YEAR: 2005

SEASON: Fall

MONTH: October

DATE: Sunday

STATE: Arkansas

COUNTY: Hot Spring County

LOCATION DETAILS: This area is in the Arlie Moore area of the corp land surrounding Lake DeGray.

NEAREST TOWN: Bismarck

NEAREST ROAD: Hwy 7

OBSERVED: Wednesday, October, 12, 2005 our neighbors dogs were very active and barking all night. The next morning about 5:30am my own dog was barking in the backyard. I opened the door to calm her down and I heard something in the back of our property near the fruit trees. It was very heavy sounding and I could hear branches breaking as it departed. The next morning around 8:30am my husband went to his truck in the backyard and heard something behind our shop take off running. He thought it was a hunter and ran to the back to listen. He thought it sounded like it was on two feet. He said it stomped very heavily as it was running through the woods and he could hear snorting. Sunday, October 16th, I went walking around the neighborhood road and discovered several sets of large and small barefootprints on the gray slate road in front of our house. At first I thought it was a childs footprint until I looked closer. There were two sets. The largest measured 13.5 by 7 inches and the small print measured 9 by 4 inches. I took pictures of all the prints and measured each print. They consistenly measured the same size. The large print is about 3 inches wider than my husbands foot and he's a big man.

ALSO NOTICED: The footprints were also found in our yard in the sand around the driveway. There were several very near our fruit trees. There were large and small prints. There was one print found in the mud near the water faucet. This print measured the same as the other large prints that were found. I also found other prints behind the shop that were old and dried, but were still distinguishable.

OTHER WITNESSES: My husband and son were witnesses to the footprints. I did take pictures.

OTHER STORIES: No.

TIME AND CONDITIONS: Early morning hours.

ENVIRONMENT: This is a heavily wooded area less than one mile from Lake DeGray.

Follow-up investigation report by BFRO Investigator Tony Gerard:

I spoke with the witness by phone. The witness reported that her dogs often bark at deer, which are numerous in the area, so she did not consider their barking all night anything extraordinary at the time. The original prints she found on the gravel road were coming from her property, on further investigation she and her husband found other prints on their property. There were at least two different sets of prints. The tracks had five toes and no visible arch. The larger prints were 13.5 inches in length and 7 inches wide. Width measurement was across the ball of the foot, which was the widest part of the track. The smaller tracks were 9 inches in length by 4 inches in width. The tracks were much narrower in the heel. On the larger tracks the big toe was distinctly separated from the other toes, on the smaller tracks it was much less so.
The witness has fruit trees on her property in addition to blackberries and muscatines. She said that they had hardly gotten any fruit at all this year and that there were not even any fallen fruits around the trees. They had initially attributed this to deer. Her husband had mentioned that he needed a ladder to get to the ripe apples.
This area is within a few miles of reports Report #1640, Report #13211, Report #7059,Report #1641.



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About BFRO Investigator Tony Gerard:

Tony Gerard is a community college biology professor.

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