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Geographical Index > United States > Washington > Ferry County > Report # 29045
 
Report # 29045  (Class B)
Submitted by witness on Tuesday, March 29, 2011.
Possible howls and footprints in Colville National Forest

YEAR: 1986- 2008

SEASON: Fall

MONTH: October

DATE: 2008

STATE: Washington

COUNTY: Ferry County

NEAREST TOWN: kettle falls

NEAREST ROAD: Highway 20

OBSERVED: I have two personal accounts and at least one second hand accounts to report. I was encouraged to share them by a recent aquaintance, Nate H. I would like to be contacted by phone at your convenience to give a more detailed description of the encounters and specific locations. That said, I will briefly describe the incidents. All occurred in Ferry County, Wa.

The first was back in the mid 80's. I was 20 or 21 and would pack in by myself on 3-4 day mule deer hunts in the high country. I was camped mid-mountain overlooking the Sherman Creek drainage. At dusk I heard a long "howling" call from far below me that literally caused my hair stand on end. It started very low and and cresendo'd at a medium level, lasting maybe ten seconds and repeating twice. Oooowwwwuuuuuuu. I have heard everything in the woods, including bull beef cattle, and I knew instinctually what this was. My remaining nights on that hunt were spent sleepless. I never spoke to anyone about it, fearing ridicule.

Four years later I was stationed in SE Alaska and my father in law (an avid hunter) came up to go on a brown bear hunt with me. Late on the night after our life threatening kill of a dandy bruin, we were imbibing in some whiskey in our remote cabin. The comraderie of the hunt coupled with the whisky loosed our tongues and I told him of my experience years prior, with his promise of secrecy. With the same promise from me, he related an actual sighting he had not five miles from where I heard the "call"

He was a UPS driver and his route took him over Sherman Pass on HWY 20 on a daily basis. It was early spring and he was just below the summit when he saw what appeared to be a long haired "hippie with a backpack" trucking through the tall brush up ahead on the west side of the HWY. He slowed down and as he came abreast of it (about 20 mph)their eyes met. It was instant recognition an the BF did a 90 down the hill. As to my knowledge, he has never told another soul.

Jump ahead appx 20 years. My hunting partner and I were driving a remote section of road after dark to try and find concentrations of deer tracks to hunt some new areas about twenty miles from Canada and forty miles north of the aformentioned incidents. There was appx 16" of snow and maybe 4" of new over the last vehicle tracks. We came upon a strange set of extremely large tracks and got out to investigate, thinking they were cougar. However, these were unmistakably bi-ped, and HUGE!I wear size 13 and they were at least 4" longer than my insulated boot footprint. In addition, the stride was so long that we had to jump to mimic the distance between them. The tracks followed the road for appx a mile, mainly holding to the "uphill" side of the road and sporadically moving to the downhill side when the view was more expansive. They finally dove off the road into a creekbottom and we couldn't locate where they exited the creek. Keep in mind that it is 10 degrees f so no human is gonna take a walk in a stream!

I have an entry in Boone & Crocket, so I hope that lends some credibility to my assertions. I would love to speak with you via phone to give a more detailed description.


Follow-up investigation report by BFRO Investigator Charles Lamica:

I was eager to investigate this case because I live in the area where it occurred. I interviewed the witness by telephone on 4-1-11 and found his story to be very credible.

The witness grew up in northeast Washington and has hunted this area extensively. As a young man in the mid-1980's he often went on solo camping and hunting trips. On one such trip, in October, he was sitting near his campfire just at dusk when he heard a howl unlike anything he'd ever heard before. He said the howl started out at a low pitch, lasted for about 10 seconds, ending at a higher pitch. The howl was repeated at least once, maybe twice. The witness says he is familiar with many animal vocalizations and, although he had never before heard a bigfoot howl, this sound was so unusual and so powerful that he instantly suspected it was produced by a bigfoot.

A few years later, the witness was talking with his father-in-law, who related that he had actually seen a greyish-brown bigfoot near Sherman Creek Pass on Highway 20. This is very near the location where the witness had previously heard the howl described above. (This is within a few miles of BFRO Report #9286, in which a motorist saw a bigfoot crossing the same road in 2004.)

In 2008 the witness and his nephew were driving some back roads north of the Sherman Pass area, looking for deer tracks. It was October and there was snow on the ground, the top layer of which was very fresh, light and fluffy. They soon came upon what they believe were bigfoot tracks. He described the tracks as being about 16 inches in length, with a stride of 5 feet or more between steps. He could discern evidence of toes within the tracks, but the snow conditions (very light, fluffy snow that fell back into the tracks) did not allow them to see crisp details. The witness is confident the tracks were not caused by any other type of animal. I asked him if they could have been caused by a bobcat or coyote bounding through the snow and he was adamant that was not the case. He and his nephew followed the tracks on the roadway for almost a mile, at which point the tracks went down an embankment and into a creek. They searched the nearby creek banks for further evidence of the tracks but found none, forcing them to conclude whatever made the tracks must have walked IN the creek for some distance. The witness told me, "No human wearing snowshoes is going to do that."

My personal research in this area lends credibility to this report. I have talked to several people in this area who have reported unusual howls, woodknocks, and tracks. I've done a number of solo horsepacking trips and camping trips in this area and have had similar experiences. Based on these experiences, I believe there is at least one sasquatch family group living in the remote forests between the towns of Kettle Falls and Republic.


About BFRO Investigator Charles Lamica:

Chuck Lamica's interest in sasquatch started at the age of 8, when his family discovered large footprints near their home in rural Oregon. He was an Alaska State Trooper for 22 years and later worked as a Forest Warden for the Washington Department of Natural Resources. He now lives in northeast Washington state.