YEAR: 2011

SEASON: Fall

MONTH: November

DATE: 25

STATE: Texas

COUNTY: Sabine County

LOCATION DETAILS: The specific location has been withheld at the request of the submitter.

NEAREST TOWN: San Augustine

NEAREST ROAD: none given

OBSERVED: Before the week of thanksgiving 2011 I didn’t believe in Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and ape-man whatever you want to call it. I wasn’t afraid of the woods, or really ever shaken by anything until that day. My family is avid hunters and outdoors people; we are out in the woods more than most people, and not just during hunting season. We have wild hogs, coyotes, wolf, and have been told black bear even though we haven’t seen them in nearly 5 years at this hunting lease. I know what big game looks like and sounds like. I have been hunting from the age of 5 years old with uncles and other family members. What I saw was not a bear, large cat, deer, and elk, any of your normal big game animals and was not a man in a ghillie suit. We have laid down very strict rules at our hunting club to which I had a helping hand to write, because me and my husband are land managers. Although ghillie suits are not banned, just expressed that misidentification could get you shot while wearing one, and you have to wear blaze orange during deer season period while walking to and from your stand. If you are going to stalk hunt you have to wear blaze orange at all times and stay in the area you have been assigned to period. If caught without blaze orange you are permanently banned from the club, due to insurance purposes. I only tell you this so you know that it wasn’t someone just pulling a trick on me.

I was going out on my last evening deer hunt around 1:30pm. November 25 2011. I was taking our friends Honda 350 out because she was going to watch our two kids while I went out and my husband went out to hunt as well. Things were as normal, I made my way from deer camp to our tri-pod deer stand. Our tri-pod if you’re looking at it from the trail point of view there is a pine tree thicket north of the stand, then a creek runs parallel to the pine tree thicket. Our stand is just south of the thicket tucked in with some hardwood trees, to the west of the stand is all hard wood tress and the underbrush all cleared out the same is for the east. South of the tri-pod is more hardwood trees but we never cleared the underbrush. So I get to the trail that leads into my stand area which is a good 400 yard to 500 yards of a walk. I grab my .243 caliber rifle, backpack (which had deer calls, turkey calls, doe and buck urine buck rattle, walkie-talkie). I start making my way to the stand in what’s called a stalk and stand walk. You take 3 steps and stop and listen for a minute. This takes me about 30 minutes to make it to the stand. While walking to the stand I pour doe in estruses urine and buck urine on the ground to cover any human sent I might have on my boots, to lure in deer or hog. I get in and get everything ready, and wait. About an hour passes so I start with a doe bleep for a few rounds of calls then get out the young buck rattle to see if a big buck responds after a few hours. Well needless to say no deer call back or show up, not even squirrel and the birds have all but gone. At this point I have about half an hour before dark and I’m just sitting there with my rifle in hand using the scope which is a nice clear 3x9 to glass the woods. I drop it from my eye and start looking around and then notice this man like figure walking about 400 yards west of my stand headed for the thicket.
It was moving fast, with long strides shoulders forward, arms swinging with a heavy step. I thought to my self no way someone is stalk hunting in a full ghille suit in my area when they know my area is clearly marked off with pvc. So I pick up my rifle, and thought I’ll just see who it is, because they are banned from this point on, I want their butts off my lease they just broke about 2 major rules in the contract they signed. So at this point it was instant anger you know I wasn’t going to shoot them but I’m going to have there you know what’s at this point as soon as I could tell which member it was. I get my gun up and get my scope up to my right eye, and was 100% in total shock and instant heart stopping bone chilling fear. To the point you don’t breath, don’t move. What I saw in my scope was a haunting sight. It was ape like with long dark almost black muddy like colored hair. The hair had to be 8 inches long; its face looked kind of like a gorilla that black leathery look but it had human structure. It was covered from head to toe in hair. I must have by this point gasped for air or hit my foot on the stand because as it was walking towards the thicket it never stopped walking but it turned its head and glanced at me and my heart was about to pound out of my chest all I could do was lower my rifle and watch this think skulk off into the pine tree thicket. I sat there shaking for a good 10 minutes, before I was able to gain my composer to get the hell out of there with out killing my self. Once I got down I ran to my atv and franticly tried to get it running and I got about half way down the trail on atv before the bike stopped working. That’s when I started to send S.O.S. with my rifle because I couldn’t get my atv to run. S.O.S. with a gun is 3 quick rounds fired. About 15 mins later a friend that hunts about ¼ or ½ a mile from me showed up on his bike. When he got there we were talking about not seeing any deer, but I never told him, and while we were there and he was looking at my atv all I wanted to do was get out of the woods and back to deer camp, we could smell wild animal kind of like wild hogs, is best I can describe it. He knew I was rattled but I played it off like I was just pissed off because I didn’t see any deer. But truth be told I didn’t go back out and hunt the last day, and haven’t even gone back. After playing out what happened and what I saw that day, the creature was around 8 to 8 ½ foot tall very muscled looking, It never growled or yelled at me, never made any threaten movements, but you could tell it was in a hurry to get where ever it was going.

ALSO NOTICED: I have not gone back to the location and never saw or oberved anything out of the norm until that day. I just noted that there was no wildlife around me when it was around as if the rest of the wildlife just disapeared. Not even a bird, which now looking back is strange.

OTHER WITNESSES: no others

OTHER STORIES: We have an older gentleman that avidly hunts for this creature, I don’t know if he has ever seen one but he has told others about seeing the grass spots where the grass was all laid down and from a group of large animals, but on the edge of where the grass is laid over it looks like someone sat down and twisted it like a girl twist her hair. He says he has seen clear prints as in foot prints, but to my knowledge he has never done any cast. Another older man swears he has heard a group yelling or calling. Along with stories of people seeing Bigfoot in Sabine National Forest.

TIME AND CONDITIONS: right around 5:20pm to 5:30pm it gets dark right around 6pm to 10 minutes after

ENVIRONMENT: Mostly pine trees, lots of small creeks, a lot of pine tree farms around. Plus you have Lake Sam Rayburn and Toledo Bend Reservoir, and Sabine National Forest. Lots of wildlife, wild edible plant life. Wild berries and acorns. Doe, lots of Doe.

Follow-up investigation report by BFRO Investigator Cliff G.:

I conducted a telephone interview to verify the above facts as reported. She was still quite shaken by the event and, as of the interview time, had yet to tell her husband or any other hunting members about the encounter. She did feel that her uncle would be especially receptive based on his prior experiences on the property. Initially, she expressed a great deal of anxiety related to returning to the property in the near future. After discussing the events for more than two hours, she seemed determined to learn more about Bigfoot behavior and the history of sightings in the area. She was educated on the numerous resources available online including our database. I hope to learn more about the immediate area in the near future.

I was able to obtain the following additional information:

The animal was observed crossing an opening approximately 400-425 yards wide in a very short period of time; she estimated it took “less than a minute” and that it was moving from left to right and slightly away from her. Her only observation of facial features was fleeting as it turned to look at her. "He had a dark, leathery face and dark eyes". She perceived it to have a purposeful gate with a long, steady stride. It did not seem to be frightened or hurried, but focused. This speed is remarkable if her estimate is accurate, putting its pace near a four minute mile without much of an effort.

Her ATV’s untimely failure was due to a fuel line coming off. In her anxious state, she was not able to identify the problem and focused only on her attempts to remove herself from the immediate area ASAP.

The 3-shots she fired is a well-established practice to summon aid from anyone within range.

The hunt was scheduled for one more day but she chose not to participate for fear of seeing the animal again.

The older gentleman she referred to (her uncle) was frequently the brunt of many jokes while on the property due to his belief in Bigfoot. He would often mention things on the property that he felt were related to possible Bigfoot activity. When pressed for examples, she remembered him mentioning that the cleaning area where the game animals are gutted would frequently be completely cleared the day following a kill. She explained that she had actually seen the place he described as a “bedding area” where they observed several areas in the grass to be twirled around in tight circles as if someone had sat down and played with it. This older member of the hunting group had hunted the land for several years more than anyone else. She speculated that he may have actually had an encounter himself, but would not want to draw that type of attention to himself.

Three National Forests surround the lease comprising some 725,000 acres. Nearby Toledo Bend Lake is the fifth largest man-made lake in the United States at 181,000 acres and some 1,200 miles of shoreline. In fact, the vast majority of southeast Texas is largely unspoiled.

About BFRO Investigator Cliff G.:

Cliff is a native Texan who grew up camping, hunting and fishing throughout the Southwest. He is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force serving more than ten years and has been in healthcare for eighteen years with a strong background in Biology, Anatomy and Physiology. Cliff is currently working in critical care. He has a particular interest in studying the human reaction to encounters and interpretation of sasquatch behavior. He has attended conferences on the subject and has attended BFRO expeditions, both public and "members only" in Oklahoma and Arkansas as well as several private expeditions throughout Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisana. For questions or comments, Cliff can be reached directly via e-mail at bfro.texas@yahoo.com.