In 1994 or 95, I was still living in Minnesota. The eastern portion of the state is thickly forested, and where I grew up was no exception. The underbrush can be very difficult to get through, let alone see into. The summer leaves make for ideal cover.
I went bear hunting with a friend of mine that late summer/ early fall. Bear baiting is legal and an accepted practice there, at least it was. You could go to most grocery stores and bakeries and get a pickup load of food for free. You had to check back almost everyday, most hunters would be looking also. Sweets made for the best bait pile. We would just throw it on the ground at likely places. Some scouting beforehand would be ideal, of course.
We had one bait pile hit out of three, I believe. A bear will absolutely destroy the bait. It looks like a small tornado has gone through, lol. My friend was going to sit in his tree stand above the bait pile, and we decided to set out “honey burners” to attempt to attract the bear. To make a honey burner, we took two coffe cans. A 5lb and a 1lb sounds right, but I don’t drink coffee, so my memory may be fuzzy. (It’s actually quite fuzzy from time to time.) we drilled 4 holes in the 5lb can to put a couple metal rods through to hold the 1lb can up from the bottom of the other can far enough to put a can of lit sterno under it. We then poured honey into the 1lb and wired the contraption to a tree. We each had a burner set up and we were about 200 yards apart. The smell of the honey was thick, as there was only a slight breeze. I only had a burner going. No bait pile. We could not see each other at all.
I sat in my portable tree stand for a few hours, and along about dusk, something in the brush behind the burner started to growl at me. Deep, guttural grows. The growls were loud. I thought there was a bear back there, naturally, I was bear hunting, what else could it be? Lol. Those growls were quickly turning into a underwear changing moment for me. Then a tree in the background started to shake. Like, whip back and forth like nothing I had ever saw before. The top of the quaking aspen, (pople in Minnesotan) was somewhere around 15 feet off the ground, and the very top was shaking so fast. I don’t even know how to describe it. The growls intensified dramatically. I switched the safety of my .270 off. Then it just quit. The silence was deafening.
The 200 yard walk to my friend was long, I tell ya. When I got there, we walked out together. It was almost completely dark by then. I never returned to that spot after I retrieved my stand the next day.
I never considered this a Sasquatch encounter. I hadn’t even heard of tree shakes being a thing until about 8 years ago. When I heard about Sasquatch shaking trees, I instantly remembered this experience. At that time, I thought the PNW was the only place Bigfoot lived. Had I known then, I could’ve looked for tracks. I could’ve looked for bear tracks too, but those growls made me not want to know. So, I have no clue if this was an encounter or not. And I’m still just as happy to not know.