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Man, Yuchi, that was tough to read. I went back through the thread and did not see the original story from 14 months ago, but your recap here seems sufficient. What a waste. What's done is done, but the whole notion of trying to collect a "specimen" is full of ugly realities. It seems clear the "sniper" was not up to the job, and the recovery process was not all that it should have been. I'm not trying to point fingers so much as to acknowledge that was just an ugly, ugly event. As a hunter myself, I sense that risks were taken that needn't be. Another way to put it is that I'd expect more respect is typically given trying to take a trophy whitetail. As I said, just a waste. When I began my investigation into this phenomenon some four plus years ago, I'm certain that I leaned toward the pro-kill line of thinking. With all the study I've done and my own interactions now (no sighting), I am decidedly in the no-kill camp. To know that this creature--and its mates--suffered unnecessarily just saddens me. Not intended as a flame--as I said, what's done is done. I just think your story should be a message to all wanna-be "collectors" that their chance for success is extremely low. While their chance for getting someone killed is extremely high. But thanks for bravely putting your account out there. I hope others do see it for what it is--a cautionary tale.

To the best of my knowledge and belief & IMO/IIRC: The "shot" occurred at approximately 18:30 hours, within ~30 minutes of "sniper boy" getting into the tree (climber) stand. We heard it from the campsite (~3/4 mile away) and the shooter announced "I got it" over the 2-way radios most of us were carrying. By the time we arrived on the scene the "entity" had managed to crawl/stumble away as by virtue of the stomach contents and blood I recovered shortly afterwards, it had been gut shot instead of rear, through the upper thorax as the shooter initially thought. It had belly crawled up to the doe carcass and grasped it by the snout (you could clearly see the indentations caused by each finger, in it) just before the shooter fired however, it was likely rotated over ~90 degrees and pulling it back into the brush between the time the shooter lowered the NV googles and sighted through his (regular) scope. There was a second one standing ~30 yards away next to the dim road but for some unexplained reason, the shooter didn't take that one. After we got all the GCBRO/BFRO people away from the deer carcass area (they did manage to stomp out most of the evidence of the entity's ingress/egress) and secured a coleman lantern, we managed to locate the trail ~20 yards into the brush and within another ~40 yards, I began to locate/recover the blood and stomach content samples. We approached a fresh blowdown (still had the leaves in it's top) of ~35-40' in original height and heard a low growl emanate from it and I began to flank it from the starboard side, getting down into the creek bed that was meandering through the timber. I noticed the distinct hand print impression in the clay of the opposite bank where it had obviously stumbled and caught itself when getting down just ahead of me. As I was just at the point of clearing the right flank is when we heard two others coming in toward our position, one from the right (behind me) and the other from the opposite side. At that point two of the guys were positioned facing those directions with instructions to shoot anything that broke cover. At that point is when the rush (likes of which never previously experienced) came on as I suspect feelings of what we were dealing with and my own mortality came into keen focus. A few seconds later, the wounded one broke from the blowdown and I swung the shotgun in a level path at it's head and fired just as I cleared a large (~36" diameter) pin oak tree. At the blast, the two entities approaching stopped and retreated with the hunt organizer immediately getting on the radio ordering us (the six that went in to get it) out of the thicket as some of the GCBRO/BFRO people started to get excited and with them being armed and some inebriated, he probably felt it prudent to do so and in hindsight I'd agree and it was a miracle no one was accidentally shot that weekend. We set up a perimeter as the hunt organizer said "it" was likely dying and wanted to wait until daylight to go back in for the extraction. A short time later is when an observer on the rise north of us in a 12' tower stand with TI binos came on the radio that something was walking, falling and walking out of the thicket, headed in his general direction. A group of people rushed up to that area but the guy's TI failed (batteries) a few minutes later and contact was lost. A couple of the BFRO guys had been playing with it the evening before and failed to put fresh batteries in it. We maintained the perimeter and a while later is when the moaning, wailing, crying sounds began and were a ways distant from the exit path of the wounded one. I suspect it was one of the two that had attempted to come in to it's aid and defense when we had originally went into the thicket. BTW, it was later determined (after daylight) that I had fired several feet over the top of the entity as the creek bed meandered beside and behind the pin oak I was using as a reference point with it bailing off into the creek bed on the opposite side of the tree. A few days later, the hunt organizer found another patch of blood within 75 yards of where the guy with the TI was positioned and a bit past his position. He allegedly sent a sample off for analysis and the "official" version was it came back "unknown primate" with his immediate demands for our samples. Our group of three had agreed we were going to keep them as the hunt organizer had publically stated earlier, we could. I made contact with Dr. Meldrum and he referred me to Dr. Fahrenbach to whom I was going to overnight the samples to him with the stipulation he could do whatever he wanted with them as all we wanted to know was...what was this. That's when I learned one of our group had secretly returned the samples I recovered to the hunt organizer. We still don't speak to each other. ~14 months later, during the "cookout" event in Oklahoma is when the aggressive behavior was experienced.

Personally, I felt profound sadness when I read that post. Not sure how Sniper lives with himself.

Gotta Know, indeed it was hard to read. And Yuchi1 I can tell from your tone in relating the account that you are not all that proud of the way things went down. I can also understand better your soul searching after the fact that brought you into the no-kill camp. You may be different today had you and the team been successful? Just the sense of wonderment and awe of being able to see the creature up close and delivering the body to science would have changed everything although deep down you may have still harbored regrets. Thankfully you seem the type of person that would. Needless to say it was a sad tale. Gotta Know is right on point as is anyone else in saying that there are "ugly realities" in this pursuit. People have said it many times here that so much needs to be in place far ahead of trying to bring one of these creatures in. One being the knowledge that history has showed that Sasquatch can take a bullet and get away even if it dies later. And that's almost too harsh of a thing to say. Tough critter. Very tough critter. It actually makes me wonder how the party got out of that situation alive. I also wonder what the shooter is thinking today. I think such an event would change anyone. It's still unfathomable to me that there is this very large, very strong, bipedal creature out there. Heck of an account, thank you. I plussed you for again having the courage in relating it

I really don't know the answer to that question as asked. I can say that they do often bed under limestone/sandstone overhangs along creeks and rivers. Generally the floors below the overhangs are flattened and smoothed by old floods and previous water levels. When used as bedding areas by BF, they usually make a "mattress" of straw, leaves or, in one case I know of, cornstalks. Those cornstalks were pulled up in large bundles when the corn was in the "roasting ear" stage by two different BF on one trip to a cornfield, and carried over a mile to to the bedding area. The corn was eaten under the overhang, the cobs broken off the husks and apparently thrown into the large creek, and the stalks and husks used as the mattress. (As most field investigators have concluded, BF are "neatness freaks". In this case, all the soil was gone from the roots of the stalks - maybe just from their transport through the bottom land's thickets - and the stalks aligned so that the roots were against the back sidewall of the overhang.) Several other documented cases of BF using those overhangs for bedding spots in AL, northern Arkansas, and West Virginia. I would think that to a BF, overhang ledges with a very good view of the stream and its valley, plus the security of not being seen from above, would be much more appealing than bedding in a cave. In the previous post I mentioned "a huge limestone mine" in north AR. That limestone was mined in layers using heavy equipment and explosives. It was mined in a "checker board" pattern, leaving square support columns and straight line "roads" in between the piers in two directions. Each layer mined was, as best I remember, about 20' thick. When the crew were well into the second layer, and after the large, heavily laden truck had been using one of the inside roads a long time, the rear wheels under one side of a truck broke through the limestone floor into a large cave. Mining shut down, the load from the truck, and then the truck itself was removed, and the deep cave could be seen with lights. The geologist in charge contacted a state university, and an experienced team of "spelunkers" went down to map the cave. The cave was so long, with so many forks and drop-off they didn't find but one end of it. In the far reaches of the cave they did discover the remains of a Native American male and his hunting tools, all near the skeletal remains of a raccoon. Maybe BF just isn't cut out to be a spelunker. I've been in several caves in several states, but you can bet your boots I never went past more than one fork. All I was looking for was BF sign. I suppose everyone has seen and read this report. http://www.bfro.net/news/arizona_cave.asp

You have to consider human activity cycles as well. If a Squatch knocks a tree over in the forest and no one is there to see it, is there a sighting? The cycles are a combination of human and Squatch variables.

Then you're not paying attention.

It's because everyone who has been involved very long knows that stuff was not enough to be proof back in the day and it sure isn't proof today. I found 2 tracks last summer. One was a partial and not real clear but it was obvious enough in person what made it. I looked at it, decided it wasn't even good enough to photograph, so I walked away. In 1970 who, looking for bigfoot, would have done that with a bigfoot track? The other one was better, obviously 5 longer, bare toes and no claws, but it was on a steep angle, not castable, and not real great. I took a couple pictures, then the hornets got kind of thick so I left. Must have smelled food in my pack. I think a lot of people are finding a lot of evidence, it just doesn't have the "wow" 'cause the scoftics are winning. There's no point in bringing forward something short of absolute proof, if you do, you're going to get trashed. So .. don't. MIB

I would say that they have provide necessary jadedness. I stumbled onto the BFF quite late when I began looking into this topic and first found a few sites that laid out who all the interested parties were in Big-money-foot.com, and provided documented instances of some of these people faking photos, wood knocks, tracks, stone-throwing, and even the supposed finding of bodies. The traveling snake-oil salesmen of yore would be proud of their efforts to make bigfoot into a profit center. Yep. In addition to my database, I have a list of "researchers" who are reported to have been caught knowingly and purposefully hoaxing and known hoaxes. I use that information as a factor in evaluating the credibility of reports in my database - if the "researcher" is rotten one time, it's hard to trust anything from that researcher any other time. Also, if a series of reports just happen to occur in the vicinity of a known hoax, they may be tainted as well. However, that is something that each individual has to do on their own as there is no Better Bigfoot Bureau that objectively certifies researchers or reports. Agreed. Although passions can occasionally run high and sharp elbows get thrown, this place is pretty good at doing neutral, none-outcome-based, analysis. And to tie back to my comment above, this is why everyone has to have their own reference point for what researchers and evidence that they trust or don't trust. Assuming that you're describing a case where objective truth can't be known with certainty (i.e., you're the witness who has the evidence and knows the certainty of it's validity), people can legitimately disagree on whether something should or should not be accepted as valid evidence w/o either of them being wrong or mule-headed. One reasonable man sees it one way, another reasonable man sees it another. And to be fair, absent strong evidence that something is in fact a hoax or bad ID, then declaring something a conclusive hoax should be almost as rare as calling something conclusive evidence of bigfoot.

I would almost agree. Almost. A few years ago I had a single knock that I think was meant for **me**. I can't tell the whole story, context requires dropping some names ... and I won't. I was on an 4-wheeled "walk-about", hunting, fishing, exploring, and I'd camped along side a logging road in a very remote location. The knock came about 7:30 - 7:45 am when I was packing to leave. I'm pretty sure, given everything that'd happened, and the history of the location, that I'd had a sentry overnight, maybe both keeping an eye ON me and keeping an eye OVER me ... telling me it was leaving and from that point, I was on my own. MIB

Don't let it freak you out too much. I think respect and caution ("as if they're a primitive tribe with different values, ethics, etc") in your assumptions will take you a long way without much danger. Proceed slowly and be willing to back out if things start to seem over your head. Save being an idiot and pushing forward despite the warnings for me. I don't know if it is relevant, but one of my plans is, if things get too crazy, to just sit down. From sitting you can't flee and you can't attack. It shows a willingness to accept the situation as-is. MIB

That myth and legend was real.