Sasquatch Kills Hunter?

[Guest OntarioSquatch]

June 20, 1829: Okefenokee Swamp, Georgia. A team of hunters set out in an attempt to track down and kill a Bigfoot in the swamp. After tracking for two weeks, they were set upon by the Bigfoot one night. The men opened up with all their guns, but it seemed useless. Five of the men were killed by the Bigfoot, who then tore all of the men’s heads off. The surviving men opened up on the Bigfoot, finally killing it. Reported by Augusta Chronicle, March 12, 2000 – “Hunters Told of Swamp Creature’s Attack.â€

^From the bigfoot stories thread

[Guest Chefsquared]

Excellent Coonbo...can't wait to hear your insight!!!! Thank you,,,,wanted to hear from the horse's mouth

[Guest BFSleuth]

Well, this will be closer to the horse's mouth. If the guide himself would step forward...

... hopefully Coonbo may have some possible corroborating information. Stay tuned till Monday.

[VAfooter]

Welcome to the board Coonbo!

It concerns me that there seems to be no media online accounts of this. In a day where everything is online, I find this somewhat problematic. Looks like there should be some mention of it somewhere on the net.

This list shows only two fatalities in CO from bears since 1980.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_bear_attacks_in_North_America

Edited June 16, 2012 by VAfooter

[Guest]

Coonbo, thank you for logging on here and giving us more information. I really enjoy all bf reports even the ones I have doubts about and can't wait till monday to hear what else you have come up with.

[bipedalist]

June 20, 1829: Okefenokee Swamp, Georgia. A team of hunters set out in an attempt to track down and kill a Bigfoot in the swamp. After tracking for two weeks, they were set upon by the Bigfoot one night. The men opened up with all their guns, but it seemed useless. Five of the men were killed by the Bigfoot, who then tore all of the men’s heads off. The surviving men opened up on the Bigfoot, finally killing it. Reported by Augusta Chronicle, March 12, 2000 – “Hunters Told of Swamp Creature’s Attack.â€

^From the bigfoot stories thread

And, http://www.skunkapefiles.com/1800.html

Edited June 16, 2012 by bipedalist

[Guest Transformer]

It made the papers so it must have made the long list of authorities that need to sign off on these types of things. Police, Fish and Game, pathologist, Coroner. That's one big long list of long trails of paper. What about the families of the victims? They are surely not going to be sastisfied with a quick brush-off. I think this tale is just like all the other tales of its type. It is a tall tale.

[Guest Coonbo]

Excellent Coonbo...can't wait to hear your insight!!!! Thank you,,,,wanted to hear from the horse's mouth

Ok, now remember that my investigation of this happened way back around Easter of 1988. That's 24 years ago and I don't remember some of the exact details. I used to keep a log book of my investigations back then, but that log book disappeared during the time that I divorced and moved several times during the late 90's/early 2000's.

Here's the lead in: When I worked for a large NASA and Department of Defense contractor, I worked with a couple of other guys that had had encounters with BF. One of the guys was also one of my hunting buddies and he had family in New Mexico and friends in Colorado - and I'll call him Bob. The other guy was on TDY (Temporary Duty) with me for several months at White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) - and I'll call him Carl. Carl and I had been investigating sightings around central NM in our spare time and had encountered BF on the Mescalero/White Mountain Apache Indian Reservation east of WSMR and had even had one pretty harrowing rock throwing experience there.

Bob and I had hunted elk and mule deer in the Rio Grand National Forest, northwest of Alamosa, CO, a few years earlier and we were planning on hunting them again that fall. One of his friends in CO had a friend that was attending classes at one of the gunsmithing schools in CO and this friend-of-a-friend guided hunters in the fall. Bob had talked to him on the phone a few times and then Bob and I talked and it was decided that I would take an extra day or two off on Easter weekend and drive up to CO from WSMR and meet him in Alamosa - about a six and a half to seven hour drive. Then we would drive up into the mountains and he would show me the areas he proposed for us to hunt that fall. Some places were better for mule deer and some places were better for elk. At the end of our conversation, Bob told me to ask the "guide" about his experience with BF a few years earlier - that he had quite a story that he had heard from his and the "guide's" mutual friend.

On Good Friday, I drove to Alamosa and met the "guide" - and I'll call him Mike. That night, over supper, I told him that I investigated BF sightings and encounters and that Bob had told me that he had had an encounter and I asked him to tell me about it. Mike clammed up and said he didn't want to talk about it. I pulled out my log book and opened it up in front of him and let him look over a few of my reports so that he could see that I was legit. Now, keep in mind that I was only 32 years old at that time and Mike was only around 24 to 26 y/o, and he was still in college, so you've got to apply the term "guide" to him very loosely - and I found that out for sure later that fall. And at that point in my life, neither I nor my friends could afford the services of a REAL professional guide service.

Anyway, at that point, he reluctantly started to slowly relate to me the story that I told on Blogtalk. As I showed serious interest in it, and showed no doubt, ridicule or criticism, and asked intelligent questions, he opened up more. The incident supposedly had happened 3 to 5 years earlier, and, if I remember correctly, I think it was supposed to have been in 1984, but I’ve forgotten for sure. Over the next two days, we rode around in my Blazer to different places that Mike had hunted in Rio Grande, Mineral, Archuleta, and Conejos Counties doing pre-season scouting. At one point we were on another fairly dim jeep trail/logging road and came into the downhill, southeast corner of a cutover (logged) area that was around 80 or so acres in size and was on the east slope of a mountain or foothill. The seedlings that had been replanted in there were around mid-chest to head high, a few taller, there were still brush and waste piles and lots of vegetation and weeds growing there, so I figured that area had been logged three to six years earlier (I'm not familiar with the re-growth rates of seedlings in that part of the country, so this is an educated guess). The cutover area was surrounded by fairly mature evergreen forest interspersed with areas of aspen - typical for that area. Mike said "this is where it happened." I don’t know which of those four counties we were in at that time.

A couple of details of what he told me come to mind. The hunter was using a bolt-action .270 Winchester. I don’t know the brand of rifle, so I can’t judge how prone it might have been to jamming. He said that the rifle itself didn’t jam on its own, but that the hunter, in a panic as the second BF was charging, short-stroked the bolt at least once and somehow ended up with a live cartridge with the point of the bullet jammed into the rear face of the breech, missing the chamber, and the case head wedged down into the magazine. He said that that was the condition the rifle was found in when they came back later. I personally know that can happen when someone is excited, because I’ve seen it personally, and it even happened to me once. It’s primarily caused by a lack of realistic practice with a weapon. Realistic practice develops “muscle memory†that goes a long way towards preventing human error of this type.

I asked him why he threw down his rifle when he ran. He said that he already knew that BF know when you have a weapon or not and that he didn’t want that charging BF to see him with a rifle and think that he had anything to do with shooting the other one. And he said plus he could run faster without it. That made sense to me then and it makes sense to me still. Plus he had to have been in his very early 20’s then, and that would have been a natural reaction.

As far as finding any BF evidence there, I didn’t see any, but I didn’t have time to look around much. Mike didn’t like being there and wouldn’t walk four feet away from the truck. The place had a “boogery†feel to it, but that could have just been my reaction to his story. His story didn’t change from the time he told me at supper Friday night to the time he showed me the place where it supposedly happened. He also said that the story was in the local papers as a bear attack. But, I thought at the time that a bear attack, and especially a death, would have hit most of the papers in the state, plus northern New Mexico.

We parted ways late Sunday afternoon and I spent the night in Alamosa. Next morning, I found the newspaper office there and tried to search their archives. They didn’t have ANYTHING computerized and there were no microfiches either, so it was paging through big bound volumes of old newspapers. I looked all through the papers for the fall of the year it was supposed to have happened, and I found at least one or two bear attacks and maulings, that might have been in that area, but I found no deaths due to bear attack in that south-central CO/north central NM area. Then I went to the Alamosa County Sheriff’s Office and tried to discreetly ask a few questions. One of the two guys in there said that he’d heard of some guy that was torn up pretty badly over around the Rio Grande National Forest somewhere a few years ago but he didn’t know about anybody being killed. Then he asked me why I wanted to know, and I told him that I was gonna hunt in there this fall and I didn’t want to hunt where there were killer bears. That got a good laugh out of them and I left.

Based on that lack of info, I didn’t give the story much credence. Later that fall when several of us got together and hunted in CO and Mike was supposed to be our guide, I believed it a lot less. We were each supposed to take turns having him guide us one-on-one for the whole day. His idea of guiding was to take one of us out early in the morning, show us where we were on a topo map and give us an idea of the lay of the land and then point and say “hunt that park over there†or “hunt that canyon down there†or “stalk around that grove of aspensâ€, or some such, then he’d disappear and go hunting for himself and you wouldn’t see him till you got back to camp after dark.

We each took turns coming back to camp after lunch and spending the afternoon helping him get supper together, chopping firewood, cleaning up, etc. On one of my days to be “camp monkey†I was hiking in and I heard rifle shots. It sounded like somebody target practicing. There was a big beaver pond just below the camp and when I got to camp, there was Mike up on top of a HUGE boulder that sat at the edge of the pond, shooting at trout in the pond with a .257 Weatherby Magnum. He killed or stunned about a dozen and a half nice trout with the hydrostatic shock from that rifle, and at the time I thought that that wasn’t really kosher doing what he did, but we ate like kings that night. I found out later that what he did was highly illegal. The best thing about that trip was that Mike was a fantastic cook and all meals were awesome. He kept a wonderful camp, but he didn’t know squat about being a good guide.

Bob and I tried to get some more specific info out of him about the supposed victim’s name, exactly where the incident happened, month and year for sure, and so on. Even though I’d been there, I couldn’t point to it on a topo map, and we’d ridden so many back roads, logging roads and jeep trails, that I didn’t even know what county the place was in. Mike was evasive and reluctant to talk any further about it. Based on that and my previous lack of findings in the Alamosa newspaper archives, I rated the incident “Improbable/Unlikely†in my log book. My BF’n buddy Carl always talked about probability of truth, and so to satisfy him, I gave it less than 10 or 15% probability of being true.

Now let’s fast forward to around 2000. My friend Jim “Bear†Grant was researching old news stories on the internet about “wild menâ€, “ape menâ€, “hairy menâ€, “boogersâ€, “yahoosâ€, and other such things that were probably referring to what we now call bigfoot or sasquatch. He came across a story in Antebellum 1800’s about a guy that specialized in hunting down escaped slaves. He was hired to hunt one down had tracked him into the Okefenokee Swamp area, if I remember correctly. Somewhere in there, they encountered a BF, somebody shot at it, it attacked them, several more opened fire on it, but it didn’t stop right then, and the first thing it did was yank off their heads. Bear then found other old stories, some of referenced here in this thread, where the same thing happened. It may have partially dismembered some of them further, but I can’t remember. Anyway, when I read that, I remembered Mike’s story, in CO. He said that the first thing the BF did to the hunter was yank off his head.

Where did Mike get that idea, if he didn’t see it happen? Remember, this was in the pre-internet days and I believe it was extremely unlikely that he had read one of those old newspaper stories somewhere in a book at that time. Did he just make it up and just happened to exactly describe the killing method supposedly employed by other BF? I don’t know….. This has had me scratching my head ever since then.

Also, back in the 1960’s, a family that lived just west of our farm had a harrowing incident with a BF. I went to school with their two sons, and graduated high school with the oldest one. They sent their two trained German Shepherd guard dogs after what they thought was a bear raiding their garbage cans. The bear stood up and they saw that it wasn’t a bear. My classmate described it as a “yetiâ€. We hadn’t heard the word “bigfoot†at that time, but National Geographic had just put out their first special about the “Abominable Snowman†or “yeti†a year or so earlier, so he used the only word he knew to describe it. Anyway, the BF grabbed the first Shepherd that arrived and twisted its head around backwards, snapping its neck and killing it instantly, then threw it on their roof. The second Shepherd, it grabbed and twisted it’s torso, snapping its spine and threw it into their side yard. It was found on the ground with the back half of its body pointed upwards. If the front legs were pointed down, the back legs were pointed up. I would say that the muscular/skeletal structure of a big German Shepherd’s head and neck is stronger than a human’s. That action would have probably beheaded a human. Very similar killing method that I had forgotten about until I read the old slave hunter story.

In addition, the method of hunting and herding the deer towards a hidden accomplice that Mike described the BF were doing matches what I've, years later, heard described by others, and it makes perfect sense. The fact the the deer were being herded or driven uphill in the morning perfectly matches the method that you would use to employ the rising morning thermals to take the herder's or driver's scent up to the deer, causing them to move uphill away from the driver (that's downhill), to where the accomplice was hidden (uphill) and HIS scent would be also taken uphill, but AWAY from the deer, allowing him to remain hidden.

Also, when I’ve since gone back and researched bear attack deaths in the US, there is a great difference in the numbers of deaths listed in different sources. And we all know that Wiki, and any other internet source, is NOT infallible. For instance see: http://en.wikipedia....n_North_America and then compare the numbers to: http://www.blackbear...-statistics.htm . And the list gets bigger with further digging. And I also know for a fact, from my years of working for the Government, that LOTS of things are either covered up completely or altered so much that there is no way of getting to the truth of some incidents.

So, to cut a really long story short, I’m not so sure that ol’ Mike was telling a bald-faced big one anymore. But, I’m SURE NOT going to submit it somewhere as a bonafide incident. I think it’s somewhat more likely that it happened, but I still categorize it as “Needs Much More Hard Evidence for Verificationâ€.

Edited June 19, 2012 by Coonbo

[Guest]

I had a Danish client short stroke a shell on a charging Black Bear and I shot it at mere feet. I can see that happening.

[bighunter43]

Wow that was awesome Coonbo!! I'm so glad you came on here! Would it be possible for you to elaborate on your experiences near/on the Mescalero Reservation in New Mexico! I've hunted the Lincoln National Forest for 11 years straight down there, and it looks like prime Bigfoot habitat!

[Guest Chefsquared]

Coonbo, thank you for taking the time to explain in more detail. That BTR show was great and enjoyed you and Bear on Outlaw Radio.. If that story is true, it would be remarkable. If not, it's still one hellava story. Have you been or wanted to get back to that area? If you or Bear are on anymore shows, could you inbox me here? You guys are always good for some good booger stories! Thanks Dave aka Chef...P.S. Get the Outlaw Radio going again...one of my favorites

[JDL]

Coonbo, I enjoyed your recounting, and respect your experience.

I'm interested, given your experience and knowledge base, what is your opinion regarding whether or not some bigfoot actually prey on humans?

This isn't a loaded question. When you're face to face with a bigfoot, your fate is more in its hands than your own. Though they did not, I've had some experiences that could have turned out badly.

[Guest MikeG]

I've plussed that, Coonbo, mainly on the grounds that you must have taken about 2 hours to type that post! Great effort......many thanks.

Mike

[Guest BFSleuth]

+1 from me Coonbo!

I asked him why he threw down his rifle when he ran. He said that he already knew that BF know when you have a weapon or not and that he didn’t want that charging BF to see him with a rifle and think that he had anything to do with shooting the other one.

Did he say how he knew that BF know when you have a weapon or not? What was his prior knowledge of BF and how did he gain it?

Over the next two days, we rode around in my Blazer to different places that Mike had hunted in Rio Grande, Mineral, Archuleta, and Conejos Counties doing pre-season scouting. At one point we were on another fairly dim jeep trail/logging road and came into the downhill, southeast corner of a cutover (logged) area that was around 80 or so acres in size and was on the east slope of a mountain or foothill. The seedlings that had been replanted in there were around mid-chest to head high, a few taller, there were still brush and waste piles and lots of vegetation and weeds growing there, so I figured that area had been logged three to six years earlier (I'm not familiar with the re-growth rates of seedlings in that part of the country, so this is an educated guess). The cutover area was surrounded by fairly mature evergreen forest interspersed with areas of aspen - typical for that area. Mike said "this is where it happened." I don’t know which of those four counties we were in at that time.

We parted ways late Sunday afternoon and I spent the night in Alamosa. Next morning, I found the newspaper office there and tried to search their archives. They didn’t have ANYTHING computerized and there were no microfiches either, so it was paging through big bound volumes of old newspapers. I looked all through the papers for the fall of the year it was supposed to have happened, and I found at least one or two bear attacks and maulings, that might have been in that area, but I found no deaths due to bear attack in that south-central CO/north central NM area. Then I went to the Alamosa County Sheriff’s Office and tried to discreetly ask a few questions. One of the two guys in there said that he’d heard of some guy that was torn up pretty badly over around the Rio Grande National Forest somewhere a few years ago but he didn’t know about anybody being killed. Then he asked me why I wanted to know, and I told him that I was gonna hunt in there this fall and I didn’t want to hunt where there were killer bears. That got a good laugh out of them and I left.

If I recall from your blogtalk the guide mentioned that it was reported "in the local paper" or you mentioned that you remembered reading about it. It seems that if this event really happened that it would more likely than not have been reported in at least one paper. You tried Alamosa, but given the areas you scouted there are several other papers to research.

[Incorrigible1]

Excellent recounting, Coonbo. Thank you. I can tell you the rifle that short stroked the loaded cartridge wasn't a true Mauser action, such as a pre '64 Winchester 70.

The reason is Mauser rifles were designed for combat, the 1898 Mauser considered the finest bolt action rifle of all times. The US 1903 Springfield is a direct descendent. Edit: And in dire emergencies, it's a common, human mistake to short stroke that action. Paul Mauser took that into account, and produced a rifle action that remedied the issue.

Again, kudos for a well told posting. My gratitude.

Edited June 19, 2012 by Incorrigible1