OUTDOORSMAN SHARES HIS BIGFOOT EXPERIENCE! | ELK CAMP WAS NEVER THE SAME!

<v Speaker 1>Hey guys, and welcome to Sasquatch Theory. I hope everyone
<v Speaker 1>is doing good and I have an interesting story today.
<v Speaker 1>Dan from Washington wanted to share his experiences that took
<v Speaker 1>place in the state of Idaho. It's pretty common to
<v Speaker 1>hear these types of stories from hunters all over North America,
<v Speaker 1>and I constantly hear people say there are areas that
<v Speaker 1>nobody goes into due to the strange activity that takes place.
<v Speaker 1>The Sasquatch like to find areas that have the resources
<v Speaker 1>needed to survive and the cover to remain undetected. But
<v Speaker 1>with so much of that around, it makes me wonder
<v Speaker 1>why they choose these specific areas other than the obvious.
<v Speaker 1>Is there some type of energy resource or connection to
<v Speaker 1>these areas with the Sasquatch. Another theory people have speculated
<v Speaker 1>is there could be rogue males that are roaming the
<v Speaker 1>forest looking for a clan of their own. It could
<v Speaker 1>be possible if they are traveling alone and do not
<v Speaker 1>have a group of their own to rely on, they
<v Speaker 1>could become more dangerous and hostile. This experience forever changed
<v Speaker 1>Dan's views of the forest and altered the course of
<v Speaker 1>his favorite outdoor hobby. I want to thank Dan for
<v Speaker 1>sending in a story. And if you like this type
<v Speaker 1>of content and enjoy learning things about the Sasquatch, then
<v Speaker 1>please be sure to like common and subscribe. All right, everybody,
<v Speaker 1>let's dive into this next Bigfoot encounter from the state
<v Speaker 1>of Idaho. Hey, Dan, welcome to Sasquatch Theory and I
<v Speaker 1>appreciate you being on the show.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, thanks for having me here.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, no problem. If you could, would you tell us
<v Speaker 1>about your experiences out in the back country of Idaho.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, you bet.
<v Speaker 3>So this happened about well, it'll be four weeks ago tomorrow.
<v Speaker 3>My dad and I were out for our annual two
<v Speaker 3>week l khunt I go back home to Idaho. Well,
<v Speaker 3>I call all of Idaho home. That's where I grew up.
<v Speaker 3>We were in North Idaho this year just because of
<v Speaker 3>tag availabilities. We're usually in central Idaho in the wilderness,
<v Speaker 3>so we just picked a different spot this year. So
<v Speaker 3>my dad had arrived a few days early prior to
<v Speaker 3>opening day to scout the area. Since we hadn't hunted
<v Speaker 3>there due to work, I wasn't able to arrive until
<v Speaker 3>the day before opening day. Met my dad at the
<v Speaker 3>base of the mountains that we'd be climbing up into
<v Speaker 3>and setting up base camp for about a week and
<v Speaker 3>a half.
<v Speaker 2>It turned out. I can tell you one thing.
<v Speaker 3>If anybody listening hasn't been in the Pacific Northwest, it's
<v Speaker 3>hard to imagine some of these places you get into,
<v Speaker 3>how remote and rugged.
<v Speaker 2>I've been hunting my whole life.
<v Speaker 3>I'm forty years old, had my hunting license since I
<v Speaker 3>was eleven, and been some bad terrain. I fought wildland
<v Speaker 3>fire for numerous years. I was a logger for a while,
<v Speaker 3>paying for school. And when I got to the base
<v Speaker 3>of those mountains, I looked up and I looked at
<v Speaker 3>my dad and kind of shook my head and said, really,
<v Speaker 3>because this was some of the steepest, heavily wooded terrain
<v Speaker 3>I have ever seen in my life. And I grew
<v Speaker 3>up in the Pacific Northwest. But anyways, we had off
<v Speaker 3>up the four service logging roads, just winding our way
<v Speaker 3>up through the mountains. Chatted with some few hunters on
<v Speaker 3>the way up that were lower down, just trying to
<v Speaker 3>find a spot where we could set up camp. These
<v Speaker 3>mountains were so steep that you could get up on
<v Speaker 3>a ridge line, but there were times where other than
<v Speaker 3>the road that was the peak of the mountain. There
<v Speaker 3>wasn't much room on either side other than these slopes
<v Speaker 3>and forest, so.
<v Speaker 2>We wandered around for a while.
<v Speaker 3>Eventually went off on this stem road, which a stem
<v Speaker 3>road is a road that branches off and and terminates.
<v Speaker 3>It doesn't have any thoroughfare. It one way in, one
<v Speaker 3>way out. So we drove in, found the only good
<v Speaker 3>wide spot to part both of our vehicles and set
<v Speaker 3>up our wal tent for base camp. Got that done.
<v Speaker 3>That was the day before, did a little scouting around.
<v Speaker 3>Saw a few hunters just driving by on four wheelers,
<v Speaker 3>side by side, that type of thing. So if you
<v Speaker 3>haven't hunted, you know, we're all a pretty tight knit group.
<v Speaker 3>You can meet a stranger and it's like you've been
<v Speaker 3>friends for you know, thirty years. You chat, where are
<v Speaker 3>you from? Oh that's a nice rifle.
<v Speaker 2>What are you carrying?
<v Speaker 3>You know, everybody's armed to the teeth, but everybody's happy
<v Speaker 3>and friendly and gracious, and it's just a neat, little
<v Speaker 3>kind of club to be in. And what I thought
<v Speaker 3>was interesting, and even my dad commented on this. Every
<v Speaker 3>single hunter we talked to our hunting party that drove
<v Speaker 3>by and said Hey, is that you guys camping up here?
<v Speaker 3>And we said yeah, and they kind of chuckled and said,
<v Speaker 3>all right, well you're gonna have the place to yourself
<v Speaker 3>because no one goes down there. And they pointed to
<v Speaker 3>the southern slope just off of our camp. So where
<v Speaker 3>our camp was, that ridge wasn't even fifty yards wide,
<v Speaker 3>and then it plunged on the north does sheer drop off.
<v Speaker 3>No human could traverse that without mountaineering gear. The south
<v Speaker 3>side was extremely steep and heavily wooded, but you could
<v Speaker 3>get up and down it reasonably. That's the spot I
<v Speaker 3>chose to hunt, or my dad and I both, and
<v Speaker 3>they just chuckled every and I spoke to no less
<v Speaker 3>than six hunters that said the exact same thing. I
<v Speaker 3>could have recorded the first person. My dad came back
<v Speaker 3>to camp after we kind of split up in the
<v Speaker 3>morning and he said, yeah, I talked to some people
<v Speaker 3>and they said, we got the place to ourselves. No
<v Speaker 3>one hunts off the road up here. And I was like, okay, cool,
<v Speaker 3>we got the place to ourself. So opening day comes,
<v Speaker 3>that's a Sunday started with sleet at six thirty am
<v Speaker 3>when we were heading out.
<v Speaker 2>You know, it was legal to shoot.
<v Speaker 3>By then it was half an hour before legal sunrise
<v Speaker 3>or technical sunrise rather, so it's legal to shoot. So
<v Speaker 3>we went our separate ways. I went west, he went east. Nasty,
<v Speaker 3>nasty weather, just sleet all day, and then it turned
<v Speaker 3>to hail. Then it turned to snow. I hiked quite
<v Speaker 3>aways down that southern slope, didn't see anything, got soaked wet.
<v Speaker 3>It took me. I hiked from six thirty till noon
<v Speaker 3>down that mountain and decided. At some point I looked
<v Speaker 3>down and it just kept going. It was like endless.
<v Speaker 3>The plunge down to the bottom wherever that was was
<v Speaker 3>thousands of feet. I'm like, if I get down there,
<v Speaker 3>I'm going to be hiking up this mountain in the dark.
<v Speaker 3>And I think every hunt or makes that decision, is
<v Speaker 3>it worth getting an elk that far down and you know,
<v Speaker 3>taking an entire day just to pack out one hindquarter.
<v Speaker 3>So I turned around, started side hilling. It eventually came
<v Speaker 3>back up to camp around dusk, and that was it.
<v Speaker 3>Didn't see anything other than rain. Coupled deer called it
<v Speaker 3>a day. Monday pretty much same story, brutal cold temperatures,
<v Speaker 3>just awful snowing, a little bit about an inch or so,
<v Speaker 3>same thing, no report, just a lot of walking, covered
<v Speaker 3>a lot more territory.
<v Speaker 2>And that was at that point.
<v Speaker 3>Opening day was the last time we saw really saw
<v Speaker 3>humans up there. We didn't see it. There was no
<v Speaker 3>tracks in, no tracks out. I was just amazed. I
<v Speaker 3>didn't even see a granola wrapper, which if you even
<v Speaker 3>if you're in the woods pretty deep, usually you see
<v Speaker 3>human debris, you know, a beer can or dranola wrappers
<v Speaker 3>or something. I didn't see anything. No elk, nothing, no humans,
<v Speaker 3>few deer. So then Tuesday rolls around. That's day three
<v Speaker 3>of actual hunting season. Was the about the only sunny
<v Speaker 3>day up on that mountain. I went back west again,
<v Speaker 3>cut out north, hit some cliffs and rock slides, turned
<v Speaker 3>back around, kind of frustrated, ended up coming back to
<v Speaker 3>camp on the road, grabbed a quick just made a sandwich,
<v Speaker 3>grabbed some coffee, and decided, okay, I'm just gonna go
<v Speaker 3>directly south of our camp, which is just fifty feet
<v Speaker 3>away across the road. Just plunge into the woods again,
<v Speaker 3>hit those slopes and head east where I hadn't been.
<v Speaker 3>That's ground I hadn't covered, same terrain, very steep, heavily wooded.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, there's there's point where you don't even have
<v Speaker 3>if there was to be an animal, I wouldn't even
<v Speaker 3>have I don't know fifteen yards of line of sight
<v Speaker 3>that I could shoot through. It was so densely timbered.
<v Speaker 3>No game sign, you know, an inch of snow. Once again,
<v Speaker 3>no game trails. That was frustrating. I didn't even to
<v Speaker 3>find a game trail. So I'm I'm going down that slope,
<v Speaker 3>just plugging along, hoping to find something. In about one
<v Speaker 3>o'clock one pm, for the first time and well four
<v Speaker 3>days counting the our scouting day, I saw a flat spot.
<v Speaker 3>It was a grassy flat spot, not very big, probably
<v Speaker 3>the size of two swim large swimming pools, And I thought, okay,
<v Speaker 3>well this is interesting. I haven't seen this up here yet.
<v Speaker 3>I thought it was all straight up and down. So
<v Speaker 3>I moved down slope get to this grassy area, and
<v Speaker 3>I see l track from the day before, and I
<v Speaker 3>could tell because it was over the snow from Monday,
<v Speaker 3>so I knew it was at least a day old. Okay,
<v Speaker 3>that's promising. And I look down slope south and I
<v Speaker 3>see more grassy flat spots and it kind of went
<v Speaker 3>in steps. So from where I was standing, grassy flat spot,
<v Speaker 3>some eroded little slope, I mean, not very high or steep,
<v Speaker 3>another grassy spot, another little eroded slope, and then a
<v Speaker 3>larger grassy area that extended out to a dense timberline.
<v Speaker 3>So I'm looking. I'm thinking, okay, there's elkabin here. This
<v Speaker 3>is where you would find these animals grazing or sunning
<v Speaker 3>themselves or both. And I'm looking around trying to make
<v Speaker 3>that decision. Do I keep plunging downward, because at this
<v Speaker 3>point in the afternoon, if I keep going deeper once again,
<v Speaker 3>I'm going if I get an animal number one, I've
<v Speaker 3>got to dress that animal out, get it hung from predators,
<v Speaker 3>because there's grizzlies up there. There's black bear, there's wolves.
<v Speaker 3>I saw plenty of sign and there's cats.
<v Speaker 2>So if you.
<v Speaker 3>Don't get that meat either out which wouldn't happen, or
<v Speaker 3>hang it nice and high, you're not going to find
<v Speaker 3>an elk there in the morning. So I looked, and
<v Speaker 3>I looked, and I pondered, and I looked to my left,
<v Speaker 3>which would be going due east, kind of in the
<v Speaker 3>direction I was headed anyways, and I see a game
<v Speaker 3>trail cutting pretty much along the slope going east, kind
<v Speaker 3>of heading up a little bit, which at this point
<v Speaker 3>in the day is I wanted to start trending back
<v Speaker 3>upwards a little bit, gaining elevation instead of bleeding it off.
<v Speaker 3>And it was a very very well traveled game trail.
<v Speaker 3>This is probably where those elk could come in and
<v Speaker 3>out and deer, and so I made the decision at
<v Speaker 3>that time, Okay, I'm not going to keep going down.
<v Speaker 3>It's too late in the day. Maybe I can come
<v Speaker 3>back to this tomorrow early in the morning, you know,
<v Speaker 3>at first light, catch some animals out there.
<v Speaker 2>You know, I knew the location.
<v Speaker 3>Based on you know, compass direction and in relation to
<v Speaker 3>the road that went to our campsite.
<v Speaker 2>So I'm starting to turn.
<v Speaker 3>And walk up that game trail when from down below,
<v Speaker 3>I hear five loud, distinctive.
<v Speaker 2>Thumps, and the.
<v Speaker 3>First thought that went through my head, it was kind
<v Speaker 3>of funny in retrospect, was what is a person doing
<v Speaker 3>all the way out here beating on a piece of
<v Speaker 3>wood because it was so distinct. I mean, like I said,
<v Speaker 3>I've been hunting my whole life. I've been in the
<v Speaker 3>woods my whole life. I know, animal sounds. I know
<v Speaker 3>what a woodpecker sounds like. I know what it sounds
<v Speaker 3>like when a deer, elk, or moose or bear is
<v Speaker 3>crashing through the brush. These were five distinct, measured deep
<v Speaker 3>thunks of wood on wood, and I just thought, what
<v Speaker 3>is a person doing out here? Messing around? This is ridiculous.
<v Speaker 3>We haven't seen humans up here for four days. I
<v Speaker 3>haven't seen a single track or sign of a human.
<v Speaker 3>What are they doing all the way down here? There's
<v Speaker 3>no trails, Like I said, this was the first game
<v Speaker 3>trail I saw I had seen in days. Well the
<v Speaker 3>whole time I was up there, What is a person
<v Speaker 3>doing on here?
<v Speaker 2>Messing around?
<v Speaker 3>And then I just kind of shook my head and
<v Speaker 3>laughed inside my head and said, no, there's what Why
<v Speaker 3>would they be down here? Just it just sounds like
<v Speaker 3>someone beating a big stick or log on another log.
<v Speaker 2>What is going on here?
<v Speaker 3>So in my brain I instantly go, Okay, this isn't
<v Speaker 3>a this can't be a perse and this doesn't make sense.
<v Speaker 3>But what kind of animal would make this sound? And
<v Speaker 3>I'm just rattling off okay, elk, No, it's not elk fighting,
<v Speaker 3>you know, rattling their antlers This sounds like someone just
<v Speaker 3>thumping wood on wood, and it was very measured, just whack, whack, whack,
<v Speaker 3>five times, very measured, very distinct. There was no breeze whatsoever,
<v Speaker 3>so that sound carried really well, and I could tell
<v Speaker 3>it was coming from down in those far the furthest
<v Speaker 3>grassy area at least that's what where the sound appeared
<v Speaker 3>to be from. So now I've got my curiosity up.
<v Speaker 3>I'm like, you know what, I know, I wasn't gonna
<v Speaker 3>go down there, but I'm kind of bored. I haven't
<v Speaker 3>seen anything, and I'm curious, like what is doing that?
<v Speaker 3>So I start heading south towards where I think the
<v Speaker 3>noise is coming from. So I'm moving. I'm moving pretty
<v Speaker 3>quiet and slow. I get down to that second grassy area,
<v Speaker 3>so I go down. I kind of curve around so
<v Speaker 3>I don't have to slide on my butt down this slope,
<v Speaker 3>get to that area, and I stop. You know, as
<v Speaker 3>a hunter, you're not just power hiking. A lot of
<v Speaker 3>it is you stop, you look, you listen, that's your priority.
<v Speaker 2>Stop, look and listen.
<v Speaker 3>And I tend to do that a lot and stay
<v Speaker 3>still for pretty long periods. In fact, Opening Day Mule
<v Speaker 3>deer dough almost walked into me. She was about no
<v Speaker 3>more than fifteen feet maybe ten feet away before she
<v Speaker 3>smelled me and realized that I wasn't a bush because
<v Speaker 3>I was completely camoed and I'd been standing there still
<v Speaker 3>for about twenty minutes. So I did the same thing
<v Speaker 3>because I didn't hear the sound again, and I thought, Okay,
<v Speaker 3>this is some fluke, maybe sounds carrying whatever. And then
<v Speaker 3>I hear two more to measure deep thunk, thunk, from
<v Speaker 3>the same direction. Okay, well something's still there. So my
<v Speaker 3>brain had already turned towards Okay, if this isn't a human,
<v Speaker 3>this is an animal. I don't know how they're doing
<v Speaker 3>this or what it is. I've never heard a noise
<v Speaker 3>like this in forty years of being in the wilderness,
<v Speaker 3>and other than if a human's out there beaten around.
<v Speaker 3>So I had already turned away from that option, just
<v Speaker 3>because it didn't seem probable that a person would be
<v Speaker 3>out there just goofing around like that, or no one
<v Speaker 3>was setting up camp on these slopes. The train's too brutal,
<v Speaker 3>the weather's too brutal. I mean having a big army
<v Speaker 3>wal tent in our vehicles to get into even that
<v Speaker 3>was that was some hard living for that duration of time.
<v Speaker 3>So I'm like, okay, this is an animal, so I'm
<v Speaker 3>gonna go into full on stock mode. That means every
<v Speaker 3>single step I take is measured. I look at foot placement,
<v Speaker 3>sometimes going toe to heel, so if you roll toe
<v Speaker 3>to heel you can walk on almost dry pine needles
<v Speaker 3>and make no noise. It's a very slow pace, you know.
<v Speaker 3>So it's taking me fifteen minutes to cross ground that
<v Speaker 3>would take me seconds of just walking normally. Because in
<v Speaker 3>my mind, okay, I'm gonna sneak up on what this
<v Speaker 3>is and get an eyeball on it before it knows
<v Speaker 3>I'm there, and I spook it. So I'm doing that.
<v Speaker 3>I'm doing that. I stop again because I haven't heard
<v Speaker 3>the noise again. Okay, once again. Maybe I'm hearing things.
<v Speaker 3>Oh is it the trees. Maybe the trees are rubbing
<v Speaker 3>or knocking against each other. So I stop and look
<v Speaker 3>at the tips of the trees. There's no breeze. There
<v Speaker 3>would be a small gust that would come through, but
<v Speaker 3>it almost didn't even wiggle the grass. And I'm but
<v Speaker 3>I'm watching, watching if there's movement, if trees are making
<v Speaker 3>weird noises because they can. They can make almost animal
<v Speaker 3>noises like as they rub against each other and they
<v Speaker 3>create can crackle. Nothing like a deep measured thunk that
<v Speaker 3>I heard. But you know, I'm looking for obvious solutions
<v Speaker 3>other than what kind of animal do I know in
<v Speaker 3>North America that can that's doing this, other than a person.
<v Speaker 3>I don't hear anything, No, no appreciable wind or breeze.
<v Speaker 3>I'm listening to trees, nothing and I'm like, this is weird.
<v Speaker 3>And then a single knot comes again. All right, well
<v Speaker 3>it's still there. So I go back into you know,
<v Speaker 3>stock mode, very quiet, stopping frequently, listening, just being observant.
<v Speaker 3>I'm getting a better idea that I know where this
<v Speaker 3>sound is coming from, and it's where I originally thought,
<v Speaker 3>which is at the end of the lowest grassy area
<v Speaker 3>I could see probably within the tree line, because I
<v Speaker 3>I couldn't see anything at this point, and I had
<v Speaker 3>a pretty good viewpoint because I had elevation, and you know,
<v Speaker 3>and I would stop again and go, okay, as I
<v Speaker 3>gained a little bit of ground, let's just stop and
<v Speaker 3>think this over, listen to the trees again. Maybe you know,
<v Speaker 3>maybe I'm in thicker canopy, and out there in that
<v Speaker 3>open area there's a little bit more breeze catching these trees.
<v Speaker 3>But okay, let's just think logically and distell nothing. And
<v Speaker 3>I can see the trees way out there, I can
<v Speaker 3>see this little meadow. There's just no breeze. It was
<v Speaker 3>very pleasant, you know, to have some sun out and
<v Speaker 3>be that still and quiet, versus having sleet hammer you
<v Speaker 3>in the face for twelve hours straight. And as I progressed,
<v Speaker 3>I got about two more distinct knocks when I had
<v Speaker 3>stopped and listened for prolonged periods. I'll explain at the
<v Speaker 3>end of this what that meant to me and what
<v Speaker 3>I did not realize at the time that moving so
<v Speaker 3>slowly and silently that I could, in the same manner
<v Speaker 3>sneak up on a deer and almost touch it, I
<v Speaker 3>would hear a noise that loud and distinct, at least
<v Speaker 3>in my opinion, because I wasn't making any noise walking
<v Speaker 3>and I never heard the noise other than when I
<v Speaker 3>had done the stop, look and listen for extended periods.
<v Speaker 3>So we're talking five minutes plus, there would come a knock,
<v Speaker 3>and then I would oh, okay, still there let's keep moving.
<v Speaker 3>So I'm moving down slope, and like I said, there
<v Speaker 3>was about five distinct episodes of single and then that
<v Speaker 3>initial five knocks, and then the two that were right after.
<v Speaker 3>I keep going down slope and I get to a
<v Speaker 3>point where now I'm on fairly level ground with this
<v Speaker 3>this grassy area meadow, if you want to call it that,
<v Speaker 3>so I no longer have elevation, and at that point,
<v Speaker 3>I am ninety some percent sure I know exactly where
<v Speaker 3>this noise is coming from. I can see across this meadow.
<v Speaker 3>It's pretty much ringed on all three sides the slopes.
<v Speaker 3>I came down the slope to the north, which was
<v Speaker 3>right behind me, and then heavy timber and a little
<v Speaker 3>bit of elevation gain on what would be the west
<v Speaker 3>side to my right, and I'm facing south down slope,
<v Speaker 3>and I'm like, okay, well, let's keep going.
<v Speaker 2>We made it this far.
<v Speaker 3>You know. At this point, I'm let me go back
<v Speaker 3>and clarify this real quickly. When I heard those initial
<v Speaker 3>five knocks or thumps or whatever you want to call them,
<v Speaker 3>I was about two hundred and fifty yards out, give
<v Speaker 3>or take a few, but I pretty accurately say about
<v Speaker 3>two hundred and fifty, so at good distance. You know,
<v Speaker 3>at this point, I'm definitely under one hundred yards probably
<v Speaker 3>closer to oh seventy five, maybe a little bit less
<v Speaker 3>to where I think this noise is coming from. So
<v Speaker 3>I proceed forward, and as I'm walking, I look to
<v Speaker 3>my right, which is west, and I see there's this
<v Speaker 3>weird depression in the ground that it almost looked like
<v Speaker 3>it would have been a stream bed, but it was
<v Speaker 3>just this circular dip, you know, like a halfpipe like
<v Speaker 3>skateboarders do. It wasn't really erod, it didn't have water channels,
<v Speaker 3>so it just could have been some weird little dip
<v Speaker 3>in the ground. I don't know, But it went downhill
<v Speaker 3>and I'm like, okay, well whatever, I'm just gonna kind
<v Speaker 3>of follow along that. And I kept following it, and
<v Speaker 3>now I'm at this point directly facing this tree line
<v Speaker 3>where I hear had heard these noises, or where I
<v Speaker 3>think they're coming from.
<v Speaker 2>And I stop.
<v Speaker 3>Because at this point I have a pretty good view
<v Speaker 3>towards where I think the sound is. From the screen
<v Speaker 3>of young young growth pine. It's just like a wall.
<v Speaker 3>There'd been a lot of burns up there, and so
<v Speaker 3>you had a lot of new growth and they can
<v Speaker 3>get pretty thick. And I'm like, Okay, once I go
<v Speaker 3>through this little in the land, I'm out in the open.
<v Speaker 3>I know that, and I'm in full view of whatever
<v Speaker 3>the heck I'm human, animal, whatever I'm think, I'm stalking
<v Speaker 3>or you know, tracking down There's one lone pine that
<v Speaker 3>was a decent size, and I was using that somewhat
<v Speaker 3>like a screen, so I wasn't up against it.
<v Speaker 2>I was still back.
<v Speaker 3>Oh, I want to say, ten yards from this tree,
<v Speaker 3>but I was still staying behind it so where I
<v Speaker 3>could see the meadow, see the tree line, but I
<v Speaker 3>had some coverage because the branches went way down all
<v Speaker 3>the way to the ground.
<v Speaker 2>And so this is uh, yeah, this is where it gets.
<v Speaker 3>I think my brain shut tried to shut all this
<v Speaker 3>part out, and I've only this is the only the
<v Speaker 3>third time I've said this out loud, and this is
<v Speaker 3>the second time to you. I know that once I
<v Speaker 3>get through that depression, I'm out in the open. So
<v Speaker 3>I stop, and I I'm getting a little apprehensive. You know,
<v Speaker 3>I've gone face to face with black bear, with some
<v Speaker 3>I don't think had good intentions and survive that didn't
<v Speaker 3>really panic because I know Bear, I know kind of
<v Speaker 3>what their mannerisms are, what are their motivations, their body language,
<v Speaker 3>you know, whatever they're doing, you have an idea, right
<v Speaker 3>they're either curious, scared, or they're hungry in your meal,
<v Speaker 3>or they think you are. But I'm thinking, Okay, once
<v Speaker 3>I get out there, I'm now under forty yards closer
<v Speaker 3>to thirty once I come out in the open from
<v Speaker 3>whatever this is. If this is an insane person, which
<v Speaker 3>I think you'd have to be to be kind of
<v Speaker 3>doing this to a heavily armed hunter with a bunch
<v Speaker 3>of other heavily armed hunters roaming this entire area, so
<v Speaker 3>I'm like, Okay, this could be bad, but I've come
<v Speaker 3>this far. You know, I was hunting with an AR ten.
<v Speaker 3>If anyone doesn't know what that is, it's the big
<v Speaker 3>brother to the AR fifteen. So it's chambered in three
<v Speaker 3>to eight Winchester, which is a decent sized rifle caliber.
<v Speaker 3>I've got a ten round magazine loaded up, and I've
<v Speaker 3>got a second ten round spare on my web gear
<v Speaker 3>on my belt to my hunting bag just in case
<v Speaker 3>I have a malfunction. That's the main reason I don't
<v Speaker 3>think I need twenty rounds of three to eight to
<v Speaker 3>take out one ELK. It's just magazine failures are the
<v Speaker 3>most common failure with a semi auto mag fed weapon,
<v Speaker 3>so it's just good to have a backup in case
<v Speaker 3>you have a catastrophic failure. So you would think I
<v Speaker 3>would be pretty confident with that, but I just I
<v Speaker 3>don't know. I just this wave of apprehension hit me
<v Speaker 3>by imb like, you know what, just do it. You
<v Speaker 3>came this far, You're this curious. But it was really
<v Speaker 3>bothering me that I saw no sign of anything, no movement.
<v Speaker 3>I just thought I would see something moving behind these trees,
<v Speaker 3>but they were so dense, I mean they were overlapping
<v Speaker 3>each other, these young green trees. It was just like
<v Speaker 3>a wall. And as I'm sitting here going through all
<v Speaker 3>this in my brain, Okay, rifles ready, I've got it
<v Speaker 3>at the low ready, just in case something happens. I'm
<v Speaker 3>not going to point it at the trees because I
<v Speaker 3>don't have a target, and if it's a human, I
<v Speaker 3>don't want to come out, you know, with my muzzle
<v Speaker 3>pointed in that direction.
<v Speaker 2>That's that's not a good policy.
<v Speaker 3>You know. Number one rule of gun safety is or
<v Speaker 3>one of them, don't you know, identify a target before
<v Speaker 3>you point at it. And as I'm sitting here going
<v Speaker 3>through all this in my brain, there comes these five
<v Speaker 3>rapid fire like machine gun fire smacks wood on wood,
<v Speaker 3>deep meaty smacks, but fast. I mean, like I said,
<v Speaker 3>it was like a machine gun, just boom boom, boom,
<v Speaker 3>boom bom boom, just but not like a stick. You know,
<v Speaker 3>you grab a stick. I could do that with a stick,
<v Speaker 3>but these were just this sounded like a big thick
<v Speaker 3>green branch or a log or something.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, but so rapid fire. And I kind of whoa.
<v Speaker 3>I was like, okay, well I know where it is now,
<v Speaker 3>because there was no mistaking that this came from behind
<v Speaker 3>that tree line up ahead on the edge of that meadow.
<v Speaker 3>No mistake, okay, And I'm like, whoa, that was a
<v Speaker 3>pretty clear sign. I know where it's at. So take
<v Speaker 3>a deep breath, go down that little dip in the land.
<v Speaker 2>I come up.
<v Speaker 3>And got my weapon at the low ready, you know,
<v Speaker 3>So that's just pointed at an angle towards the ground,
<v Speaker 3>kind of midway between having it shoulder and hanging straight
<v Speaker 3>down so I can snap it to my shoulder, get
<v Speaker 3>the scope up and be on target if something comes
<v Speaker 3>barreling out of there or whatever, or if it's an elk,
<v Speaker 3>I get an elk. Great, Not not that I thought
<v Speaker 3>it was. But once I lost that cover of the tree,
<v Speaker 3>I stopped again, and I'm just drilling holes with my
<v Speaker 3>eyes into this tree line just at this point, just
<v Speaker 3>begging something to move, like, show me, just show me
<v Speaker 3>something I can see. I just have to see something.
<v Speaker 3>I don't want to just barrel into these trees and
<v Speaker 3>you know, run into I don't know what, something that
<v Speaker 3>may not be that pleasant. And I'm just drilling and
<v Speaker 3>standing there, just still as a statue, you know, questioning now,
<v Speaker 3>questioning every you know, decision of my life. Why did
<v Speaker 3>I decide to do this? This doesn't seem like a
<v Speaker 3>good idea. I'm out here by myself. I'm very far
<v Speaker 3>away from camp. My dad knows roughly where I'm at,
<v Speaker 3>but not you know, we don't we have radios, but
<v Speaker 3>we usually lose transmission pretty quickly.
<v Speaker 2>And as I'm.
<v Speaker 3>Standing there, this this doesn't I'm sorry, this doesn't get
<v Speaker 3>any easier. I couldn't even think about this for days
<v Speaker 3>without completely breaking down. My palms are just I'm sweating
<v Speaker 3>through my shirt. That's no exaggeration.
<v Speaker 1>It's no problem, Dan, take your time.
<v Speaker 2>Is I'm standing there just I don't know.
<v Speaker 3>I'm just frozen, Like what do I do next? Do
<v Speaker 3>I just keep advancing? There comes.
<v Speaker 2>It.
<v Speaker 3>It was like a grenade going off. Five yards in
<v Speaker 3>front of me. There was the most violent, explosive smash
<v Speaker 3>of wood on wood.
<v Speaker 2>It completely shorted out my brain.
<v Speaker 3>I staggered back from just the mental and physical shock
<v Speaker 3>because I was so close to that tree line and
<v Speaker 3>it just you know, I was standing there is dead
<v Speaker 3>quiet still and then this this sound. I yeah, it
<v Speaker 3>was like an explosion or being ten feet from a
<v Speaker 3>head on collision, you know, people going sixty miles an
<v Speaker 3>hour in a car.
<v Speaker 2>But it was just wood on woods smash.
<v Speaker 3>Just I mean, like I said, I fought fire, I've logged,
<v Speaker 3>I've dropped thousands of trees, big ones, had them drop
<v Speaker 3>right in front of me. You know, they don't sound
<v Speaker 3>like that. This was just a smash and just so loud.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, it literally shorted my brain out. It was
<v Speaker 3>like clipped, you know, like the old school film reel.
<v Speaker 3>It like cut a moment out of my life. And
<v Speaker 3>the next thing I know, I went from that just
<v Speaker 3>the explosion of sound, the shock, and then basically my
<v Speaker 3>brain comes back online. As I'm backpedaling out of that
<v Speaker 3>meadow with my rifle at my shoulder, the radical indexed
<v Speaker 3>on that tree line and that was all automatic. And
<v Speaker 3>I thank God afterwards that I trained so much with firearms,
<v Speaker 3>not just for hunting, but you know, I've had a
<v Speaker 3>concealed carry weapon and a permit since I was twenty one.
<v Speaker 3>I'm almost forty one, and I train religiously, not just
<v Speaker 3>in long distance shooting, but you know close quarters stuff,
<v Speaker 3>so move and shoot, and you know, ability to move laterally, forward,
<v Speaker 3>backwards while shooting, reloading. I have drilled that for countless
<v Speaker 3>and countless hours, and I guess my body took over
<v Speaker 3>it because my brain it was all just.
<v Speaker 2>Wrote training.
<v Speaker 3>Like I said, I transitioned from peer shot to that,
<v Speaker 3>and then I'm like, I'm awake again and I'm backpedaling
<v Speaker 3>as fast as I can with that rifle on the
<v Speaker 3>tree line. And all I could think was there was
<v Speaker 3>three thoughts going through my brain. Number one was don't
<v Speaker 3>turn and run.
<v Speaker 2>Don't run. Don't run.
<v Speaker 3>It just kept going over, keep your rifle up, don't run,
<v Speaker 3>don't run. But then the scared part of me that
<v Speaker 3>was still wanting me to run said, you're tripping. You're
<v Speaker 3>tripping because my heels were catching this grass was very long,
<v Speaker 3>it was kind of mad at all over the place.
<v Speaker 3>There was you know, twigs and stuff being blown in
<v Speaker 3>and that had been blown in, and so I'm catching
<v Speaker 3>my heels. But I'm like, you can't run, you cannot
<v Speaker 3>turn your back.
<v Speaker 2>Do not do it, Do not do it.
<v Speaker 3>And but at one point I just I'm like, I
<v Speaker 3>have to move faster. I have to get distance between
<v Speaker 3>me and whatever did this. And so I made the
<v Speaker 3>decision to split second decision. I'm going to turn and
<v Speaker 3>sprint ten feet, that's it.
<v Speaker 2>And then I'm going to.
<v Speaker 3>Turn around, rifle up, backpedal, sprint ten feet, rifle up, backpedal.
<v Speaker 3>And I did that. I mean ten feet's not much.
<v Speaker 3>I mean that's almost just three lunges when you're sprinting.
<v Speaker 3>So lunch, lunge, lunge, turn, rifle up, back pedal, back pedal, turn, sprint.
<v Speaker 3>I did that until I hit the slope again. And
<v Speaker 3>at that point I just went hell bent for leather
<v Speaker 3>up that mountain. I you know, had heavy gear on
<v Speaker 3>my elk. My pack alone was I would estimate with
<v Speaker 3>all the water and you know, survival gear and stuff,
<v Speaker 3>probably thirty five pounds, give or take a pound or two,
<v Speaker 3>and then my rifle spare ammo all that stuff. But man,
<v Speaker 3>I never been so glad that I stay in shape
<v Speaker 3>your around because I you know, this slope, especially down there,
<v Speaker 3>was so steep.
<v Speaker 2>You know.
<v Speaker 3>The joke is, it's so steep your noses touching the
<v Speaker 3>ground in front of you as you hike up it.
<v Speaker 3>And I just I went just.
<v Speaker 2>I didn't. I ignored branches, logs, everything. I just went.
<v Speaker 3>Uphill as fast as I could. But at that point
<v Speaker 3>I still consciously said, you got to turn around.
<v Speaker 2>You can't just run.
<v Speaker 3>And so about every twenty feet or so that I
<v Speaker 3>gained elevation, I turned put my rifle back down range
<v Speaker 3>because I still had really good line of sight straight
<v Speaker 3>up that meadow to that tree line where that sound
<v Speaker 3>came from. And I did that over and over. I
<v Speaker 3>refused to just run and not see if something was
<v Speaker 3>behind me, because well, that's that's the fear. Okay, I'm running,
<v Speaker 3>something's gonna chase me. That's what you know. Predators in
<v Speaker 3>particular do it's just instinct. And I don't remember the
<v Speaker 3>run up that mountain too well. I didn't stop other
<v Speaker 3>than I it was literally one thousand and one, one
<v Speaker 3>thousand and two. That's all I did to pause, to
<v Speaker 3>whip my rifle around, put it down range, make sure
<v Speaker 3>nothing was coming after me, and keep going. And I,
<v Speaker 3>I mean ignored every pain in my body that you know,
<v Speaker 3>legs given out, and I was like, nope, you know,
<v Speaker 3>feeling like my heart's gonna explode, doesn't matter. I just
<v Speaker 3>kept going and going and going, and just rinse and repeat, stop, turn,
<v Speaker 3>check my six, keep going, keep going. And after what
<v Speaker 3>seemed like a day of running up that mountain, all
<v Speaker 3>of a sudden, I'm just panting and sweating and not
<v Speaker 3>really paying attention to what's in front of me, just
<v Speaker 3>what might be behind me, and just.
<v Speaker 2>The thought of keeping going.
<v Speaker 3>And then I see a flat spot in my vision
<v Speaker 3>ahead of me, and it didn't really click at first,
<v Speaker 3>and then I was like, I hit the road, this
<v Speaker 3>is the road. And I lunged up onto that road,
<v Speaker 3>crashed into the embankment, whipped around on my back, and
<v Speaker 3>pointed that rifle down over the lip of the road
<v Speaker 3>and just sat there in utter shock, and it was
<v Speaker 3>like you know, being a kid and you reach the
<v Speaker 3>safe zone or something, you know, didn't hear any sounds.
<v Speaker 2>Well, here's the thing.
<v Speaker 3>After that last explosive smash and me starting to backpedal
<v Speaker 3>with my gun up, there was never another sound, not
<v Speaker 3>a single knock, nothing. It all ended there with that
<v Speaker 3>last explosive smash and me backpedaling out of there, you know,
<v Speaker 3>with my gun up right of rock and roll, it
<v Speaker 3>all ended. I didn't hear anything as I was going uphill.
<v Speaker 3>I didn't hear anything as I was backpedaling. It all ended.
<v Speaker 3>So I'm sitting there in total shock, and I'm looking
<v Speaker 3>just dazed, like I'm on the road. It was like
<v Speaker 3>being lost at sea for you know, a year and
<v Speaker 3>then seeing like a ship or I don't know something rescue,
<v Speaker 3>you know, salvation. And I was in such shock. I
<v Speaker 3>looked down my boots on tide. So I set my
<v Speaker 3>rifle down and calmly tie my boot. And at this point,
<v Speaker 3>I actually don't know where I'm at in relation to camp.
<v Speaker 3>If I hadn't been an utter shock, I would, but
<v Speaker 3>I just I couldn't think. I couldn't even process that
<v Speaker 3>I was on this road again, and I looked down and.
<v Speaker 2>This was amazing.
<v Speaker 3>Right in front of me is my dad's footprint from
<v Speaker 3>the day before, in the fresh snow, from the day before,
<v Speaker 3>heading back to camp, and I just I just stumbled up,
<v Speaker 3>grabbed my rifle and just started stumbling back to camp.
<v Speaker 3>I don't remember the walk back. I don't It was
<v Speaker 3>maybe a quarter mile. I don't remember that. But at
<v Speaker 3>the same time, even though I don't remember the walk,
<v Speaker 3>it was all hitting me all at once. You know
<v Speaker 3>how you're blaming your brain can replay things that took
<v Speaker 3>This took me. It took me an hour to cover
<v Speaker 3>two hundred and fifty yards. To give you some perspective
<v Speaker 3>on how slow I was moving. This wasn't like I
<v Speaker 3>just marched right in, heard some noises and then boom,
<v Speaker 3>scared run. This was an hour event of me hearing
<v Speaker 3>these knocks, me stalking towards the location, and then it
<v Speaker 3>was even long, not as long, but then you have
<v Speaker 3>the duration of me trying to get the heck out
<v Speaker 3>of there.
<v Speaker 2>But it all just played back in my mind, and.
<v Speaker 3>I just was like, you idiot, do you not just
<v Speaker 3>realize what happened that you weren't even going towards this
<v Speaker 3>location until you heard those knocks and you got curious
<v Speaker 3>and how every time you stopped and hesitated, there was
<v Speaker 3>a knock and there was nothing in between. There was
<v Speaker 3>no random sounds, no random thumps. These this only happened
<v Speaker 3>when you stopped and you stayed still for a long
<v Speaker 3>period of time. How could you have not recognized that
<v Speaker 3>is deliberate.
<v Speaker 2>And it just.
<v Speaker 3>I feel and I could be very wrong, but based
<v Speaker 3>on the location, you know, viewing it as a hunter,
<v Speaker 3>this was a perfect kill box. This was like a funnel,
<v Speaker 3>grassy area, thick tree line, ringed on all sides by
<v Speaker 3>heavy timber and slopes, obvious elkin deer sign they're gonna
<v Speaker 3>want to come down there and graze. I'm like, this
<v Speaker 3>is an ambush site, and you're a sucker. You just
<v Speaker 3>got out of pure curiosity. You got suckered into this.
<v Speaker 3>And that just did me end once that went through
<v Speaker 3>my brain, because if it had been a human, you'd
<v Speaker 3>have had to have one of the world's strongest men
<v Speaker 3>out there with a gigantic green piece of wood that
<v Speaker 3>would make us smash like that.
<v Speaker 2>It I just can't even fathom.
<v Speaker 3>I've worked out and competed in weightlifting most of my life,
<v Speaker 3>and I like to think I'm strong. I couldn't do that,
<v Speaker 3>not on my best day. I can't imagine someone being
<v Speaker 3>able to generate that type of force to make us sound.
<v Speaker 3>That's what just broke my brain. And then the realization
<v Speaker 3>that this wasn't just random stuff. I mean, once or
<v Speaker 3>twice if I heard a knock and I thought it
<v Speaker 3>was because you know, I heard it because I stopped. Okay,
<v Speaker 3>I could swallow that. But five times, not counting the
<v Speaker 3>five rapid knocks in that huge smash at the end,
<v Speaker 3>so that's about seven. Is that coincidence? And the deliberateness
<v Speaker 3>in the it just it broke me. Man. I I
<v Speaker 3>got back to camp and I don't remember taking my
<v Speaker 3>pack off.
<v Speaker 2>I don't remember setting my rifle down. I did.
<v Speaker 3>I set them down very carefully by my truck. I
<v Speaker 3>climbed in my truck and grabbed my monstrous hand cannon
<v Speaker 3>revolver that I didn't have strapped to my chest that day.
<v Speaker 3>I don't know why. I guess just to save weight,
<v Speaker 3>and I hadn't seen any bear sign and I had
<v Speaker 3>my rifle. I just grabbed, set it on the console
<v Speaker 3>and just completely I don't mind admitting it just melted down.
<v Speaker 3>I was shaking, uncontrollably, hyperventilating. I had all this thick
<v Speaker 3>winter gear on. I turned the truck on, turned the
<v Speaker 3>heater on, and I was just I could barely turn
<v Speaker 3>the truck on. I was shaking so bad. There's tears
<v Speaker 3>and snot coming down my face. And you know, like
<v Speaker 3>I said, I've I fought fire, I've almost been burned over,
<v Speaker 3>I've almost had trees fall on me.
<v Speaker 2>I've been in.
<v Speaker 3>Near life and death self defense shooting situations to protect
<v Speaker 3>myself and my family, and none of that stuff shook
<v Speaker 3>me up. You know, with firefighting, its training, With logging,
<v Speaker 3>that's part of the job. You might be like, well
<v Speaker 3>that was a close call.
<v Speaker 2>You know. Same thing with you know, being a.
<v Speaker 3>Having a concealed carry weapon and encountering a violent person
<v Speaker 3>who means you harm. It's training, training, And none of
<v Speaker 3>that stuff showed me up. I never had nightmares. This
<v Speaker 3>just this broke my brain. I just thought, why did
<v Speaker 3>this happen? Why did this happen to me? I want
<v Speaker 3>to leave. I don't want to be here anymore. I
<v Speaker 3>don't want to hunt anymore. I never want to go
<v Speaker 3>in the woods again, I'm done. You know, that was
<v Speaker 3>my happy place, the wilderness. I love going out by myself.
<v Speaker 3>I love spending time out there. That's that's where I
<v Speaker 3>find peace. That's where I go to reset every year.
<v Speaker 3>And I was done. I was like, how am I.
<v Speaker 3>I can't tell my dad this. He's not going to
<v Speaker 3>believe it, or he'll just kind of brush it off
<v Speaker 3>and explain to this coincidence or just you know, you know,
<v Speaker 3>weird sounds happen not in this sequence, you know. And
<v Speaker 3>at the same time, I'm just thinking, because my brain
<v Speaker 3>at the time, I'm just like, okay, this, this can't
<v Speaker 3>be a person. I mean, the most logical solution is
<v Speaker 3>this was a person who was either insane or playing
<v Speaker 3>a prank on me. And then I thought about that
<v Speaker 3>because I once I calmed down a little bit, I'm like, Okay,
<v Speaker 3>how is that probable?
<v Speaker 2>Yes, it's the.
<v Speaker 3>Most logical answer. But it's like, Okay, I'm at the
<v Speaker 3>top of a mountain, one of the highest mountains out there.
<v Speaker 3>I'm at the end of the road, literally, no humans
<v Speaker 3>in or out. I've got snow, no tracks, I've been
<v Speaker 3>all over this mountain. I've got those hunters saying no
<v Speaker 3>one goes down there. My dad has been hunting on
<v Speaker 3>the east side, so that was kind of direction I
<v Speaker 3>was going same thing. Hasn't seen a single sign of
<v Speaker 3>any human, no tracks in, no tracks out, and no
<v Speaker 3>one could tell me you could come up from the
<v Speaker 3>bottom of that mountain and hide to play a prank
<v Speaker 3>in the middle of the wilderness on the random hunter
<v Speaker 3>who probably would have never showed up me being there,
<v Speaker 3>and someone just hiding in these trees. And I'm not
<v Speaker 3>trying to make an excuse or anything. I'm just I
<v Speaker 3>literally right now, I'm trying to logically think of what
<v Speaker 3>did this that fits within the framework of what I've
<v Speaker 3>encountered in the wilderness for forty years. And I'm like,
<v Speaker 3>it was at nighttime, if it got above twenty you
<v Speaker 3>were lucky. During the day, if it got above the
<v Speaker 3>mid thirties, you were lucky. This was not You're not
<v Speaker 3>getting some twenty five year old YouTubers that are gonna
<v Speaker 3>drive two hours up what you can barely call roads,
<v Speaker 3>hide in the wilderness and survive out there just to
<v Speaker 3>you know, let's scare these a hunter and get it
<v Speaker 3>on YouTube. Hey, maybe they did. I'd be happy to
<v Speaker 3>see it because then I would be like, Okay, you
<v Speaker 3>pulled a good one on me. At least I know
<v Speaker 3>you were a person, and I wouldn't be mad. I'd
<v Speaker 3>be relieved because at this point, there is no animal.
<v Speaker 3>Like I said, dear an elk, what are they gonna do.
<v Speaker 3>Are they gonna pick up a log?
<v Speaker 2>No?
<v Speaker 3>Are they gonna make those loud, meaty thumping wood noises. No,
<v Speaker 3>even if they were kicking something that, it doesn't sound
<v Speaker 3>like that a bear. No, it wasn't gonna pick a
<v Speaker 3>stick up in its mouth and rhythmically knock it against
<v Speaker 3>wood and draw in this lone human. I'm just trying
<v Speaker 3>to rationalize it. And I tried telling someone else and
<v Speaker 3>they said, well, beavers can make loud noises. And I said,
<v Speaker 3>I grew up on the Salmon River in Idaho, and
<v Speaker 3>we have beaver that come on our property and slap
<v Speaker 3>the water. It sounds like you take one of those
<v Speaker 3>foam you know, noodles you float on like kids have,
<v Speaker 3>and slap it.
<v Speaker 2>That's what a beaver sounds like.
<v Speaker 3>And what is a beaver doing six thousand feet up
<v Speaker 3>a mountain with no waterways slaping on wood?
<v Speaker 2>It doesn't I'm like I.
<v Speaker 3>Appreciate you trying to work with me here on finding something,
<v Speaker 3>but I've exhausted the probable, even the human. I just
<v Speaker 3>you know, and even if it was like I said,
<v Speaker 3>that person would have to be suicidal if you're going
<v Speaker 3>to scare and intimidate an armed hunter or hunters, I mean,
<v Speaker 3>everybody's armed to the teeth. It's hunting season, no less
<v Speaker 3>than two weapons. Everybody's got a side arm and a rifle.
<v Speaker 3>Is that it really would?
<v Speaker 2>Uh?
<v Speaker 3>Would someone do that that was even somewhat thinking right
<v Speaker 3>in their brain? And then to boot? How would they
<v Speaker 3>get in there? I mean that one road was only
<v Speaker 3>the only way in. There's no trails, there's no roads.
<v Speaker 3>It's it's brutal terrain. I mean I survived it because
<v Speaker 3>I train year round for this type of stuff, and
<v Speaker 3>it kicked my tail. I'm still hurting. And this is
<v Speaker 3>a month later. Because I'll tell you a little bit more.
<v Speaker 3>I went back out several times to that not that
<v Speaker 3>exact area, but close enough.
<v Speaker 2>So anyways, I.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I just sat there in my truck breaking down
<v Speaker 3>and just like, oh my god, I just I think
<v Speaker 3>I just barely made it out of there with my life.
<v Speaker 3>This was to me an ambush site, and I was
<v Speaker 3>lured in. And it took me days to think of
<v Speaker 3>it like this, but I thought, okay, I think the
<v Speaker 3>only thing that saved me was I came out of
<v Speaker 3>that into the open with my rifle at the ready,
<v Speaker 3>and that final smash was okay, yeah, you're armed, You're
<v Speaker 3>probably not worth it. Get out of here now. And
<v Speaker 3>that's what I did. And that's when all the sounds stopped,
<v Speaker 3>no more thumps or knocks or whatever you want to
<v Speaker 3>call them, loud and clear. I got this signal copy
<v Speaker 3>that you know, and I got out of there. I
<v Speaker 3>think that's the only that's the only logical thing I
<v Speaker 3>can think of, because it all stopped, and I just
<v Speaker 3>I just kept thinking, how am I going to do this.
<v Speaker 3>We've got almost a week more to hunt out here.
<v Speaker 3>I can't do this. I don't I'm just gonna have
<v Speaker 3>to pretend. Just tell my dad in the morning, like, oh,
<v Speaker 3>I'm gonna go west and you go east, and okay,
<v Speaker 3>see you back at camp at dust. That's our protocol,
<v Speaker 3>and I'm just gonna sit in my truck. But for
<v Speaker 3>like seven days, because I didn't want to go back.
<v Speaker 3>I didn't want to set foot out of that camp site.
<v Speaker 3>I strapped that revolver on. It's a big, big gun,
<v Speaker 3>you know, that's supposed to be the designed to take
<v Speaker 3>down two thousand plus pound animals. And I never took
<v Speaker 3>it off again, you know, in addition to always having
<v Speaker 3>my rifle at arm's length. And but I'm like, I'm
<v Speaker 3>not going out. Didn't sleep that night, I can tell you,
<v Speaker 3>even though I wasn't afraid of whatever whatever it was,
<v Speaker 3>so I want to clarify that I didn't see it,
<v Speaker 3>so I'm not making judgments on what it was. But still,
<v Speaker 3>you know, it's pitch black, no moon, and I just
<v Speaker 3>kept thinking, what if I wake up and something staring
<v Speaker 3>through my window of my truck at me. I didn't
<v Speaker 3>sleep all night and understandably wasn't in a good mood
<v Speaker 3>in the morning. I was mad at this point. Now,
<v Speaker 3>I was mad, hadn't slept. I was deeply angry that
<v Speaker 3>whatever this was did this to me. That makes me
<v Speaker 3>feel like I never want to go do something that
<v Speaker 3>I've done my entire life. This is what fed our
<v Speaker 3>family growing up, This is how we ate. This wasn't
<v Speaker 3>just going out and oh, I'm gonna get a trope
<v Speaker 3>bull elk or a deer. This was our food. We
<v Speaker 3>couldn't afford to buy meat, you know. That's we lived
<v Speaker 3>in rural areas. My dad works for the government and
<v Speaker 3>so but by the necessity of his job, we lived
<v Speaker 3>in rural areas, and that's how we ate. We fished,
<v Speaker 3>we hunted, we grew our food. Yeah, we'd occasionally go
<v Speaker 3>to the nearest town, which wasn't very big, and do
<v Speaker 3>some grocery shopping, and but that was our primary food source.
<v Speaker 3>And that's I want to keep that tradition going. I
<v Speaker 3>think it's important. But now I was like, I'm never
<v Speaker 3>doing it again. Unless this is like a park or
<v Speaker 3>there's a ton of people around, hopefully armed people.
<v Speaker 2>I'm done.
<v Speaker 3>I'm just I'm not, even though me not knowing or
<v Speaker 3>not even making any conclusions to what this was, I
<v Speaker 3>just I'm like, this is not something that I ever
<v Speaker 3>want to experience again. I don't want this. I didn't
<v Speaker 3>want this to happen. But you know, I I buckled
<v Speaker 3>down the next day and I'm like, I I have
<v Speaker 3>to get moving.
<v Speaker 2>I can't.
<v Speaker 3>I can't sit here for a week in the cab
<v Speaker 3>of my truck, just hiding and pretending. So my Dad
<v Speaker 3>and I headed out the next day and split up,
<v Speaker 3>and I chose a ridge line to go up, and
<v Speaker 3>I'm like, I felt safe. I was high up, it
<v Speaker 3>was open, at least relatively speaking. There wasn't these deep,
<v Speaker 3>dense dark areas down like on that slope.
<v Speaker 2>So I felt comfortable.
<v Speaker 3>But you know, I was walking along and I was
<v Speaker 3>just pouring over this in my head, and all of
<v Speaker 3>a sudden, just tears were running down my face, just involuntarily.
<v Speaker 2>I didn't even realize it.
<v Speaker 3>And that whole day, like you know, I I think
<v Speaker 3>I had stocked up on an elk. I didn't had
<v Speaker 3>a view of it, but it was the loud enough
<v Speaker 3>I could hear it crunching.
<v Speaker 2>If it was a deer.
<v Speaker 3>It was a big deer, and that was fine, But
<v Speaker 3>you know, of this sudden, there's all these grouse up there,
<v Speaker 3>and they come exploding out of the brush right in
<v Speaker 3>front of you. I mean, I just my heart stopped
<v Speaker 3>every time, even though normally I'd be like, yeah, it's
<v Speaker 3>a bird, and you know, I got through it. We
<v Speaker 3>ended up heading off that mountain. We didn't move our camp,
<v Speaker 3>but we went to an area that was much much lower,
<v Speaker 3>much warmer. There wasn't even any snow. It was just
<v Speaker 3>down to the north of our campsite, off the mountain
<v Speaker 3>where there was a lot more game sign and we
<v Speaker 3>spent the rest of the time there. Hunt ended, I
<v Speaker 3>had to work, go back to Washington work for a
<v Speaker 3>few days, and then I decided to go back on
<v Speaker 3>my own to the same relative location, mainly because my
<v Speaker 3>ELK tag was still valid. Season hasn't closed, hadn't closed,
<v Speaker 3>hadn't gotten anything. But more so I had to prove
<v Speaker 3>to myself that you know, I can go back.
<v Speaker 2>I'm not gonna let this stop me this time.
<v Speaker 3>Though.
<v Speaker 2>Let me tell you, I brought.
<v Speaker 3>Some serious hardware with me, and it was you know,
<v Speaker 3>that Revolver was on my chest, that ar Ten was
<v Speaker 3>with me at all times, and I brought some other
<v Speaker 3>things that were much much bigger and more lethal, and
<v Speaker 3>those were always literally within arms reach when I was
<v Speaker 3>in camp at night, you know, because there's no camp sites,
<v Speaker 3>you just find a place like an old logging road
<v Speaker 3>you can back your truck into and if it's not raining,
<v Speaker 3>maybe start a fire. But you're still butted up against
<v Speaker 3>just thick timber, and at night, you know, you can't
<v Speaker 3>see two feet into that timber even with the headlampe,
<v Speaker 3>it's too dense, and.
<v Speaker 2>That was nerve wracking.
<v Speaker 3>But I just had the feeling that you know this well,
<v Speaker 3>and I'm pretty positive this wasn't a personal thing. This
<v Speaker 3>was an opportunistic site, if that's what it was, If
<v Speaker 3>it was an ambush site for you know, catching game
<v Speaker 3>or whatever, that this wasn't personal, and whatever it was
<v Speaker 3>isn't going to follow me, because that's not the intention.
<v Speaker 3>It's to catch something unawares or lure it into this
<v Speaker 3>kind of kill box zone and get it, and it's
<v Speaker 3>not going to follow me. So I that kind of
<v Speaker 3>calmed me down. I mean, I could be completely wrong
<v Speaker 3>about all of that. I'm willing to accept that, but
<v Speaker 3>that's how it felt as a hunter, what I was
<v Speaker 3>being led into, cause that's what I would do if,
<v Speaker 3>you know, if I wanted to get something, I've done
<v Speaker 3>it before. I've waited in the tree line undercover at
<v Speaker 3>the opening to a meadow at daybreak, just waiting for
<v Speaker 3>elk or deer to wander into that and they can't
<v Speaker 3>see me because I'm in the timberline completely covered, and
<v Speaker 3>I just make sure I have a clear shooting zone.
<v Speaker 3>It's the same exact thing. I've done it hundreds of times.
<v Speaker 3>You know, it was it. But I was on the
<v Speaker 3>other end. You know, I was just the scared rabbit.
<v Speaker 3>I mean that that rifle felt like nothing. It felt
<v Speaker 3>like I was holding a toothpick, because that's just what
<v Speaker 3>went through my brain.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, I've got this big, semi auto.
<v Speaker 3>Heavy, you know, decent caliber rifle, and I felt like
<v Speaker 3>it's not going to be enough as I was backing
<v Speaker 3>out of there, and it just I've never had that feeling.
<v Speaker 3>Like I said before, I I've run into bear and
<v Speaker 3>some that I don't think had good intentions, but they
<v Speaker 3>kind of recognized that it wasn't going to be an
<v Speaker 3>easy process and they eventually backed off with me have
<v Speaker 3>it without me having to do anything. But you know,
<v Speaker 3>as I was back there, the only other person I've
<v Speaker 3>told I talked to and they said, now, I know you.
<v Speaker 3>You want to go back there, don't you? Meaning the
<v Speaker 3>exact place that happened. And I think the uh, the
<v Speaker 3>pregnant pause I gave alerted this person to that fact,
<v Speaker 3>and they said, do not do that. They said, I
<v Speaker 3>believe you, and I agree that all these logical things
<v Speaker 3>you're trying to think of don't make a whole lot
<v Speaker 3>of sense. So you don't know what this is. You're
<v Speaker 3>going back there alone, you're off the grid, Do not
<v Speaker 3>do it. What are you trying to prove? And I'm like, well,
<v Speaker 3>I want to confirm what it was. I want tracks,
<v Speaker 3>I want sign I want a visual something, just so
<v Speaker 3>if I found a bunch of garbage that, you know,
<v Speaker 3>some humans have been camping back there and it was
<v Speaker 3>this extremely you know, a lot of winning chance that
<v Speaker 3>it was a human plane a prank on me then confirmed,
<v Speaker 3>then I can go back to just being like I
<v Speaker 3>can hunt in the woods and feel comfortable without having
<v Speaker 3>to worry about something else. But I stared up at
<v Speaker 3>that ridge because I could see the exact location where
<v Speaker 3>my truck was parked from the the slopes I was hunting,
<v Speaker 3>so as the crow flies, it wasn't that far away.
<v Speaker 3>But it took from where I hunted that last four
<v Speaker 3>days the next weekend, it took it would take an
<v Speaker 3>hour and forty five minutes to drive up to that
<v Speaker 3>ridge because the roads are you know, switchbacks. You're driving
<v Speaker 3>a lot of times five miles an hour because they're
<v Speaker 3>just so rough, and there was snow up there it
<v Speaker 3>had been snowing more and more, and I'm like, at
<v Speaker 3>the very least I'm risk and sliding off the mountain
<v Speaker 3>and just dying that way. Is it worth it? Even
<v Speaker 3>with all this firepower?
<v Speaker 2>What am I going to do?
<v Speaker 3>You know? What?
<v Speaker 2>What am I going to prove?
<v Speaker 3>And I was like, yeah, you're right, don't do it.
<v Speaker 2>And I didn't.
<v Speaker 3>And I thought about it, and I just remembered how
<v Speaker 3>pathetic and small and weak and helpless I felt back
<v Speaker 3>and out of there.
<v Speaker 2>Even with.
<v Speaker 3>Something that should have made me feel pretty comfortable, it didn't.
<v Speaker 3>And I'm like, yeah, you can bring in all the
<v Speaker 3>guns you want, but if you're going by yourself.
<v Speaker 2>And it is something predatory that means to.
<v Speaker 3>Get you, and there's more of them or whatever it
<v Speaker 3>is or them, I don't know, you're out numbered, Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>that could be meaningless, you know. And so ended the hunt,
<v Speaker 3>didn't get anything, ended up going back out again, even
<v Speaker 3>though hunt season was over. I'm like, I'm just gonna
<v Speaker 3>go for a long hike in the wilderness totally different
<v Speaker 3>forests National forest but nearby but technically separate National Forest.
<v Speaker 3>I was going to hike out, spend the night in
<v Speaker 3>the woods, make a fairly primitive camp, so I didn't
<v Speaker 3>have a sleeping bag or tent, just a survival shelter.
<v Speaker 2>You know.
<v Speaker 3>I was just gonna improvise a shelter, start a fire,
<v Speaker 3>you know, and just get back at it, you know,
<v Speaker 3>make sure that I could keep doing this and not
<v Speaker 3>let that fear and reluctance keep me away from this.
<v Speaker 3>And ended up being didn't turn out too well with
<v Speaker 3>it being so wet, and I ended up circling back
<v Speaker 3>after a fifteen mile plus hike and just ended up
<v Speaker 3>getting in my truck and calling in. My body was
<v Speaker 3>so beat up by then from all that hunting and hiking.
<v Speaker 3>I was like, I got to take a break. And
<v Speaker 3>that was pretty much the end of it. I I
<v Speaker 3>just found your show and.
<v Speaker 2>And started listening to these stories.
<v Speaker 3>I listened to some other channels, and I was like,
<v Speaker 3>I got to talk to somebody. I don't know what
<v Speaker 3>this was, but I just I've beat my head against
<v Speaker 3>the wall of you know, logically, what am I left with?
<v Speaker 3>You know what am I left with?
<v Speaker 1>It sounds like sasquatch activity to me. While you were
<v Speaker 1>out there stalking the sounds, Do the thought of bigfoot
<v Speaker 1>ever cross your mind?
<v Speaker 2>No?
<v Speaker 3>You know, and I this is why I don't want
<v Speaker 3>to tell my family, because I've I'll be honest. Ever
<v Speaker 3>since I was a little kid, I thought cryptozoology was cool.
<v Speaker 3>You know, the lockness monster who doesn't want to think
<v Speaker 3>that's real? Bigfoot awesome. I would read all the books.
<v Speaker 3>I remember in third grade walking out with a pile
<v Speaker 3>of books from the library. But I was always like, yeah,
<v Speaker 3>even as a little kid, like that would seem really cool.
<v Speaker 3>But we've never really found one.
<v Speaker 2>We don't have a body.
<v Speaker 3>You know, maybe they were real at one time, like Gigantopithecus, right,
<v Speaker 3>we know that existed, some ten twelve foot tall bipedal primate.
<v Speaker 3>We know that existed. Okay, and they exists at the
<v Speaker 3>same time as humans. Well, maybe something that's carried over
<v Speaker 3>in our brain and memory and lore and okay, that
<v Speaker 3>makes sense. You know, I'm in the medical field. Like
<v Speaker 3>my sister says, I'm way too logical. That was her expression.
<v Speaker 3>You're just you're logical to a point, and it didn't.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, I don't know how to convince anybody that
<v Speaker 3>I that sasquatch. My brain is tuned into one thing
<v Speaker 3>when I'm hunting is and that's where's the elk?
<v Speaker 2>Where's the deer?
<v Speaker 3>Okay, make sure you know where you're going so you
<v Speaker 3>don't get lost. Make sure you know. Your brain is
<v Speaker 3>so occupied with maintaining safety and stalking and tracking. I
<v Speaker 3>just it never. That's why if I had thought sasquatch,
<v Speaker 3>I would have never walked towards those sounds. I would
<v Speaker 3>have been running up that hill right then, because when
<v Speaker 3>I've heard from your show and a few others, this
<v Speaker 3>is not something you want to go toe to toe
<v Speaker 3>with or be on the bad end with. But no,
<v Speaker 3>I didn't. I I don't know how I I mean,
<v Speaker 3>just I would swear in front of the Supreme Court
<v Speaker 3>or whatever someone wanted, you know, put a gun to
<v Speaker 3>my head, I can honestly say, consciously and subconsciously my
<v Speaker 3>only thought. That's why my first thought was what is
<v Speaker 3>a person doing out here making these noises? This is ridiculous?
<v Speaker 3>How is someone out here doing this? This is stupid?
<v Speaker 3>And then going now, I can't be a person. What
<v Speaker 3>kind of animal can do this? And just but I
<v Speaker 3>was rattling through all that North American animals that could
<v Speaker 3>you know that are out there even after the knock,
<v Speaker 3>you know, and I know that's from what I've read
<v Speaker 3>and listened to. The whole wood knocking thing is characteristic
<v Speaker 3>of sasquatch, but I didn't think that. I'm just thinking,
<v Speaker 3>what type.
<v Speaker 1>Of what is this?
<v Speaker 3>Like, I've never heard this before. This is weird. Okay,
<v Speaker 3>let's go find out what it was. I'm kind of
<v Speaker 3>I'm not really bored, but kind of like, yeah, let's
<v Speaker 3>go find something interesting. It's like, you know, I'll be
<v Speaker 3>out hiking and see some cool like rock formation, and yeah,
<v Speaker 3>I'm supposed to be looking for animals, but I want
<v Speaker 3>to hike up to that that looks really interesting and
<v Speaker 3>I'll do that. But no, it didn't. It did not.
<v Speaker 1>I think the first initial set of knocks was the
<v Speaker 1>sasquatch letting each other know that there was a hunter
<v Speaker 1>in the area, and maybe the second set of knocks
<v Speaker 1>was more directed towards you.
<v Speaker 3>You know, when we chatted the other day and you
<v Speaker 3>said that that that I I hadn't thought that, and
<v Speaker 3>it made me feel better because, like I said, my
<v Speaker 3>only impression, and this is a narrow, I would say
<v Speaker 3>biased impression, is a hunter that I felt like I
<v Speaker 3>had been lured and funneled in to just this perfect spot.
<v Speaker 3>Like I said, it was a spot that if I
<v Speaker 3>could have gotten down there and hidden that tree line it,
<v Speaker 3>you know, daybreak, that's what I would have done. Waited
<v Speaker 3>for an elk or a deer to wander off that
<v Speaker 3>slope right down to have a you know, have a
<v Speaker 3>little morning grazing, get catch the morning sun. That's all
<v Speaker 3>my brain went to. But yeah, when you said, I
<v Speaker 3>was like, okay, okay.
<v Speaker 1>Kind of sounded like they lost track of you since
<v Speaker 1>you went into stealth mode and you mentioned the rapid
<v Speaker 1>fire knocking sequence. That kind of sounds like maybe that
<v Speaker 1>one of them got caught and maybe you didn't see it.
<v Speaker 1>I say that because I told you that story about
<v Speaker 1>me in my area where I snuck up on one
<v Speaker 1>and it grunted and then blew and it just kind
<v Speaker 1>of disappeared. It was so fast. But right when that happened,
<v Speaker 1>directly behind me, I heard the rapid fire knocks that
<v Speaker 1>you were explaining, like something was caught, like they're ringing
<v Speaker 1>the bell, but with knocks. I don't know if that's
<v Speaker 1>kind of how you felt, well you didn't see it,
<v Speaker 1>but I kind of feel like there was one around
<v Speaker 1>you and maybe it ducked down or hid behind a
<v Speaker 1>tree before you could get a good look at it.
<v Speaker 1>But maybe the other ones around thought, you know, were caught.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, you know, like I said, I had tunnel vision.
<v Speaker 3>I was so locked into that tree line where I was,
<v Speaker 3>I knew the sounds at this point were coming from.
<v Speaker 3>And I did have that thought a few days later
<v Speaker 3>that maybe because those five knocks preceded that loud, explosive
<v Speaker 3>smash as I came out into the middle.
<v Speaker 2>Was that right?
<v Speaker 3>Was that a warning to something else or was that
<v Speaker 3>my first warning? Like you need to get gone now?
<v Speaker 3>And then when I warned it and I was like, oh,
<v Speaker 3>it's right there, you know, stupid me, like, oh now
<v Speaker 3>I know where it is for sure, I'm gonna get closer.
<v Speaker 3>And then it was like, okay, you didn't listen to this,
<v Speaker 3>how about this? And then smash.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. I just don't think they're used to people pursuing
<v Speaker 1>the wooden knocks. I think most people just kind of
<v Speaker 1>hear it and don't really give it much thought. But
<v Speaker 1>with you, you kind of followed the sound, and you know,
<v Speaker 1>they kind of let you have it, or they gave
<v Speaker 1>you a good warning, because if they definitely wanted to
<v Speaker 1>have you, they could have that's what they took you out.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, that just makes my hair stand end up to
<v Speaker 3>think that, you know, and from what I've heard, you know,
<v Speaker 3>I listened to all the back episodes on your channel
<v Speaker 3>and just well, really only one other channel talking about encounters,
<v Speaker 3>and it's like, yeah, well there's one, there's usually more.
<v Speaker 3>If that's what this is, you know, whether a family
<v Speaker 3>unit or however you want to describe it. I'm like, oh, geez,
<v Speaker 3>and I was doing a little bit of when I
<v Speaker 3>was backpedaling. I did. I barely remember this, but I
<v Speaker 3>did do a little side to side looking to make
<v Speaker 3>sure something wasn't coming in, you know, out of you know,
<v Speaker 3>laterally at me, because there was that feeling that okay,
<v Speaker 3>I'm in a funnel now, and.
<v Speaker 2>But not not much.
<v Speaker 3>I most of it was just keep my gun on
<v Speaker 3>the trees and just if something comes out of there,
<v Speaker 3>just start shooting and don't run, because that's you're not
<v Speaker 3>gonna be able to run fast enough with all that
<v Speaker 3>gear on to do anything except turn your back and
<v Speaker 3>get taken that way.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, but.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, it's it's hard. Yeah, I hate that it happened.
<v Speaker 3>I know, people, I mean, if this was something like that,
<v Speaker 3>like Sasquatch. I know, people one go out seeking this
<v Speaker 3>type of thing, and even though I've had a just
<v Speaker 3>a passing interest in this, it's always been an abstraction, right.
<v Speaker 3>I'm like, I've been out in the woods my whole life,
<v Speaker 3>never encounter anything, and I've been in some The wilderness
<v Speaker 3>area and that borders the town I grew up in,
<v Speaker 3>Idaho is the second or third largest wilderness area in
<v Speaker 3>the continental forty eight.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, you.
<v Speaker 3>Can't get any more deep and dark than that, other
<v Speaker 3>than going to Alaska or the Amazon. I mean, there's
<v Speaker 3>places back there that humans probably haven't gone in hundreds
<v Speaker 3>of years. They've never set foot. It's too rugged, it's
<v Speaker 3>too harsh, it's too far back. You can't get there
<v Speaker 3>with the vehicle. In fact, motorized vehicles are prohibited other
<v Speaker 3>on the stem roads. You go in, the road terminates,
<v Speaker 3>you're on foot or on horseback.
<v Speaker 2>That's it. You're done.
<v Speaker 3>You can't take even a bicycle that's considered a mechanical vehicle.
<v Speaker 2>It's illegal. I just thought, you know, if if.
<v Speaker 3>Something like that is out there, this is the place
<v Speaker 3>it would live, with those wilderness areas. I mean, if
<v Speaker 3>someone's never really been hiking or backpacking or hunting in
<v Speaker 3>the Pacific Northwest.
<v Speaker 2>But they've flown over it in a plane.
<v Speaker 3>And you look down, it's like, oh my gosh, we're
<v Speaker 3>in a plane going what how seven hundred miles per
<v Speaker 3>hour and an hour goes by and you're still staring
<v Speaker 3>at untamed wilderness. That's why I was always kind of like, Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>these these things could hide back here. I've been in
<v Speaker 3>these places. I could hide from humans for the rest
<v Speaker 3>of my life. No one would find me if I
<v Speaker 3>didn't want them to. Why couldn't something as smart as
<v Speaker 3>we are that was born and lives and is evolved
<v Speaker 3>in this environment. Yeah, they could do it. I mean
<v Speaker 3>I've never seen a cougar. I know they're around, I've
<v Speaker 3>probably been stocked by them. I've never seen one in
<v Speaker 3>the wilderness. I've seen wolf, I've seen bear, never seen
<v Speaker 3>a wolverine.
<v Speaker 2>They're around.
<v Speaker 3>I mean some biologists look their entire lives for wolverines
<v Speaker 3>and don't find them, even though we know they're there.
<v Speaker 3>So it's like they don't have the level of intelligence
<v Speaker 3>we do. But they're they have instinct and that's their environment,
<v Speaker 3>that's their home.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, did you find it odd? That you didn't
<v Speaker 1>see any tracks or game sign or see any wildlife
<v Speaker 1>while being out there, not well, not until after No.
<v Speaker 2>I I don't know.
<v Speaker 3>It's hard to say when you're hunting, because that happens. Yeah,
<v Speaker 3>it does, you know, especially when the weather starts getting
<v Speaker 3>harsh like that in the uplands, you know the elk
<v Speaker 3>are gonna drop down, which they did because that area
<v Speaker 3>we dropped down to, you couldn't walk ten feet without
<v Speaker 3>stepping in moose or elk scat or at fresh track.
<v Speaker 3>I mean I ran into moose bull moose walked out
<v Speaker 3>fifteen yards in front of me. I was all cameled up,
<v Speaker 3>and you know, standing there still, and he didn't even
<v Speaker 3>see me, just sauntered by, like okay, but no, I mean,
<v Speaker 3>that's that's not unusual. I mean the the two years
<v Speaker 3>pre my dad and I were in the the wilderness
<v Speaker 3>in central Idaho and we were out there for the
<v Speaker 3>full two weeks way back there, and we don't road hunt.
<v Speaker 3>That's something that was weird to me in this area
<v Speaker 3>is everybody road hunted. No one went even fifty yards
<v Speaker 3>off the road back into the bush. And my dad
<v Speaker 3>even commented on that he goes we've been up here
<v Speaker 3>for almost We've been up here like a week and
<v Speaker 3>a half. And he goes, have you seen a single
<v Speaker 3>trace of a person off the road up here? I said, no,
<v Speaker 3>not a track, not a piece of garbage, nothing.
<v Speaker 2>I'm like, this is And he's like, isn't that kind
<v Speaker 2>of weird?
<v Speaker 3>And I'm like yeah, And all those hunters we talked to,
<v Speaker 3>they're like, yeah, no one goes off the road up here. Well,
<v Speaker 3>they were referring to the site we were at. In hindsight,
<v Speaker 3>I do think that's weird that verbatim, this is what ever.
<v Speaker 2>I mean.
<v Speaker 3>It was like I could have recorded the first hunter.
<v Speaker 3>No one goes down there. That's what they say, just
<v Speaker 3>like that. I mean verbatim, not like I'm not paraphrasing.
<v Speaker 3>That's what they said. No one goes down there.
<v Speaker 1>Those are the areas that I would want to venture to,
<v Speaker 1>are the ones with the least amount of human pressure exactly.
<v Speaker 3>So I guess I was a little bit. I thought
<v Speaker 3>it was a little bit odd, but looking at you know,
<v Speaker 3>other than those grassy areas, which those were the first
<v Speaker 3>ones I had seen. And this is after criss crossing
<v Speaker 3>that mountain side for days. You know, deer tend to populate,
<v Speaker 3>and I did see some mulei's and some white tail,
<v Speaker 3>but no elk. Those tracks in the snow as I
<v Speaker 3>was following those knocks was the first elk track I
<v Speaker 3>had seen in four days. It didn't really surprise me,
<v Speaker 3>you know, just kind of knowing how they they tend
<v Speaker 3>to draw down lower when things start getting rough up there.
<v Speaker 3>They're smarter than people sometimes when it comes to that.
<v Speaker 3>That's what I kept thinking. I'm like, these animals are
<v Speaker 3>a lot smarter than us. They're hunkered down and we're
<v Speaker 3>out here walking through sleep for twelve hours.
<v Speaker 2>It is ridiculous.
<v Speaker 1>Do you think you ruined their hunt? Like they're expecting
<v Speaker 1>those elk to come down that trail and down into
<v Speaker 1>that thick area that they were hiding in. Maybe like
<v Speaker 1>that loud knock was the aggression of one of them.
<v Speaker 1>Kind of just irritated.
<v Speaker 3>I would be if I had been hiding in those
<v Speaker 3>trees for whatever however long, and somebody comes bumbling down.
<v Speaker 3>You know, I wasn't bumbling, but you know what I'm saying,
<v Speaker 3>I'm not as silent as a deer.
<v Speaker 2>Elkid.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I'd be ticked off because that was a great spot,
<v Speaker 3>like I said that was the first. That's what kind
<v Speaker 3>of got me afterwards, is like, oh, okay, the first
<v Speaker 3>elk track I've seen in days were going down into
<v Speaker 3>this grassy area, because that's what I was initially following
<v Speaker 3>before I decided that going down further just at that
<v Speaker 3>time of day was not worth it because that climb
<v Speaker 3>back out was gonna start getting really prolonged and arduous.
<v Speaker 3>And I don't know if you've ever had to butcher
<v Speaker 3>an animal in the dark and then still have to
<v Speaker 3>make your way back to camp covered in blood, that's
<v Speaker 3>not a good feeling, especially when there's known grizzly around.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, wolves don't Wolves don't bother me, you know,
<v Speaker 3>they kind of know what's up. Black bear. They can
<v Speaker 3>be a little squirrely, but cats are spooky. Cats are spooky,
<v Speaker 3>but grizzly they don't care. It's like, oh, the dinner
<v Speaker 3>bell just got ring, all right, free meal, I'm not
<v Speaker 3>going to tangle with one of it was in the
<v Speaker 3>dark with a headlamp on, So yeah, it could have
<v Speaker 3>been that too. It could have been just geez, you
<v Speaker 3>kind of mucked up this place for us. Yeah, I
<v Speaker 3>don't know. None of that went through, like I said,
<v Speaker 3>until I talked to you the other day, none of
<v Speaker 3>that even crossed my mind. I just that's why I
<v Speaker 3>was so stuck mentally, and I took me a lot
<v Speaker 3>of nerve. Yeah, I had to really kind of ramp
<v Speaker 3>myself up to contact you because I'm like, I'm in
<v Speaker 3>my wits end to explain this. I you know, like
<v Speaker 3>I quoted that whole Sherlock Holmes, and I probably said
<v Speaker 3>it wrong. But you know, once all logical solutions are eliminated,
<v Speaker 3>what are you left with? The improbable or illogical, however
<v Speaker 3>you view, that has got to be the right answer,
<v Speaker 3>because I'm like, I can't.
<v Speaker 2>I just can't fathom.
<v Speaker 3>Any animal doing this, you know, known mammal or otherwise.
<v Speaker 2>And I just.
<v Speaker 3>I keep going back to the human thing and just
<v Speaker 3>going this, this terrain was so rugged and harsh. Other
<v Speaker 3>hunters don't want to hunt it. Not saying I'm special.
<v Speaker 3>Maybe my dad and I we just get into these
<v Speaker 3>crazy places.
<v Speaker 2>That's just how we do it.
<v Speaker 3>It just seems like we always end up in some
<v Speaker 3>crazy predicament in these wild places. And but just to
<v Speaker 3>see no sign, I mean, someone would they how they
<v Speaker 3>would have gotten in there? In fresh snow and not
<v Speaker 3>left tracks or some just but just to do something
<v Speaker 3>like that. I know, we live in this day and
<v Speaker 3>age of YouTube and cell phones and people doing all
<v Speaker 3>kinds of weird stuff and tiktoking. You'd think, like, oh,
<v Speaker 3>that makes sense, someone's out there just punking you. I'm like,
<v Speaker 3>do you you not realize where we were? I realize
<v Speaker 3>that hardened hunters of thirty plus years are beaten up
<v Speaker 3>by this terrain and you can die in a heartbeat
<v Speaker 3>from exposure from an injury. That you're gonna go out
<v Speaker 3>in the middle of the random wilderness where no trails
<v Speaker 3>or roads are deep dark in the woods and just
<v Speaker 3>wait to try and play a prank on a heavily
<v Speaker 3>armed man or woman. You know, I think I would
<v Speaker 3>have had a better chance of winning the lobbery, you know,
<v Speaker 3>than hiding in the woods and spotting somebody out there, because,
<v Speaker 3>like I said, my dad and I didn't see any
<v Speaker 3>There was no one, No one was up there, and
<v Speaker 3>just it's just so improbable. I'm trying to justify it
<v Speaker 3>that way, just going this had to have been just
<v Speaker 3>someone just be in a maniac But it doesn't make
<v Speaker 3>any sense. You just those things just don't happen when
<v Speaker 3>you're in the woods like that, or I guess they
<v Speaker 3>could the thing they could, not that they can't, not
<v Speaker 3>that it's impossible, but that word improbable. This keeps coming
<v Speaker 3>up through my mind, just knowing how harsh it was,
<v Speaker 3>how remote it was, how much work it took just
<v Speaker 3>to get there and back, I mean, just to for
<v Speaker 3>someone to go out there and goof around and scare
<v Speaker 3>a heavily armed man. If I was a rookie, as
<v Speaker 3>scared as I was, I mean, I wasn't scared. I
<v Speaker 3>was terrified. I've never been terrified my life to that
<v Speaker 3>point where my brain shut down and I went into
<v Speaker 3>complete autopilot, which thankfully, I hope it was the right autopilot,
<v Speaker 3>which wasn't just running. It was keeping my weapon up
<v Speaker 3>and backing out instead of just running scared, you know,
<v Speaker 3>dropping my gear or something like that. But I just, yeah,
<v Speaker 3>what are the odds?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah? I bet that wore you out back pedaling up
<v Speaker 1>that mountain with all that gear and the steep terrain.
<v Speaker 3>You know it it really I don't know. I didn't
<v Speaker 3>feel it once. The adrenaline woar off, I was you know,
<v Speaker 3>you get that adrenaline dump. That's more exhausting once it
<v Speaker 3>wears off than the physical exertion you underwent. It's like
<v Speaker 3>I said, I trained pretty hard. I've been an athlete
<v Speaker 3>my whole life and done the firefighting, the logging thing.
<v Speaker 2>I know.
<v Speaker 3>I live in a city now and work in the
<v Speaker 3>medical field. I'm sitting in my butt. I still lift
<v Speaker 3>weights every day. When elk season's coming up, I throw
<v Speaker 3>on my gear and I go for I try and
<v Speaker 3>get in thirty plus miles a weekend. I've got three days,
<v Speaker 3>three day weekend, so I usually the two or three
<v Speaker 3>well about three months preceding elk hunting. I'm I'm getting
<v Speaker 3>some about thirty if I'm really doing it. You had
<v Speaker 3>forty plus miles with all that gear on a weekend,
<v Speaker 3>so pretty decent shape cardiovascuar wise and endurance wise. But
<v Speaker 3>that adrenaline dump and then the loss of it, You're
<v Speaker 3>just like, it's like being Superman and then having Kryptonite
<v Speaker 3>shoved down your shorts. Right, You're just done.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, And like I told you before, don't give up
<v Speaker 1>on going out in the forest. I think it makes
<v Speaker 1>it worse on a person if they stay away from
<v Speaker 1>nature after having a bad experience.
<v Speaker 3>Well, and yeah, And I really appreciate you saying that
<v Speaker 3>because and that's why I went back on my own.
<v Speaker 3>I'm like, hey, I got to get an elk here.
<v Speaker 3>This is ridiculous. I spend a lot of money, a
<v Speaker 3>lot of time, a lot of effort. I need to
<v Speaker 3>get some meat to put in my freezer. I still didn't,
<v Speaker 3>but a lot of it was just, yeah, you can't
<v Speaker 3>this this is your happy place. I'm not happy living
<v Speaker 3>in a populated area, and I don't always get you know,
<v Speaker 3>have a lot of time to take off to go out,
<v Speaker 3>you know, traversing the woods. So that solid two weeks
<v Speaker 3>I take every year, is that's peace. It totally resets
<v Speaker 3>my brain. It resets my attitude, you know, it just
<v Speaker 3>makes me feel like a different person.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>And that that day that that happened, I thought that
<v Speaker 3>was all gone.
<v Speaker 1>And you mentioned returning to the area, and I know
<v Speaker 1>that you guys talked about it not being a good idea.
<v Speaker 1>Do you think you're going to return to that exact
<v Speaker 1>location where the knocking happened?
<v Speaker 2>You know, I don't know.
<v Speaker 1>I maybe it would be good to make peace with it,
<v Speaker 1>Like if you go back, take like an old bag
<v Speaker 1>of help, met and like put it where the sounds
<v Speaker 1>are coming from. And I don't know, I kind of
<v Speaker 1>feel like that would let them know, you know, sorry
<v Speaker 1>for ruining your hunt, and they're smart enough to understand it,
<v Speaker 1>they'll remember you. But then again, I could understand if
<v Speaker 1>you never want to go back in there, because who
<v Speaker 1>knows what else you might find.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, you know, I I other than that morning of
<v Speaker 3>just being angry and going, Okay, I got this, you know,
<v Speaker 3>elephant stopping revolver in my rifle, plenty of extra ammo,
<v Speaker 3>I'm going to go down there tomorrow. I'm to the
<v Speaker 3>next morning and I'm gonna go down there and I'm
<v Speaker 3>going to figure out what this was. You know, come
<v Speaker 3>hell or high water. That wore off pretty quick. You know,
<v Speaker 3>you feel pretty tough when you're sitting in the cabby
<v Speaker 3>your truck, all warm and toasty and got all this firepower,
<v Speaker 3>and then you get out there and you feel like you're,
<v Speaker 3>you know, like I said, a little rabbit being.
<v Speaker 2>Cornered by wolves.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know if I will.
<v Speaker 3>I I just I just wish a I wish it
<v Speaker 3>hadn't happened. I really do. I this was if this
<v Speaker 3>was something, you know, preternatural like a sasquatch, something beyond,
<v Speaker 3>you know, just the normal animals I encounter. And I
<v Speaker 3>know people, like I said, they some people want encounters.
<v Speaker 2>They they want to find it, they want sightings.
<v Speaker 3>I don't.
<v Speaker 2>I don't if that's what this is.
<v Speaker 3>I don't want to come toe to toe or face
<v Speaker 3>to face with anything like that. I don't.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I don't add that. I've had that same scenario
<v Speaker 1>happen to me, except the loud knock at the end
<v Speaker 1>happened behind me right after I got dark on the
<v Speaker 1>trail that I walked in on, Like I had to
<v Speaker 1>walk back down that trail, so that freaked me out,
<v Speaker 1>but nothing happened, thankfully.
<v Speaker 2>I yeah, I can't imagine.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I mean, it makes me, It really does.
<v Speaker 2>That's why I really appreciate you talking to me.
<v Speaker 3>Is is giving an alternate viewpoint versus I was the
<v Speaker 3>prey getting led into this, because that's.
<v Speaker 2>Just how it felt. Man.
<v Speaker 3>Like I said, it's a little bit tunnel vision as
<v Speaker 3>far as Okay, I'm a hunter, I can see if
<v Speaker 3>something else was hunting, how advantageous this spot was, and
<v Speaker 3>just the way the scenario unfolded, it just felt like
<v Speaker 3>I had been lured in to this ambush point, and
<v Speaker 3>that just I mean, I know, you know, humans, with
<v Speaker 3>all of our technology, we feel on top of the
<v Speaker 3>food chain, and when we got all of our technology
<v Speaker 3>and protection, sure, but when you're out in the woods
<v Speaker 3>like that, you're not. I mean, even if it's just
<v Speaker 3>a grizzly or something you don't if you don't have
<v Speaker 3>the right firepower, the right training, the wherewithal and they
<v Speaker 3>get the jump on you, it may not matter.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, But if.
<v Speaker 3>Something out there is just as intelligent as we are
<v Speaker 3>that has the same say, it has the same predatory mindset,
<v Speaker 3>and is viewing you like that, that is spooky. I
<v Speaker 3>would have felt better if this was a serial killer
<v Speaker 3>psychotic human that was deliberately stalking me. That sounds weird,
<v Speaker 3>But I could take that personal one on one, and
<v Speaker 3>it being a human viewing me like for whatever sadistic purpose,
<v Speaker 3>that sounds great. I would have been better with that.
<v Speaker 3>Like if I found out later there's some wild man
<v Speaker 3>hermit he that's living out there that's you know, stalking
<v Speaker 3>humans and whatever eating them or something, I'd be okay
<v Speaker 3>with if I discovered that. But not being viewed at
<v Speaker 3>as a prey item on an impersonal I don't know
<v Speaker 3>that sounds weird, because that's how bear can view you.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, like I said, I've encountered black bear that
<v Speaker 3>they I think I encountered a boar up in the
<v Speaker 3>same area and he followed me and basically stalked me
<v Speaker 3>and wouldn't go away. And I think he had more
<v Speaker 3>than curiosity on hand the way he was acting. But
<v Speaker 3>I still it's like it's a bear. I can see him,
<v Speaker 3>I understand what he's doing. I was well armed, I
<v Speaker 3>could see him, and I had enough distance and training
<v Speaker 3>that if he made a move that he made, he
<v Speaker 3>may have got me, but he would have both of
<v Speaker 3>us would have paid the price. And but I understand that.
<v Speaker 3>But to have the unknown of not seeing it and
<v Speaker 3>have it have this what I think of is, you know,
<v Speaker 3>this deliberate intelligence behind it. It goes beyond in animals
<v Speaker 3>stalking and hunting and its instincts.
<v Speaker 2>That just.
<v Speaker 3>That's all that stuff that was going through my brain.
<v Speaker 3>You know, the next day when we went back out
<v Speaker 3>and just made me just I had to stop sometimes
<v Speaker 3>and just you know, I'm man enough to say just
<v Speaker 3>just let the tears come out and just go. I
<v Speaker 3>I oh, my God, like, what.
<v Speaker 2>Just happened to me? What just happened? What?
<v Speaker 3>What? What is this? And not be unable to explain it.
<v Speaker 3>I couldn't talk to anybody about it. I mean, like
<v Speaker 3>I said, I my ads a first person I would
<v Speaker 3>I mean, he's seventy one, he's still out there hitting hard.
<v Speaker 3>He's the first person I would take into any battle
<v Speaker 3>or any situation with me. But that's something I just
<v Speaker 3>couldn't tell him because I I think I just couldn't express.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know.
<v Speaker 3>It's easy to step back when something like this happens
<v Speaker 3>and say, oh, it was all coincidence, quint of events.
<v Speaker 3>It was just, you know, the stars were aligned, those
<v Speaker 3>knocks came at just the right time. You thought that
<v Speaker 3>they were coming at this time, and it was just
<v Speaker 3>totally random, and your brain was playing tricks on you.
<v Speaker 3>And I'm like, I was stalking. I thought I was
<v Speaker 3>stalking this thing because I thought it was some animal
<v Speaker 3>doing weird stuff. I didn't think of something actually viewing
<v Speaker 3>me or intelligently assessing my approach coach and going okay,
<v Speaker 3>well let's get him a little bit closer. Let's get
<v Speaker 3>him a little bit closer. I that never crossed my mind.
<v Speaker 2>I thought I was hunting it or not really hunting ITCS.
<v Speaker 3>I didn't know if it was you know, you know
<v Speaker 3>what I mean though, Yeah, I thought I was sneaking
<v Speaker 3>up on it and being all clever, and I I
<v Speaker 3>don't think that was it at all. I I got
<v Speaker 3>spotted pretty far out and for me, so camoed up.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, you can see movement, but that was pretty good.
<v Speaker 3>Two hundred and fifty yards is that's a that's a
<v Speaker 3>that's some distance.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, And I can tell you're you're wrestling with yourself
<v Speaker 1>on you know, with all these other things that could
<v Speaker 1>have been on what your instincts are telling you it
<v Speaker 1>probably is.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, it's And I understand that.
<v Speaker 1>Because after I had my sightings, like I knew what
<v Speaker 1>I saw, but it's just like I don't know, kind
<v Speaker 1>of like when somebody close to you passes away and
<v Speaker 1>it's recent, like your brain tells you that itn't happen,
<v Speaker 1>but you have to remind yourself like, yeah, yeah it did,
<v Speaker 1>and then you know, it just kind of keeps happening
<v Speaker 1>over and over in your mind. I don't know, that's
<v Speaker 1>the way I kind of look at it.
<v Speaker 3>Well, it is and I told you when we chatted
<v Speaker 3>that if I didn't have those like forty emails I
<v Speaker 3>had sent out when I got back to my truck,
<v Speaker 3>because uh, cell phone that you couldn't do. You couldn't
<v Speaker 3>call out, and text messages didn't work, but emails did.
<v Speaker 3>If you had one bar, which we were high enough,
<v Speaker 3>if the wind was like blowing the right direction, you
<v Speaker 3>could get one bar. And I started sending emails out
<v Speaker 3>to the only person I thought I could because I
<v Speaker 3>just didn't.
<v Speaker 2>Know what to do.
<v Speaker 3>I was completely melting down, like in shock. And if
<v Speaker 3>I I saved all those, if I hadn't saved those,
<v Speaker 3>I would have thought you had like some waking nightmare.
<v Speaker 3>But this was broad daylight. This was one PM on
<v Speaker 3>a sunny day. I wasn't sleeping, certainly wasn't drinking. We
<v Speaker 3>don't do that when we hunt. Were not those type
<v Speaker 3>of hunters you know that sit around drink all day
<v Speaker 3>in camp and then you know, let's go drive around
<v Speaker 3>shoot a deer. You know, that's not how we roll,
<v Speaker 3>you know. And I've already been up since four am,
<v Speaker 3>getting ready and going out at before the sun was
<v Speaker 3>even up. And you know that person, I know that
<v Speaker 3>I did tell after I got back that has a
<v Speaker 3>background in psychology. It was like, you're feeling that disconnect
<v Speaker 3>because your brain's trying to protect itself from trauma. Because yeah,
<v Speaker 3>that blank moment you have in your brain was because
<v Speaker 3>your brain did it shut down for a second to prove,
<v Speaker 3>you know, to protect you That's an innate response because
<v Speaker 3>otherwise you just get overwhelmed, go into shock, you can't
<v Speaker 3>do anything. And he's like, your your training kicked in
<v Speaker 3>and you were on an autopilot. And that's He's like, that's
<v Speaker 3>more than I would have done. I would have run.
<v Speaker 3>I would have just started running. And I'm like, I'm
<v Speaker 3>not bragging or anything. I said that this is trust me.
<v Speaker 3>I was, Ah, it may have looked coordinated, but I
<v Speaker 3>inside I was just like, you're you're just the rabbit.
<v Speaker 3>This rifle you're holding is just a twig and it's
<v Speaker 3>not enough, even though I didn't know what it was.
<v Speaker 3>That's how I felt after that sound was this isn't
<v Speaker 3>gonna be enough. If whatever is comes at me out
<v Speaker 3>of those trees, this isn't gonna do it. That's not
<v Speaker 3>a good feeling.
<v Speaker 1>Well, I'm glad you made it out of there. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>it could have been a much worse situation if you
<v Speaker 1>had to completely run out of their full blast.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, it could have been.
<v Speaker 3>It could have been.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. I mean, it kind of sounds like you were
<v Speaker 1>one step away from having an encounter, you know.
<v Speaker 3>And that's I don't know whether it was just general
<v Speaker 3>apprehension of I can't see this and I'm gonna come
<v Speaker 3>face to face with it, and that's that's scary, even
<v Speaker 3>if it's a moose, right, if anybody's been around moose,
<v Speaker 3>they're more dangerous than bear half the time. You know,
<v Speaker 3>they will stomp you to death and not think twice
<v Speaker 3>about it, just because they're just so early, or they're
<v Speaker 3>protecting their calf or something like that. But man, that.
<v Speaker 2>I should have just backed off.
<v Speaker 3>I I fought through that apprehension of what are you
<v Speaker 3>really doing here? Is this worth it?
<v Speaker 2>You know?
<v Speaker 3>Like I said, when I came out of that little
<v Speaker 3>dip in the ground and heard those five rapid fire smacks,
<v Speaker 3>that's that that's when I got nervous, and I should
<v Speaker 3>have backed out then and just been like, Okay, this
<v Speaker 3>isn't this isn't a good idea. What are you doing?
<v Speaker 3>That did cross my mind, But then I'm like, well,
<v Speaker 3>I've come this far, I may as well check it out.
<v Speaker 3>But you're right, what what have What would have happened
<v Speaker 3>if I had just gone waltzing right into those trees?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it's hard to say I'm glad you didn't, though.
<v Speaker 3>I'm glad I didn't. I didn't.
<v Speaker 2>I didn't want to.
<v Speaker 3>That's you know, that's that stupidity that I'm not being sexist,
<v Speaker 3>but a lot of guys have of you know, Well, I.
<v Speaker 2>Just got a man up, you know, gotta do it.
<v Speaker 3>Came in far.
<v Speaker 2>Just don't be.
<v Speaker 3>Scared, just do it. And I was like, okay.
<v Speaker 1>It's a good thing you didn't take off running. I
<v Speaker 1>feel like they possibly would have chased you out of
<v Speaker 1>the area.
<v Speaker 3>Well, you know, and I've known that my whole life
<v Speaker 3>is you know, you don't you know, it's the same
<v Speaker 3>thing if you encounter a even just like a feral
<v Speaker 3>or vicious dog, you know, in town, in a city,
<v Speaker 3>it's the same thing. If you run, you trigger the
<v Speaker 3>chase instinct. That's just plain and simple. How predators of
<v Speaker 3>every shape and form operate, doesn't matter mammal, reptile, you
<v Speaker 3>name it.
<v Speaker 2>That you run, they chase.
<v Speaker 1>And That's what they're known for, is following and stalking people.
<v Speaker 1>So I feel like they possibly not would have chased
<v Speaker 1>you the area, but would have trailed you.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 3>And you know, that's the craziest thing. Once I hit
<v Speaker 3>that road, and even though I you know, whip my
<v Speaker 3>gun around and was just sitting there, just staring at
<v Speaker 3>the lip of that road, I knew nothing was going
<v Speaker 3>to come above it. It was more just autopilot once again,
<v Speaker 3>just keep your gun towards the perceived threat until you
<v Speaker 3>know there's not a threat.
<v Speaker 2>You know, be ready.
<v Speaker 3>But you know, nothing was crashing up the hill after.
<v Speaker 2>Me, and I just.
<v Speaker 3>I just kind of was like, Okay, I'm good. You know,
<v Speaker 3>most predators don't want to come around areas that they
<v Speaker 3>know humans, you know, routinely traverse, right, even if they
<v Speaker 3>haven't seen humans roads, they animals recognize that this is
<v Speaker 3>where those things go that shoot at us. We're not
<v Speaker 3>going to go there. And like I said, I that
<v Speaker 3>thought that kept going through my brain that this was
<v Speaker 3>possibly an opportunistic ambush site. It's an ambush site. Why
<v Speaker 3>would they chase something comes in, You get close, you
<v Speaker 3>nail it, you take it back wherever and you're done.
<v Speaker 3>You don't follow it all the way up a mountain.
<v Speaker 3>You know, that's not how ambush predators operate. Right. They
<v Speaker 3>may chase for a short distance, but if that prays
<v Speaker 3>too far away, and especially if it's potentially harmful, they're
<v Speaker 3>not going to pursue it, right. Yeah, that's how predators operate.
<v Speaker 3>They know if they're you know, that's why the wolves
<v Speaker 3>and lions and stuff take down the weaker, the herd,
<v Speaker 3>the sick, the weak, the old, the young, because they
<v Speaker 3>don't want to get hurt either. You get hurt in
<v Speaker 3>the wild, whether it's a scratch or a broken bone,
<v Speaker 3>that's a death sentence. You're done.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Doesn't sound like a very good hunting spot with
<v Speaker 1>all the sasquatches being in there. And I say that
<v Speaker 1>because anytime I get activity, I don't see any game,
<v Speaker 1>or if I do see deer, they're acting really spooped
<v Speaker 1>and they don't want to stick around.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. Well, like I said, I saw two mulei's and
<v Speaker 3>a uh one, yeah, one white white tail buck. But
<v Speaker 3>that was pretty far west of where I was, and
<v Speaker 3>they were way they were actually up by the road.
<v Speaker 3>They were actually only one hundred yards down slope from
<v Speaker 3>the road. They weren't. When I went way down there
<v Speaker 3>that first day, to the point where I'm like, this
<v Speaker 3>is ridiculous, I have to go back, there was nothing.
<v Speaker 3>There was no tracks, no game trails. So yeah, it
<v Speaker 3>could be.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, do you think your dad was in an
<v Speaker 1>earshot of that last wooden knock the.
<v Speaker 3>No, No, he had gone way way to the east,
<v Speaker 3>and you know, with all that timber cover, I don't
<v Speaker 3>as far as distance, I mean, you could hear. I
<v Speaker 3>mean you hunt, right, I sure do if you're in
<v Speaker 3>thick timber, and even a gunshot that's fairly close, you know,
<v Speaker 3>can be so muffled you can't tell where it's coming from,
<v Speaker 3>how close it is. It's just like that's a gunshot,
<v Speaker 3>and it could be fairly close.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I agree.
<v Speaker 3>So no, I was way down there, and you know,
<v Speaker 3>other than those few grassy areas, it was so thickly
<v Speaker 3>timbered and dense, I don't think sound would have carried
<v Speaker 3>beyond you know, those tree lines. So no, I mean
<v Speaker 3>he never said anything. And there was a couple of
<v Speaker 3>times sitting around, can't you know, the in the tent
<v Speaker 3>eating dinner. You know, it's dark, nothing going on. I
<v Speaker 3>was just ready to spill it like, hey, I had
<v Speaker 3>something weird happen the other day, you know, like all casual,
<v Speaker 3>and then I'm like, nah, just keep your mouth shut.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I know the feeling. Do you think you're gonna
<v Speaker 1>end up asking him or telling him?
<v Speaker 3>Uh?
<v Speaker 2>I don't know.
<v Speaker 3>It'd probably have to be a rare occasion and the
<v Speaker 3>very rare bottle of whiskey to get that done. I
<v Speaker 3>don't I don't think so, you know, I don't know.
<v Speaker 3>I just what worried me though, was is since we hunt,
<v Speaker 3>you know, we we go out together.
<v Speaker 2>We make sure we have two vehicles.
<v Speaker 3>So and this has happened, one of them goes down,
<v Speaker 3>We've got a backup to, you know, whatever get done,
<v Speaker 3>whatever needs to get done. That happened last year. But
<v Speaker 3>we split up. We don't hunt together. Well, I'll take
<v Speaker 3>that back. So the next day we split up. I
<v Speaker 3>went up on a ridge, I circled around another ridge,
<v Speaker 3>came back down. We met up. We hiked back to
<v Speaker 3>camp together. And I remember we hiked on the road
<v Speaker 3>and I knew exactly where I came barreling up that hillside.
<v Speaker 3>And this was only twenty This was you know, the
<v Speaker 3>next day, the same time of day almost and I'm
<v Speaker 3>just like, I'm looking down, I'm going like, that's where
<v Speaker 3>I came, just barreling up that mountainside the other day.
<v Speaker 3>The next day it had snowed heavily. There was four
<v Speaker 3>or five inches of snow. A cloud was sitting on
<v Speaker 3>top of us, not fog, an actual cloud. Because we
<v Speaker 3>were that high up all day, we found this old
<v Speaker 3>It must have been a road made by a fire
<v Speaker 3>crew way back when when there was a fire, because
<v Speaker 3>it wound down the slope and it was east of
<v Speaker 3>where I was where that happened. But my dad was
<v Speaker 3>with me, which that was pretty rare to kind of
<v Speaker 3>hunt as a team. But we were just like, yeah,
<v Speaker 3>let's go down there and check this place out, okay.
<v Speaker 3>And so we fanned out and we you know, had
<v Speaker 3>a lot. We were out, you know, parallel to each other,
<v Speaker 3>so we went, you know, blast each other. We saw
<v Speaker 3>something we when we were coming out, we went east
<v Speaker 3>and saw tons of deer sign no elk spent the
<v Speaker 3>whole day out there, slugging it out through the snow,
<v Speaker 3>and then we circled back to the west towards our
<v Speaker 3>camp and came up this slope and then we came
<v Speaker 3>up on the road and I looked and I'm like,
<v Speaker 3>we about walked right back into where this happened. I
<v Speaker 3>didn't realize it because with the amount of snow and
<v Speaker 3>the clouds that were literally it was like a fog,
<v Speaker 3>but it was a cloud, low lying cloud that you know,
<v Speaker 3>landmarks and stuff weren't identifiable. I just knew what direction
<v Speaker 3>we were going, but I didn't know where we were
<v Speaker 3>at in relation to where that happened. To me. We
<v Speaker 3>came up on the road and I'm like, we were
<v Speaker 3>I don't know, under a quarter mile from walking right
<v Speaker 3>back into that area, and then we had cut up slope.
<v Speaker 3>I'm just like, oh my Okay. That kind of freaked
<v Speaker 3>me out. I'm like, but at the same time, my
<v Speaker 3>dad was with me. Okay, two people, two guns or
<v Speaker 3>multiple guns, I felt totally fine with that. Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>So, what would you say to all the people out
<v Speaker 1>there that expressed the fact that they've been out in
<v Speaker 1>the forest all their live and they've been all over
<v Speaker 1>the place and they haven't seen nothing, no bigfoot, no structure,
<v Speaker 1>is nothing anything of that kind. What would you say
<v Speaker 1>to them?
<v Speaker 3>Keep your ears open and you should probably listen to
<v Speaker 3>your instincts more than your curiosity, because I think that's
<v Speaker 3>what almost got me in trouble.
<v Speaker 2>Instead of.
<v Speaker 3>Thinking through this as in, okay, this is really bizarre,
<v Speaker 3>and instead of thinking like a hunter stalking something, think
<v Speaker 3>about what's actually happening, because that's what I didn't do.
<v Speaker 3>I didn't think about, Okay, this is a really bizarre
<v Speaker 3>sound to hear out the woods like this that I've
<v Speaker 3>never heard that sounds very human. But you know, once
<v Speaker 3>again ran that through my brain, as is this probable
<v Speaker 3>or improbable? And even though I was moving so slow
<v Speaker 3>and methodically, I wasn't thinking as anything other than a
<v Speaker 3>hunter stalking pray. Like I said, That's where I felt
<v Speaker 3>really stupid and negligent was these sounds never happened outside
<v Speaker 3>of when I stopped and stood there for extended periods.
<v Speaker 3>They did not happen when I was walking towards.
<v Speaker 2>Where I thought the sound was.
<v Speaker 3>They never did and I was moving silently and slowly enough.
<v Speaker 2>There is no way.
<v Speaker 3>Any part of my movement would have masked these sounds
<v Speaker 3>because they were very loud and distinct and atypical for
<v Speaker 3>a forest sound or an animal sound. That should have
<v Speaker 3>keyed me in right there that something wasn't right as
<v Speaker 3>far as my thinking.
<v Speaker 2>And but.
<v Speaker 3>I mean what you said is exactly the perfect way
<v Speaker 3>of saying it. I've been in the woods my whole life.
<v Speaker 3>I've never heard or seen anything. Well, I've never seen
<v Speaker 3>a blue whale in person, and if no one had
<v Speaker 3>told me about him and I saw one, I'd probably
<v Speaker 3>freak out. So you know, you just got to be
<v Speaker 3>it's you just.
<v Speaker 2>Gotta be aware and think.
<v Speaker 3>I don't know. I usually, like I said, when you're
<v Speaker 3>out there like that, you're thinking through a lot scenarios
<v Speaker 3>all at once. You know, your brain's divided into survival,
<v Speaker 3>like can I safely traverse this hillside?
<v Speaker 2>Can I get up that slope safely? Is it worth it?
<v Speaker 2>You know? Where am my oriented towards to? You know what?
<v Speaker 3>In firefighting we would call the safe zone, as in,
<v Speaker 3>where can I get back to where I have a
<v Speaker 3>point of reference to if I get turned around or
<v Speaker 3>if there's a blizzard. I'd been in blizzards where you
<v Speaker 3>couldn't see twenty feet in front of you.
<v Speaker 2>Do I know where the truck is? Do I know
<v Speaker 2>where base camp is?
<v Speaker 3>Do I know where the road is? You're constantly tuned
<v Speaker 3>into those things, and then okay, of course you're like,
<v Speaker 3>which stretch is the wind blowing? Okay, I see some
<v Speaker 3>animals sign do I need to move uphill downhill to
<v Speaker 3>keep the wind in my face so they can't smell
<v Speaker 3>me as I stalk them. Your brain is constantly going
<v Speaker 3>when you're doing this type of thing, and you do
<v Speaker 3>get that. I mean, at least maybe that's just me
<v Speaker 3>that vision where when something like this happens, you keep
<v Speaker 3>thinking in those zones of those certain parameters. Where if
<v Speaker 3>I had stepped back and went like, okay, this is
<v Speaker 3>not normal, maybe we shouldn't. We should take some time
<v Speaker 3>or back off and just watch and observe, or just
<v Speaker 3>leave and maybe not let curiosity kill the cat.
<v Speaker 2>I don't know.
<v Speaker 3>That's a great question. It's hard to answer though, But
<v Speaker 3>like I said, that's what's kind of bound me up
<v Speaker 3>is I did not want this to happen. I wasn't
<v Speaker 3>looking for this. I don't know how to explain this.
<v Speaker 3>I oh, I know. I just don't know what other
<v Speaker 3>advice other than just keep just keep your be willing
<v Speaker 3>to step out of whatever zone you're in. You know,
<v Speaker 3>if you're out in this power high and my goal
<v Speaker 3>is to get up to this whatever this peak and
<v Speaker 3>that's it.
<v Speaker 2>You know, take a selfie of myself.
<v Speaker 3>Okay, that's fine in your your mind's on, Okay, my
<v Speaker 3>legs are burning and I've got this many more miles
<v Speaker 3>to go, and you're kind of, you know, in the zone. Well,
<v Speaker 3>if something weird's happened, it's just like a you know,
<v Speaker 3>communicating with people or getting in a very emotional situation
<v Speaker 3>with someone like a family member, significant other, you sometimes
<v Speaker 3>have to really step back physically and mentally remove yourself
<v Speaker 3>from that one way path you're on.
<v Speaker 2>And just stop.
<v Speaker 3>And and analyze the situation instead of just kind of
<v Speaker 3>rush rushing in, you know, figuratively speaking, into a situation
<v Speaker 3>where you're already kind of like this is really not right.
<v Speaker 2>This isn't this isn't normal. Yeah, I don't know if
<v Speaker 2>that's a good.
<v Speaker 1>After No, that's a valid point. And at what point
<v Speaker 1>did you think the sounds were bigfoot?
<v Speaker 2>I I honestly haven't.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, like, I mean, you found my channel, but
<v Speaker 1>like what were you watching or doing? Were you kind
<v Speaker 1>of connected? Maybe that's what happened there from what this
<v Speaker 1>person is explaining, I mean, did that happen or did
<v Speaker 1>you just kind of already know about Bigfoot and just
<v Speaker 1>started thinking more about it.
<v Speaker 2>I've listened to.
<v Speaker 3>Some other channels just because it's so interesting to hear
<v Speaker 3>people this your average day people, you know, like I said,
<v Speaker 3>as a kid, especially, I was all over crypto stuff,
<v Speaker 3>you know, cryptozoology, because it's just, especially as a kid,
<v Speaker 3>that's super cool to think there's a you know, a
<v Speaker 3>relic hominid or or dinosaur living in the loch Ness
<v Speaker 3>or you know, or Lake Champlain, you know, og Pogo,
<v Speaker 3>all this stuff that is so cool. It's as cool
<v Speaker 3>as dinosaurs, right, And I had that background, but I
<v Speaker 3>never really fathomed it or conceptualized it as being part
<v Speaker 3>of my reality. And but after you know, and you,
<v Speaker 3>like I said, you hear about this wood knocking stuff,
<v Speaker 3>and and I'm like, okay, I'm at my wits end
<v Speaker 3>trying to explain this logically.
<v Speaker 2>What are other people saying?
<v Speaker 3>And I've I've heard other encounters that aren't these crazy
<v Speaker 3>TV shows, you.
<v Speaker 2>Know, where they're out.
<v Speaker 3>Doing all this weird stuff just for TV. You know,
<v Speaker 3>I can't stand that. I won't ever watch that. But
<v Speaker 3>listening to people like on your show and like Sasquatch Chronicles,
<v Speaker 3>people that are just like firefighters, policemen, lawyers, judges, truck drivers,
<v Speaker 3>you know, housewives, whatever, just average day people talking about
<v Speaker 3>this and completely breaking down emotionally and saying I'm never
<v Speaker 3>going in the woods again. You know, I drank heavily
<v Speaker 3>for five years after I saw this thing because I just.
<v Speaker 2>Couldn't handle it.
<v Speaker 3>That kind of That's why I went back and I
<v Speaker 3>you know, and I your channel popped up on the
<v Speaker 3>YouTube feed is recommended. I went back and listened to
<v Speaker 3>all of them in that span of time. When I
<v Speaker 3>got back after this and I was like, man, what
<v Speaker 3>else am I left with? That's when I started thinking like, okay, yeah,
<v Speaker 3>if you've run through all the logical explanations, what else
<v Speaker 3>do you left with? And I don't discount or disbelieve
<v Speaker 3>anything that anybody says on these when they have IWENT reports.
<v Speaker 3>I'm not trying to say that or think that people
<v Speaker 3>are lying. It's just like I said, it's there's that
<v Speaker 3>part of your brain that remains abstract that Okay, this
<v Speaker 3>is wow, this is really wild, and this person is
<v Speaker 3>really emotional and I can't you just can't act that
<v Speaker 3>good all the time, you know, to say something like
<v Speaker 3>that and break down, you know, in tears or whatever,
<v Speaker 3>recounting a story, something had to have happened. But it's
<v Speaker 3>just like I said, maybe, as you know.
<v Speaker 1>I think you took the best approach regarding the situation.
<v Speaker 1>And I think a lot of other hunters would have
<v Speaker 1>reacted a lot differently, and they possibly would have took
<v Speaker 1>a few shots into the forest just because they are
<v Speaker 1>extremely afraid.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I agree, and I I couldn't imagine doing that.
<v Speaker 1>You know, I'm sure there's people that have done that.
<v Speaker 2>You're right, and that's.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, jeez, that's that's irresponsible on so many levels.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, what if it was a group of humans
<v Speaker 3>or a single human and they are just being idiots,
<v Speaker 3>you just committed first degree murder, you know, manslaughter at best.
<v Speaker 3>And it's like you, that's not what's been drilled to me.
<v Speaker 3>That's not what I've trained for. And and if it
<v Speaker 3>is an animal and they're they're warning you off and
<v Speaker 3>they're not directly confronting and threatening you, that's not an option.
<v Speaker 2>In my mind.
<v Speaker 3>You don't just kill something because you're scared. You know,
<v Speaker 3>you go to self defense because you are an imminent threat,
<v Speaker 3>or they're that thing or a person is an imminent
<v Speaker 3>threat to you. That's it, you know. I yeah, I can't.
<v Speaker 3>I I think that's that's why I kind of have
<v Speaker 3>discounted the human element so much as even if you're
<v Speaker 3>some wacky whatever something year old person just trying to
<v Speaker 3>get a good little prank on YouTube, I don't think
<v Speaker 3>other than all the scenarios I brought up, the terrain,
<v Speaker 3>the weather, the remoteness, you would have to realize that
<v Speaker 3>you are. You've got to target on your chest if
<v Speaker 3>you scare someone bad enough to think their life is
<v Speaker 3>in imminent danger, and you're right. If someone's a rookie,
<v Speaker 3>you know, they're new to hunting, or they're whatever, just
<v Speaker 3>trigger happy, like, oh you're gonna mess with me, okay,
<v Speaker 3>iwll this crank a bunch of rounds into that tree line,
<v Speaker 3>I'll spook you off well. With high power hunting rifles
<v Speaker 3>that can go through a lot of stuff. And I
<v Speaker 3>just I kept my finger off the trigger the whole time.
<v Speaker 3>I mean, as I was backing out, I had my
<v Speaker 3>thumb on the safety, you know, because on an AR
<v Speaker 3>it's like a thumb safety you just flick off with
<v Speaker 3>your you know, your dominant hand. And but I still
<v Speaker 3>had my finger on the trigger guard. I never put
<v Speaker 3>my finger on the trigger because I didn't have a target.
<v Speaker 3>You know, nothing was in my sights. And plus you
<v Speaker 3>put your finger on the trigger and you trip and fall,
<v Speaker 3>you can you know, have a negligent discharge, and who
<v Speaker 3>knows what you could shoot yourself or I don't know.
<v Speaker 1>But I agree. I would have thought it was just
<v Speaker 1>people camping out there or hammering on things and possibly
<v Speaker 1>fiddling around.
<v Speaker 2>That's what I thought.
<v Speaker 3>But then I'm like, okay, a I would have been
<v Speaker 3>able to see them because they this tree line was
<v Speaker 3>so dense you couldn't really there was no spots in it.
<v Speaker 3>It went from those little grassy areas to just I
<v Speaker 3>mean that timber was just I can't express how dense
<v Speaker 3>it was. And that's what I thought, like, what is
<v Speaker 3>But it was just that wood on wood. It wasn't
<v Speaker 3>like someone hammering tent tags. It wasn't someone chopping wood.
<v Speaker 3>You know, which if you've cut wood or logged or whatever,
<v Speaker 3>you just you hear sounds and they're very distinct. They
<v Speaker 3>have a quality to them, you know. That's why I
<v Speaker 3>was saying. If it was like a dry branch hitting
<v Speaker 3>against a tree, that's distinctly different than a thick log
<v Speaker 3>or a green branch or tree. You know, it's got
<v Speaker 3>that deeper, thicker sound than the more the dry, brittle
<v Speaker 3>cracking sound. And an axe makes a different sound, you know,
<v Speaker 3>hitting a tent pig makes a different sound. And because
<v Speaker 3>that's the one thing that ran through my brain, what
<v Speaker 3>is a person doing on here, doing down here beating
<v Speaker 3>wood on it? Beating a piece of wood with a
<v Speaker 3>piece of wood like this is bizarre and you would
<v Speaker 3>not want to camp down there. That would be a
<v Speaker 3>horrible spot. And I was close enough at the point
<v Speaker 3>where that final I mean, that's what settled my brain that, Okay,
<v Speaker 3>this isn't just people out here camping. Was that final
<v Speaker 3>smashing sound. It was just so violent, so loud, so
<v Speaker 3>much force behind it. I can't imagine just the strength
<v Speaker 3>behind something like that.
<v Speaker 2>It was just like a bomb.
<v Speaker 3>If that hadn't happened, maybe I would have rationalized it
<v Speaker 3>all out as coincidence, or I just didn't see some
<v Speaker 3>people out there dinking around, But why would they be
<v Speaker 3>doing single knocks spaced out by fifteen plus minutes only
<v Speaker 3>when I stopped, No, I think you're Your input and
<v Speaker 3>feedback has been extremely valuable. It's it's made me feel well.
<v Speaker 3>It's nice to have someone just listen without all the
<v Speaker 3>bias you know of Ah, you're just you're imagining things,
<v Speaker 3>you know, especially something that traumatizing that I've never experienced
<v Speaker 3>out of all the dangerous, stupid stuff I've done to
<v Speaker 3>be that shook up. No, I don't have questions. I
<v Speaker 3>just really appreciate that secondary point of view that maybe
<v Speaker 3>maybe I wasn't being hunted, and maybe it was discommunication,
<v Speaker 3>and yeah I got the signal that I needed to leave,
<v Speaker 3>but maybe not as malicious as I thought. That that
<v Speaker 3>makes me feel a lot better.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, you know, it's rare to have a siding, but
<v Speaker 1>just sometimes humans slip into these rare areas that just
<v Speaker 1>people never go into, and these things are in there,
<v Speaker 1>and you know, they communicate around the humans and let
<v Speaker 1>each other know what's going on, and they immediately understand
<v Speaker 1>and know what's going on when they hear the knocks.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, I wish I knew. I wish I know what
<v Speaker 3>every one of those meant.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, same here. Yeah, okay, Dan, Well, I appreciate
<v Speaker 1>you telling us your encounters and taking the time to
<v Speaker 1>get a hold of me and get on the show.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, man, I can't thank you enough. This has been
<v Speaker 3>really cathartic for me. I can't think you enough.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, man, it's no problem. And just keep watching the
<v Speaker 1>shows like Sasquatch Chronicles or whatever else is out there,
<v Speaker 1>and just keep learning what you can about it, and
<v Speaker 1>keep using the outdoors the same way you always have
<v Speaker 1>and just enjoy it.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah, no problem, man, all right,
<v Speaker 3>take care of keep up the good work.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and I appreciate it. You have yourself a good night,
<v Speaker 1>all right. Likewise, all right, take care all right, you two.
<v Speaker 1>Thanks buy. I really want to thank Dan for reaching
<v Speaker 1>out and tell me a story, and it means a lot.
<v Speaker 1>As an outdoorsman, I really like hearing these types of experiences.
<v Speaker 1>Because most hunters are very knowledgeable and aware of their surroundings.
<v Speaker 1>It could be possible Dan almost join the Missing for
<v Speaker 1>One one list, but I personally feel the sasquatch for
<v Speaker 1>only warning the others and most likely trying to spook
<v Speaker 1>Dan away from the area. I say that because why
<v Speaker 1>would a predator that is stalking someone let them know
<v Speaker 1>before he strikes. I just think it was a warning,
<v Speaker 1>and of course, if he would have continued into the brush.
<v Speaker 1>Anything could have happened regardless, I am thankful you made
<v Speaker 1>it out and that you chose to talk about your
<v Speaker 1>experience rather than bottling it up inside. I think that
<v Speaker 1>only makes things worse, and it's only healthy to get
<v Speaker 1>back out and enjoy nature as usual. Dan, if you
<v Speaker 1>ever want to meet up in the future and do
<v Speaker 1>an elk slash Bigfoot camp, let me know. If you
<v Speaker 1>enjoy my pursuit with the Sasquatch, then please be sure
<v Speaker 1>to like and subscribe. Anyways, that's all I have for today,
<v Speaker 1>and I appreciate everyone for watching. Take care,