Geographical Index > Canada > Saskatchewan > Report # 4857
(Class A)
Submitted by witness on Tuesday, August 27, 2002.
Noon sighting by fisherman, on the shore of the Churchill River
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YEAR: 1992
SEASON: Spring MONTH: May DATE: 20 PROVINCE: Saskatchewan COUNTRY: Canada NEAREST TOWN: La Ronge OBSERVED: May 19,1992 I was fishing in upper Sackewan on the Chuch Hill river, When I Saw the animal(bigfoot). I just caught the biggest northern pike of my life, when I turn around in the boat in total fear. I caught a glimps of the animal on the bank on the river disappearing into the forest. It was approx. 8 foot tall hair all over. I was approx 100 yards from the animal. It took me awhile to calm down and then went back to camp. I mention to the owner that I saw something strange in the forest and he tried to convience me that it was a bear walking upright with a cub through the forest. I did not say I saw bigfoot or a bear just something strange. I have been riduculed so I have been quite about this.
ALSO NOTICED: Owner of the lodge tried to convience me that I saw a bear walking upright when, I never told him anything about the animal except I saw something strange this morning in the woods. OTHER WITNESSES: none OTHER STORIES: none I went fishing up here. TIME AND CONDITIONS: noon fair sky sunny ENVIRONMENT: Forrest, river
Follow-up investigation report:
I talked to the witness by phone 8/29/02. He had been fishing alone from a boat in a bay on the Churchill River in Saskatchewan, about 35 miles northwest of La Ronge. He had just landed a big northern pike when he felt something looking at him. He turned and looked and saw a big upright animal standing on shore 70 to 100 yards away looking at him. He made eye contact with it and it turned and walked like a man into the forest.
The witness described the animal as tall - probably 8 feet tall - big and muscular. When I asked him if it could have been a bear or a human he said no, that he was sure it was neither.
"What was it then?" I asked.
"Well... bigfoot or sasquatch, I guess they call them," was his tentative reply.
"A lot of people don't believe they're real. What do you think?" I said.
"Yeah, I saw it. It's real," he said.
The animal had brown hair, two to three inches long, covering its entire body. The sighting was brief, though, and the witness was quite frightened by the experience. He could provide no further details on the animal's appearance. In talking to witnesses, like this one, who claim to have seen a sasquatch, I've been struck by a couple of things: Witnesses often emphatically say, NO, it was not a human, and, NO, it was not a bear. I usually pursue the point by asking, "How do you know it wasn't?" Their response to that is usually silence, followed by a statement like, "It just wasn't." One witness, when I pressed the "How do you know?" question, said "It's like if you see a horse standing in a field - it's a horse! It just is… you know it."
That sentiment, that the animal they're seeing is what it is - a sasquatch - suggests that a sasquatch is different enough from a bear or a human to be readily identified as such. That it's like "a horse in a field" - anyone getting a good look at it knows what it is (or what it isn't). The second characteristic I've noticed from witnesses of good sightings is that they seem hesitant to give the thing they've seen a name. Apparently, the experience is awesome, carries great implications, and is plain frightening. To put a name on it maybe implies some understanding of it - and understanding seems far from what is felt by witnesses. "Traumatizing" may be a better way to characterize the experience.
The witness was struck by the way the resort owner he told of "seeing something strange" went out of his way to convince him he'd seen a bear walking upright. The suggestion was that the owner launched into a persuasive "bear walking upright" argument based only on the witness's "saw something strange" comment, because he knew there were sasquatches in the area. The inference was that the owner was trying to "keep a lid on it" for fear of it scaring customers away. And it did scare the witness away. He told me he stayed away from that bay the rest of the trip.
When I asked him if he'd ever seen the Patterson/Gimlin film, he didn't seem to know anything about it. The reason he gave for just now submitting a report of his sighting (one that happened ten years ago) was that he'd just seen a TV show about bigfoot in which the BFRO was mentioned, so he found our website and decided to write up his experience. He also indicated that he'd been given quite a bit of grief over the years for talking about what he saw that day.
"What do you think the animal was doing standing there at the water's edge?" I asked.
"I think it was watching me catch that fish," he said.
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