YEAR: 2017

SEASON: Fall

MONTH: November

DATE: 11/24/2017

STATE: Missouri

COUNTY: Maries County

LOCATION DETAILS: Initial sighting was on our family farm. Second and third sighting were at the junction of CR ___ & ___, Vichy, MO
Please do not post our addresses or CR.

NEAREST TOWN: Vichy

OBSERVED: November 24, 2017 Two of us were coyote hunting at night on our property. My friend was sitting at the end of the field in a hunting blind and I was going to walk the edge of the woods toward him to try and kick up coyotes. While walking I could hear something walking down in the woods below me, appearing to keep up with my pace. I thought it might be coyotes, so I whistled to my friend. He whistled back and then whatever was in the woods below me whistled. I picked up the pace due to that kind of freaking me out. Twice I whistled, twice something in the woods below whistled. I was close to the hunting blind by then and picked up my friend. We went to the other side of the field and quickly got back to our vehicle. When driving back to my house, we crossed the creek bed and as we pulled into the field right below our house, there it stood. At first, the headlights were not on it and I was trying to figure things out in my head of what possibly could be the big of a creature on our property. It was about 60 yards below our barn. When my headlights hit it, the creature stood there for less than a minute. My friend and I both got a good look at it. It had long, shaggy hair. Its eyes reflected orange. Its arms were attached at its shoulders. It stood 7 1/2-8 feet tall. It looked at us and then, not in a hurried way, turned around and walked back into the cedar thicket. Our border collie took off after it and we grabbed our guns and headed toward where it went back into the woods. Our dog came back rather quickly and we did not go much further. It was gone. This was late at night, but the next morning when my dad went out to do the feeding, the goats usually are very skiddish, but that morning they hugged around his feet and would not let him away from them. We had not told my parents about what we saw the night before because they were in bed when we got back. When my mom walked out of the other side of the house that morning she made the comment wondering about a horrible smell on that side of the house. Two evenings later, my parents were putting Christmas lights on the house and something to the right side of the house, down in the woods, let out an loud long squall. Then the coyotes started yelping on the left side of the field. Another squall from the right side was heard and the horses came running to the house. It was not coyotes squalling. The horses have never been afraid of coyotes. They yelp every night. My parents were both a little on edge with what they heard. My dad has lived in the house for 30 years and is an avid outdoorsman, but never heard anything like that. Since that night, there have been two more sightings within a mile from the first sighting.
One sighting was when my friend was heading home and had our border collie with him. He was passing an abandoned home with an open area right across the road. Our dog started going nuts trying to get out of the window. He slowed down and looked and it was on all fours about 15 yards off the road in the open area between two junk vehicles. When he stopped, it stood up and quickly went into the woods. The next morning, my dad, myself and friend went back to check out the area. We found where it had been standing, but it was on grass and just smashed down. It was raining when he saw it, but the area is grassy and not muddy.
I saw it again just a couple of weeks ago when I was headed into town at night. It was diagonally across the road from where my friend saw it last. I noticed something move as I passed by and it was standing back in the treeline. My parents have tracked its footprints down in the valley between our house and the field I was walking in the first night. They took pictures, but they are not very good pictures. After we realized that there actually is a sasquatch, we started thinking back about things we just passed off as fluke before. Like having a couple pictures of something unexplained on our game camera. We even joked about, "Look, we got bigfoot on our game cam!" My parents go on driving dates regularly. They were on one of their dates two autumns/winters ago and there is a small field they passed right next to our property. There is a creek on the other side of the field. As they passed, they saw something larger than a deer take off quickly. They could not explain what it was because it was not anything normal to them. We told several people about the sightings, but they thought we were crazy, so we quit mentioning it to others. But we did have a couple people who believed our accounts and told us about BFRO. We also have heard of others in our area that have had similar encounters, but because of the disbelief from others have not reported their sightings.

ALSO NOTICED: The night after the second sighting, seeing it between the two abandoned vehicles, my friend came and picked me up and we attempted to find the path that it had taken. When we traveled through the woods and down to a cave the smell was rotten. We looked around with flashlights, but did not ever see anything.

OTHER WITNESSES: Two witnesses. Coyote hunting. No drinking or drugs involved at any time.

OTHER STORIES: We heard that a neighbor on the next road over had an adult daughter see one. She had seen it three nights in a row behind her house, but the one night it attacked her dog. Also, my dad always told the story of a friend of his who is in his early 70's now. He said that when the friend was about 12 years old, he was hunting and sighted one on a pond bank.

TIME AND CONDITIONS: 1st time: 11:00 pm. Night time. Cold
2nd time: just at dusk, cold
3rd time: about 9:00pm chilly

ENVIRONMENT: The landscape is all fields, woods and creek bottoms. There are a few caves in the area. Not extremely populated.

Follow-up investigation report by BFRO Investigator Carter Buschardt:

Spoke with main witness via phone. He has enlisted in the Armed Services and is shipping out in 2 days, so the timing was perfect. He would have been unreachable for the next several months.

For the purpose of this report, I will address the events of November 24, 2017 and the very next morning. As mentioned, they were out hunting late night, around 11pm. Witness started walking back towards his friend in the blind, trying to stir up activity. By his estimate, he was about 100 yards or so from the blind when he started walking towards it, about 50 yards from creek bottoms where the whistling and paralleling came from. As quoted, he whistled once, then his friend whistled back, then whatever was in the creek bottom whistled as well. It was louder than his friend, and from the opposite direction. He whistled again, and it returned the whistle. Totally creeped out, he picked up the pace, met his friend, and got in their truck (parked near blind) and headed back to the house.

When they first saw the creature it was about 60 yards from the barn. It just sort of "stood there" and they kept driving towards it slowly. They were not sure of what they were seeing. They finally stopped about 30 yards away from it. As they stepped out of the truck, they thought for a second it was a horse, due to the coloring, which was a "reddish chestnut", and it was "shaggy hair". When the witness mentioned it had "arms attached at the shoulders", he was trying to say it was an upright 2 legged creature, not some 4 legged animal up on hind legs. It came out funny, but I understand what he meant.

The eyes "glowed or shined a reddish orange color" and they "glowed that color the entire time they watched it." The creature was never out of the headlights the entire time they watched it. The entire duration lasted, by estimate, for 5 minutes, and from the time they left the truck to when it walked away was at least a minute, and probably no more than 2 minutes. Eye glow versus eye shine could not be established with certainty because the creature was always exposed to the headlights. About the time it turned, it passed a cedar tree along the electric fence, and that is where they got the size estimate of 7.5 to 8 feet tall. Any other physical characteristics could not be established due to their "excitement", other than it was "huge". At the time it started to walk away, their dog came running from the house and ran towards the creature, barking. Border collie with perhaps a little coon dog or other mix in it. It followed the general path of the creature a short ways into the woods, but returned a very short while afterwards. They walked towards where the dog and creature had entered the woods, but when dog came back out, they all returned to the house.

Regarding the events the next day, a quote from the witness.

"The goats were huddling around my dad the morning after the first sighting. We had never seen that before, nor since that incident the night before. My mom smelled the odor the morning after the incident when she walked outside. It seemed like the odor was coming from the woods on the opposite side of the house from where we saw the creature the night before. I smelled the odor the night the night my friend saw the creature when he was by himself and we went tracking down by the cave."

I have been invited to visit the property and I have shown them photos of structures from my collection for reference.

About BFRO Investigator Carter Buschardt:

Carter is originally from Texas & moved to Missouri in 1988. Professional drummer for 20 years. Improv & sketch comic and writer for 5 years. Lighting technician for major touring groups for several years. Experienced outdoorsman and was a trained investigator for MUFON. Studied Herpetology in college. Longtime special interest in Sasquatch long term habituation, burial research, infra sound, language & stick structures. He led three Missouri BFRO Public Expeditions:, 2012 & 2013 & 2014. Led public expedition for BFRO in Illinois in 2019.Participated in Iowa, 2012 Illinois. Michigan 2016. Private Expeditions: Illinois 2011, 2012, 2013. Missouri 2011, 2012 (3) 2013(2) 2014. Iowa 2012, 2014 & 2015. Consulted on two Animal Planet Finding Bigfoot TV shows. Expedition leader in Missouri 2013 (1) & 2014 (2) & Illinois Expedition 2019 (1). Led night ops on numerous BFRO expeditions. Hosted a public Town Hall meeting in Missouri in 2017.