Ranch of the Beast: We've Got Bigfoot Down Here in Texas

0:04 Welcome to the Bigfoot Society. In this episode, I talked to John, who shares the bigfoot activity he's been experiencing at an undisclosed ranch in southeast Texas. If you've experienced something similar to what John has, or have more information regarding Bigfoot or other cryptids in the same area, please reach out immediately to me after this episode. Remember, your encounter could be the key to unlocking this mystery once and for all, so please don't hesitate to contact me at Bigfoot Society at gmail dot com. All right, bigfot Society. We've got the privilege of talking to John tonight. He reached out to me from East Texas. How's it going tonight, John, it's going well. Good to be here. I'm excited to talk to you. It's been a little bit of time in coming, but I'm going to actually let you have the floor.

0:48 Feel free to introduce yourself as you would see fit, and you can head right into what you've experienced. All right, So sounds good. I'm just a regular guy. I'm not a professional bigfoot hunter, I guess you'd say. And what I really want to do is just shared my observations and some of my experiences that I've had over the years. That's been a part of my Bigfoot journey. It started back in grade school. Back in my day, there was this deal where there was a book club and the teacher would get a brochure and she would hand it out and there was selection of books that you could purchase. And so anyway, I'm thinking, I'm about in seventh grade and I'm looking through the brochure and I see this book and it's like a double feature. It's on one side you got Bigfoot and on the other side you got The Likeness Monster. And I thought, well, that looks pretty interesting. I phoned it up my money and ordered it.

1:47 In a couple of weeks, your books come in and then I'll never again. The teacher is she got the box, and she's walked through class. She's passing up the books. She's oh, okay, little Susie, I see that you got a book. Oh, let's see the Julia Charles the Chef. Oh boy, that'll be good. And little Jimmy, Oh, you got a book here on the Apollo Astronauts. Oh, that'll be good. And then she gets to mine. I'll never forget it. She pulls it out and she looks out. She's, oh, John, you got a book on Bigfoot? And she says, I hope you realize that this is nothing more than a man in a monkey suit. And I was thinking to myself, well, this is great. I spent all my money and I've got a book on a man in a monkey see and so if I at least there's the log now monster. So anyway, I got home and I just put it on my bookshelf, never even touched it, so I guess. It's about a month later and I'm over with my little buddy and we're riding our dirt bikes and it goes to a rainstorm comes up and his mother calls the sentences, y'all kids, get out. Your lightning's going to strike you. So we come on in the house and so we're sitting there and we're watching the TV, and, like a lot of people that I've heard on different podcasts, all of a sudden there's this show that comes on and I'm hearing Leonard meanwhy, I'm thinking, my gosh, that Spock And it's of course it's the old in Search of the series that was on, and the particular one that was on that day was on Bigfoot, and so

3:21 I sat there, I'm glued to the TV, and I mean, as fast as the show is over, i am lickety split home. And I've grabbed that book and I read it cover to cover three or four times. I wish I could remember the name of it, but I can't for the life of me. But so anyway, that sort of kicked off my whole Bigfoot experience, so at least to give me some knowledge as I grew older. I grew up on a ranch in New Mexico in the Rocky Mountain Santa de Cristo Mountains, and hunted and fished and just lived in the mountains. The ranch was at nine thousand feet, so we were way up in the mountains. And never the whole time I was there, did you ever hear anything about Bigfoot, seeing Bigfoot, any signs or anything of them. If you heard of Bigfoot, it was always the Pacific Northwest. You just never heard of them in that area. And I just grew up like a lot of people. I'm like, I believe they exist, but they're in the Pacific Northwest. As time passes, life goes on, you'd focus on your job and whatnot, and another. And so anyway, Rock's on about i'd say about twenty years and my late wife and I we decided that we were going to do a lot of traveling up in the Pacific Northwest, all through Oregon, Washington Bridge, Columbia, Alberta, the Canadian Rockies, the Yukon Territories, Alaska. We went all the way to the Arctic Circle, and

4:54 we spent a lot of time just in not the tourist trap places, but the off the road places. We did a lot of fishing. We would do a lot of we'd fly into different camps and so on and so forth. We did a lot of rafting down rivers fishing, and we had a lot of Native American guides, and they're particularly the Chilicot tribe. Of course, there were some people from the I think it's the Tagish, and then there was the oh gosh, there's another one. I can't recall what they were Inuit Indians. And you would hang around them, and one thing that I noticed about them was that there if you when you bring on up Sasquatch, they're very protective about it. They don't really they don't really share a lot. They may say something, yeah, it's we believe this or that, but it's not until they get to know you a little bit better that they'll start to actually share what they actually believe. And like I said, we've been around a lot of fishing guides. We had met, we had gone to a training facility. There was a lady that was training dogs for that I did rod and she had a couple of people that worked with her Native American mushers, and they had some pretty interesting stories about experiences that they've had. Of course, another group of people that I love to talk to was the bush pilots because they're flying into all these road areas and so they have a lot of course that bird's eye view, but when you're up there

6:27 and you're taking all that in, there's so many things that it's just you would be hard pressed to go to that area and not believe that Sasquad exists. The museums, of course, there are oral histories, they're written histories. You've got carvings and paintings and totem poles that go back hundreds of years, and it's just fascinating that all of these tribes had their own opinion and take. There's actually a book out that I want to read by Kathy Strain. I think is her name. It's called giants, cannibals and monstrous and it's I can't remember this lady's background, but it's basically about various Indian tribes and how that they distinguish Sasquatch watch what is their opinion of Some of them consider it to be evil, some of it considered it to be good.

7:18 And that's the same thing that I picked up in Canada was there's somewhat variations and how that they looked at a Sasquatches and for each particular tribe. But anyway, I returned, we're back in Texas and I'm still skeptical. I one hundred percent believe Sasquatch is in the Pacific Northwest and Canada, possibly Montana in that area. But I am just I'm just so skeptical that there could be any bigfoot Sasquatch in the lower forty eight or the South. That's my attitude. I just I'm very skeptical. I actually manage ranch and we've got several thousand acres. There's pasture land, there's cypers bottoms, we got plantation pines, and then the ranch is backed up to what's called Type two land, which in Texas it's basically wildlife preserves that you can hunt on it, but it's basically land that's untouched. And then backed up to that is a bunch of timber land that's owned by the Timber company. And there again, there are some hunting leases on it, but not that many. And it's we're talking thousands upon thousands of acres that are continual. And inside of this acreage is there's rivers, there's lakes, there's just on a ranch alone, there's four artes and wells that have the best water you've ever tasted. There's canals and just multiple water sources. I guess what I'm trying to get at.

8:54 So I'm out in this every day and I'm just to believe I'm oblivious to what's going on around me. I would hear wood knocks and I'd be like a tree falling in the woods. I would hear whoops and say, I'm some kind of a kyoke stick with coyot, and I just wasn't. I wasn't put any credits in what I was hearing, and I was just there, again, they're not down here. And one day we were fixing some fence, and I had a pen, or I had a pasture with some young bulls that would let's just say, would be east to where we were fixing this fence. And so a lot of times when you've got those young bulls together and they'll try to show out to each other and I have this very low beller, they'll just boo and then they'll try and call another one out to have a push and shove match. And so this bull was walking around out there and he was doing this low beller, and all of a sudden, I noticed that directly to the west of this I was hearing the same kind of sound, although it was different. It's it's a little more raspy. And I got thinking. I was like, what in the world Because the area that I was hearing the sound coming from was plantation pine and there should not be any cattle over there. So my first thought is one of them's got out of the pen and we got over there and got lost in the plantation. So we got through fixing the fence and I go

10:28 to the pin, go to the pasture to check out the bulls. They're all there, and so then I go to check the fence and the fence is not broke, and I'm thinking to myself, what was to do because I know there's not any other cattle back there, and I was very perplexed by that. When so I come home and I'm just sitting around, and I thought, let me just look and see. And so I get to looking on various websites and there's people that have said, yeah, that bigfoot sasquatch will kind of they'll mimic sounds such as that they'll do whistles, they may do howls. And I got to think that that's interesting that happened that day, and so it was just one little tidbit that was moving me in that direction. And so anyway, you know, a couple of days pass and I'm starting to just pay a little bit more attention to what's going on.

11:22 So I ended up meeting this lady and she is a just a bigfoot, a wealth of information she has just from her childhood. She has studied bigfoot backwards, forwards, up and down. And so we get to talking and when I'm telling her about it, and she implies, he needs to be a little more aware of what's what's going on, and you might actually open up and may open up a world to you. And so I do. I start paying a little bit when I'm hearing wood Knox and start paying a little bit closer attention to him, and so on and so forth. And so we end up going to a Bigfoot convention in Jefferson, and I ended up talking to this lady. She's a biologist, but she's she had some other degree in plants that I don't remember exactly what it was. I'd never heard of it before. But so we get to discussing various things about big fit and she is the first person that I remember that that coined the term wood ape, and I thought, ruh, and so it stuck with me, and so we were talking about various things and she was she said, what is it exactly that you don't believe that they're down here? And I'm like, I don't know that there's enough. I'm skeptical about the food source. And she said, obviously, John, there's rodents, there's deer, there's hogs. And I was like, yeah, I understand that, but you would think that there would be need to be more. And she goes to explain to me in great detail about other various plants that that a

12:52 wood ape could actually eat and survive on. And when it started, I started thinking about it, and I was like, gosh, when you think about it, ton of muscadines, we've got dewberries, we've got what's called pope salad, which if not prepared correctly, is poisonous. But I traveled in Africa, and I remember the guide. I remember that some of the great apes in Africa would eat these particular leaves that they could eat that if a human was to eat them, they would kill you. And so I got to think of their again. That could certainly transfer them here. But the one thing that she said a couple of things that really stuck, and one of them was is hackberry trees. And I had always that's one of them deals where your buddy says, oh youm hackberry trees are poisonous, and so from that point on you think they're poisonous, but in reality, hackberries aren't like a superfood. And the ranches loaded with these hackberries, and I was thinking, wow, that that's something I hadn't thought of. And then something else she's pointed out was she said turtles. She said that we feel like the what apes that's part of their diet. And that is something that I would see constantly would be turtle shells where you would see the top land over here and the bottom land over here, and I would mention it to people and they'd say, oh, that's that's gators doing that. And then one day I saw a gator eat a turtle and there's no top and bottom, it's just the whole thing. And so I eliminated that theory all together.

14:26 And and you know, started paying closer attention because there was turtle shells all over the place. And then another thing that you mentioned was grib worm. You know, we've got lots of white oak, and of course they get old and die, and the things are full of grubs, and I would see places where that the bark was peeled off. And occasionally we have what's called honey bears. They're just little bitty black bears and they're very scary. If they see you, they're they're going to run like crazy. But I just thought that's probably what it is, some honey bears. But when I got to paying closer attention, I noticed that these these scab marks on these trees were higher, and I got thinking, yeah, that's just that's just not a bear. So anyway, I come back from this convention and got a little bit more knowledge, and so one day we're working on a project. We're clearing a lane to a back property line, and I was on a dozer and I was pushing a lane, and so got all I could do the one day, and then back the dozer off and went and did something else. A couple of days later, I come back and I walk upon the most textbook tree break that I've ever seen. It was absolutely it was an ironwood tree, roughly three and a half four inches in diameter.

15:52 It's bent down, back down to the bottom of itself, and no, you know, absolutely not a weather related situation. This was clearly bent down. And that with the knowledge that I got at the convention and seeing that tree break, I started thinking there's something going on here, and so I really started to pay even closer attention. At that point, I had mentioned it to my girlfriend and she she was telling me, she said, you know what you need to do. She had listened to a pod podcast where a lady was talking about and and she brought that up to me, and I thought, you got to be kidding me, that that's ridiculous.

16:36 But then I remember we were we had gone to that expedition Bigfoot up in Blue Rigs, Georgia, and I remember reading an article and there at that museum where that this lady had started this gifting program. So anyway, at first I thought, that's ridiculous, me gifting a wood ape. And one day I was in my office in something that I happened to just see. She had mentioned to me that they had. I came across the set of Marti grav beings, and so I thought, man, perfect deal. I put them in the trink. A couple of days later, I take them to this way back piece of the property and I get back there. Of course, the instructions were that you take two sticks and pull them in the right angle, and then you put the item behind these sticks. They're exactly like I was told them. I'm thinking, this is nice, this is totally nice. And I get busy on another project. It's probably a week if not more before I get back down there. So I pull up there.

17:40 I'm on a plariffs and I pull up there, and as I'm driving up there, I'm noticing something that it seems out of place, and I'm thinking, what in the world, and as I get closer, what I find is just bizarre. I find a happy birthday balloon like that you would get at Walgreens or Walmart. And obviously somebody had a birthday in the balloon had got away, but I just can't believe that it would have landed where my gifting area was. So I find this happy birthday balloon. And then the second thing that was even more strange was I found a gallant jug, a gallon oil jug from Texico Havel and Supreme from back in the nineties, and I'm thinking, how did that get here? Now? The beads were still there, but apparently they had gifted me a balloon and an oil jug.

18:38 I laughed it off at first, but then I got to think, something did this, And I know it's not people, because we're talking way back and the places. We watch the property very closely, and so that kind of got to me, I guess, you'd say, And it was just one more thing. A couple of more weeks pass, and I'm on another project. We had a thirty acre lake that blew out during Hurricane Harvey. We had thirty inches of rain. It blew the levee out and so when the wake blew out, it actually caused there to be a lagoon, and at the back edge of it there's a little kind of an island that sticks out. So I was patching a road and I was stealing some clay from an area there to patch this road. And so I'm on a skidst I'm going back and forth patching this road and I get to where I'm done, and as I'm leaving, I noticed that there's this there's a hitch pin that's on this piece of equipment that had fallen off. I fought it had happened before. The thing's like two hundred dollars, So I thought, man, I got to go find this thing. So I know that I've only been to the lagoon and back, so I just parking the machine and I walk. So I walk down trail. I get to this lagoon area and I'm sure enough I find the pan laying there in the dirt. Pick up the pin. But as I'm turning around, I've got this feeling that something is watching me, you know how it'll come over you sometimes, And so

20:11 I turn around and I look, but I don't see anything. And so just on the end, I grab my camera and I just snap. I do one ancest that and just go on about my business. I come home and later that night, I'm going through the pictures looking I don't see that, and I don't see that, and then all of a sudden, I see this picture that's just bizarre and I can't really make it out. I blow it up. I put it on my home computer, blow it up a little bit more. And I did not see this when I took the picture, so I did not know what was there. One took the picture, but because I got to looking at it, the best way I can describe, and this is going to sound ridiculous, it sounds like the head the lead singer of the Insane Clown Posse. It's this weird looking face, and you can clearly see eyes and a nose, a pudgy nose, but the top of the skull from a like right above the eyebrow, going over kind of the top of the skull, you can clearly see where there's no fur, it's just skin. And on the other side you can clearly see that there's hair there. It's behind a branch. There's a branch in the way that you can make out its face and it's not hunting down and it was actually on that little island in that foliage looking at me, and it's one of these pictures. Some people will look at it and they'll instantly see

21:42 if other people look at it, and they'll be like, I don't know what you're talking about. But I thought it was really interesting. So I thought, huh, it's one one more thing. And I again, time passes on. I'm paying more attention. I notice one day I get there at the ranch and I'm hearing like sound what sounds like a peacock, and way back in the woods. And when I'm thinking, man, what how did that get there? And so I go back there. I don't see any sign of any peacock or anything such as that, but clearly heard what sounded like a peacock. As I'm going back there, I go through an area where there's a tremendous growth of hackberries and they were all the berries had made and they were just thick, and so I actually go over there.

22:30 I'm going to get some and eat them, and I happened to look down and I noticed there it was sand and it was wet sand, so it's it was like hard packed, but you could see where that something had come up there and had reached up to grab some of the berries, and it had made pretty It made an imprint, nothing that was castable, but it was something that you could clearly you could make it out. Especially you can't in the picture, you can't really see it that well, but being there you can see it. But what I noticed was that the print, it's not like what I would have thought. It wasn't a sasquatch print. It wasn't something that was sixteen inches long and seven inches wide or like that.

23:19 It was actually it was actually you could see that it had toes. But what show me the most was it was very wide it was compared to its length. And that goes back to my conversation with this woman about the wood aches, and so that kind of put me over into the camp of I believe, and I don't know a lot of people disagree with me, but I believe in East Texas, I believe that we have wood apes. It'd be hard for me to believe that a nine foot Sasquatch could maneuver through the thick underbrush that we typically have. Now. Don't get me wrong, there's areas that are open, but the majority of it is pretty it's pretty viiny, and it's thick. And not only that, a lot of the bottom areas are quite swampy. And I think something, in my opinion, I think that something more in the seven foot bracket and down with a much wider foot is better suited for that type of territory to get around in. And so after seeing that print, I was I'm getting over there in this woodache camp even more. There again, here we go again. Another couple of weeks go by, and I'm going down a trail. I forget what I was doing. I was going back there to check something, and all of a sudden I smell this. I get this wolf of the smell that smells exactly like the inside of a beaver den. I know a lot of people

24:52 say I like sewer and so on and so forth, but this was like musky inside of a beaver den. And so I may I'm on a player of slam out of brakes, and I just go to looking around and there again I don't I'm not seeing anything, but I should just start taking picture such him. Get on back to my office and start looking. And here again I see this shape. I see this head there's a tree that's fallen over and the roots are pulled up out of the ground, so it's got dirt on them. And there's this creature that's up there against these roots, and lo and behold, he's got it. You can see the ball that's in the head again, and I'm like, here we go again. This could clearly be the same I'm looking at the same guy again. I think two days later, about less than a corner of a mile from where I saw, got this picture of this creature I got. I had some trail camera set out, and of course, don't get me started on trail cameras, because that's the biggest mystery in the world, is why we can't get a good shot of one on a trail cam. But I did have one that was set I actually set it in a rotten tree to where that it was not on the outside of the tree. It is inside the tree, and you could not see this thing. Of course, it was only shooting

26:22 forwards a very limited scope. But I got a picture of what appears to be and I've looked at it a hundred times. It looks like it's it looks like it's a hip. Impossibly an elbow of something I recreated it. I know it's absolutely not a deer. It's not a honeybear because it's too high, and it's not a coyote or anything like that. It had to be something that at least was standing about four feet coll and like I said, it's just like a up in an elbow. But it was something that's and that's the only picture that I've ever got on any of the trail cams of any value that I would say as far as that goes. But so it's like last year, middle of the winter, it's freezing, and my girlfriend and I decide that we're going to go back to the back part of the property where that where the lake, the old lake that blew out is and so I think it's twelve degrees. We're crazy, and so we go out there, and so we're easing around. Everything is just solid for especially for Texas. Twelve degrees for Texas's East Texas is gold. And so we're easing around and we get to this area and we noticed it was one of those deals where that it was sixty degrees one day and then the next day

27:52 it's twelve. And so the day prior it had rained and so everything's sloppy. And we noticed right there at the edge of this embankment is a very clear it. I would not I would call it a baby. I wouldn't even call it a juvenile. It was a very small footprint that had it actually was made when it was wet, but it had froze. And there again it was something you couldn't really cast it. But it was a pretty interesting footprint. And so that kind of got our We got our hopes upon that deal. And we went on and did some more driving around and we got to a point where I wanted to check and see if I could see any footprints. There was an area that had washed out, and I just wanted to go there, and so we killed the players for just a second.

28:47 And we're sitting there just listening, and all of a sudden, we hear on an old logging tram, we hear what sounds like a gibbon monkey. It has that exact sound like a gibbon and it does it does it three distinct times. And of course we are rookies. You talk about rookies, we we are like rookies. Or said, we don't have any recording. We're sitting there just listening here it three times. Finally we wake up start recording. Of course at that point we don't hear it no more, but very distinct like a gibbon monkey. Three times. We stay there a coupleoun't know, an hour or two left, and then we head out.

29:30 And when we get to the truck there again my girlfriend is saying, she said, did you notice that there was some like songbird? And I thought, yeah, I did hear that. And the more we got to thinking about it, we got to think, well, obviously, on a day like to day, there's not gonna be songbirds out singing, and one of those missed opportunities again where it possibly could have been what apes out there doing some whistling. Of course we val you know, man, the next time we're gonna we're gonna be waved to prepare. So more time goes on and this probably goes down. Is one of the most impressive things that I've seen as far as my big thing investigations have been going. And I was coming out and pash care and I was shutting the gate. I was actually horseback and so I'm shut the gate. I get the horse doing to shut the gate, and I happen to look down on the ground and it's there again.

30:33 It's sandy type sail and I went down there and this just shot me. There was one of our one of our cat dogs print. There was a perfect dog print in the sand. And then something had taken its finger and had made a circle around that dog print. And I just have to leave. That was a a parent teaching a small one. Okay, here, this is a dog print. Look out for this. Be aware of this. And I got a pretty good picture of it. But that just really stuck with me. I'd never seen I've never heard of anybody that has came across to anything like that or that was the first time I had actually ever seen it. So there again, I'm man, I'm more on track.

31:27 I think there's wood apes in East Texas. So fast forward it's this past Christmas, and I had got a thermal camera. So now we're moving up. I've got some equipment and so I'm thrilled to death. We got a thermal and so we go out and we get there to ranch and I've got to put out some hay to some cows before we go and do some research or some hunting, and we know more out of the truck and we hear three perfect whoops, just booming right in a row, and I thought, wow, here we are. This is setting up good. So I put out the hay and we we make around three the woods. We take the players some, we walk some, and we hear two or three more good whoops, and then we hear our own favorite, the peacock sound again.

32:31 We didn't stay there that long. We had stuff to do, so we've called them night pretty early, but we left out and came back the next day the next afternoon. Hold the weather, it's raining, it's not necessarily freezing cold, but it's chilly. It's certainly the kind of weather that you'd rather just be in the house. But now we got the new therm lamb, we got to do something. My girlfriend goes down to the lake. We have about a eight acre three at the lake that she had gone down to, and she's walking on the Lake Levey and honestly believes that she's carrying something, and she's actually thinking that she's being paralleled by one off into the creek. And we get down that. When I actually get back down there and we notice that there's this really odd trail that comes out of the creek and it goes to the lake, and it goes down to the lake in an area that's very flat, where the bank is not steep, and there's this trail beat out, and so I instantly think it's probably beaver's.

33:37 I got to look around. There's no beaver sign whatsoever, and there's a very faint, juvenile footprint that you can somewhat pick up, and so I thought, I thought, this is an area that I'll put up one of my cameras in the future and see what happens. We go back and we get the players. Of course, pitch black. Now the clouds are just thick clouds. There's the every once in a while the moon to poke through just for a second, but it goes back pitch black. So I got my thermal out. I'm just thrilled to death. I'm hogs deer, funny things in trees and we're having a big fun. And of course here again we're rookies and we should have had the GoPros going and recording devices that we're enamored with the thermal So we're there's an area that I'm wanting to go.

34:32 It's back off and it's a Cyper swamp, and so I'm wanting to go back down to that area. And so we were easing down this trail and it gets to this point in this trail where that it's so thick that the trees have actually grown into themselves. So it's almost like you're going in a tunnel. And so we get as we're pulling up to this tunnel a or at this time, this trail, my girlfriend, now she doesn't tell me this at that time, but as we're pulling in there, she starts to get really anxious. She said, just this anxious feeling just comes over.

35:13 Of course, it's pitch black. We do have the headlights on the playiffs, but it's totally pitch black everywhere else. And and she says she gets this feeling like she's just getting anxious, and just all of a sudden, out of nowhere, there's just this roar that is so loud that it actually is even you can even clearly hear it over the PLAERIFS motor and I'm just basically stunned by it. I'm just sitting there in disbelief of what I'm hearing. And she says that I'm looking at her, and she said, I'm actually smiling. And at this point she is completely panted and she's freaking out, and she literally, it is so scared that she punches me because I'm not acting. I have no reaction. I'm just sitting there with a smile on my face like I'm crazy, and she literally punches me. And I come out of it, and she said, od, we got to get out of herself. We basically put it in reverse and high tail out of there, and I can tell she is scared, and at that point I'm even starting to get scared then, because it sounded like the roar of a Howler monkey. It just you hear. The people say that you can feel it. I can't honestly say that I felt it because there was a windshield in front of me, but I certainly heard it clearly over the player's motor.

36:43 So we back up. We figured that's enough for one night. Of course, here again, after the fact, I got the thermal out. I'm trying to look I'm not getting anything. But at that point there again, we're rookies. We're out of dog. So we go back the next day. We're going so we're on a mission. We're going to make it down there to the swamp, and so we're headed back there and we're on the we're on the playerffs. Everything's doing good, and all of a sudden, the players starts acting up. The thing's been running perfect, and all of a sudden it just starts acting up, and it's it's, it's it's like there's an ignition problem. It hits, and it quits and hits, it quits and it hits, and then all of a sudden, it just quits, and and there's no fire in each set to and try to fire it back up in just no way. Of course, it's starting to get dark, and so we the last place we want to be is out there on foot, and so we we abandon the playerffs and high tail it back to the ranch headquarters and end up going back the next day to get it and get on it fires right up. Now. I've heard people say numerous podcasts, did they have the ability to mess with electricity. I don't know if that's true or not, but what I can tell you is that this players that was running perfectly, all of a sudden quits and when we go

38:16 get it the next day. I don't know if they're if they've moved on or what the deal is, but it fires right up. We end up going back again. Finally we make it down into the swamp and we do get we get one good I think that back we get two good whoops, but they're at a distance, and that was about all we had time for. And I guess at that point that's the last that I've been out there other than my daily stuff. There was a guy that was on your podcast. I think it's been months ago, and he'd made a comment that that he believes that they move in and out of areas, and I completely agree with that. We had a real We went a long time and didn't have any issues with hogs, and then all of a sudden, we started having major issues with fogs. And I noticed that the activity level definitely increased when the hogs were there. Now the hogs have died out, and I've noticed that we're not I'm not hearing any not hearing the whoops, I'm not hearing the peacock. I'm not hearing such as that. And so I think that they've possibly moved on to another area. But I think that they you know, I think that they move back around. I'm just keeping after it and hopefully one day I'm trying. My goal is to get I'd love to get a good cast, something that I can compare the something that I can show.

39:42 Look, it's wider than it's not one of these that's really long. It's got some width to it. And anyway, that's about it. I just wanted to share that and maybe some other folks are in the same boat as I am, and they'll get to the point that they'll start to believe that they're down in the South as well. John, You've got some incredible things going on that ranch. Thank you for sharing that. I have some thoughts if that's all right, Yeah, absolutely, well. I would recommend to do if it was me in that situation is I would take some advice from Chris Spencer from the Olympic Project. And you can watch about this on a Small Town Monsters YouTube channel. Eli Watson has a documentary series he's been doing. But what Chris Spencer does is he will be wearing like a headlamp band and he'll actually have a audio recorder in that headband, so when he leaves the vehicle, it's already recording, right because he says what you've also experienced. Is that usually when you get out of the cars right away, you're going to experience some type of whoop, which you've been experiencing already.

40:59 But that might be a way that you'd be able to actually capture this audio if you're wanting to try to do that. And oh absolutely, you can get a solid recorder for not that much. You can get a task cam for just anywhere from like eighty something to one hundred. They're pretty inexpensive. Now I'll put a link in the show notes for what I use personally. But wow, and that is for that's for audio record Yeah, yeah, okay, that would be for audio because it man, it would be really cool if you could at least get some of the whoops recorded, that would be cool. I could the end of course, that role is now that I did not see that coming a million miles away. I'm and then with the peacock because it sounds like a male peacock and I no, good, we don't have any peacocks after and I just ge't think of that. I have to laugh when I hear it. I'm thinking, so it's just ridiculous, what are they doing? And another the other thing is that when it sounds like that gibbon monkey. That's unusual to me. And I've had people to say, oh, owls do that in the middle of the day.

42:15 I've never experienced. I experienced owls doing some stuff night, but not two in the afternoon, at least in my opinion. But yes, you couldn't be more right back. Just we've made so many rooky mistakes. It is not even fun. But it's like anything else that you do. You get out there, you experience it, and you learn and you just do better than next time. Absolutely, Let's see, I'm looking through my notes here. We're leaving the location at East Texas, right, we just have to be nebulous about East Texas. Yeah, we could, I would say Southeast. Gotcha. Are you able to share any more about the female researcher that you had been talking to or I cannot remember her laughing, I can't remember her name that it was she was sitting at our table, and I know, if I'm not mistaken, she had done work with the wood A Conservatory.

43:13 She had worked with them, and this was a super smart lady. She really in a lot of ways, she was a lot of the catalysts that that that really got me to focus when she mentioned what she did about the turtles. That that really because that is something that I had been seeing for years. There the turtle splitting part when I'm thinking it's weird and never really put the pieces together, and then she was like the turtles or meat of a turtle, highly nutritious and easily caught and make a nice little meal. And when she made mention of that, I was like, Wow, definitely was something that made sense to Yeah, it's very smart. If any listeners have an idea of who that might be, you can put it in the comments, or if you need to reach out to me an email, you can do it that way too. Bigfoot sitagemail dot com sounds like that might be someone fun to chat with for sure. Would you be able to share the photos that you took? Yes, yeah, awesome, that would be really cool to see those. It's funny that you mentioned the lead singer of Insane Clown Posse because I've actually if you're talking about the same guy.

44:31 I actually interviewed him on the podcast because he had a bigfoot encounter just outside of Detroit, so we talked a while back. So I had actually read that somewhere and I was thinking, you got to be kidding me. The actual yeah, the actual guy, the actual singer. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah yeah. Like I said, this photo, well, some people can look at it and like I said, they will instantly say oh yeah, and then other people will just there at it and go, I don't know what you're talking about, and I don't know. There again, I find it hard to believe that it's shadows or something of that. You can clearly see two eyes, the glare of the sun coming off its nose and the glare of the sun shining off the ball spot on its head. It's there to see. And now in the second photo where that it's over by the stump, that was a little more more difficult. But for me seeing exactly where it was at, it was clear to me to where that I could understand what was going on, and having seen the ball spot, I could definitely notice it again, even though this was at a far greater distance, it wasn't as close as the other one was. But there again, that that smell. I would have never I would have never stopped and just taken random pictures had I not got that odor. I mean that that odor

46:02 just inside of a beaver Den just stopped me dead in my tracks. I mean, I was like, that's weird because I was not near water, and that one definitely just stopped me. And the one of the the like I said, looks like it's hip. I mean, you can clearly see it's something what I don't know. But that's the only I have had every kind of trail camera you can imagine out in every kind of place you can imagine, and that is the only what I would call good picture that I've got. I've gotten some images at a distance that you can add names something out there, but it's not something you can say yes or no to.

46:50 And that, to me, that is the biggest mystery in the whole thing, is why that there's just not more caught on trail camps. But obviously they have got that ability to elude them. And I think only because I had gone to the great extent to get this thing up in this dead tree and camouflage it in all kinds of different ways. I think that's the only reason that I got what I got. I think if they're I think if they're even halfway camouflaged, I think they're detected somehow. And I didn't have one. I did have one experience one time. Of course, I don't know, I maybe reading something into it. I was back and I was fixing some fence on the back corner of this property, and so you know, I'm gathering up my tools and I'm walking back to the mule, and all of a sudden, I just got this horrible Of course, I'm sixty years old. Disney spells part of the game. I was actually feeling really good, and hmm, I just got this really strange? Did the sensation come over me? And I made it to the mule and I sat down.

48:07 Of course, some drank some water, and it wasn't I wasn't overheated or anything like that. And there again I got to think, I thought, what was that all about? And then of course you hear people that did say that they have that ability to do that, and so there again, I don't know, but it makes me wonder. Absolutely. Have you I guess you're in an interesting situation because the ranch is so big, But have you talked to any neighbors that are on the outskirts of the ranch to see if they've experienced anything out of the ordinary there. We really don't have any neighbors that are in the core of the rant of the main body.

48:49 They're on the they're on the outskirts. But in those areas there it's relatively populated. But what I have experienced is the adjacent land behind the ranch that is the type to preserve. I've talked to several people. I say several, I've talked probably four or five people that have I was talking to this one guy. He's passed away, I'm thinking now, but years ago. I think it was back in the nineties. He was going him and a buddy were going duck hunting. And there's a lot of slews in this area. And so him and his buddy they were going duck hunting, and they drove their truck to this area where you had to park, and there was a gate and I think if you had a permit, you had a key or something. But so they drive they get up to this gate and they're going through the gate and the guy said, it's in the most dark, and he's got his flashlight in his mouth and he's going through the gate and all of a sudden, he looks down and he sees a footprint and he's now, what is that? And so he calls his buddy over then and the look. Of course this is before cell phone cameras all that, but they're thinking, wow, that's crazy, and so they dismiss it. And they walk another couple of hundred feet and then all of a sudden, the footprints come back into this trail, and so they follow them, and you

50:19 can clearly follow them. So they follow them to the edge of this slew and he said, they get there, he said, it's still dark, but he said, you can hear this, and he said he takes his light and he shines it. It's cypress trees, basically, and and he shines it and he says that about seventy yards away or not that about thirty yards away. He said that they see this figure and he and they say it just basically they see it for a couple of seconds and then it just disappears behind some brush. And they were He was a believer all his life. And I talked to another man that he actually had some property now he sence had sold it to the timber company and they actually planted in it.

51:08 They put in a eucalyptus plantation. But this guy had a place back there and he was an older guy, and he said that he would hear him all the time. It wasn't nothing for him to hear him turn three times a week woots, hollers yells the whole nine yards imitations of his cat and I have talked. And then there was another guy that was a dentist that I had talked to once before, that he was in one of the rivers fishing, and that he said that same kind of deal. He said, they were sitting there fishing and he said, all of a sudden, they heard this splash and he said they happened to look up into this kind of a slew area and he said they see this creature just for a second, just basically going across the slit. And this guy he for years and his retirement. They tell me that he would come down and just set out cameras and book and whatnot. But se Yeah, a few people I have talked to some other people that have had some pretty interesting sightings on the Sabine Renver, which is not terribly far from where we're at, and some relatively some pretty interesting stories coming out of that part of the world, which in my opinion, that's more of the hot spot in East Texas. I had talked to a guy, very interesting story. They were working. They were from a contracting company out of Tyler and they were down working on a bridge over

52:42 by the Sabine River on just the county road. It wasn't no major thoroughfare, and they're doing some work on his bridge, and so they the county. There was some kind of an area that the county used for gravel or something, and they allowed them to put up their campers in this area so they wouldn't have to drive back and forth to get a motel. And so the guys like, we've got our fifth wheel part there. And he said that they had. They every night they would cook out on the pit and he said, he said, it's smelled great. He said we had pork button barbecue and everything else. And he said that one night, he said they were laying there in bed and he said that he was in the bedroom of his fifth wheel, which is obviously in the front part which is high, and he said that they he said it was perfectly still. He said that the air conditioner wasn't running, and he had his windows open, and or he had one of his windows open, and he said that you could literally hear something flump, and he sat up and he looked around, and they thought, I'm just hearing things. And then he said, just out of the blue, he said that the moonlight was shining into the fifth wheel, and so he said, all of a sudden, something distorted the light.

54:10 And he said he glanced over to the window, which was closed, and he said he saw a hand up against that window, and he said he just he went screaming, and he said the hand went away, and he said to everybody woke up and you know, what the hell's going on. They turn on the lights and look around, and of course he's in. I saw somebody's out there. I've seen their hand up there. And they were like, nobody's here, nobody's here. And so they all went back to bed. And the next morning they woke up and they had left I forget they'd left something out there on the pit, and that whatever it was that they left out there was gone. But he said that you could still clearly see the smudge of the handprint on the window. And I thought, man, that's pretty close encounter. But that, like I said, that was over closer to the Sabine River area. Yeah, the Sabine River definitely has some loud stuff and if listeners want to hear more about that, read more about that. Lyle Blackburn has a great book on Texas Bigfoot that he came out with this last year. Definitely recommend looking into that. At the beginning of our interview, we had you had mentioned in passing about talking to Iditarod mushers and bush pilots about bigfoot way back when you had been traveling.

55:40 Is there anything that you remember from those conversations or Yeah, there actually a couple of things there. We were talking to this one musher that was saying that, so they when they're training these dogs, they'll start off like on fifty mile courses, and then they they build him up and build him up and build him up. And so they they've actually got numerous teams and so it's not like they have one team. They have several and then they'll end up picking out the best groups to actually run the Iditarod. There's several mushers that go out and these guys will go out for two or three days and mark these dogs. And this one guy, his name was Billy, I remember that, and he was telling me that he was This would have been up by white Horse up in the Yukon, and he was telling me that they were camping by a river. It wasn't I'm trying to remember.

56:40 It wasn't in the time of the year when it was bitter cold. The sunlight was out. It must have been in the spring and so there was still snow, but it's not just horrible dark and cold. And he said it's starting to thaw. And so they had run this course and he was saying that they had set up camp by this river, and he said that they had typical to take care of the dogs first, got the dogs fed, got the dogs staked out, and he's in there in his tent, and he had been Native American. I think they have an ability to sometimes sense things. And he's got he said, he's got an uneasy feeling.

57:22 And he goes out back out of the tent. But he said, all the dogs are not acting up. He said that they're all basically bed down. And he said that he just said this strange feeling that something was out there. And so he goes back. He finishes getting a little bite to eat, he lays down and he says, there again, he said, something is like telling him there's something out there. So he puts on his head lamp. He goes back out. The dogs are still. Typically the dogs would would smell something, scent something, but he said nothing. And he goes back out there and he's he said that he's he's looking around.

58:06 There's nothing. He's and he's sitting there thinking himself, you're just your mind's playing tricks on you. You just need to know, go on to bed. You got a big day tomorrow. And he said, he walks up to the tent, he's fixing to go into the tent, and he said, something just tells him stop. And so he backs out and he takes his head light and he looks down. He said there was like a row of trees that was by this creek or river. And he said, he looks down these rows of trees and he said that at about the tenth tree, which I don't remember. I think he was saying it was like maybe fifty yards away or something. He said, there's this clearly, there's this creature that is standing behind a tree. But the tree is not big enough to hide it. He said, you can see the shoulder on this side and the shoulder on this side. And he said that he's shining the light on it, just clearly, and he said he's not He doesn't know whether to get his gun. He doesn't really know what to do. He's just waiting it out. And he said after about a couple of minutes, he said, all of a sudden, he said, you see it tilt its head a little bit, and he said you can clearly see one eye and he said it turns and he said it just vanishes in a split second.

59:29 It's just gone. And he said that next morning they went over there and he said there was some sure enough, good sized footprints, but to them, it's like just another day I've heard Grandpa told me about them. Just don't mess with them. They won't mess with me. And they go on about it. A lot of the bush pilots that you'll talk to. There was one guy was talking to and he said that, of course, when you're flying a plane in Alaska, it's not autopilot. Hands and feet are working all the time because of the drain and in the weather, so it's not a situation where you can drive around with your with your camera in your hand. But he said that, and this wasn't just one. This was a couple of them had said that you'll you'll be flying along there, and he said, all of a sudden, you glance down there on the river and bam, you'll you'll see one just for a second. Uh, They'll they'll notice you coming, and then and there they're boom, they're in the woods. And so I thought, I would imagine that that makes sense to me that in their job that they they do see them quite often, or more than what you would think anyway. And then of course a lot of the guys that work the rafts, when you're a raft and you're fishing, you're basically saying, so you're not making any noise, and you're right, you're you're flowing down that river and you you'll come around a bend. And that didn't happen with us, but we were in a play. It's called

1:01:00 kal Ketna, which is the neatest little town you ever saw in your life. And there was some river guides there that we took a trip fishing trip with, and there was a guy that's saying that the year prior they had rounded to be in and they had seen one out there about knee deep, and he said that it'd seen them. They've seen it that just back in the woods. It's a fascinating stories. John, You're an absolute wealth of information. Thank you. I just, like I said, I just I think there's I think there's a lot of people that are in my same boat that grew up believing that they're in the Pacific Northwest, that's they're in Canada, they're in Alaska. And it's not until you just really take the time to look deeper into or to just explore the things that you're just dismissing just and maybe they are. There may be times where you hear something and yeah it is a kyoke, but in other times it may not be. And if you're one of those people that you're riding the fence and you're like am I think what you'll find if you just spend a little more time and look a little bit closer, that you might be surprised. And like I said, I'm looking to get that good cast one day. That's my goal is to find a good I've got my casting kit and everything ready to go when that day comes. But that's what I'm after. We'll see you see your main goal is to get a really good cast. But what happens if you're

1:02:30 out there in the cypress and you actually get a visual face to face with a wood ape. Have you thought that through it? I don't know. After the episode with the roar, I'm not even sure that I could keep myself together at you hear you listen to these podcasts and you hear these people that have these experiences, these close up experiences, and I just got a wonder could I keep it together if? But it was so strange, Like I said, my girlfriend was she was in full blown panic mode. Now she was panic, and I was just I was off in another world.

1:03:12 I was. When we talked about it, I told her, I said, I did hear the roar, but my mind was sitting there processing what was that? And I said, I really I The fear didn't come upon me until I had actually processed the fact that, oh my gosh, that was something. And then I'm like, oh, good lord. When you tell I hear people that are like I got my Trusty forty five, that's so I ain't gonna get me. Yeah. Yeah, I'm here to tell you what if a bigfoot wanted to take you out, I don't care what you got. You're gone. I mean, that's clear, to me, they're just so stealthy that I don't You're just not gonna do it, and that that's that gets on a another subject that talking to the people in Canada so far is that they believe that Sasquatch in a lot of ways are like people, that they have different personalities. I know my girlfriend is she's of the belief that a red for if they got that red fer their me, they're nasty, but if they're brown or black, they're more docile. And of course I'm always laughing at it, but it's if you really get to looking at it, you listen to people, and the ones that are the red for actually do send me a little bit more aggressive. And there's no science behind it I have come up with, but other than just hearing people's

1:04:43 stories. So I've heard that as well. Yeah, that, and so I agree. I think that they're I think that they're they've got distinct It's like anybody else. That's what were you exposed to coming up that caused you to be the way you are. And I think the ones that are violent had probably been exposed to that, and the ones that are hot have probably been exposed to kindness. And so I think that affects how they actually act, but I do believe overall they're extremely shy creatures in my opinion. Last question for you, it's a weird one, and if you don't have anything, that's fine. It's actually a question for all the listeners too, just in case, but have you ever heard anything weird coming out of the Franklin County, Texas area? I have heard are you talking as far as just weird in general? Mainly bigfoot related? But I guess, I guess that could be anything but mainly bigfoot related. I have heard some stories, but what I've heard has more been I don't know the mix of a bigfoot dog man really what I've heard now, you know that for what that's worth.

1:05:55 But I have heard of some strange things happening in that air. Of course, another area that's got strange stuff happening is down in Saratoga, Texas where that where the brag light is at. Sure there's a lot there's a lot of people that or I say a lot of people. There are people that believe that. Of course, the legend is the train conductor who lost his head and he's looking for his head and got the light there there are people, of course, that's backed up to the Big Thicket Preserve, which is thousands of acres of preserve, and there's people that you when you start talking to those people, those are the people that believe that Bigfoot has got something to do with portals, and they believe that the light that people see.

1:06:43 I've actually been down there in Sack. What that's worth. But yeah, and it's what it looks like. It looks like in the distance. There's this of course this was back in the nineties when I saw it. There's this dancing light and I have no explain I've heard everything under the sun's from gas you name it, the moon shadows. But there are some people that believe that that is a portal, and that is why that there are some people that there's quite a few sightings from time to time down in that area Bigfoot related. And and you've got that group of people to say, hey, that's that portal. So Franklin, how you said, there is there actual dogment sightings around that area too. There are seen together or a kind of separate sightings with dog man versus Bigfoot. I've the stories that I've heard now, I've heard a few people with Bigfoot related stories. But I was listening. Gosh, it's been scenes, but I was listening to a guy that I think he was on dark Waters. Oh sure, yeah, yeah, And I think this guy was from over there and it was dog man related this guy, and I'm thinking this guy was a I'm wanting to say that this guy was even a deputy sheriff. No quote me on that, but it seemed like he was a constable or something like that. And I specifically remember it was dog man. Very interesting. Yeah, listeners, If

1:08:16 anyone has any leads about any bigfoot activity or dog man activity or anything in the Franklin County, Texas area Sulfur River bottoms, I'm curious in it for a few reasons I can't get into right now, but you can reach out to me a big Foot Stigma dot com or you can put it in the YouTube comments as well. It has been a fun time chatting with you, John. Thank you so much for reaching out to me. You're very welcome. You're very welcome, and I'm here your podcasts and I just I just like the way you do business. I just really appreciate you. Thank you. And I don't think that the activity is going to let up on your your ranch that you deal with, so please keep me in the loop with what continues to happen down there. Just want to take a few minutes to say thank you to you all my listeners for listening to the podcast. Please take a minute to help out the show by subscribing on YouTube, making sure you hit the bell so you don't miss any notifications, and share the episode on YouTube with a friend. Also, if you're listening to us on a podcast, thank you so much, make sure that you're subscribed share the show with a friend. Really, it's all about sharing the show wherever you can.

1:09:30 If you've had a bigfoot encounter related to the following or know someone who has, please reach out to me at Bigfoot Society at gmail dot com or pass on my email. Here's the list. Bush pilots in Alaska that have seen something from their plane, Retired law enforcement officers who department had a large file for bigfoot encounters, Individuals that have had bigfoot encounters on their family property through multiple years and generations. Individuals who've had a face to face encounter in the state of Tennessee, North Carolina, Kentucky, West Virginia, Alabama, or Mississippi. Individuals who've had a face to face encounter in the state of Oklahoma or Arkansas in the Washita National Forest. Individuals who've had a face to face encounter on Prince of Wales Island or surrounding area in southeast Alaska. Any encounter in Franklin County, Texas. Hunters that have never shared what they saw in the woods due to fear of ridicule. Individuals that have had a bigfoot tried to enter your house in the Honabi, Oklahoma area. Any encounters that happened within a twenty mile radius of Northfield, Massachusetts and twenty five mile radius of Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Encounters in the enchanted Circle, encounters in the Yosemite National Park area, or any national park for that matter. Individuals that have lived a long life don't care what people think about them now and want to share what happened to them fifty to sixty years ago. I'm your guy to share your story. Individuals that live in remote wooded property and feel like they're under attacked by bige after clearing their land. And lastly, any bigfoot

1:11:02 encounters where the individual saw what seemed to be an orangutan, Please reach out to me a Big for Society at gmail dot com. If any of those fit what you've experienced, and for those where it doesn't fit, please feel free to reach out anyways. A special thank you to all the Big for Society Patreon and YouTube channel members. It's your support that helps keep the show going and I extremely appreciate it. I'll see you back next time. Listeners, new shows on Mondays and Fridays. I'll see you then.