Iowa Bluff Charge!

0:00 Welcome to Big for Society. If you have Bigfoot activity to report from the same areas discussed in this episode, please reach out to me directly after this episode. And if you'd like to be on the podcast to discuss a personal Bigfoot encounter, please reach out to me directly at Bigfoot Society at gmail dot com. Do you wish there was more Big For Society to listen to you every week? Well there is now. If you become a supporting member over at Patreon, you get a special members only episode every single week on Wednesdays, and sometimes even more episodes. Head on over to patreon dot com. Forward slash the Big for Society and now let's get on with the show. All right, Big Fort Society. We've got the privilege of talking to Nick today. Nick is an outdoorsman from up in Alamackee County in Iowa, northeastern Iowa, and some of you might be familiar about that county.

0:53 In recent episodes it got brought up, and it's also the area where a Yellow River State Forest is a lot of you might be familiar of that. But Nick, thank you for coming on the show. How's it going tonight? Oh, not too bad. It's a windy, nasty day up here, but it's been pretty good so far. Oh man, it's roughly we're in west of West of Moines and it's forty mile per hour winds down here. It's wild. Yeah, it's been howling all day or two. Feels like the roof is going to get blown off, so hopefully that doesn't happen. But yeah, that's part of living in Iowa. Right, Yeah, that's for sure exactly. You had reached out to me through email, I think quite a while ago, and then you'd reached out again after a certain episode you heard recently. Correct.

1:46 Yes, yeah, here I saw. I listened to the Amakithni, Iowa episode recently, and I yeah, pretty much. I had to send a set up an interview because it's because I've had any experience at one of the places that he mentioned, not really very iffy one, but and I had one when I was younger that was really blatant and I've shared it before, but I think people should hear it because it's pretty wild. Yeah, absolutely, Nick, I'm going to go ahead and feel free to take us back to where you were when that occurred and what we need to know, and you can take us right into it.

2:27 Okay, So I live in Lansing, Iowa. It's right down the Mississippi River, about eleven miles south of the Minnesota border, about ten ten or twelve miles from Yellow River State Forest. And my encounter happened. It was I was ninth ninth grader, a freshman in high school, and I'm thirty seven now, so it's over twenty years ago now. But so it was around September first, somewhere in there, right around the opening of a small game seasons girl season, and my friend or two of my friends and myself decided to go squirrel hunting and we went to this there's a shooting range that's about three or four miles south Lancing, and so we were we went out and parked at the spot, and it's the driveway that we parked had is right next to the shooting range. And we walked out the valley south about a few hundred yards and then started walking up the hill. And we got halfway up the hill or something like that, we're in this little clearing and there's a like a ravine right next to us, like a waterway basically, and all of a sudden, something came crashing down the hill towards us, and it stopped at the edge of the tree line, and it then proceeded to basically beat on its chest and screeched like a chimpanzee, and it just it absolutely scared every

3:58 living crap out of us. And I remember thinking, what is that? And so I was like, follow me, And we ran down into this ditch and kind of buy a tree and stood back to back with our squirrel rifles and waited for this thing to just watching, waiting for this thing to attack us. It was so loud that you could hear, you could feel the percussion of it beating on its chest, and it was like just it sounded massive. It sounded like a cow crashing through a cornfield. That's how I would portray it. And I honestly don't remember leaving the woods that day. I just remember this moment of just pure terror. What is this thing?

4:39 I've never I've been I spent a lot of time in the woods over the years, squirrel hunting and deer hunting and stuff like that, and hiking, and I've never heard anything like that in the woods around here. And people said, oh, maybe it was a rough grouse, and I was like, I know what a grouse sounds like. I know exactly what a grouse sounds like. It sounds like an old tractor starting up. This was nothing like that. This thing was just screeching like a chimpanzee, but a little bit deeper in tone maybe, if anything. And like I've talked to one of the other guys recently that he doesn't even remember it. But I was at a party with the other friend and I said to him, do you remember that time we went squirrel on taking?

5:22 He's yeah, what was that? And I said it had to be a big foot. I don't know what else they could have been. I mean, there's no no stories of escape chimpanzee. There's no rich people with exotic pets around here. They're they're definitely here. Oh yeah, I had no question, no question at all. Oh man, that is it's super intense. How long was it making that sound for? Would you say, I don't. Know, maybe a minute or two. And like the I remember the woods being really quiet that day, Like I don't remember hearing any birds or we didn't see any squirrels or anything like that, And like we were in the woods for very long at all. We were maybe there the most ten minutes. It was like a kind of a beautiful sunny day in the fall, and the leaves are like just yellowing. Most of the leaves weren't off the trees yet. But I mean, I don't remember exactly how long, but it couldn't have been very long.

6:21 It was maybe a minute or two. Did you hear it walk off at all? Eventually? No, And that's the weird thing. It just it went quiet, like dead silent, and we'd never heard like it. Heard it thrashing around in the brush for like that short period of time, like in front of used, like shaking trees and breaking branches, and it sounded massive. But I don't remember. I don't remember even leaving. I don't remember the rest of that day and the entire day, which is very strange. It's like something like that. You'd think it'd be like you remember every second, but it just was almost like my mind was wiped.

7:02 Yeah, it's sometimes I think, being in a situation like that where it's super high stress. I don't know what our mind exactly does in those situations, but yeah, you can things can happen. Yeah, I kind of almost I wonder if there isn't something to the whole infound infrasound theory about them too. I mean, this was it was terrifying, absolutely terrifying. Did you feel like you're physically being affected in any way? I don't know that you could feel it. You could feel a percussion from it in air test, So I don't know if it's that or if it was just how audible it was. This thing clearly must have known what guns were, and I think that's why elicited such a response, because it was right right behind the shooting range, not probably five or six hundred yards from the shooting range, not that and people don't use it very often, but I still hear I live close enough to it still now that I hear gunshots from it every once. Well, but I think they know what guns are. I think they're obviously highly intelligent.

8:05 Oh, without without a doubt. There are so many things coming out about how it seems that groups of them are able to use tactics that are almost like military in a sense, like flanking, surrounding, just really crazy stuff. There's definitely something going on. It's not just a dummy. I would say there's a definite intelligence. There with the Olympic project. The way that they set up their nests that they found that sounds military to me too. They had centuries and they had what they thought was where the birthing was taking place, was surrounded by larger nests and then the smaller nests in the center.

8:48 That's high intelligence, and they're obviously masters of self. You don't get to be you don't get to be the master of the forest without being highly intelligent. Yes, that that that is true. Have you ever been back to that area where you were squirrel hunting that day? I've been close to there, I've never been back in that particular spot. I haven't really had permission since then, and I don't know who runs the place now. I've thought about going back out there, but I'm honestly afraid to do it. I don't really I know, I wouldn't do it alone. I've hung out in the area not too far from there a few times, and but there it's all private property around it, so it's hard to get into that area. It's without permission. But I've thought about it.

9:38 Gotcha, how did this affect the rest of your life? Living through a situation like that, it has. Kind of changed, like I don't like going hiking in places that I don't know anymore. I won't go hunting in places and I've never gone because that was the first time I've ever gone hunting out there. I've gone squirrel hunting quite a few different places in the area. I never had had any problems, but I don't hunt as much as they used to by any means. Mostly stick to fishing now, but I've fished pretty close to there, actually fairly recently. And there's there seems to be a lot of evidence in this I don't know what other animals eat clams, but there's just clams all over the shoreline along these areas. I think that's a food source for them. There's one area that I saw that there was like a perfectly rounded rock that's just set precariously right by where there's a big clam bed, and I think that they used They obviously know what they're doing.

10:32 I think they used clams for food source big time too. Yeah, definitely. And are there a lot of deer up in that area too, tons. Of deer, Yeah, tons of deer. There's a there's one field that's it's a way ways fifteen miles away from where I'm at right now, but I've seen over one hundred deer in that. Field at one time, and definitely a water sources as well. I would imagine while you're close to the river. Right where I'm at is like where where my encounter happened is like seven hundred yards from a village creek, So there's a nice freshwater stream that runs right by it, and there's a swamp right next to it too. It's only a few hundred feet away, so there's definitely water there.

11:19 There's definitely food in the area too. If there's so many deer in this county, it's unreal, to be honest with Yeah. Have you heard of other people experiencing things like this in the same area or any big foot related things in this part of the state. Not that particular area, but the guy mentioned the other episode of the other Amaki County episode mentioned Lower Dam, and my buddy had an encounter at Lower Dam where he was canoeing, and it got laid on them and it started to get dark, and they were running behind and heard what he described as what he's like later described as the Ohio howl, and it chased him in their canoe for a quarter mile or something like that.

12:14 Oh, it actually chased him. Yeah, they came down off the hillside and ran alongside their canoe. He never saw it, but he said it sounded He like went through looking for sounds that it sounded like, and when he found the Ohio howl, that's when he was like, that's exactly what it sounded like. Oh my goodness. And this is by that's by the Upper Iowa River, right. Yeah, that's on the Upper Iowa. It's about ten ten miles out of Decora, something like that. And that's a that's a large state forest area, but it's really remote, and there's there's thousands of acres of forested area along the Air River.

13:04 That man, do you think you would rather have a sighting of what it is or did you prefer the way that it happened where you couldn't see it. I would have loved to have seen it, because I've been into big foot for a long time, ever since Harry and Anderson's. But it still leaves that Maignant never you can't really say for sure what it was, but you're pretty obvious if you ask me, but it's hard to say. I think I would have liked to have seen it, but I feel pretty positive I know what it was without having to see it. Absolutely, there's no other things up there that can make a sound like a screaming chimpanzee. That logically does not make sense.

13:51 No, and there's like I say, like, I've looked around and there's no escape chimpanzee. There's nobody with gorillas in the area. Yeah, not the right area or that as at all. Have you ever heard of any things happening down in Yellow River at all? I have, Yeah, I have, definitely. Obviously there's a finding big boots. So but I know a few people that camp down there and they said that they've had experiences. They couldn't really explain that you've heard weird howls and stuff like that. Yeah, as we were talking about before the show started, I get about at least one email every week about Yellow River State Forest. It's just it's wild. And just in case the guys listening to this episode, there was a worker that's some sort of DNR related worker that reached out to me with some information but never followed through or maybe I need to. I don't remember getting a second email, but if that individual is listening to this one feel free to reach out again if you do want to share what you know about what what's happening in Yellow River Steak Forest, please.

15:02 I think there's a lot of people that know what's going on down there, and just they whether they're legally legally can't say or something like that. I fully understand that too, because it's a pretty pretty well known camping area and it's a pretty big recreation area. They got equine and stuff, and it'd be hard for them to put out something that that would be potentially defermented them to people camping down there. Oh exactly, I've never heard of anybody having a really aggressive encounter like mine. It could definitely happen. Just the whole area in northeast Iowa. There's there's Backbone State Park has come up a few times on the show.

15:45 There's been some weird stuff that's happened in there. But yeah, most people will when they think in Northeast Iowa, they will think of the Finding Bigfoot episode that took place at at Yellow River, which is a classic for a few reasons. But a lot of people think that it's like that. It's a heavily populated area, but it's very sparsely populated and there are just it's all timber. It's all timber around here where I'm at, and it's all hills. It would be so easy for them to hide. There's thousands and thousands of acres of forests in Yamaki. County because that county is that's part of the Driftless Area. Correct, Yes, it is. Yep. There's probably more than a few listeners that are like, Okay, Iowa, it's all cornfields. Can you explain maybe how the Driftless Area region of Iowa is a totally different story.

16:34 It's completely it's more like a mountainous region than anything else. Like it explained, it's like the river. There's rivers and bluffs everywhere. Like literally where where I'm sitting in my house right now one hundred feet to a hillside that's six hundred feet tall. There's it's rolling hills everywhere, big valleys. There are cornfields, a lot of cornfields, but there's tons and tons of hillsides with forests. There's a lot of state land. There's a lot of people that just have big wooded wood lads. Basically, it's nothing like the rest of Iowa. It's absolutely nothing like it. Yeah, it's absolutely beautiful. People need to look up pictures of it. It'll change your view of the state in a few ways.

17:19 There's nothing like it in the fall. It's just absolutely gorgeous. Hunting and fishing is phenomenal around here. As well, because you guys have there's trout up there right. Oh yeah, there's I know at least a half dozen child streams within twenty miles of me, and they're very good trout streams. And the Mississippi River is there's no better fishing on the planet in my. Opinion, So that's another food source as well, is the trout that's up in that area. For sure. I've had some really interesting conversations about Iowa that are not out on the podcast yet. There's one about Boon that is coming out in a few weeks that I don't know even though if I want to visit Boon anymore now.

18:06 But are there other weird things that are seen up in that area besides Bigfoot? Any stories you've ever heard of other weird stuff going around? Not personally in this area, but I mean there's the van Meter monster or van Meter visitor. Oh yeah, that's yeah, that's down in my area. That's pretty. That's close enough to Yeah, that's good stuff. There's I've never never really had any encounters from anything else, but I got stocked by a cougar a few months ago. Oh really, they're supposed to not really be in this area, but they definitely are. No, they won't really tell you that they're in the area. Was that and was that over violancing or it was right behind. My house on the hillside behind my house, there was a big solar flare a few months back, and me and my buddy decided to walk up the hill late at night to try and go and see the official we could see the northern lights better. And we were walking around on the hillside and we saw this two big yellow eyes, forward facing eyes staring at us, about eight inches apart, and we walked towards it, and it took off, and so we kept what we kept. We started walking down the hill and we were shining the lights around the whole time, and then we thought we saw it four other times, so, oh.

19:25 Man, that's something you don't want to mess with out there, for sure. No, but they're pretty. They're usually most of the time. With all the deer around here, they've got so much food they don't know what to do with it. But you definitely there was some guy that was in a tree stand somewhere behind the behind where I'm at right now, that he apparently saw it stalking around his tree sands, following his set trail, and it was stalking him too. Wow. Can you think of any other areas that you've heard of in the northeast part of Iowa that might be good for bigfoot sightings or that might be known for Bigfoot activity.

20:06 Upper Dam is not too far from Lower Dam. I know that's a good place. Most of Elmi Key County to be honestly, if you is pretty good. The Cora area would be a good place to look into because there's a lot of the Long How Rivers just there's tons and tons of forests out there. A little further south, like Clayton County would be another good place to look into, Like around Pike's Peak and Effigy Mounds. I would say that those are probably likely places. I know that they there was what was like a minimum security prison that they turned into a big camp, bigfoot camp not too long ago. And that's right by Effigy Mountains, which is just on the other just south of Obamakeee County, like ten miles or something like that.

20:51 It was sorry it was turned into what so. They had turned it into a big foot camp or something like that. You could go and stay there and then go and do expeditions or something like that. Really, I don't know if that's still open or not, but. I'll need to look into that. It used to be called Luster Heights. Luster Heights, all right, I'll check that out. That's very interesting. Like I say, I don't know if it's still open. That was a few years back now, but that was what I had heard at one time. And that's where the kind of bluff overlooking the Mississippi all the way along the Mississippi is prime territory too. And it's there's a highway usually, but then across the highway it's like bluffs and hillsides all the way along it for one hundred miles or better, all the way down towards Dubuque would be prime territory in my opinion.

21:47 Yes, Dubuque has a lot going on. Little Mcokata River has come up a few times. There's been plenty of sightings down there. If people are listening down in the Dubuque area, Yeah, watch out. Not too far outside the city for sure. But Nick, it has been fun chatting with you about what you experience. I appreciate you coming on the show and helping to flesh out the northeast part of Iowa a little bit and give us some solid information about what you experienced over there. I appreciate it.

22:28 If you ever run into anyone that brings up any sightings, or if you have anything else happened to yourself, feel free to reach out. We can always chat again in the future. I will do that. You're a big for society. Our goal is to provide a platform for those that have encountered Bigfoot to share their encounter and a safe and respected environment. But we need to hear your story. If you've experienced something that you just can't explain, please send me an email at Bigfoot Soociety at gmail dot com. Then we can start the conversation. I know a lot of you have not shared your encounter at all. It's been twenty years and it's time that you get this off your chest and then you can get some well deserved for rest. Because I know you haven't been sleeping. I understand what you're going through, and I appreciate every one.

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