Dear Nance, I ask that you use only my first name.
I am retired, but I still have a strong network in the Marines, and I may be taking a post
in local law enforcement soon.
So I ask for anonymity, otherwise.
Thank you.
My story has been a difficult one for me to write out for a lot of different reasons.
And I know that my story will upset a great number of your listeners, many of whom seem
to think that Sasquatches are just cute, oversized teddy bears.
But I'm here to tell you they absolutely are not.
I ran up against a bulls' Sasquatch in the upper peninsula in Michigan, and a sweet teddy
bear he was not.
To tell you a little bit about myself, I earned my title as a United States Marine.
Currently, I am out of uniform, as they say, meaning I am retired.
But while I was in uniform, I completed five tours that saw a very active combat, two
tours in Iraq, and three in Afghanistan.
I only include this information, so you understand.
I'm not someone easily intimidated or rattled.
I thrive in high adrenaline situations, and I love heavily competitive sports.
But outdoor activities, they are my thing, including hunting.
Through the years I had the good fortune to become friends with many other guys that also
enjoyed my favorite pastimes, including hunting.
Tyler is one I met while I was in Afghanistan.
He too was in the Marines.
We fast became good friends.
I was with Tyler the day that this encounter happened.
We were hunting with permission on private land, with friends of Tyler's family in the
upper peninsula in Michigan.
It was late October.
We had already scouted and set up our stands in a promising area with a lot of signs.
Our stands stood approximately 150 yards apart, along a natural ground dip that had a game
trail running east to west along the bottom of the dip.
My stand was set in an area thick with deciduous trees, with most of the trees having lost already
about 60% of their foliage.
The ground was covered with thick, dry, crunchy leaves, which I counted on to make it easy
to hear our game coming.
We set up our stands one day, and then we went back to where Tyler had parked his truck.
He had a pop-up camper in tow, which we planned to sleep in.
We wouldn't keep his very warm, but it would shelter us from rain and other elements.
We got up in darkness around 230, headed to our stands that we hit mark with GPS coordinates
a day before.
Due to specifics within the terrain, we split up approximately 100 yards away from our
stands, and we each made our way to our stands in the dark.
I was using a red light in my headlamp.
This wouldn't spook game, but it gave me enough to see by.
For the record, we were bow-hunting that day, and Michigan allows you to carry handguns
while bow-hunting, mostly for bare defense.
I do not recall what Tyler was carrying that day, but I was carrying a cult python 357.
It's a revolver wheel style of pistol, and it holds six rounds.
I have a concealed carry permit in my origination state, but Michigan does not have reciprocity
with California, where I was living at the time.
So my handgun was holstered visibly according to the law.
We got to our stands and waited.
We keyed our mics on our walkies to check in with each other every 20 or 30 minutes or so.
We used ear buds for this, so there were no sounds to spook game.
It was disappointingly quiet that morning.
Strange how it went.
And the day was a total disappointment with no success on either of our ends.
I mean, there wasn't a mouse out there farting in the leaves.
It was dead silent.
We were disappointed, but we went back and spent the night in the pop-up camper.
Pretty much we got up and it was a rinse and repeat.
The next morning we were out in the darkness again heading to our perspective stands.
Again, we parted in the darkness and we each went our way.
I had the stand that was to the east of the natural ground dip.
What may say a ground dip?
It might have once been an old creek, maybe hundreds of years ago.
The earth there had a natural depression, about 20 feet wide, and it varied between four
to six deep in some areas, and others might have been as little as two feet deep.
Along that natural dip, there were ground swells on each side that rose up to different heights.
Everything was very smooth, like maybe water had worn it smooth a very long time ago.
But for now it was just being used as a convenient expressway for a lot of game.
It almost made a natural shooting corridor once we were up in our stands.
One of the reasons that we split up was so that we did not have to cross this natural
dip at any time, and we could avoid doing that, about a hundred yards out by splitting near
a bend in the ground dip when it went back and forth.
I don't know if that makes any sense.
I just mean the ground dip did not run in a straight line.
It curved and meandered back and forth, like a creek might have.
But we didn't want to cross it, so we didn't disturb any game that might be along there.
This is difficult to explain.
That's the best I can do.
On this second morning, I'm halfway to my stand.
I'm walking and I'm looking around and I'm checking the ground as I walk so I don't stumble.
Everything is lit up with my red light.
I remember looking down at the ground, then checking the way ahead again, and I suddenly
saw a large tree ahead approximately 25 to 30 feet ahead.
This was a very large tree, not like a lot of the skinnier trunks I was passing.
I saw it, and I just corrected my course to walk to the right of it.
When I saw it, I do remember that I had a quick silver thought, like, "Wow, how did I miss
seeing that just a second ago?"
I must really be tired.
I took maybe two more steps, and it became clear that the tree had legs and arms.
I looked up and up, and the tree had a face.
I stopped dead in my tracks.
I had just a moment when I thought maybe I had run into another hunter, but then I saw
the face.
I saw those eyes blink, and those eyes were over eight feet off the ground, and they were
set inside a very broad skull that sloped sharply upwards.
I saw its breath in the cold air from its slightly open mouth.
You just can't bake that.
There was a very real and very heavy presence about it.
It had gravity and malice.
Those were not some puppy dog eyes looking back at me.
They were solid-colored, no whites.
I will call them black, but I don't know.
Those eyes could have been brown in the red light, and I wouldn't have been able to
discern the difference between black and brown.
The hair covering it was lighter than black, I'm sure of that.
The shade in the red light was not as dense as black, but the eyes were harder to tell
because of the shine reflecting from them.
We stood, locked eye to eye for maybe four or five seconds.
Then I saw its face began to change.
It went from looking mildly surprised, which it did seem to be, to something of a hardening
in the expression.
The eyes narrowed, and they seemed to crinkle at the edges.
The head tilted down just a bit further onto the chest.
The nose wrinkled, and the lips parted slightly more, and I saw the bottoms of white upper teeth.
The teeth were rounded, but I saw canines that were much like ours, but they were slightly
more pronounced.
They weren't long like a lion's, but somewhere between our canines and a gorillas.
I heard a low rumble coming from it.
It rattled, enrolled in the chest and grew louder in increments.
I don't know what I was thinking to keep eye contact with it like I did.
Most humans on the planet know, intense eye contact is always a challenge, even with just
other humans.
I started backing up.
My nature in a fight or flight situation is to fight, usually, but I was also trained to
assess my threats and do so in measure to my capabilities of the moment, meaning, would
it be best to retreat to live to fight another day?
Well right then, I was pretty sure that fighting was not my best option on any level, and
I did not want to fight it another day either.
I was solely focusing on the living thing.
Instinctively I enholstered my cult from my thigh.
I think I was talking to it like I would a dog saying things like easy now don't do anything
stupid, boy, or something like that.
I had a lot of training, that's true, but I had nothing under my training file of how
to handle a pistol off Sasquatch 15 feet from you.
That fire folder was completely empty.
This was not like handling a bear, and let's face it, if you are pinning your hopes on a
pistol with a bear only 15 feet away from you, something has gone horribly wrong to bring
you to that point.
How do you do that, at least for Sasquatch?
My cult python 357 is a decent choice for stopping a bear, while that is if you have time to
get a couple well play shots fired off.
But at only 15 feet away, they're probably going to just find bits of you in bear scat
at some later date.
Some hunters out there, well they might argue that point with me.
But everyone agrees 15 feet is not much fighting space with a bear or a Sasquatch.
You need time to drop a running bear, heck even one just standing 15 feet from you is hard
to drop.
I was backing up and almost stumbled on something, but managed to keep myself upright.
As I moved away, the Sasquatch's eyes followed me, dripping malice with every step I took.
Listen, I did not want to shoot, I really didn't.
But with every nanosecond that ticked by, I became sure I was going to have to.
As I said, its posture and its face was changing, its eyes were looking more and more dangerous.
It was like looking at a lion right before it pounces on you.
Every hunter that's faced dangerous game that close knows the things that I'm mentioning.
You will notice dozens of tiny muscle ticks, a hundred movements and tiny changes in the
animals all happen in just a single second.
And those are your clues, its about to pounce or charge you.
Well I read all the cues, I already knew how this one was going to go.
Well at least I thought I did.
I was still backing up and had increased the distance between us to about 30 feet, and
I was thinking maybe it was 50/50, I was going to be able to walk away without firing a single
shot.
But then all those clues hit, and all I could do was say, "Oh no, it's coming for me."
I think I actually did say, "No, as in don't do it buddy."
But then I saw it take a step toward me.
I didn't hesitate, I training kicked in.
Slow and steady I fired my first shot then my second.
Out of habit, I had the gun pulled up and aimed at center-mass.
I know I hit it, I know it.
I saw the bullets hit, and they heard it.
Oh yes they heard it.
I saw it falter and stop.
I heard cries of pain and rage.
I saw the look of surprise on its face.
I saw its hands come up to where the two bullets had hit, which I estimated was roughly
left to the sternum, at least as it would be on human anatomy.
And both of those shots were perhaps an inch or so apart in a general area.
I don't know if it was far enough left to hit the heart.
I don't think it was.
That chest was very, very broad, and I hadn't compensated for that in my panic.
I hoped it was enough.
I wanted those two shots to be enough.
I wanted it over.
I turned and I started to run.
I looked behind me and was relieved to see that I didn't see it moving toward me.
I looked back again a second later, and oh no, it was charging after me.
Two shots from a 357 right in the chest, and it was still coming at me full speed.
I was vaguely aware of Tyler yelling in my earbud.
He was yelling and asking me what happened, what's wrong, am I okay?
I did not have time to answer him.
I turned and fired three shots farther left to the previous shots, hoping to hit the heart.
Then I fired my last one right at its skull.
Even in my red light I saw blood flowing across the hair.
I saw it come to a faltering stop, and I too had come to a stop, perhaps twenty yards away
from it.
I watched it reach out and steady itself on a tree trunk.
I watched it slump against the tree, but it did not go down.
It was holding on.
It was still upright.
Six shots from a 357, and that Sasquatch was still holding on and was still upright.
It looked its head and zeroed in its eyes on me.
I was sure it was mortally wounded, but I could also see it was pissed.
Pist I had shot it.
Pist because I think it was intelligent enough to know exactly what that would mean, that
it would die.
But seeing it still standing, although wounded, and realizing it wasn't going down, and
further realizing I would have to dig to get more ammo out of my pockets.
Well, I wasn't waiting for it to get another boost of adrenaline and come to finish me off
in a fit of vengeful rage.
I turned and ran.
I heard Tyler saying that he was almost to me.
He had been vectering in on the gunshots and all the yelling.
I keyed the mic and I yelled at him to stay away, stay away, run back, go to the truck.
I told him over and over under no circumstances to come to that position.
That I was on the move and I would meet him at the truck.
I ran harder right then than I ran for my evacuation ride out of Kandahar after one hellish
fight.
The thing I remember from this time of running through the dark forest are the howls of
the creature that filled the air behind me, howls that only started after I began to
run.
Howls that I assume were pure rage at me and rage at the knowledge that it may be dying.
All of that accentuated with the ghastly red light bouncing ahead of me as I ran.
Those are my memories.
There are things about my run back to the truck that I truthfully cannot remember.
I remember getting there before Tyler.
I remember reloading my cult and waiting in silence as I regulated my breathing.
Tyler keyed his mic several times before he got near the truck to let me know he was coming
in.
I confirmed it was clear with my voice.
When he got there I quickly told him we had to move, now I would tell him on the way out.
I had been through some very bad shit with Tyler more than once overseas.
He looked at me but he did not question.
He got busy tearing it all down and packing it up.
We pulled out with the pop-up camper not completely locked down.
We did that once we got out on the main road.
By now it's the blue light of an early morning.
We quickly pulled over and locked everything down, then we got the heck out of there.
As we drove out I told Tyler what had happened, what I had seen, what I had shot.
You should have seen Tyler's face.
It was a mixture of disbelief that I had really seen and shot a Sasquatch.
Along with real belief that something had happened to me out there.
I had told him everything as he drove and then I waited when he went silent.
I thought he doesn't believe me, he's not gonna believe me.
When he pops out with we should go back.
What I asked him?
Why?
Why do you want to go back?
To make sure it's dead he said and to get some proof.
He emphasized that last word, that word proof.
And me?
Well I took it all wrong.
I told him I would rather go back through Fallujah door to door again that it ever go back
there.
She hadn't looked it in its eyes.
I had.
I didn't need to prove that that thing existed.
I'm not sure that thing is dead, I said.
It was still on its feet after six, count them Tyler.
Six direct hits from a 357 and you want to go back to see how it's doing to see if it's
still pissed off because you want proof?
I was screaming at him in the truck by then.
Listen, I am never going back there.
Now either you believe me or you don't, I don't give a shiny bald pink rat's ass either
way.
No Tyler said no.
I meant proof for science.
Not proof that you're telling the truth to me.
I don't need proof from you.
If you say you shot a Sasquatch, I know you well enough to know you shot one.
I heard a lot of that commotion.
I heard the shots.
I heard you screaming and I heard something else scream.
And dude, I have never heard you scream, not even in combat.
I've never heard you scream like that and all the time I've known you.
I looked at him and I felt better knowing he believed me that I still wasn't going back,
not for science, not for all the world.
You see, the thing I can't get over is this.
None of that had to happen that morning.
Sasquatch had to see me coming.
It was not there and then it was suddenly there.
I believe it deliberately put itself in my path.
I don't understand that.
Everything I have since read says they shy away from humans.
They avoid people whenever they can.
Well, I'm here to tell you that no, they do not always do that.
If a lot of the Native Americans are to be believed and I believe that they should be,
well then some of those creatures are highly dangerous and some will seek humans out as a
form of food.
I think we're a little bit like beef to them and children, I think children are veal to
them.
I know my story is going to anger a lot of people.
So many want to tell you their friends with Sasquatches and their harmless and they do
gift exchanges.
And that's fine.
If your friends with one and it's never harmed you, well that's great.
But just know you are literally betting your life on that kind of interaction, always
being harmless every time you meet with them.
Me?
I would never in a million years do that.
Maybe it thought that I should be the hunted rather than the hunter that day.
I really don't want to speculate too much on its reasons or intentions.
But I know it did not one thing to avoid me.
I tried to back up, I tried to leave it, I tried to avoid it.
But no sir, it wasn't going to have that.
I wish it had, I wish it would have let me just go.
I have many times unloaded all six rounds from that cult into a wood stump at roughly
the same distance I was from that Sasquatch that morning.
And when I'm done, I go look at the damage that's done to that log.
I shake my head and I can't believe that Sasquatch was still standing.
I wonder what did happen to it afterwards.
But honestly, I didn't care enough to go back and find out.
Anyway, thanks for letting me get this off my chest.
Please spread the word.
Six shots from a 357 is not going to take down a bull Sasquatch.
Signed David.
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