"I Was Prepared for Hunting, Not for This"

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Either you're listening to the Big Fort
Society podcast and I'm Jeremiah Byron. Every

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week I talk to individuals who have
experienced Sasquatch in some way or another,

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so you won't want to miss an
episode. Make sure you're subscribed on the

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platform that you're listening to, and
share this episode where a friend does not

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cost a thing, and it helps
the show continue to grow. If you'd

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like to hear Bigfoot Society episodes early
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by becoming a Patreon supporter or a
YouTube channel member. Links to those are

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in the show notes in Bigfoot Society. I've taken far too much of your

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time so far, so let's get
on with the show. Over the last

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few weeks, I've been receiving emails
from a gentleman named Randy, and Randy

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is all I'm going to share regarding
his name. I'll start reading the emails

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that I've been receiving. This is
an extremely long, ongoing story that I

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have started to share twice now and
have had to stop for one reason or

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another. When I try to discuss
it with pretty much anyone except my wife

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and the members that were involved.
Some type of odd panics starts setting in,

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and that's a feeling. I'm just
not accustomed to being an ex retired

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SSgt from the one hundred and first
Airborne Special Forces Black Ops Sniper recon At

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any rate, I will give it
a shot. However, I'm not going

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to spend two hours writing this story
until I hear back from you personally and

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that you are interested in doing a
program on this topic. I swore to

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my best friend that not a word
of this would come out during his lifetime.

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Unfortunately we lost him back in April
of twenty twenty two, so it's

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time and it just keeps bothering me, the nightmares, etc. I sometimes

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feel like once you see these things, they can now see you whenever,

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wherever. It's very unlikely, but
it's just odd sometimes. And every summer

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my friend and I and a few
others camp on and off way up in

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northern Maine, about an hour and
a half north of Moosehead Lake. Come

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each fall, we are up there
early camping and getting set up for the

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hunting season. And to be continued
if you reply next email, thank you,

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Jeremi. I have not shared this
full story anywhere. I did touch

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on it and send the first half
to a site. It may have been

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called learn to hunt, or perhaps
how to hunt, something of that nature.

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He wrote back and wanted to hear
more, but again, my friend

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was still alive and therefore I was
not at liberty to disclose much information.

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Okay, so I believe I told
you the background of what we did.

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You see, the three of us
always went up north an extra week before

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hunting season to set up base camp, which was no small feat considering sometimes

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would have more than a dozen hunters
come up to camp during the week of

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hunting. Along with our many responsibilities
of setting up base camp was scouting.

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Of course, this was done all
year long, but during the week prior

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to hunt week we picked up our
scouting routine. Every morning before dawn,

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we were somewhere deep in the North
main Woods preparing to enter at the crack

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of dawn, same routine, every
dark, icy morning. My friend would

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be fumbling under his four x four
jeepsya for his thermos of hot coffee,

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while I'd be loading bullets reputlessly back
into my three to eight clips. And

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it would begin. He would say
something like, I don't know why you

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bother bringing that right now, we're
not hunting, We're scouting. And I

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would then answer him with a blank
stare and say something like because I don't

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want to be friggin' eaten. He
was my best friend in the entire world.

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I worked with him too as his
partner assistant installing flooring, so I

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spent way more time with him than
I did my own wife. This story

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may be running on. Please stop
me if so, I can get directly

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to the point and I apologize.
I'll wait to hear back from you again.

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I apologize from Randy. A few
days later. There is another email,

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so Jeremiah. On Wednesday morning,
I was up off Silver Road about

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a mile and a half down at
the end of a logging road, just

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checking scrapes, tracks, etc.
While my friend had gone across the road

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and hiked up three Bear Mountain.
We had plans to meet down on Golden

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Road before going back to camp that
evening. Now, where I was tracking

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a very large buck. It led
me down into an old growth forest,

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pretty much the only one I'm aware
of up in this area, as northern

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Maine is very much logged and harvested
year round. As a matter of fact,

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most all of northern Maine is owned
by logging companies. That's why we

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have to buy daily gate passes to
enter the northernmost forests. Another interesting fact,

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there's little to no snow plowing law
enforcement besides an occasional game warden food

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or in fact fuel, so planning
ahead is necessary. The nearest s door

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is about a two and a half
hour drive away. Any flats and you

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get a lot from rough roads.
We have to fix them ourselves. So

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as I'm following this monster bucks tracks, I see something baffling. A bare

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footprint, a large bear footprint.
The way the weather cycles up here,

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there's no way that print could have
been there in deep This person was heavy.

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Now, I've heard a bigfoot many
times, but growing up in the

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country hunting my entire life, serving
in the US Special Forces as a black

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op in many theaters, I did
not allow for such foolishness. But what

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was this? I estimated this print
at around nineteen inches. It was located

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about four inches from the side of
the creek. When I stompd with all

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my night might, I could not
make a quarter of an in indentation.

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Yet this track was two and a
half inches deep in this hard ground.

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So this guy weighs well over seven
hundred pounds. I'm thinking something is not

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right, and I had no camera
or phone, nothing, So I took

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out my two way radio and called
my friend to see if he could come

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pick me up, even though I
knew we had to be seven to or

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five miles apart at the time.
To my surprise, he immediately answered,

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in his typical sarcastic way. What
I told him he needed to come back

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at these tracks I'd found, and
gave him approximate coordinates. He told me

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he'd seen in twenty minutes, he'd
see me in twenty minutes. So I

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sat down to take a break,
and not even five minutes went by,

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and it seemed like my friend was
throwing small rocks at me. So I

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kept yelling out into the bush,
that was a pretty good time you run

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up here, and no response.
Few minutes later, another stone was heard

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ricocheting off branches near me. I
screamed, cut the crap, but hoole

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or I shoot your butt. Yeah, I edited that it's kind of a

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family show. I thought I heard
a growl, so I got seriously concerned

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when I spotted my friend coming up
over the embankment. That was another ridge

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away from me, at about half
a mile away. Randy writes, I'll

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continue later, I need to pick
my wife up. I had to wait

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another few days, and then I
got the next email again. So I

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was sitting on half rotted tree stump
with my three to Z eight rifle between

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my knees. After the second rock
came winging by me and I heard it

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coming hitting leaves and whatever else it
may have hit on its way past me.

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And after I threatened to shoot what
I thought was my friend if you

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didn't knock it off, And immediately
after I looked slightly to my right and

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now spotted my friend cresting the hill
about half a mile from me. I

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immediately fell wave of heat. I
felt like my blood started boiling or something.

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I've since been told that it was
probably the start of a panic attack,

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although even through dozens of major combat
situations, I'd never had a reaction

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quite like how this felt. But
I did upon spotting my friend just a

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bit after hearing this deep, reverberating
growl, realizing all at once that I

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probably just screamed at what I presumed
was a seven hundred pound sasquatch, I

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asked imate it that weight. After
viewing the footprint, but before seeing the

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animal, I slowly stood up,
but felt like I was going to pass

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out, so I planted the stock
of my rifle into the moss patch next

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to the stump and held the barrel
balanced myself, taking my first couple steps

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into my friend's direction, using my
rifle like it was a five hundred dollars

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dangerous cane. I heard a tree, or at least a three inch limb,

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snapped just out of view, but
within thirty to forty years yards of

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where I was standing, just out
of view in a bunch of thickets,

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where the swamp started and the high
bush blueberries would have been a few months

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ago. I immediately came out of
this temporary panic mode I had been in,

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and swung around with my rifle coming
up toward my shoulder, when all

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at once, my friend touched off
his old savage rifle. All this all

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at once in the same five seconds. That's what is so confusing. It

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seemed to me that my friend could
never be where he was that fast.

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It should have taken twenty to thirty
minutes to get down off the ridge.

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I'd seen him come over and head
down, then cross a small brook,

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then up the other ridge that I
was on the lower side of, down

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by the beginning the swamp. The
reason I started turning and raising my rifle

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was not the snapping tree that was
and did fall but misbe my fifteen or

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twenty feet No, it was that
demonic screaming this thing started, and the

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eruption of branches, bushes and debris
flying as a beast over nine and a

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half feet flew out towards me.
I have no real idea if I could

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have got a shot off in time
had my friend not been there. I

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had no real idea if this sasquatch
was just bluff charging to intimidate a hunter

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that was way too close to his
home. Because my friend was there and

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when he'd seen this thing just a
minute or two before myself, he immediately

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fired one shot into his forehead,
and as it stumbled, he buried one

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more shot into his chest. The
ground noticeably shook when this beast hit the

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ground only about eight feet from me. My friend came fast walking toward the

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two of us as it took a
knee as I took a knee beside this

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huge animal, and I nudged it
several times with my rifle no response.

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I tried rolling it over but could
not. As my friend got there,

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he told me to get back from
it. He wanted to put one more

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into the back of its head,
just to make sure it was both not

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a threat but also was not suffering. I told him I'd seen the hair

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in a chunk of flesh fly from
its center mass, just under the left

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pectoral muscle. I asked him to
help me roll him over, and after

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much struggling and maneuvering his massive arms
and legs, we managed to turn him

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over. To a horrible sight.
I hadn't realized the first shot had hit

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him just above the right eye,
and he had bled quite a blot before

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dying. His eyes were wide open
and huge, oddly wide apart. I

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noticed this immediately. There's an immense
amount of tension we were both experiencing,

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and the smell that was coming off
of this dead beast was as if it

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had been dead for weeks before.
Now, all of a sudden, we

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heard two loud, sharp, distinct
knocks. I stopped breathing for a moment,

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gathered up my stuff on the ground, fast in rifle, turned to

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my friend and yelled run as I
had already started heading up the first ridge.

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Now you have to understand my friend
and I, we are not exactly

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athletic types nor runners, yet at
this point we did a fair job at

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it, so we thought. By
the time I was almost to the top

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of the second ridge, I didn't
have much more run in me. My

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friend had passed me going up this
ridge as he hit the top, and

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I yelled to him that I was
done running, so I stopped, and

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as I slowly climbed the rest of
the ridge, I was checking the clip

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in my rifle as well as my
backup. My friend met me as I

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topped the ridge, and we discussed
if we should stay here and have the

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higher ground if more of them came
for us, or should we keep heading

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to the jeep as fast as possible. I told him high ground won't mean

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anything if they came for us,
especially more than one. He said something

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like, it's only about a mile
if we cut through somewhere. I don't

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remember exactly what he said then,
because we heard a loud, long,

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mournful howl call from what could be
nothing but another sasquatch, and we started

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running again like track stars. The
scariest part of the entire event was the

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last quarest mile across this old cutting
area in landing. This is full of

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small stumps left over, short pieces
of logs, and brush, with about

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two and a half feet of crabgrass
growing up covering all that junk, so

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if you're not extremely careful, you
could easily turn an ankle or worse.

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We made it to the jeep,
covered with sweat and about as anxious as

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a man could be. As my
friend fired up the jeep and started throwing

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mud, dirt and rocks, I
heard another scream off to the right side

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of the Tote road, about fifty
yards away outbound two more sasquatch, one

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large what I believed to be a
female, the other another large male.

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As we tore it out of there
and headed back down Golden Road towards camp,

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my friend asked if I thought these
creatures could track us somehow and find

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us at camp, or if we
left camp, could they track us over

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two hundred miles to down home.
I remember telling him I'm no bigfoot,

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whisper or nothing, and don't really
know all these things, but I sure

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would be a lot more comfortable packing
up and heading out of camp like asap

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tonight. We did exactly that.
Sadly, I never went hunting that season.

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As a matter of fact, I
stopped hunting, I stopped camping,

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I stopped going up north. I
soon got very sick with stage four cancer.

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Survived, but I caught sepsis and
some other nasty stuff that kept me

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down several years. My best buddy
was the only friend that would drive out

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of states to the hospital they had
me in. By the way, we

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swore that as long as we both
were breathing, no one would hear about

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that last trip up into the North
main Woods. God speed, my friend.

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And that's the email I got from
Randy. It's very interesting, and

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I'm sure listeners have a lot of
different thoughts or opinions about this. You're

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welcome to leave them in the comments. If you have any questions for Randy,

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leave those in the comments as well, or email me at Bigfoot Society

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at gmail dot com. It's hard
for Randy to talk right now because of

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what he's been through stage four throat
cancer. I believe there is a chance

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he might be able to come on
for a short period of time, So

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if you have any questions about what
Randy and his friend experienced that time up

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in the Northern main Woods and there
are dealings with the Sasquatch and dispatching of

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it. You're welcome to contact me
Bigfoot Society at gmail dot com or leave

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your question in the comments if you
have any interactions with a Bigfoot, any

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stories you would like to share that
you would love for me to read on

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the podcast. I would love to
be the one that shares way you've experienced

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on the podcast. You can email
me directly, as it says in the

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outro Bigfoot Society at gmail dot com. Please include if you would like me

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to read this on the podcast,
that you give me permission to do so,

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and what name you would like me
to use for yourself as well if

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it's an alias or first name only. That allows me to not have to

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go back and forth in an email
chain with you and I appreciate you all

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listening. Have a great day.
I know a lot of you listen at

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00:17:00.799 --> 00:17:04.839
night. Make sure you're subscribed,
and please share this with your friends.

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Thank you. Here at Bigfoot Society, our goal is to provide a platform

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for those that have encountered Bigfoot to
share their encounter and a safe and respected

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environment. But We need to hear
your story. If you've experienced something that

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you just can explain, please send
me an email at Bigfoot Society at gmail

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dot com. Then we can start
the conversation. And I know a lot

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of you have not shared your encounter
at all. It's been twenty years and

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it's time that you get this off
your chest and then you can get some

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well deserved for rest, because I
know you haven't been sleeping. I understand

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what you're going through, and I
appreciate every one of you listening