Sasquatch Chronicles - SC EP:312 The Snelgrove Lake Incident

Episode Date: April 3, 2017

A listener writes, "Hello Wes, Doug Hajicek Here, I was the creator and producer of MonsterQuest, Legend meets Science, Mysterious Encounters, Giganto the real King Kong and many other TV shows. I recently worked with Les Stroud on his bigfoot shows as a Tech director. Anyhow, I just wanted introduce myself to say how much I really enjoy your Sas-Chronicles and compliment you on your super nice friendly manners and the great respect you show witnesses and guests. You also always ask great questions, take the topic serious and your commentaries always compliment your interviews. You are a very talented host who is no doubt gaining endless-connect the dot knowledge base on this on-going mystery. Your show has helped even me connect dots by hearing so many witnesses back to back and I've been doing research like 27 years now. I got in to this crazy mystery and mainly produced my shows to communicate good BF info to the public as I was a BF researcher first, but happened to be a wildlife/ natural history producer who just applied my production skills to producing the shows on a subject that I was most interested in and researching everyday anyhow. My interest began like most when I crossed path with one of these creatures at a fairly young age and then again in the far north in the early 90s, been a lot of years now trying to find answers. My son is also now a dedicated field researcher after he traveled with me to Snelgrove Lake, Ont. Canada and experienced the wrath of creatures first hand. He has also been in search of answers ever since. Anyhow love to visit with you sometime when you get spare time. I have had many life changing experiences for sure to share with anyone who wants them shared. We certainly have plenty in common."

Black thing go from left to right, and I thought, I'm going to die out here and no one's ever going to know. I couldn't believe what my eyeballs was showing me. I'll never forget how evil the eyes were. It was horrible. I mean, I've never seen nothing that evil. It ran towards me at a rate that I can't even explain, turned and stared at me, and this look of, I just want to kill you. I want to say it was human, but it wasn't. He was yelling at me to grab a gun, grab a gun. I was like, for what? He said, just grab a gun. And there's footprints all the way to the door of my house.

It had went inside my garage all the way to the door. 911, what are you reporting? Get somebody out here. What's going on now, sir? That son of a bitch is about 6'9, I don't know. Do you see him now, sir? Yes, I'm looking right at him. Uh-uh.

You're listening to Sasquil. Watch Chronicles. Check us out online at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. If you've had an encounter, email me. My email address is Wes at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. Something has unleashed its wrath. The refrigerator was ripped from the wall. When Munster Quest first investigated, a legendary creature may have turned up its aggression. This rock on the side of the building was bang. And since then, the cabin has been attacked. again. And all of a sudden, something was throwing at the cabin. Now, Monster Quest returns with

a new search, a new plan, and a new opportunity to analyze some of the most startling evidence collected. If there is any DNA left there, we should be able to read it. And a shocking discovery suggests they may be closing in. It was eight feet tall, blacker than black. Welcome to the show, everyone. Thanks for being here tonight. Got a great show planned for you this evening. Going to be speaking to Doug Hichick, who was a producer on Monster Quest. And you guys remember that show, Monster Quest.

I played a small clip there in the beginning. And he'll be talking about Snellgrove Lake. And there's a cabin on Snell Grove Lake that seems to be the focus of these creatures. And Doug will be giving us some inside information, things that happened that you maybe didn't see on TV. And he'll be sharing his own encounters with us tonight. definitely going to be a great show. I'm excited to have Doug on.

If you've had an encounter and you'd like to be on the show, shoot me an email. My email address is Wes at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. And if you get a chance to check out the website, Sasquatch Chronicles.com, you can become a member, get additional shows, check out the store at the top of the website, get yourself some gear, lots of cool stuff. I hope you get a chance to check it out. again at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. Let's jump into it tonight. I want to welcome Doug to the show. Doug, thanks for coming on tonight, man.

I really appreciate you being here. Hey, thank you. Thanks for inviting me. And I was playing for the audience there in the beginning, the monster, you know, a little small clip of what happened out there, the Snow Grove Lake, the cabin out there. And I've always been fascinated with that story. And I'm a huge fan of yours.

and so I really appreciate you coming on the show. I wanted to talk about, before we get into some of the different things on TV, I wanted to ask you about your own personal encounter with Sasquatch, and if you would kind of share with the audience what you were out doing and walk us into what happened. Well, you know, I had several things happen when I was young, things like hearing, you know, like a screams like a woman being murdered in the forest. But I was young because I practically lived in the woods when I was a kid with the dirt bikes.

And I don't think I ever came home. And then later on as a deer hunter, I would hear and smell. I'd hear chest beating on occasion that was not grouse. And I would hear or smell terrible smells. You know, they'd be reported by other people in our hunting party. And we'd be a mile apart, very odd. And you just, you know, this stuff kind of builds up. And I do remember seeing the Patterson Gimlin creature on the Covered Boys Life when I was young.

And I could, you know, very quickly looked at that with kind of a skeptical eye and went, God, that looks like a real animal. And I remember, you know, that kind of opening up my brain. But didn't really think a whole lot about it in a very busy young life. Got married young, had kids, and started getting into television. I landed at my first TV series in 1985. And that allowed me to travel pretty much all over the world. And I was on a trip for that show, way up in the subartic, on a lake called Selwyn Lake.

And we had flown up there to film Giant Lake Trout. And I was up there with a fisheries biologist, a good friend of mine. We had a fishing guide. Anyhow, one day, after a very successful day of filming, we had to do a little pea break. And it was kind of the lake was a little bit rough that day. So we went to shore. And quickly we all noticed these tracks that came out of the water and walked in this beautiful sandbush. beach what they call an escrow up there in the arctic and um through pea gravel into the into the

forest the stunted black spruce forest and you know of course we're immediately looking at these tracks in the ones in the sand there wasn't a ton of detail i mean there were there were discernible toes but there wasn't like you know um there were no claw marks we thought for sure these are polar bear tracks or grizzly, possibly even a bare and ground grizzly tracks. And, you know, there were no claw marks. They were just way too long. They were in a very weird, perfectly straight line. And we followed the tracks through the P-Grom.

I remember Rick jumping off a big, tall rock and trying to make that kind of a deep impression. He couldn't even dent it. And he would be dead in 270. And so we followed the tracks. And then they got into these little stunted black spruce trees. And they're about seven foot tall less. And they're, you know, they're spindly.

They're flexible. But there was a seven foot tall tree. And there was a track in front of the trunk. And then in a straight line was the next step stride. And that's when it really hit me. Holy crap. Whatever this was stepped over this tree. And, you know, I remember just like the blood rushing to my, to my head and thinking, my God, you know, this is probably a big foot.

And, of course, everybody else in the party thought the same thing. And they were just like, we were kind of goofing around, you know, laughing, joking about it. Then we got really serious because we followed the tracks through the, the little stands of trees. And then we could see out in the tundra, these tracks going forever. this trackway. And it went in the street line. And so, of course, I want answers. And I'm, you know, I'm thinking, God, whatever this is,

we can catch up with that if we get the float plane up because there's no place for it to hide up there. And it's still something I would like to do at some point. And that is to go back and look for tracks. So we went to the float plane pilot, took the long boat trip. We called it the butt slap trip, because it was of rugged water in this little aluminum boat. And we got back and we told him about the tracks.

And it was just an instant. The camp owner got angry. I thought we were trained to hoax him. And he took his clipboard. And I remember he whipped it across the tent. And Rick looked at each other and thought, we were back out of here. You know, he was in no mood for going up

and looking for something. thought we were playing a joke on him. But I really regret that. And then, you know, I get back home and I cannot get that out of my head. I remember sending Peter Byrne the film. I had had a video camera, of course, filmed all this stuff. Sent him the tape so we could study it. And then he had pulled out, I think, in the 1800s, a sighting on that lake.

It was really interesting. So, one story short, I was on a mission at that point. And that, that, seeing those tracks just literally changed the course of my life because at that point I was obsessed with getting answers. And of course, I'm in the TV business and I thought, God, would it, would it be really cool to actually get some facts out to people? Because I had met Matt Moneymaker at that point. And, of course, Matt informed me that, oh, man, sightings are common. all of the country. I was just shocked and informed me on, you know,

things that he knew. And it really got me more obsessed at that point and more wanting to get this information out. And that's when Ledgy Meets Science was born. I, we contacted Discovery Channel, put a deal together with Discovery Channel just really fast. And I started producing Legend Meet Science. And many of your listeners may know

about that. It's now a book also, written by Jeff Meldrum. So from there, it went on, and I just kept on, you know, making programs about Bigfoot because they were my excuse, Wes, to get out into the field. As you know, it's, you know, it's expensive to go on expeditions. A lot of gears needed and allowed me to buy a lot of gear and to thermal cameras. And this is a long time ago, and they were very expensive, allowed me to do a lot of things. You know, just one thing went to another. That's interesting about the trackway. It just went on for miles and miles.

Did the float plane operator, did he ever go and look at him? No, no. We were literally afraid to bring him up again with him because he was so angry. I mean, we're talking really angry. He really thought that we were trying to hoax him. That's kind of a common thing in camps, these fishing camps, camps gets to play jokes on each other. And he thought we were playing a joke.

You know, we were all in it and we're all going to get them. But I regret not going alone with him and having them try to understand that it wasn't joking. You know, this wasn't a hoax. Because I really felt that if we could have got up, you could have seen those tracks just clear. And there's no place for an animal to hide up there. It's mainly tundra. And, you know, those little stands of trees. but they're very thin.

You could see right through them. It's not like the canopy, you know, in Washington State or Minnesota, which, you know, aerial reconnaissance to me seems kind of silly a lot of ways because you can't see through the canopy. But we could have. And we could have, you know,

I had, of course, you know, all the video gear in the world with me. We could have gotten amazing footage because these tracks looked fairly fresh. How far could an animal get, you know? So, you know, a plane can go, you know, 130, 140 miles an hour, we could have easily caught up to this. So a lot of regrets there, a lot of regrets. Yeah, no, I understand.

And that is frustrating because you probably would have caught up with it, you know, from a plane. I want to get into the Snell Grove incident and your actual sighting. I thought your sighting was very, very fascinating with the two creatures talking. Before we get into that, one of the members on Sasquatch Chronicles.com, he asked me to ask you about offering Bob Gimlin a million dollars to recount his story or something to that effect. I've never heard this story before. But will you tell us what happened? Was it for a TV show? Yes. I was one, I had gone to Bluff Creek with Bob. It was the first time he had gone back. It was me and a whole bunch of other researchers. It was for one of the anniversaries. I think it was around the year 2001, maybe. But I was filming with serious encounters,

and we were in Northern California. I was trying to get an interview with Bob, literally kind of hinting every day. And I know at that point, Bob was, you know, he was really seemed regretful about going public and, you know, just having somebody people ridicule him and say that he hoax this and hoax that and on and on and so he was very reluctant to go on TV and finally because I had done legend me science um I think even John

Frida said asked him and said guys you can trust Doug so on but anyway Bob agreed to do it and I remember the sun was literally setting we had just you know I could see the life was only going to be good for a few more minutes but I'm like I It doesn't matter. I'm just going to start rolling. No, no prep, no nothing. We miced them up quick. And I didn't even know.

My balance of camera just started rolling, because this was, like, to me, historical. And interviewed Bob, and, you know, and he just told this amazing story, matter of fact, and I asked him a number of questions, told this story, and I got done, and I said, can you hold on a second? After I got the interview in the can't,

I called my executive producer, at the station and I said can I offer Bob a bunch of money to finally settle this controversy to see if he'll come forward

and say okay admit that it was a hoax and I'd give him X amount of money and so and I threw some numbers out there and I said how about we offer them a million dollars

and I said one I think you're safe he isn't going to take it because there's no way this guy is lying I've spent days with him. He's just, just amazing. I don't think I've ever met him more honest person than Bob being one. And I said, so I don't think you have any chance, but in the slight chance that he takes it. Then he'll, you know, we'll have an exclusive show on how this was done. And that'll be historical.

And he goes, okay. And so I literally got a phone and offered Bob the money. And Bob didn't even think about it. He goes, Doug, I'd love to take your money, but let me tell you again, here's what happened. And he just went off into this story again. I mean, there wasn't even a split second west of thinking or pondery or anything. It was just an instant. So pretty amazing. Yeah, that is an amazing story. I've never heard that before.

And, I mean, I get where Bob's coming from. It gets old after a while. You know, the Big Four World can beat up on you. But for him to turn down a million dollars, that says a lot right there. So that's an amazing story. turn it to turn it down within two seconds. He didn't even hesitate. I don't think I've ever seen somebody pick up on a conversation so quick.

He said, Doug, I'd love to hit your money, but here's, let me just tell you again what happened. He just went off into the story. It's like, okay. Yeah. There was no pondering. So, anyhow, there you go. I think the Patterson footage is, you know, obviously 100% real. And I've spent hundreds and hundreds of hours, analyze.

it and doing forensic stuff to it and other people have taken over and are doing amazing work with it. And it's the more you study it, the more you know it's a real animal, period. Yeah, and that is an amazing story because Bob's not a wealthy man. I know that for a fact. And for him to turn it down, you know, a million dollars would change anyone's life. Oh, sure. And that's, wow, that's amazing.

I appreciate you sharing that story. if you would, I really want to get into the Snellgrove Lake cabin incident and find out why you think that the creatures are there. But your first sighting was actually at that cabin, and you weren't even looking for Sasquatch. If you would, would you mind telling the audience about that encounter? I was fascinated by it. I know you don't think it's that big of a deal, but I thought it was an awesome encounter. Well, it was quick. And first off, I've seen these creatures.

on three, I call them casual sightings because there was no interaction. I wasn't that close. One was in broad daylight. Actually, two of them were in broad daylight. And one was that night in headlights in my car. But the creature was standing at the side of the road. And it was apparently, it looked like it was drying off.

And I had a witness with me. Pretty amazing. But, you know, we were up at Snell. and I had been going to Snell Grove Lake for many years, I mean, since the 90s. And I went up there first to film a story on this amazing cabin in the middle of nowhere that was solar powered, had a hot shower, you know, a solar powered shower, had running water from the lake. I mean, they had all the modern conveniences except the toilet in the cabin and everything. And so it was kind of a big thing in the 90s, you know,

here's this getaway you can go to, it's flown in, dropped off. They weren't there to do a story, which I did for television. And then I'm like, I talked to the guy, I'm like, I want to come back here. You know, and I started going up there

because it was just my favorite place to go. For many reasons, one, I mean, how often can you go to a place where you can literally hear your own heartbeat? So this was just another trip, and this was a trip that I had brought, decided I'd brought myself, I brought friends many times, gone up there alone before.

But finally we decided, hey, let's, you know, bring our daughters up. And Joe and Vladimir, a good friend of mine, we all had daughters about the same age. And they were all friends. They all knew each other, too. So we say, hey, let's all go on this thing and bring them up there. And, of course, the moms are all worried because there's no phone service up there. and so we go up there and we're having a great old time, you know, fishing, fish or biting, the weather's been good. And my daughter's in my boat, Joe's daughter's in his boat, and Plattermer's daughters in his boat.

These are little aluminum craft boats with, you know, like five, three horse, two horse motors on them. And we were in a lake that was hidden. And I called it Hidden Lake, because you literally cannot see the answer. turn to this little stream. It's around a little bog. And so you can't see it, can't find it. You go in there and there's just massive wallies. And we were on her way out after a long day of fishing.

And my daughter started making monkey sounds, which she had done also on the lake. She said it helped her catch wallies. It was very odd, and I just whatever. She'd make these little chimp sounds. And so we're pulling out of the stream. And we're catching fish even in the stream, you know, small alloys. And as we're pulling, she's fishing and pulling up these little, you know, 10-inch fish.

And we get to the edge of where the stream empties into the main lake. And all of a sudden there's a huge wood knock. Bam, on the side of a tree. Of course, right away, I'm like, tell you. and everybody to cut their engine. So everybody cut their engine. And I told them, I don't think anybody even hurt because they were kind of way back there and the motors were loud.

And this thing was right next to me and her. So anyhow, I just had never thought about, you know, this could be a possible bigfoot place. It could be a big foot or big foot surround this lane because I'd been going up there so many times. Never had anything weird happened except a couple of, at times we'd either heard something. One time we heard singing.

I was up there with my son and Joe. We heard this beautiful operatic tennis singing. That sounded like I'm just a regular woman singing from the edge of the lake somewhere. The opera warming up, like she was warming up her voice. And it was really bizarre because I went on so long. I remember my son, my young son, I won. how that changed his life because it was a mystery even to him. He said, Dad, I know why you come up here all the time.

And I said, yeah, there's a lot of mysteries. Yeah, and it's just such a beautiful place. I said, you don't even know, you could be back a million years ago, and you wouldn't even know when you should look at your own watch, what century it was or when it was, because it's all just this virgin, beautiful forest. Anyhow, so we get back. we wait till like two in the morning, one in the morning to do a wood knock. Never done a wood knock up there before.

We do a wood knock, Wes, and it was an instant, the response. The creepy part, it was only feet away from us once again. And everybody's jaw, I remember everybody's face turned white, and everybody's jaw kind of dipped and dropped. There were certainly skeptics in the, you know, in the group. Joe had never seen anything until he was out of sky, open-minded, but skeptical. Blattermer was completely skeptical. And boy, that changed instantly. So Woodnock was loud and just feet.

And so we had a rock exchange. We tossed little rocks out into where the wood knock was because it wouldn't answer any more woodnocks. So I said, hey, let's toss a couple of pebbles. you know, near where the woodnought came from underhandedly and on behold, we had a rock exchange rocks came back, tossed gently, landed by all

our feet. And this went on for maybe an hour, two hours this rock exchange. And so because you got to remember, West, when I had my sighting, it was the next day during the afternoon, and I'll get to

that. But so nothing happened. There was no screaming that night. No wood knocks. It's just this rock exchange, except one big rock landed in the lake and clunk, clunk, clunk down the

boulders, maybe 15 feet from us. But then once again, that wasn't aggressive either. And so, we go to bed very, very late. The kids are all asleep. And I say, hey, I'm going to set up a bit.

You guys go on off the bed and I had a candle on the table. The cabin was dark, except for this little candle, little tea light. I'm reading a field and stream, hoping I'd get tired. You know, I'd feel going to get a yawn going. And I finally did. I started getting a little tired. My eyes were tired.

And I went to the window. There's a window that faces the forest. I went to the window and there's a little solar-powered light above the sink, and which pumps water from the lake. And I flick that light on, and then all hell broke loose. And the cabin at that point started being pounded, shook. I could hear, I mean, there was just massive amounts of screaming going on.

This caught me off guard. I mean, I was literally, I didn't, I didn't even know where to turn. I didn't know where this was going to end. I could hear stuff up on the roof. I could hear running on the bridge. which was really odd. It didn't sound like a big, heavy creature. I could hear brush getting tossed up on the roof.

Rocks, small rocks, big rocks. It was just a huge amount of commotion. And I look up, and of course, the skylight. There's a skylight up there, and it's wide open that we use to let the hot air out. And I'm like, how do I shut the skylight? You know, and where's the pole? I remember a pole. I'm panicking.

I grab this long pole and I shove it in the hook and I'm trying to get it turned and I start turning it the wrong way and all this commotion's going on. And then the cabin started rocking while I'm trying to get this skylight. I just in my mind pictured some creature jumping down that skylight or falling through that skylight. You talk about a bad horror movie. So, you know, the cabin is just a full commotion and I'm like, where is everybody? nobody's waking up at this point because this onslaught continued I mean the screams were thundering loud

and it sounded like there were two creatures fighting it's the best way I can describe it like they were arguing screaming at each other almost which was so odd or screaming at something else I didn't get to

for some reason I didn't get the sense they were screaming at me so all of a sudden the cabin started rocking like being lifted from the block it's on. You can remember this is not log cabin. It's a cabin built on a pretty much plywood with steel siding, but it's being lifted from the blocks from the foundation and shook and rocked. And I look at the floorboards, and I can say the floorboards flexing. And I'm like,

oh my God, I run into Vladimir's bunk bedroom there and he's, you know, sounds asleep and I'm beating on his back west, as hard as I can. I mean, I've, I've been. I feel like I'm hurting him. And he's hitting him and hitting him. And he's not waking up. And then I changed directions. I'm like, oh, God, Joe will wake up. I run into Joe's bunk room.

And I start beating on Joe's back and shaking him and wake him. Nothing. And then it quit. And by then it was too late. I never even got to wake those guys up to even tell when it just happened, which doesn't make any sense to me at this day. It never did. except they probably were extremely worn out, I guess.

So any logical explanation from all the fresh air and being up late, these guys that go to bed early and get up early, and we kept them up quite late. So anyhow, the next day we were burning our trash by our paper trash in the fire because you have to either, you know, you have to read your perishables, you have to pack out to recyclables, and you have to burn your paper trash. you know, garbage basically, the paper burnables.

And so we're burning the trash, but we had just come back, you know, we had dinner every night, and everybody was always strictly instructed to never throw your fish cuts in the lake, because that's where we drink out of, but to always put the fish cuts on this big rock, on the other side of this little bay about, you know, I don't know, I've never measured it, but I'm guessing it's, you know, 100 yards away, maybe less. and there would always be a seagull or two that would come by and, you know, resident seagull that would come by and grab the guts and swallow them whole and whatever. It's pretty amazing to me to see these seagulls eat these entrails.

But we're burning the trash and we had, you know, we'd add supper, we'd put the fish in trails over there. No seagulls had shown up yet. And we hear chatter like I'd heard the night before. kind of a, they sounded just like two chimpanzees and they were like fighting, arguing and they were going back and forth and obviously there was two different kind of tones or voices and we're like, I look at Joe and I'm like my god

there's sounds like chimpanzees over there it sounds similar to what I heard last night we look and we're scaring just staring on the other side of that shore here we see two, both of us see it We see two black upright figures walking and actually heading north. And right along the shore, but just in the tree line, just enough where we could see there were two upright figures there. And they were very black or brown or very dark colored.

But we never get to see any features whenever you see hands or faces or anything. So that was my first sighting. And that was pretty exciting. It also was Joe's. but it wasn't, I could hardly even consider as a study because I didn't see any detail. Seeing the two figures chattering back and forth, I've actually talked to a lot of hunters who have either seen them or not seen them, and they'll describe it as, I've had it describe so many different ways, like two chimpanzees chattering back and forth.

I had one hunter who said it reminded them of like a deaf Russian people talking. He couldn't, it was some weird chatter and it was obviously some sort of conversation going on, but he just couldn't place what it was. And that's interesting when you see the two figures and you hear them having some sort of conversation back and forth. Like I've had Ron Morad on several times and I'll probably have them on here in the near future. And he's talked about that, almost like they're having some sort of conversation back and forth. Well, actually, I would say these weren't. They were yelling at something. they were either both yelling at a third party or possibly even us or they were yelling at each other

but they were definitely in a scolding tone you know it did not sound friendly and it was loud and very distinct but very once again i have to say it's the only thing i can relate to is chimp chimp like chatter never heard anything that sounded like words or anything but man i tell you i certainly heard stuff that sounded like anger or um um just yelling at each other like a couple fighting it's the best way i can describe it so that was pretty amazing and of course at that point i had produced you know numerous shows on the topic gone on tons of expeditions looking for them with every kind of photographic gadget you could ever think of um plinths balloons i may go on and on when we had everything.

And here I am burning garbage, talking with my friend about the day of fishing and about the previous experience of the night. And there it is right there. That's usually the way it happens, isn't it? Yeah, pretty amazing, pretty amazing. I wanted to ask you, what did you think, what do you think actually set these things off the night before

when all hell broke loose by turning on a light? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't really get into a lot of detail. Well, one, I just think about myself because I've got, you know, very light colored hair, blonde hair, one diamond and then turned white. And so it closed. Everybody else kids me because my hair gloves.

Oh, I could see in a crouch your hair gloves. So I'm just wondering if they weren't out there, you know, maybe doing their reconnaissance or spine through the windows. we're just close by the cabin sneaking around, and then all of a sudden I flick this light on. And if they were close, which they obviously were, because the attack of the cabin happened instantly,

I think I just scared the heck out of them. I really do. As you describe it, it reminds me of almost like the ape canyon story with the miners, and what the miners must have been going through. You know, those guys were just popping off shots through the wall. I realize it's a different type of situation, but you still... Well, I could imagine, okay, but let's go back.

What if this would have been 100 years ago or 50 years ago and just complete ignorance about these things? And we're all armed and we were all up. God, I wonder if we wouldn't have started shooting through the walls because I thought I was going to die that night. I really was convinced there's no way I'm getting out of this one. You know, I'm finally going to meet my maker. because this sounded violent and powerful and anyone

they're going to come bursting through that little thin door and I'm dead and they're going to kill my child and my friends and you know this is not good but yeah I could imagine that if we would have all been armed and taken us back 50 years 100 years we might have started shooting through the walls too to protect herself yeah I think I actually had even reenacted that at Abe Canyon for mysterious encounters.

So I was very familiar with the story. But here I was living it, real life. And, boy, I'll tell you that, that adds a lot of credence to that story. Yeah, it's, you know, before I want to go into the Snowgrove incident, I know you've been looking into this for 27 years. And, you know, my opinion's changed a lot over the very short amount of years I've been doing this. When I very first, you know, I had kind of a nasty encounter, and my opinion of them was their godless killing machines and kill them all and like God figure it out. And my opinion of that's changed a lot.

And it's mainly from talking to witnesses. You kind of get a sense of, okay, well, maybe they're not all godless killing machines. Maybe kill them all and let God sort it out was emotions talking at the time. But how has your opinion changed from when you very first started looking into this and you've had these encounters? and you've been out to Snowgrove Lake, and I know you've looked into this more than probably most people. How has your opinion changed, and what have you learned over the 27 years? Well, I think I started out thinking they were extremely docile, extremely, you know, that they absolutely operated only on fear and would retreat in almost every case.

They might throw a rock at you, but they're going to retreat. You know, and we had that happen numerous times, but everything I was ended without, it's, you know, like a gorilla all bang the side of a zoo window and then run. You know, I figured absolutely that would be the case. But things like Snow Grove where they were attacked the cabin for such a length and knew I was in there. They did not retreat. I don't necessarily, they didn't come burst into the door either, which would have been, you know, like a, a toothpick to them. I wouldn't even have slowed them down.

But I kind of think that we're dealing with a more of a variety of either creatures, situations. I think that they have a hair-triggered temper. I think they're far more powerful than I ever dreamed of because that cabin, I don't know what it weighs, but it was being lifted off its block foundation, which is only, you know,

it's held up by two corners. I'm suspended on blocks. but they were lifting it. You know, and I'm 100% on that. I'm not maybe they were lifting it. They were lifting it. The whole cabin was being lifted and rocked. And so I'm thinking, boy, they're kind of willing to really go to the, the 10th degree to scare somebody.

But then again, I did walk away, and I've been up there, you know, numerous times since, and we've had encounters. but in every case I walked away. But I also think that they're very capable. I think they're meat eaters. And I think they're very capable of killing somebody, either out of fear. Let's just compare it to black bears. There are, my God, just Minnesota alone, there's 38,000 black bears. There's that many bears here, and they're tolerated in most cases because they operate on fear.

They stay away from people. you see people and they both you know they just leave people alone and I think we're kind of dealing with a bear mentality I think most of them operate in fear but every once in a while less there is a black bear attack and there is somebody

killed by a black bear and I've always keep that in the back of my mind and for years I've done blackberry research I've been very in close proximity to mothers with cubs I've actually had the privilege of having a mother trust me whether cubs

and thinking, oh, my God, something doesn't happen and this mother doesn't go back and take me out, you know. You just don't know, they're wild animals. So there's going to be exceptions. So I always wonder if, you know, people that haven't been taken children, maybe have been taken and, you know, taken out of curiosity and maybe die of exposure. Maybe they weren't killed by these creatures.

Maybe they were just taken. Maybe they were accidentally injured. maybe people have been taken and accidentally injured you know because you can imagine something that powerful jerking your own probably wouldn't be too good and you could die of fear and exposure also

so you look at the the Osmond story where he was kidnapped and there were things in that story that I believe like he described this goose walk well I felt that you know I was one of the people that saw that first in the Patty film you know, this, just the legs spleen out like a goose, like a duck walk.

He describes that. There's no way he could have described that without having some kind of very, very intimate encounter with these things. You know, could he have been killed? Would he have been killed possibly had he had not gotten away? So who knows? So I'm still kind of on the fence, but I have a lot more fear now. In fact, I have not gone to Snell since our last incident.

And I keep asking myself, if I'm not. gone because I'm afraid to. In other words, why did I go there so many times? And now I haven't gone. God, it's been, you know, numbers of years now. And I'm just kind of trying to get out. I'm thinking that maybe it is a fear factor. Because it just take some, because I know I'll mess, you know, I'll do wood knocking, I'll do things like work there. I can't resist. And then you think, God, what if they, you know, what if they kind of recognize who we are, you know, and some of the incidents have happened already, and they come done for me.

So, anyhow, that's kind of where I'm at, Wes, I guess it hasn't changed a ton except I think I have more fear now, more fear, more respect. And there's certain dots I'm connecting and thinking, you know, there could be certain ones that could easily, and would easily kill a human, just like a blacker. Rare, but still possible. No, I understand. I wanted to ask you about this cabin at the Snellgrove Lake.

Why do you think that they're focused on this cabin? Well, okay, I've got opinions, and they're only opinions. But one, I had been going out there for years, and nothing ever happened. There was never any banging on the side of the cabin or having any rocks thrown at anybody, although there was, you know, a couple of fishermen that I was with that had a big stanchard. I curled over the forest and landed in the water by them. I heard the singing, you know, I mean, I never had any attacks. My God, I've slept out on the dock or right on the boardwalk right next to the dock before you're to the dock.

You know, never thought anything of it. The worst thing happened to me is I saw, you know, a mouse climb on my sleep at me. That's, you know, and he just kept doing it all night and bothered me one bit. but you get into a situation where people are instructed to throw their perishables at the end of these 40 trips into the backwoods. And once again, you know, when this operator told us, this is why how you're going to do things, he wasn't joking, you could tell. I mean, these guys, they mean business.

So he says don't throw your fish cuts in the lake. He better not find any fish cuts in the lake. you better not find perishables than burned in the garbage. He better not, you know, or anywhere near the cabin, on and on and on. And so people did this pattern. They'd come up there and they put the perishables out. So it could have been a possible additional food source. But there's a huge amount of food around that cabin.

It's rich in grouse, spruce grouse that are, you know, very, very easy to catch barehanded up there. We used to go bull hunting them and we'd walk up three feet from them and use a flu-foo bow and arrow and just knock them off their feet. So there's a lot of grouse at their huge blueberry crop, but it doesn't happen until August. Well, I never started going until August. In fact, that was my first August trip, West was when we brought our girls up. I used to always go in June. June was like my month up there because there were no bugs. There were no mosquitoes, no black flies.

And a friend of mine who I used to take up there, started bringing his friends up there and took my month. So I couldn't go in June anymore. And then the rest of the months were booked by regulars. And so I had to start going in August. And so August was my month. And so I started then going up in August. And that's when the blueberries are ripe.

And that's when I started having these Sasquatch encounters. Okay. So that could have something to do with it. But I think, you know, you think about a cabin in the middle of nowhere. You know, you have 500 square miles of wilderness, and it's the only shiny man-made thing up there. So I don't really necessarily know why the cabin was attacked when no one was in it. That I do not know.

That's an interesting thought process, you know, to figure out why was the cabin destroyed inside in the contents of the shed? including a giant fuel tank that was flipped upside down, and no humans could lift. No group of humans could lift it and flipped it. If you would kind of describe that, I would imagine most of the audience has seen that Monster Quest episode where the cabin owner was talking about this cabin being attacked.

And I remember when I watched that episode and seeing the damage, because he had actually filmed it, I don't know if it was for insurance or what, but he had actually filmed the damage on the inside. and, you know, my amateur hunter looking at it, I'm thinking that's no bear. No bear went in there and caused that much damage. But for the audience, would you describe what happened to that guy's cabin? Yeah, well, I can tell you first even how I found out about it because he didn't tell anybody about that.

He didn't want to advertise that the cabin was trashed. You know, that would hurt tourism, right? It's not going to tell somebody some creature broke into his cabin and trashed it. And so I didn't know about it because when I gone up there with my daughter and Joe and, well, you know, that was probably, I think it was the first time that anybody had been in there since the cabin was attacked. And I can tell you, I can attest to it. I knew every knot in the wood. Nothing was replaced, meaning there were no scratches in the cabin, no bite marks, no claw marks. I would have noticed it.

And I would have said something to. Chuck, oh, I see a bear broke you. Everything was just normal. We get out there, if this is totally normal, the cabinets are all put back. Even though they were ripped off the wall, they were put back because there were no marks on them. It was just torn with hands. So, anyhow, and I didn't even, this wouldn't have never even come up. And I had not told Chuck about one, the nail board I found.

I told them that's dangerous to have that back there was leaning against the building nails out. And I got kids there. And so when he came back, I was telling him about what happened. I was like, holy crap. He just didn't even seem surprised. And then he told me about the incident with the cabin. And I said, Chuck, I was an old bear, dude. I said, there's not one scratch in that panelling and that nauty pine paneling.

I said, I know every, I said, Chuck, you know I know every square inch of that cabin thoroughly. And there's nothing that's been replaced. He goes, yeah, I know. And it didn't wreck the wood. They tore the cabinets off the ship. shelves off, you know, flipped over the refrigerator, flipped over the wood stove, broke everything in the cabin, tore little plane carts up in little pieces. I mean, there were piles of debris that something was in there for hours of that days destroying stuff with a vengeance. But yet,

there was a poster. All the paper in the cabin was torn up. I mean, everything was torn, except there was a paper poster in the cabin that was still hanging and he stood by one staple of these animal pictures of the animals of Ontario. And I found that interesting. But got even plastic, everything was broken to the little pieces. So could it have been a bear? I mean, you know, I guess if a bear can pull shells down

and cabinets and bend pipes and bathrooms and do all this without leaving. Keith marks, claw marks. Why would it, why would it go into a, you know, the thing and bend the sink down flat? Why would it flip up? Why would a bear flip a 1,200 pound fuel tank upside down? That's not something a bear's going to do. They're going to stay as far away from gasoline as you could ever imagine.

There was just too many things. He didn't add up. And then I had bear expert, look at the footage. And he said, no, it's not bear damage. This is just not. You know, he gave me many reasons why. And he said, one, the bears are all hibernating when that damage occurred. And two, he said, the refrigerator is not completely trashed.

And if you look at the film in that, you'll see, oh, there's a little lining worn off in the bottom of the refrigerator. That a bear did that? No, that was that way from water damage. And that happened, I mean, I remember that when that refrigerator was new and I watched it, that fit in. bubble up over the years and that you know because we have to clean the refrigerator out and I remember that that surface area being removed from the refrigerator just a finish a white finish the bearers didn't trash the refrigerator because they can smell what they think is formic acid because the formaldehyte is used in the insulation and it breaks down into formic acid they think it's an ant colony and so to immediately

tear that refrigerator apart never that that wasn't a that didn't happen the cabin the doors were fine spares they'd just go right through a window they'll go right through the door they'll come in and go through a different way i mean they'll just literally just walk through the door like there's no problem break it no the doors were fine one of the screens i think was hanging but it wasn't it wasn't clod up or damaged i don't believe um chuck said whatever it was came in through the doorknob and shut it shut the door behind itself And he found that interesting, but he still was kind of convinced it was beers, but yet you could just tell when you talk to somebody, he was like, oh, and he did say to me, I could believe that was the Sasquatch more than a human. And that's kind of a pretty direct statement.

He said, it would easily, easier for me to believe it was a Sasquatch that did this damage than a human because it looked like human type damage. you have hands to do it. Do you think that owner knows more than what he says because it hurts business that there might be these things around? I do. I do. And Chuck is like a brother to me. I mean, I just love Chuck.

He's just, you know, we've gotten into each other over the years. And I have just so much respect for him. He's one of the greatest pilots ever flown with. He's saying nice about him. But he did tell me a story. which he now denies. He told me a story of seeing what he thought was a black, huge bear. It didn't make any sense to him, and it seemed like he was walking upright.

He remember circling the plane around, making a couple passes over it, seeing it. And they couldn't find it anymore. But other than that, what he knows, I couldn't tell you, but I know he did tell me that story. I'm telling the truth but I asked I brought it up someone one day we were chatting on the phone

and he goes so I never told you that and I'm like yeah you did so are you like brothers and I'm like yeah you did Chuck he's like

no I didn't I'm like yeah you did and that was really weird felt very awkward so but Chuck has recently sold Snow Grove it's a lease basically

they lease it from the government follow strict rules of six people at a time, only so many people a year can go in there. You know, it's very strict rules. They lease it to land. They build a cabin, but he's recently sold his lease to some other outfit or no. I would imagine Chuck is still flying,

but I believe it probably got too much more for him. He had a number of outposts all over. I don't know if he sold them all or just sold that one. Maybe he just sold that one. I wouldn't blame him. Anyhow, but that cabin is just, you know, it's in the heart of the wilderness. You know, if I was a wild animal, when I check it out, yeah, I think I would because there's food, smells, things and noise possibly that would attract an animal. Every once in a while, we've had a small black bear wander up, and like one time a black bear wandered up when I was sitting out there with the black bear.

I was just sitting there looking at me. I'm on the porch with it. And you looked at me and looked at my suitcase and looked at me. me and grabbed my buddy's suitcase and ran into the forest. But the blackfers are puny up there. Man, they're small. It's interesting with the cabin. It makes me wonder prior to that attack.

And I probably wouldn't have thought about this at the time when I saw it on TV. But after interviewing so many people, if whoever was staying there before, if they decided to pop off shots or they did something to piss this thing off for it to come in and do it. Because you hear of attacks like that on people's homes, some cabins. Right. But usually it's something where they're popping off shots or they're doing something. And these things...

Sure. In fact, it could have been moose hunters because I think he brings in a certain amount of moose hunters in the fall, a party or two up there. And so I'm wondering if it wasn't moose hunters. Because it was the last, it was one of the last things they were coming to button up the cabin, I believe, for the year. Button it up, winterize it, you know. poor antifreeze or whatever they do down the down knee up in the pipes.

I'm wondering if it wasn't a group of hunters that was up there last. And then they came back and the cabin was trashed. And then they put those, they put the nail boards up on the steps to keep bears out. And you know, it's safe to do because the bear's not, you know, if you know anything about black bears, They're just so kind of methodical. They're not going to step on a nail board. They're going to feel the nail board with their paw, but they're not going to step on it.

They're not putting all their weight on it. And so it's a deterrent to keep them away from the doors, put a stick in the sliding door, because I'll slide that glass door open. And that's happened, I know. And he had a bear in there for a second. I guess the door opened. Didn't do any damage.

I got scared and ran away. So I'm wondering if it wasn't a hunter, or it could have been some very obnoxious people. Or it could have been just resenting the cabin. I mean, I can imagine if you can believe they're almost human, that it could say, hey, I don't like this here. This is more territory. It could just have been a territorial destruction.

That's also a possibility. Unfortunately, I don't think we'll ever know. I really don't. And I certainly could, you know, talk to Chuck and find out. And I never thought of that. That was a great question, Wes, because I never thought about who was up there, created before the cabin was to strike.

Would have been nice to know. Yeah, because I think that they do have very short tempers, and I think that they can be very territorial, and they can snap on people. I think if you're in a, they seem to have very short tempers. If you listen to people, talk about their encounters, these things can snap on you in a second. I wanted to ask you about the nail board,

and for the audience listening, who hasn't seen the episode, it's basically a piece of plywood with screws screwed in, and you put in front of the doors so the bears will stay out of the cabin. But something actually stepped on that screwboard. Would you tell us about that? And then what came of the DNA? Right. Well, okay, so when I discovered the screwboard,

I could literally, you know, I saw the points. And then when I confronted Chuck on that screwboard that was leaning. against the back of the cabin in a place backed by the propane tanks. One, I told them, don't, you know, don't have those screws out so we could fall on that thing. Oh, my God, it'd be pretty deadly. But two and he's telling me that, yes, I'm stuck on it. And that's what he told me finally the story of the cabin being destroyed. Now my ears are perked up.

Now everything's making sense. And I'm like, oh, my God. You know, I mean, I really felt lucky that they didn't come in and destroy the cabin with us in it. And so, my ears are really perked up at this point. He said, yeah, I came back. After the damage, we put the nail boards up. And then when we came back in the spring, there was a lot of blood underneath the nail board.

And there was blood remnants on the top. And I went, oh, I'm better go to examine this thing. I didn't know something stepped on it. So I went and looked at it. And it looked like you could literally see the flesh. layer and then the fat layer to the flesh layer from what would be in your foot. I mean, it was pretty, you know, very, what would I put it? You could see this pattern on there or something stepped on. You could definitely tell it left part of its body parts on that nailboard. So I said,

Chuck, can we take this nailboard and put it in the shed where it's safe? Go to every rule or floor plant was packed and no place I wasn't going to bring that thing back. I said, I will come back. I will get funding and I will come back with some scientists. We'll collect the nail board. Don't touch it. Just leave it there in the shed. We'll lock it in. And he agreed to do that, no problem.

And that's kind of, you know, what happened. But certainly, Chuck, and it wasn't our party that put the nail board up. But I can only imagine this thing if it had come into the door before. No problem. And maybe it came back to destroy it again after Chuck fixed it. up and literally we did animation to kind of show how it wouldn't even have seen it come around the corner from the forest put its foot up on the porch shifted its weight and that was then driven those screws through its foot not a pretty thought for anybody to even think about i just i don't know

but it was not done on purpose as a trap um for for a Sasquatch was done as a bare deterrent pretty common practice up there right here and it works very well in this case it didn't work. Something stepped on it. And so, anyway, we collected the, with Jeff Mildrum, brought a geneticist

up there. And they very carefully, they brought up all this genetic equipment up, you know, they have stuff to store it, and they carefully picked off, which they also agreed, even Jeff did,

that that was fat tissue, dried fat, dried flesh. There was also a couple of hairs that were taken that also had naturally worn hints that were wrapped around the screws. There were some spider webs taken off fibers that, you know,

were nothing. They were just plant fibers. But there were some hairs that were taken that were, you know, that fit the morphology of a soft squash hair and flesh. And, of course, we tested it. We didn't, you know, we tested nuclear DNA. First test, you know, because the stuff was old and dried, he didn't get anything.

He claimed that the lab didn't get anything. Well, then Kurt Nelson, who was a geneticist, tested it at the University of Minnesota. And, of course, they have to amplify it, use primers and whatnot. And he got it so many base pairs. I can't remember how many. You know, 100, 200, and I don't remember what it was exactly. He had enough base pairs, but there was a gene or two that was divergent, and it was one of the same genes that was divergent in chimps.

and African chimps, which is really interesting. And apparently that is also, one of the things I didn't tell you when we talked last time, is that it is something that does occur in humans, but one in five thousand or less. That would be the smallest amount that the virgin gene would occur in humans. So a very tiny, tiny chance. And so Kurt Nelson knew that he was looking at you know, possible real nuclear Sasquatch DNA.

And I believe we still, to this day, we have some flesh samples that have been preserved that still can be tested when the technology, genetic technology gets better. I would rather not even test it yet. I didn't get another, you know, get another 100 or so base pairs. It doesn't really prove anything unless we can get more, you know, more divergent genes and so on. So I would rather them wait. I don't have any of the samples. Dr. Jeff Meldrum may have them.

I haven't asked Jeff lately. Or maybe they even went to the genetic studies that were done. I'm not sure. I really don't know if some of those snow growth samples went to Belba. Yeah, I don't think that this is going to be proven through DNA, but that is fascinating, that the results you got back. And not that these things are chimpanzee. fanzies, but what's interesting is when you listen to a lot of people's encounters, I know everyone

says ape and ape and ape, they tend to act more like chimps than they really do apes. You know, they have chimps or hands down. I know everyone sees them on TV and they've got the cute little outfits on and all that. Chimp will kill you in the forest, a wild chimp will kill you in the forest. They have very short tempers, but they're very, very intelligent, very intelligent creatures. And so that's fascinating that it came back as a diversion to an African chimp. or, you know, portions of the DNA, if you will, there are, there are closest relative at this point. That's true.

Yeah. And who knows these things, I've known, there's no doubt there are close relative. We don't know, you know, we just don't know. If you test mitochondrial DNA, and I've done it so many times on here that looks, it's got a tapered worn hand, Nomedulla, they always come back human, you know, and yet the genetic says never check the morphology. You know, they don't say, oh, yeah, well, it's human DNA. But, God, that's really odd hair.

You know, it just doesn't match a human in so many ways. That never happens, and that kind of bothers me. But the nuclear DNA is getting cheaper to do and better, and, you know, the primers keep getting better, and they're able to revive older and older DNA as we go through, and I'm really excited about getting a better study done in genetic information. Once again, it'll convince a few scientists top on board. We'll convince the world.

Genetics alone. I really don't believe it. It just won't. Yeah, I tend to agree. And that's why I always say that, you know, someone's going to, we're going to need a body. Whether you want to believe someone's going to hit one with a car or someone's going to shoot one, regardless, at the end of the day, a body is needed. And no one likes to hear that, but that's just the truth. A body is going to be needed in order to prove this.

DNA is not going to prove it. Video is not going to prove it. We have more than enough audio. We have more than enough footprints. We have more than enough hairs to show that. But here's what happens. But here's what happens, Wes. Every time you do an interview, you bring us one step closer to convincing another mainstream scientist.

everything is a baby step. For instance, nobody has gotten really clear, close-up 4K footage of a face, you know, where you can see the eyes and all that. If that happens, it won't convince everybody, but it will convince a lot more scientists. We'll get a little closer. We'll get better genetic material. Get us a little closer to the being accepted. Because we have this paradigm that's just this fake, laughable thing with so many, so many means.

mainstream sciences. Thank God for people like Jeff Miller, that have, you know, had just huge amounts in Grover grants that have had huge amounts of courage to take this on. Even Ian Redmond, who was, you know, willing to listen, go to a Bigfoot conference. He's open-minded. Jane Goodall has made some very open-minded statements. And so, you know, we're kind of getting there, but it's going to take more time.

I even have fears that a body wouldn't do it. It'll just bring us closer because they'll say, it'll just be this huge group of skeptics. They'll come through a great argument and say, that's just a human with some kind of cell abnormality or some type of disease or some type of a genetic hold back. You know, and that's my fear. It'd have to be two bodies, probably to convince everybody.

Which is, and they'd have to be two bodies from two separate geographic objects. taken 10 years apart or collected 10 years apart. So those are my thoughts, whether they're right or not. No, it can be right. But, you know, everybody kind of does their part. And, you know, we can say, well, there's no good with, you know, certain television shows or there's no good. But every witness at his document, it brings us a tiny bit closer, just a tiny bit.

And you've done a huge service with by doing these back-to-back interviews with witnesses with no noise, no editing, no anything, where a person like me can listen to these things back-to-back-to-back because, you know, I interview witnesses constantly. But by the time you interview a new witness, you almost forgotten certain little details. But with your show, it's going to allow even scientists to listen to these testimonies over and over and over and over and over back to back to do marathons and have their light bulb go off

because really it's all about people's light bulbs going off and I think you've done one of the better services that's ever been done in history with by interviewing people and the way you do it and you're just very laid back manner and letting people just talk I listened to a witness last night that you did it was the guy in, I believe it was Florida, that ran into one while he was going to prank his kids,

scare his kids in the backyard, if you know what I'm talking about. But there's details and his just immense details that he gets into there. There's no way that people are making this stuff, you know. Yeah, no, I appreciate the kind words. And I've always felt like my show didn't really make a difference except for helping people to come forward. know, it's, but I have gotten emails from, from a few universities, and one in California, one in Texas, and one in Georgia. And I think there is a lot of closet scientists that listen to the show,

because I've even gotten emails from them, and they'll say, you know what, this behavior reminds me of, you know, primates over in Asia, and they do this and this and this, and I can kind of draw a comparison to what this witness is saying. And there's certain aspects of what. what this witness said, that's very primate-like behavior of known primates that we know, and they'll kind of draw. So I guess there is small pieces to the puzzle out there that, again, you're not going to solve the whole puzzle, but it's nice to get pieces of the puzzle to try to draw a

conclusion on this. But I appreciate the kind of words, Doug, very much. And again, it goes, the compliments more for the witnesses that have the courage to come forward because they're the ones that really make the show. I wanted to ask you about the incident, the Snellgrove Lake, the night that the cabin was actually, they call it attacked. And I know Jeff Meldron was there, you were there, and you guys were all out there. If you would, can you kind of walk the audience, for those who haven't seen it, into what happened? And why do you think, what set these things off that night?

Okay, we had gone up there and we had brought, you know, a marginal amount of equipment. My main goal was to get the DNA collected, see if we can have some interactions, set up some lights, normal everyday surveillance equipment, nothing too special. We just had normal, you know, like game camera traps put on trees around the cabin. And they wanted to do an, you know, Jeff really wanted to do an environmental stuff. He asked his Estabon, Sarmanto. But Estabon couldn't go. So it was just Jeff, it was Kurt Nelson,

it was myself, my son Blaine, and Vladimir. And so we went up there, and we had bad weather. Kurt one of Kurt's goals was to go camp on that, hit in a lake, where we had heard that first one knock. And so he wanted to be dropped off. That was only his goals. And so we did that. We dropped Kurt off, and he camped alone.

way far away and a tent by himself but it was drizzly it was raining and you know it's raining on a tent you can't hear anything it's like kind of all wildlife just ceases to move

but we had that kind of weather just drizzly, drizzly weather and I was really let down nothing had happened nothing had happened I think three days went by nothing happened finally the rain

quit it was just I could hear that drip drip and it was finally just coming to an end slowing down I go outside and walking around

on the porch and it's still a little bit and I don't want to get all damp and just bummed and all of a sudden a rock

comes out of the forest and hits the shed ricoishes off the shed and rolls by my feet and I'm like oh my God they're here you know

this is what I'm thinking is when I'm yelling. I literally yelled it. They're here, you know. And I ran, so I was all excited. I couldn't contain myself. And I kill everybody. And I said, stop reading.

Come on out. I said, you know, I just had a rock thrown at the shed. They come out. And a little bit, you know, we're just listening at this point. We're talking and listening and joining the stars. And Blaine had to go to the bathroom. And, of course, at this point, because of the rock thrown, he's scared to go to the out.

house, he's going to pee off the porch. We had this whole spot. We kind of peed at this one end of the porch in the middle of the night. You know, it's a normal human thing to be a leery of walking to an outhouse through the forest, the edge of the forest in the middle of the night. So anyhow, he's peeing. And as he's peeing, we and Kurt are just, we're talking, we're standing near blade. And a rock comes and darn near takes his head off.

I mean, he's hit within an inch of his head right above him, Just bang. And literally, I don't think I've, I saw Kurt. I've seen this happen before when people get mad. Kurt actually got angry. I mean, he felt like thinking, oh, my God, and he takes a rock, and he throws it back into the woods. We're all standing outside, and here comes that rock.

I literally could see it in the light coming over, because I'm looking in that direction, and it comes sailing over the top of the camera, cabin, and hits this tin roof, and, of course, makes a lot of noise. Boom, and boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And that was enough for everybody now to bolt into the cabin, because nobody wants to get smacked in the head.

And you're starting to envisioning, you know, a shower of these rocks coming over. And so we go in the cabin like a bunch of cowards. And I'm filming, I'm the camera guy, because it's just, you know, we could only bring so many people up there. So I'm filming everything. and I film, you know, Kurt,

a little statement from Kurt, a little statement from Jeff. They're whispering. And we do that. We kind of get, collect our, whatever, our thoughts and our emotions.

And we all go back outside again. We feel kind of comforted in, just from that little 10-minute wait. And we all go back out. Kurt, very brave guy. He goes out, he grabs a thermal camera, turning on for him,

and he's scouring the back of the cabin. He's in the woods. now scouring looking for, you know, to see anything. I'm filming with a night vision camera around the front. And nothing happened. Literally nothing happened. That whole night we tried wood knocks. We tried everything, nothing.

No more rocks, no more wood knocks, nothing. No screaming. I mean, just nothing. So we're like, well, whatever, we'll go to bed. And so we're going to bed probably two in the morning. And, uh, plane is on edge. He's the youngest there. he is fine, but he's on edge.

And every time I try to fall asleep, I hear, Dad, Dad, did you hear that? You know, he's just waking me out constantly. Finally, he started scaring me. He goes, Dad, one of a rock comes through the window. You know, we'll get glass in her eyes and we'll get in my head and, you know, whatever. I said, okay, go just, you know, whatever. So I finally, we built a little barricade of duffel bags. So at least I'm protected.

Blaine's probably not protected. I said, you're protected by a wall blade because he's below. His head is below the window. And mine is right in line with the window. And so he's giving me crap about that and still bothering me, keeping me up. And finally, it's quite, we go to sleep. I go to sleep. And I'm brutally awakened, as is everybody in the cabin, by what sounds like,

I thought immediately it was a camera trap thrown, one of our heavy game trail cameras that was thrown at the side of the cabin. It hit literally right by my head when my head was leaning against the upper bunk wall because it's that wall that aims, you know, to the forest. And it hit right there. I mean, literally the whole cabin shook.

Everybody's up now. Kirk Jeff, everybody's up. And we're thinking, oh, my God, this is, you know, they're definitely here. If you want our attention, now, finally, it's funny that nothing happened. happens until you fall asleep. You truly are sleepy.

And it's like they want to wake you up. To this day, millions of theories about that. Why do they want to wake you up? If they're afraid of you, why do they watch up? And so the next morning, we find a piece of a cordwood. That was bounced off the cabin.

It was laying in the middle of the walkway to the outhouse. It was just some wood planks. She'll land there. Clearly it was that chunk of the, firewood that was thrown at the cabin. And so that kind of thing wasn't as violent is what I experienced, but then again, I don't think I remember going to the sink or anybody didn't flicking the light on. I didn't even want to do that. But anyhow, after that log kit, now my son is literally going into shock. He literally thought that we were going to be killed at any second, and he was shaking it,

probably. He couldn't breathe and he was acting irrational and he was trying to crawl under the under under his ground bunk, which was just full of millions of dead spiders and spider webs. I mean, it was nasty under there. He's trying to crawl under there. He's just, he doesn't know what he's doing because he's so scared. This is the first time in his life. He's actually had that much fear. And I got him calm down, but I was literally worried about his health at that point. that he couldn't breathe and got him calms down. And finally the sun comes up, went back, okay, so that night was real interesting. We don't know what the next night is going to bring, but nothing else happened.

That was it. Do you think what set them off was your son peeing off the side of the, by the cabin, peeing in the woods? Yeah, I mean, absolutely, because, you know, on other expeditions, including it, It happened to me at the Pinchot National Forest. I had a rock just about take my head off when I was urinating. And we were out, me and Kevin of the name of Mario and Vladimir, we were out on an expedition. And we were walking through the forest without any flashlights.

We didn't even bring flashlights. We just went on a long walk, you know, at 1, 2 in the morning. And we had a rock that just about. took my head off and I was urinating. There's other cases where we've had rocks thrown at us, where we're urinating. So it's definitely got to be a territorial situation. And I had an experience when I came back up there after that trip, which is a little bit more to that trip, but I came back up.

And there was one of these things that urinated where we urinate. It came and urinated through the picnic table. across the porch and then grabbed my buddy's rod case that was we keep them outside grabbed it from the ground and threw it at the cap so obviously it's an either an irritation to them but it came and remarked the territory and so that I found very interesting but anyhow to get back to the story when we were up with um Jeff and everything um nothing happened when back you know onto the DNA and everything. And, of course, I wanted to go back up again, this time with Jeff again, and bring some

other people. I wanted to bring a guy with, you know, biopsy darts and so on. And we had all sorts of little tricks up our sleeve. One of them, because we know, they're, I was attacking when, you know, when you're sleeping, I've had that experience too many times to ignore it. I thought, well, what if we could build a blind, you know, in the cabin? out of black canvas, and then we could put monitors, video monitors, under the ease, you know, put them all in a really high item.

And then monitor, you know, I have somebody on shift all night long, monitoring the cabin. Maybe we can get some footage. It would have been a huge, you know, big deal because I could have shared it on History Channel in prime time. So it would have been a very big deal. And so I was really trying to pick out of the box. And I thought it was a great idea. Only one dumb thing I did.

We spent all this money, bringing all this equipment up, tons of batteries around all this surveillance equipment, big heavy, lot of ass batteries. But there was one dumb, dumb, dumb thing I did. I never checked before we flew everything up. Before we all went up there, if the blueberries were ripe, and they weren't.

And they were green. And we had no action. So here I've got all these great, you know, Esteban Sarmianzos up there, privatologist, you know, Jeff, got Dr. Greg Baminak up there. He's the gentleman that actually concocted the sexual pheromoneships farming years ago and that people use in research. So he's out there and he's a medical doctor. And, you know, he's just really an amazing guy.

We brought a gorilla urine up during the menstrual cycle. We had all sorts of things, but nothing happened. One day the flip plane pilot flies in and selves us. There was a sighting about 100 miles south of where we were. And, of course, happened to a couple of native women who were picking blueberries. And, of course, the guys went down there and they were salvage of that trip by going in and investigating that area. which, you know, paned out, obviously, in the form of witnesses and interviews, but did not pan out in the form of any, you know, great evidence.

And so that whole thing was a bust. But it did kind of point out a pattern of maybe these things follow the ripening blueberries. And that's something for everybody to keep in mind. You know, what berries have now ripened? You're having activity, you never had activity before, or around your home. cabin, you know, you didn't have any activity before, but now you're having it. Well, maybe there's a crop of berries. That's right. Because there's no doubt they follow this wave, you know, and I believe they're

omnivorous, but I believe they follow the wave of certain foods north in certain geographic areas. Like in Minnesota, I believe they, you know, they probably go south in the winter down the Mississippi or San Quarry River. Can they work your way north as the food sources changes? because there's more plant material to eat, maybe they eat less meat, and then they kind of keep working their way north, or the ones in Ontario, just go north of the blueberry festival.

You know, and they just keep, you know, following that wave, and then when that runs out, they turn around and head back south. So, but it's landed some theory to that and some credence. Yeah, it makes sense that they would follow the food. I mean, that makes complete sense to me. I think that, you know, every animal on the planet does that.

We would do that if we were in the wild. We would follow the food and where the food's at. So that makes complete sense to me. And, you know, the whole cabin thing, I can understand leaving the food out and the entrails and all that other stuff. But I think that's really attracting them to that cabin. Like you said, it's an easy food source. And I remember seeing that now that you mentioned that, those two Native American women that were picking berries and they saw a Sasquatch while they were picking berries

and not being 100 miles, in the grand scheme of things, isn't that far away. But it would make sense that they would follow the food. Do you think that the Sasquatch is being covered up by the government? Yeah, probably not in an organized way. I think in a regional way, you know, I've got enough personal experiences in certain areas

and enough stories to kind of realize that just seems to be kind of a local, you know, like you'll have a wildlife area. You know, there's numerous game wardens and they'll have experiences. One, there's an automatic cover-up because

they probably don't want to tell their fellow workers. They don't want to tell anybody. Even if all the people are in on it or have experience, they don't want the public to know. They don't want to scare anybody or they don't want to look silly. Because they believe in it.

I've seen too many cases where there's been a really good sighting. And I've even seen this in, you know, in your state, West, where there'll be a really good sighting or a series of sightings. And they'll walk off and gate off an area. And then they never open it again because, you know, there were too many Sasquatch sightings in that area. And that becomes kind of odd to me. It's like, oh, that's an awful odd question.

I've seen it up here in Minnesota. There's a sighting. And then suddenly this whole area is off limits. So that's kind of a cover-up. And then I think on a federal level, I think there is some. But I don't know if it's like coming from the exact top. I think it comes from these levels of bureaucracy. In other words, BLM, the people that actually out in the field,

their boss may know and tell them, I even warned them about these things. But I think it ends with their boss. Who their boss is communicating with? I don't know. But I had an instance in Washington where we were right on the edge of BLM land. And we kept having this parade of SUVs coming in and taking us all aside and questioning us. It got really scary.

You know, we were doing research. We were measuring things and doing things. But we were investigating Bigfoot. You know, and I was totally honest with them what we were doing. And they'd finally, I'd leave. God, dang, and then come back the next day again. Start questioning us. It started getting kind of scary to me.

You know, it was like, am I going to come and arrest me? And then finally, sure again, it's like two or three days later. They come again. And one of the guys wants to talk to me alone again. and he takes you real far away. And he's talking to me and he goes, you know, because what I was doing, Wes, as I was asking them,

I was just turning it around on them going, well, have you had big foot sightings? So tell me about your kids. You must have. You're out here every day. You're out here. You're in the field. You must have.

I just kept pounding them. And they kept, you know, everybody I talked to always goes, no, no, no, no, no. Well, finally, this guy goes, okay, I lied there. He came to tell me that he lied to me. He had covered up the fact that they did have experiences.

Did, I believe, have sightings. I can't remember that. So I don't quote, you know, I don't want to be filled with that one. But definitely it had collected footprints. And some of these footprints, some of them were in cop pies. You know, Bill is kind of famous for renting out forest lands to, you know, people are raising cattle, feed cattle, and they'll go and they'll graze and be able to land. they had, of course, poop in the woods.

And in the winter, when they were doing some kind of tree survey, they kept finding footprints that were in the cowpies. Big human footprints. And he goes, God, I've got one of those. We've got one or two of those if you want to come look at them. So now he's trying to get information from me, which I found interesting. But just the fact that they would come out there that many times. And it was a treacherous trip out where we were.

was not an easy place to get to. For them to come out there over and over and over, it seemed kind of odd to be. Well, I've had that kind of thing happen, not quite as big, but in other areas. And it seems to, once again, think it's kind of a local cover-up, regional, I guess, for their own reasons.

I've heard about studies where the feds have ordered studies in national parks, with biologists. I've been told this by biologists that they were actually studied to track these things. I've heard of federal parasite studies and a huge dung

that they find are feces next to, you know, where they're doing you know, radio colerine of elk or other animals and they keep finding them dead with their liver is missing and entrails gone, but yet there's no teeth marks. It doesn't seem like a normal predator. You know,

find these big, huge feces that are just massively look like human feces, but they're massive. They'll send them in and do parasite studies, but guess what? Zero parasites. See, all mammals that live in the woods, whether it's cougars, bears, or whatever, they all have very unique parasites within those feces because of what they eat and so on. And they have specialized, they're specialized parasites that live in those animals. Well, these samples never had any parasites. And I find that really interesting,

as if whatever these things are, have somehow found some plant or something to kill the parasites. And so not only they're not finding any parasites, it's impossible for that to happen. And these biologists know that. There's no way it can happen. Living in the wild, you're going to have parasites.

I used to get parasites going up to snow. I'd get gerida, you know, beaver fever, you know, which living your guts is a terrible thing, but I would get it. I got it two, three times going up there, drinking out of the lake. You know, and I kept telling Chuck, I'm like, God, I get sick. Oh, you didn't get charity. I'm like, yeah, I guess I had the worst case some of the doctors who've ever seen.

So, I mean, even up there for a week, I'd get parasites, a little of living in there in the wild. So I've heard this, and that's really interesting to me. Why do you think that they're covering it up? What do you think the motive? Because when I look at it, I think, well, what would be the motivation for them to cover it up? And I can think of a couple, but they don't really add up. I understand lumber.

I understand money. I understand this and that. But let's say there was chimpanzees, for example, in the United States, and they were in our forest. I don't believe, for one instance, the lumber industry has that much pull to, you know, get enough money for the government to cover this up. And so what do you think the motivation is with covering this? Well, I'll give you a couple of theories. One is laziness. Here are my words less, plain old, everyday bureaucratic laziness.

Why do they deny they have wolves in certain areas? You know, for instance, in all places, there's, there's, well, my son just came back. They were literally tracked out of there by timber wolves. You know, these were not little coyotes. These were, you know, huge, tall, you know, four-foot at the shoulder timber walls. Of course, you talked to a game warden there, a wildlife officer. Yeah, no, we don't have any walls in here.

God, they know there's wolves in there. Okay, they're there every day. They're lazy. They don't want to do more work. They got their little routine. They can sit, you know, I hate to say this about people, but it's kind of a natural thing with some government jobs. I'm not saying all wildlife people are lazy.

I'm just saying there's a, there seems to be that effect on bureaucratic organizations. Okay. And they don't want to deal with it. They just don't want to deal with wolves. They don't want to deal with softwashes. They don't want to deal with it. And so that's definitely one factor.

Okay. Other factors can be danger. The other factor is it's just too weird. They don't exist, but yet, you know, they've had these sightings and they're working these forests. They know that they exist because they've had a sighting. And so it's just kind of like the boss says, lock it up. We don't want any incidents here. We don't want nuts in our woods.

and we don't want to deal with it. Once again, it's kind of like a laziness. They just don't want to deal with it. And there could be forestry reasons because there's no doubt there'd be pressure to set aside land, more old growth forests. Because you know, like, I think they seem to cut down everything. And it's probably been the cutting

of a lot of our old growth forests. They've probably led to some of the wildlife explosions that we have. You know, I mean, it's just a fact. Wildfires. forest cutting, replanting, you know, new forest. It gives you more variety in a forest. And this probably led to the explosion of these things, including deer and wild turkeys, cougars,

many other mammals that were very close to being extinct. And so there probably would be some pretty fast tracks that would be disrupted, let's put it that way. And I just don't think a lot of people don't want to deal with change. They just don't want to deal with it. You know, it could be the forest industry and some conspiracy. But, you know, I really don't know how much lobbying the forest industry does. I don't know, you know, how much covering up they do.

I haven't put a ton of thoughts. I haven't really had any personal. I try to just go on personal firsthand information. You know, biologists I've talked to in the federal government or, you know, people like that. So that's kind of my theory. It's just they don't want to deal with it. Yeah, and you could be right. You know, going back to you when you saw the,

or you had the SUVs coming down when you're doing an expedition, you know, if it's such a big joke and it's, we're all chasing unicorns here, then why bother stop and talk to you guys? Or why bother if they talk to you one time and, oh, you guys are chasing Bigfoot while they all get a good laugh and they can get back in their SUV and leave, why come back the next day? Why pull it?

But they interrogated all of us separately. I mean, it gets kind of scary. That really does get scary. Because, you know, you know they have total power. You can just disappear. They take you and say you're under arrest. See, you're just gone. I mean, there's not much anybody can do at that point.

They could throw any kind of churches they want at you. And you know, you can, you know, federal land, national parks, there's just a jillion laws and regulation. and they can catch you for whatever. But to be interrogated three times was getting really annoying and really spooky. And why were they so concerned? Well, then maybe the truth came out and see when they came forward and said, you know, we have seen things.

In other words, they're basically saying we believe in them. We want, I think they wanted information. So that's kind of interesting, too. you know once again it can be a whole host of things where they trying to arrest us we're trying to get inside information i don't know i really don't know yeah and it'd be nice if they would just come forward and and say what they know but i think it goes deeper than that but you might be right it might be more of a regional uh it sure seems they use the same tactic from one one region to the next it's not the first time i've heard of guys rolling in on sce vs and pulling everyone aside and and questioning them on what are you doing?

Yeah. They were bumper to bumper. They literally roll in and they're bumper to bumper. And it's like, what is going on? You know, and it's just extremely intimidating. Do you think a Sasquatch is intimidating? There's nothing worse than three black. You know, SUVs rolling up into your camp, especially if you can see them coming from a mile away.

You know, it's like, oh, this is not going to be good. Yeah, no, I can imagine. And out here in Washington State, I would imagine it's the same in every state. Those guys have more authority than cops, and most people don't realize that. Yeah, most of the time. Yeah, you're dealing with, you know, they can get you on anything. But you don't know why they're, you don't really know what their motive is. What are they after? Are they after a film permit? Are they after a picnic permit?

Are they after a camping permit? Are they after, you know, inside information is to try to deter you from, you know, trying to make you move and not be looking for Bigfoot in their area, which is kind of the feeling I got. You know, I just, I really don't know. It's a tough thing to put your finger on it. But I find it very common for wildlife officials to deny that they have, for instance, coogers.

We have cougars around here. I have seen now two cougars near my home. Broad daylight with witnesses. if you think they would admit there's coogers living around here, no, they don't want to deal with it. If anything, you know, it's a pet that got loose. And there's cougars now on the east side of the Mississippi and growing in huge numbers, but they will not admit it.

So first, uncover the cougar problem, and then you'll figure out the soft squash problem. Why won't they admit there's cougars? Then you'll know why they won't admit there's swastquatches. It's the same thing. You know, they don't want to deal with it. Yeah, that's a good point. Well, Doug, I really appreciate coming on.

I enjoy talking with you and all your experiences. I kind of have you back on the show to talk. I know there's so much more to talk about, but I really appreciate you taking the time to come on the show. It was a real treat for me, and I know the audience will really enjoy hearing you on the show. So thank you again. Well, thank you, Wes. And it was very enjoyable to me. Yeah, sure we can.

I always come back on anytime. There's a ton of subjects to talk about. Absolutely. Thanks again, Doug. And that's it for tonight. I want to remember if you've had an encounter, shoot me an email. My email address is Wes at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. Until next time, everyone. Country faster than the coronavirus and wagering week is your antidote. I'm Tom Martin and I'm a veteran sports analyst and respected sports handicapper who will help build ESPN's brand. I've been recognized and awarded by Pro Football Weekly and Gaming Today magazine as the honest handicapper. Let the other guys give you the same old boring sports talk with the same tired storylines.

We'll give it to you straight here every Friday on Wagering Week. Don't gamble with other podcasts. Let SportsGarten Network's Wagering Week help your bottom line.