters, unacknowledged and unknown. You can also find me an Instagram,
also under unacknowledged and unknown, or you can also find me on Twitter.
I don't really use my Twitter account three much, but you can find me
on Twitter under sasquatch of Eli and I and three separate words sasquatch of Aloni.
On Twitter. If you want to get a hold of me, you
can contact me through any any three of those platforms. All right, thanks
so much for joining me again, And if you've had an encounter with Bigfoot
or something that you can't explain, email me at Bigfoot Crossroads at gmail dot
com. Check out the website bigfootcrossroads dot com. You can find all the
links to reach me, past episodes, links to the merchandise, and even
contact warms in case you want to report a siding. And until next time,
I remember there's something in the woods.