Sasquatch

late sumer '79. Hunting 'coon on my home place with my partner and 4 finished hounds. 2 walkers and 2 B&T's. Two night champions and two more just as tough. These were 4 unsnap, get gone,no checking back, tree and kill type hounds. We were walking back to a patch of virgin timber with about 1-2 feet of standing water, full of briars and the like, hunted it all the time, middle of nowhere.

1/2 mile from the swamp we unsnaped the dogs and walked on. there was a creek crossing about half way there, and as we approached we heard an animal call or whale or squall....a sound that I had never heard in my life, or since on a place that I worked and hunted on 24/7 for years.

We both froze in our tracks and whispered to each other "what was that" hair standing straight up on my neck. Dogs had started off in another direction and were not near the sound. We talked awhile and descided to go on......talked ourselves in to it being a lion or pantheror something.

We took another route to the swamp and made our way in a couple hundred yards. We shut off our lights and leaned against a tree as the water was abour a foot deep. We could hear the dogs working in and out of the water at a fast pace,quartering, things were normal.......

About this time we had been standing still in the dark for 15 minutes or so and the dogs were dead ahead and heading deeper into the swamp.....when all 4 dogs stoped at the same time in the standing water. You could tell they were trying to figure something out. they never moved a foot but we could here them sniffing the air and then a whine and all 4 dogs headed for us at a dead run in the water. My big tough walker ran behind me and stuck his head between my legs shaking and whining my female right behind him, my partners dogs just hid behind him.

Now I said WTF to my partner and chambered a round in my 22Ruger just to make myself feel better. We both had those sunburst coon lights with the big belt head light walking light and hand held spot lights, and we lit up all the swamp that we could.....

This is where the fun started. As we were "backing" out of the swamp lights on and guns up, we were making alot of noise in the standing water but we could here something else just beyound the light following us and closing the distance. We would take 3 steps and stop and listen and the thing that was following us was walking on 2 legs we could hear the foot fall in the water. We would take 3 steps and stop and it would take 4 or 5 and we could here it plain as day but It would stop just after we did each time. All this while our dogs are still cowering behind us and we are scared to death.....

We get to where we coud see the edge of the swamp where it turns to pasture..... We just turned and ran, as we broke into the open we could hear the foot falls in the water behind us still coming. The hounds were running ahead but were still close, looking over thier shoulders. Then my partner yelled for help and fainted. I ran back to him and rolled him over so he could breath, eyes rolled back in his head non-responsive.....

I threw my rifle across his chest and turned on the spot light ready for what ever it was, to attack.
The dogs ran to the next creek and hid under a bridge. I could see some shadows in the edge of the timber but it never came out of the cover. My buddy got his witts about him and got up and we went for the truck as fast as we could, dogs leading the way.

We never spoke of that night untill years later.....It really bothered both of us for a long time, I never hunted that place again after dark. I went back to the spot later that year after the frost when I could see alot better, this time with my 30-06. 50 yards into the timber I saw the bones from a dead cow stuck into the branches of a tree. About 15 in all some as high as 15 feet off the ground......

Some years latter I was watching a show about bigfoot and they had some audio of the sounds that they made........You got it, it was the exact sound ( I don't mean close I mean exact) that we had heard in the woods that night. It still bothers me today when I think about it and I am 46 years old. Bigfoot chased me out of a swamp.....and I lived to tell about it.

True Story,

Paul T