Sasquatch Chronicles - SC EP:511 It Was No Damn Bear

Episode Date: February 1, 2019

Now I was scared for him. "Dobbs!" I yelled. "Dobbs!" My voice echoed through the woods. I scanned the area with my light but didn't see anything else. Keep steady, I thought to myself. He could have just dropped it. Or maybe the other Ranger, what's-his-name. They were likely at the tower together. Or maybe scouting the fire they had spotted.  "Dobbs!" I screamed this time. The sky now was now a little illuminated by the tell-tale orange glow of fire. "Dobbs, can you hear me?" ​Then I heard a man's voice say, "Shut up!"  His sudden voice surprised the tar out of me. If hadn't been so exhausted I'd have jumped up a tree right then and there. "Where are you?" he was close but I couldn't see him. "Shhh! Keep quiet! It'll hear us!" he said to me. I located where the voice was coming from, about 10 feet away and a little behind me, then swung the light at him. I saw Dobbs under a thick patch of cedars up against a big rock, huddled on the ground.  "Turn the light off and get over here," he whispered. I was moving to where he was and clicked off my flashlight when it occurred to me what he'd said. 'It' would hear us. He had his big revolver in his hand so I raised my carbine and crouched beside him. That's when I saw 'it.'  We were right at the bottom edge of a roughly oval clearing, sloping steeply uphill toward more deep woods. The fire light from above and to our right was brighter, so I figured the fire must be just over the ridge, maybe a quarter mile ahead.  At the far edge of the woods, maybe 30 yards away I saw a tall (can't guess but easily over 6 to 7 feet tall) outline of an upright figure backlit by the glow from the fire. As if it knew where we were it was turned slightly towards us. I could not make out facial features but I could see it had large eyes that were reflecting the dim light. If I had thought of it I would have made a mental note of how tall it was in relation to the nearest tree, but all I was thinking was that this time, this was no bear.   For information about the Live Show go to: https://sasquatchchronicles.com/live-podcast-show/  

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 six foot, nine, I don't know.

Do you see him now, sir? Yes, I'm looking right at him. You're listening to Sasquatch 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. Welcome to the show, everyone. Thanks for being here tonight.

Got a great show planned for you tonight. I'll get to that in a minute. I'm going to be in Houston on May 11th. I'm jumping on here to talk about this live show before Sunday. I'll be back on Sunday for the members. There's four podcasters doing a live show all at one event. He'll Billy Horror Stories, Twisted Philly, and Tony Merkel from the Confessionals. I'm not really sure how he got in, but I'll be down there.

We'll all be down there. Come hang out with us. It's Saturday, May 11th, from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. And on the blog, I'll throw up a place where you can get the tickets. I think tickets are actually almost sold out. It's a relatively small event, but I get invited to come hang out. and do a show. And I thought, what am I going to do for a live show?

And then I gave Bob Gim on a call and said, hey, Bob, you want to come hang out with me down in Houston? And he's like, yeah, absolutely. So Bob and myself will be down there. All the other podcasters will be down there. I hope if you're in the Houston area, you can come check us out. Again, I'll put a link on Sasquatch Chronicles.com on the blog if you want to purchase tickets and come hang out.

It's at the Cisco Salsa Company. And all the information is on the website. hope you guys can join us. Let's get down to business tonight. I'll be welcoming Ash to the show. And Ash actually had two encounters in Tennessee. One, when he very first got out of the military, he was out fishing with family and had an encounter.

And then many years later, he was working in law enforcement, and he was helping out Park Rangers, and they had an encounter. Very, very fascinating stuff. If you've had an encounter and you'd like to be on the show, shoot me an email. My email address is West, at Sasquatch Chronicles.com.

And if you get a chance, check out Sasquatch Chronicles.com, you can become a member and get additional shows. Let's jump into it tonight. I want to welcome Ash to the show. Ash, thanks for coming on. Sure. And I know you actually had two encounters,

one in the 70s and one in the 80s in Tennessee. If you would, would you just kind of start from the beginning and walk us into this first encounter? What were you doing? And what did you guys see? Well, I was about 21 years old, and my dad, his uncle, my great uncle, and then my uncle, Matt, who was my dad's brother-in-law, fishing, we like to fly fish, we like to hunt, and my grandfather had purchased a piece of land in the late 1940s,

and it was on one of these trips, and we had gone up into the mountains, and this is an extremely rural area. It's on the Tennessee side of the Great Smoky Mountains, but it is within a few miles of the North Carolina state line, and it's extremely remote mountainous area. And we would go up there two or three times a year to either fish or deer hunt. And in this case, I was just out of the Army, so it was sort of a celebration. They decided to, you know, we're going to do a spring fishing trip, and we had taken off and gone up there.

It was still a little snappy in the morning. It was still a little cool, still a little cool. still a little cool at night. It was kind of early spring. And we arrived late afternoon, and it was probably 30 to 45 minutes off of the pavement along a dirt logging road to get up to this area. So it's pretty remote. We had arrived, and early the next morning we decided to put on our waiters, put on our gear, and go down into the river. And to kind of set the scene, you have to walk down, through the woods and it's a fairly steep downward trail probably 45 degrees or better

and my great un required some help to get down because of all the loose rock and tree roots and things so it was a pretty you could twist an ankle pretty easily on this trail as it wound through the woods and when you got to the river it dropped straight down two or three feet but where we would go in on this trail you could get down to it once you got into the river in your waiters you walk downstream about four or five hundred yards and you are in a very steep cut in other words there's no bank on the right side at all there's just a rock wall that go straight up and on the left it's wooded you've got a two trees and then they just go steeply straight up so you have the illusion you're in

this big cut going fishing down through there um we you know we spent a lot of time there and my My dad and my great-uncle Bill on the right side of the river, about 40 yards ahead of us. And then my uncle, Matt, who was only about seven or eight years older than me, we grew up more like brothers than we did, you know, uncle and nephew. I mean, he was also on the right side, and I was fishing the left side, and I was looking for a particular eddy that I was, that I knew that, you know, I had a sense it's going to be. It's noisy because the river is just really rushing over rocks and everything, and it's noisy, but it's also very peaceful. And abruptly I had the sense. A thousand fire ants were biting me on the back, that something was behind me, something was nearby.

And it's not unusual, and it has happened many times that we walk up on a bear, or that we've walked up on, you know, a big cat or something like that. So I had turned around, I turned over my left shoulder, turning towards the shore, and as I turned a reasonably close less than 10 yards, was an animal upright, and I had maybe one second to two seconds of a glance at it. Why I did not think that was a bear, it was walking upright, and it took one step, and then going all the way up to the ridge line would be 75 to 100 yards above our head, really close to straight up, and this thing moved rapidly, and I saw flashes of its fur as it moved up.

And when it got to the top, I mean, it was, trees were moving, a lot of thick pulled aside, and you could hear the snapping noises. And as it went up, it cleared and it got all the way up to the top of that ridge in just a matter of seconds. So this just stunned me. And I'm walking over to the other side of the river, and I yelled, bear! I got my uncle Matt's attention and also rapidly got my dad's attention, even though he was pretty far away. I must have yelled pretty loud. and I was pointing and kind of looking up the ridge.

So they started looking up there as I walked across and threw about thigh deep water. So I'm moving carefully in waders, hip waders, so that I don't fall down. And as I've turned my back to this thing and I start walking, I can see that my uncle Matt is staring at it. My dad is staring at it. And in a loud, I mean, an incredibly loud voice, it made this, hey, I'm really not giving it. you know, a proper impression because it was guttural, deep, and it was

loud. I'm talking like a incredibly loud. There's no way that a person could make a noise like that. It's a funny thing. As I heard this thing coming from behind me and I could hear it echoing off the rocks in front of me. I still thought that's my dad

yelling hey. So I yelled hey back. Every time there was a hey, I yelled hey. And nowhere near as loud. as this thing was coming at me. When I got over to the other side of the river and I looked at Matt and I said, what is that? And he just kind of looked at me

and he was like, you tell me, what was that? And we heard it again where he made that noise that, hey, type noise. And these huffs, these, it's exhaling. By this time, my dad was walking towards me. And my dad always carried a revolver when we were on these fishing trips. And it bothered him enough, and I don't know what all he heard,

but he had his gun in his hand. And then my uncle Bill was coming behind him, so I guess Dad had gotten Bill's attention. And we all were getting ready to gather up. And before the four of us got within conversational distance, we heard a big crut and then a rock come flying through the woods. And this is a large between my dad and Uncle Bill and myself and Uncle Matt. And it hit the water and it splashed tremendously. Two feet deep right where that rock hit below the surface of the water. This rock was like the size of a large.

couch cushion, bigger than a watermelon. And I mean, that thing had been thrown from the ridge, and it made a tremendous arc to get down to where we were. It had come through the woods and splashed right there. And at that time, we heard a large, it was a different sound. It was a higher pitch sound. It was like, what? And, you know, whereas before it had been like a deep, it made that noise. And I mean, we just stood. Eventually, we got within arm's leaf of each other and stared up at where that thing was. And it was moving back and forth, and eventually it moved towards the upstream side on the ridge.

It was still pretty far away from us. But we could see trees moving. We could see, we could hear the brush. It was not concealing its movement. It was crashing through the woods. And then after just a few seconds, it was nothing. And we stood there for, I know, a good minute. And then the craziest thing happened.

right as the four of us were standing there. My great-uncle Bill had pulled out his coat 45 automatic, a foot and a half of everybody's ear. He cranks off a shot straight up in the air. Pow! And, I mean, it just instantly snapped us out of our suspension. We all just started screaming at him. What the hell?

You know, my dad looked at him and said, Great, damn, Bill, what the hell? He just looked at his grin and said, well, I scared off the bear. But, you know, my dad snatched the gun out of his hand. You know, and it was like, I couldn't hear. My ears are ringing. Everybody's covering their ears and cursing and looking around. What in the heck would you fire off around right in the middle of us for, you know?

But in his mind, hey, I scared the bear. We had just been paralyzed staring at this thing until he just cranked off around in the air. So anyway, at this point, it was getting dark. The fishing was pretty much over. You know, we'd been out there all day, you know, before this happened. And so we started walking back upstream. and we were looking for the trailhead. Otherwise, you'd have to climb up at three foot.

And we found it. It was starting to get dark. We moved up through the woods. We got back to the cabin without any further incident. And as we sat in there and we'd clean the fish and we're having fish for dinner, my dad was having a cigarette. He said, so what did you see? I asked Matt, what did you see?

And Matt only saw the secondary stuff, the trees movie. But he heard the noises. He heard the hate sound. and my dad's the kind of guy who's very serious. He's very calm. He said, well, you were yelling, hey, too, weren't you, son? And I said, well, yeah, but I thought you were yelling at me. And he said, well, that's it. You were yelling, and you heard your own echo echoing off the rocks in front of you. So it just sounded like. And the rock, it was probably a bear. The bear dislodged a rock. The rock came rolling down the hill. I'm surprised there weren't more rocks. And because it, you know, rolled down some such a steep hill. It got enough momentum to make that big split. And so that was it. It was a bear. That's what we had seen. But Matt and I looked at each other and we talked over the years. It wasn't a dark. Not only by the way, it stepped onto that bank and moved up, but by the noises it made. And that rock didn't come rolling down the hill. Yeah, it's a bizarre story. I mean,

you hear about this all the time, Ash, when guys are out fishing. And they have very similar experiences to this. It reminds me of a hunter I talked to you one time where he kept hearing what sounded like people talking. So he yelled at him, hey. And he goes, clear his day, something comes back and goes, what?

And he goes, but it wasn't, it didn't sound like a human saying it. And he goes, it didn't sound like any animal he's ever heard say it. But it came back. He said the thing, yelled, what? Back to him when he went, hey. So it makes you wonder if it was mimicking stuff it heard from you guys.

and other people in that area. You know, what do most people do when they're out in big areas like that? Hey, hey, yell at someone. Right, right. And someone yells back. The sound of it was much more guttural than that. It was much more animalistic than that. In my mind, I only thought that, you know, because when you're under stress,

you tend to relate things to normalcy. And so it was less of someone yelling, hey, then that's sort of the sound. It was impossibly loud. like I said, if you've ever heard an elk or a moose bugle and how incredibly loud that is, that's the level of volume. And it caught everybody's attention. You know, my dad's explanation was just denial. That's all there is to it.

Because we all could, you could not help but hear it. And then the second tone, the more like the wah was almost like it was, you know, screaming after it. But I mean, in any event, you know, bears don't make those noises. I've been in the, I'm in my sense. 60s, I've heard bears, I've heard all sorts of animals, I've hunted all over this country, and I have encountered bears numerous times. If it were a bear, I'd laugh and say, oh, wow, that bear sure scared the crap out of me. This did not act or seem like any bear, especially the way

it paced back and forth across the top of the ridge and then went in the upstream direction. But whatever it was was behind me, I think that we had gone around a bin. It probably was as surprised to find me there as I was to find it. Because when I turned around, it had already turned and was stepping up onto the bank and going up the hill. Yeah, and that's the other part, too, that's, it couldn't be a bear. I mean, a bear doesn't, they don't go up hills like that. They're on all fours. Right. And they can go up a three-foot bank, no problem. On two legs, though, I think it would be kind of comical to see a bear trying to get up a three-foot bank on two legs. I think the bear would follow. And this thing, and I don't have a great description.

of it because I did not see it. I was young enough, although I had, you know, been in the Army in that time frame. I was not in Vietnam. But that thing turned and just took a step and was dumb. So it's not like it scrambled up the bank. It took one step. And Matt and I both, we accepted my dad's explanation as far as, well, we're just not going to talk about this.

We're not going to tell anybody. But in the pit of my stomach, I knew I'd seen something that was not a bear. And Matt agreed with me. And so that, but I still, I put it aside. I didn't let it change my life. Matt and I kind of had a little private conversation of, well, it wouldn't it be cool to see it again? We didn't stop hunting.

We didn't stop fishing. We were probably a little more cautious. If you heard something, and, you know, in the past, we would have thought, hey, was that? We'd think, you know, it just opened up the possibilities of what a noise on the outside of the tent could be. Yeah, I hear you. But we didn't, you know, it was that incident alone, I'd never, if that had been the only thing,

that I'd ever seen. I never would have called you. No, I never would have reported this, because I would have just wrote it off to... We'll go with the bear story. Yeah. Even though it doesn't, nothing adds up it being a bear. And then about 10 years later, was it about 10 years later? Ash, you had another... A little longer than that. More like 13 years later, but I, you know, I settled in that area, about 20 miles away, eastern Tennessee County, up in the mountains. Cowls outnumbered people, five to one up there.

and it's a pretty quiet place. We normally have one or two deputies on at a time, sometimes only one, sometimes none in the middle of the night. So it gives you an idea of this is a very rural area, and a lot of the county has national forest, or it borders the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. At that time, we had about two or three years of drought-like weather. Very dry. We'd had a lot of small fires. We'd had maybe one big fire this summer before.

This was more in the fall than in the spring, and we were hoping to get some rain, but it had been a very long, dry, hot summer. So the Forest Service had started a fire watch. Nowadays, I think they have more sensors and cameras and things like that. But at the time, they had fire towers, and park rangers and other volunteers would go stay up in these towers for eight to 12 hours at a time, and they had a reporting protocol.

They had radios, they had binoculars and all of this stuff. So just to save these guys some miles, because the fire tower in our county was, again, 30 to 45 minutes off the beaten path. And these guys would have to drive their vehicle up and just leave them in the woods and walk up. So I discovered that one of these rangers lived near me. His name was Dobbs. And so we struck up a friendship, and I agreed since I was on duty, it was county gas that I would pull around, pick him up, and I would go turn around area at the end of a,

and drop him off, and he would walk up the trail for about probably 30 minutes before he got to his firetower. And then myself or someone else would pick up the offgoing ranger, and so we were helping him out. And I struck up a friendship with this guy. He was a good guy. He liked a fish and hunt, and he packed a 44-magnum revolver on his hips. We put together a little bag, a little kit, and he had coffee and things like that in his kit. He had a radio, and he had different things, binoculars, and he showed me his kit. He called it his firewatch kit, and he had a big walking stick, and I would drive him up there in the afternoon. Someone else had taken him up there. So I had the relief ranger in my car. I know this guy. I can't even remember his name right now, but he had just been pulled in from a different

district to help out with the fire watch in this area. So he pops out of the car, says, all right, good to meet you. Yeah, good to meet you. Again, pretty steep going uphill. So I turned the car around and I sat there and I waited. And I had brought a thermos of coffee for the guy and everything. You know, he's my new friend. And I figured about 15 minutes he ought to be meeting with the other Ranger, five minutes or so to exchange any pass-ons or anything. And then my friend would come walking out. And he always tried to get out before dark. And at this time of year, dark was coming about 6.30 at night. So I sat there and, you know, I figured about 15 minutes and I turned on the radio, listened to some news and stuff. I realized it'd been probably about half an hour.

So I started to get concerned. It started to get dark. And I turned on spotlight and I shined it up the trail off my police, you know, maybe he's, he's wanted to make sure and illuminate the trail for him. Turned on my overhead lights. This way, you know, if he's, you know, if he's, you know, All he's got to do is come downhill, but he may wind up on the road, you know, a mile away from me or something. So I wanted to flash the lights to where he could see where I was. And I waited another half hour. So I was worried. I was worried about my new friend.

I was worried what was going on. So I got out of the car and I grabbed the thermos of coffee. I grabbed my flashlight. And I just at the last second reached back into that car and grabbed my Winchester-44-Bagnum rifle. and I had a spare key, so I locked the car up, but I left it running with the lights flashing so that we could find her way back. And I took off up this trail. And I'd never been here before, much steeper than I thought. I mean, I was pretty war out in just about ten minutes of walking up this thing.

You're basically on your balls of your feet and your toes, and you're reaching forward, and I'm using the butt of this rifle as a walking stick, and I'm grabbing trees to pull myself up. So I kind of had a new respect for these guys. but I get up, you know, well past where I thought the two rangers should have met at the halfway point. And I realized that, you know, it's dark enough. Maybe I should go back. This is when I began to smell smoke. And I realized that, okay, there's a fire.

And this is what's delayed. Just what really bothered me at this point was that having been in this situation before, everything that happened in the river came back to me. And I don't know why excepted that. I was in the woods and it was at night. I'd been in the woods a million times since that incident. But it was like someone took an ice cube and ran right down my back. It just everything that I had buried in the pit of my stomach came back

because my skin began to crawl. Something's not right in the woods and the thing that's not right is me. I'm out of place. I distinctly had the feeling that I'd been watched, that something was wrong. And this is why I didn't turn around and go back to my car. And I moved forward at this point, and I started yelling out my buddy's name, you know, Dobbs, Dobbs. And I got concerned for him.

And I got all on up the trail, and I got to an area where there was a clearing. Now, at this point, I'm almost up to the fire tower. Because I'm almost up to the ridge. I certainly should have seen these guys. And at this point, the smell of smoke is heavy. There's an orange glow in the sky. We had a little moon. The moon had finally come out.

and, you know, I didn't just have to use my flashlight to see, but I could see that orange glow in the sky, and I knew we had a forest fire. And as I moved up on the ground in front of me, something caught my eye, and I bent down, and it was Dobbs. It was a Ranger had and had a little pin on the front that, you know, had reflected, and I'd seen it.

And I got very concerned at this point, and I yelled his name as loud as I could. I just yelled Dobbs as loud as I could and screamed it over and over, and very close to me. I hear a voice that says, shut up, it'll... And that scared the fire out of me because the voice was, you know, 10 feet away from me. And, you know, I turned around and looked,

and I took my flashlight, and I'm shining around, and I finally saw him, and he was... He had his back up against a rock, and due to the steepness of the trail, this rock, he could kind of lean on it and stay on his feet. And there were some scrub ced cedars, and he was kind of crouched, leaning backwards on this rock.

And I just looked at him, and he said, turn that light off, get over here, it'll hear you. And so I did what he said, and I was walking over to him, and that's when it hit me. But what do you mean? It will hear us. What are you doing about? And we got over there, he just pointed, and he had his gun in his hand. So, you know, I raised my carbine, and I'm looking around, and he points with his gun. And I look, full-shaped clear. Our side of the clearing, we were just inside the woods to the far side was maybe 35 yards, not a long distance. I had shot that distance with a handgun easily. And, you know, the smell of smoke was heavy in the air, the orange glow from just over the ridge.

And if you'd walked over top of that ridge, you'd been able to see the fire. And there was just enough moon to where when we looked across that clearing and standing right at the edge of the clearing, it really didn't get a lot of facial features or anything like that, except that I could see that it was tall. Its arms extended pretty low, like down almost to its knees, if not past its knees. And it apparently was moving diagonally,

which would be the way the slope would. But it had seen and heard me. And so it turned at the waist, and it was standing there frozen. And Dobbs was pointing his gun in its general direction. I instinctively pointed my gun at it, and this thing stood there and stared at us, and I could see it had very large eyes,

like a horse's eyes. And there was just enough light to where I got a little reflection off its eyes. And other than that, I didn't get any impression from it, except there was just no sound in the woods. You'd have thought all kinds of animals had been running and all kinds of stuff. That happened later. Right then, we were just frozen. And it was staring at us.

And I knew by the way that the light was that it could see us plainly. And this was not a one-second encounter. 45 seconds of stared at this thing. And then it just crouched all the way down to the ground, and it's almost like its elbow. was on the ground and its arms were extended out. That's how long its arms were. And it just crouched, but the entire time it never took its eyes off of us. And when it moved, I saw Dobbs react with his gun and I thought he was going to shoot him.

And the first thing that came to mind was my Uncle Bill, scaring the bear, you know, and I just pushed his arm down. It's not that I don't think we would have killed it and told me don't. Watched it and it sniffed at the ground and it used its arms to rake up some grass and sniff. and just as abruptly it stood up and it walked backwards into the woods. And by backwards, I'm talking about it, took a step, very deliberate, and then another deliberate step, and then another deliberate step, until it was far enough into the woods, and I'm sorry, bears don't do that.

Immediately we heard it moving, and we could hear the trees and the brush, because again, once you're off the trail, this is pretty thickly brushed areas, and wait a minute, vines, and this thing was crashing through, that and it was circling that oval clearance. It didn't take off in another direction. It didn't run downhill away from the fire. So I grabbed Dobbs, Dobbs nodded, he snapped out of doing the same thing. We started circling in the opposite direction. One did not, you know, I kept waiting on it to go, hey, or something, or why, or something, but it never made a noise. And so once we got up, are you okay? He was, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I said, what happened? And he, on his way down, caught up with the

other ranger, they smelled the fire, and they turned around, they went back up to the tower, and the other ranger began to scout the fire. And Dobbs said, well, I'm going to go down, get with the deputy, we'll call this in, working or something, and that's when he ran into this thing. And he said, you know, it was a little more daylight then, but he said as he was walking down, just as he saw it crossed the trail and saw him, and they stared at each other on the trail. Now, this is hearsay, because I'm telling you what Dobbs told me. And Dobbs just looked at it, and this thing yelled at him, and he turned and ran off the trail. He said the creature just chased him like it was charging him, but stopped about 15 feet away from him, and then just yelled.

And during this time, Dobbs had dropped his backpack, dropped his walking stick, and he was fumbling for his gun. He said, before I got my gun out, this thing just kind of shook its head, turned around and walked off, but it grabbed his arm. bag. Dobbs headed across the clearing, and when he got to the other side, he saw it again on the north side of the clearing, and that's when he stopped and crouched because he thought, I don't want this thing trailing me through the deep woods. At least in the clearing, I can see it. He must have been there several minutes until I came across him. That's an amazing account. Did Dobbs ever tell you any descriptions as far as what he saw? Because he saw it more in the daytime right before the sun was going down. Well, you know, that night, after he gave me the clear,

list notes, like the other ranger had notified, other rangers, they'd notified, you know, and we had people coming up the trail. We had animals running. We had, you know, you could see deer bolting across the clearing. Fortunately, the fire was not as, you know, it was, it was not a great fire, but we did get the range. Within a day or so, they had that fire under control. But, you know, we had 15 or 20 people up there within half an hour. And once there were plenty of people around, I kind of looked at Dobbs and saluted, you know, and I'll talk to you later, basically. I went back down. I got my cruiser. It was almost out of gas. I had to go down and get gas. There was the news for the next couple of days, and I didn't see Dobbs.

A few days later, draining by this point, you know, which always helps whenever you have, you know, drought situation in fires. So we agreed to meet up for a couple of coffee, and he basically expounded on what, you know, I had just told you, 30-some-odd years, but I do remember that he said it was big, chunky, not fat, bigger in the shoulders than it was at the hips, long-armed, and, you know, he just described the face as being, you know, just an animal's face, but the thing yelled at him so loud that, you know, he wasn't sitting there writing down a description. I didn't, I asked him, you know, I kind of mimic the sound of it, and he goes, yeah, it's kind of it. I never figured out if it was making the same kind of sounds that I'd heard 13, 12, 13 years before. So, you

you know, I'm not trying to say it was the same animal. I don't know what it was. But, you know, both of us agreed as we sat there one night and had cigarettes and coffee, you know, it was no damn bear. I've hunted all over the United States. I've been to Idaho. I've hunted up in Wyoming. I've hunted in Texas. I've seen all kinds of animals.

And I continue to hunt and fish all over western North Carolina and eastern. I've seen many bears. Yeah. I've seen them. It doesn't sound like a bear at all. I've seen them angry. I've seen them with cubs. I've seen them.

I've seen boars. I've seen a lot of animals. It's bizarre of the behavior. You know, it picking up the bag and throwing it almost like, I mean, that's kind of more human-like behavior than you would get from a wild animal. If it was a bear, it would have just bit the bag and maybe walked off with it. And even then, it probably is not going to happen. But for it to pick it up, throw it. Do you think Dobbs was in trouble?

Do you think this thing was coming for him? Well, you know, he's almost like he ran into it. I mean, even though there was a few, you know, a few yards between them, this thing was crossing the trail as Dobbs was coming down. And it saw him, and Dobbs saw him, and the thing stopped and screamed at him, and Dobbs dropped his kit and his stick and ran off the trail into the woods, probably at a right angle to the trail, basically, as he was fumbling to get his gun out.

and this thing pursued him, and in his words, it charged me. But then it stopped. I'm just going to make sure that you're going to keep going. You know, it's sometimes like a, you know, you see a vicious dog will run right to the edge of the yard and stop. And this thing ran at him, stopped. Before he got his gun out of the, the gun didn't come into play here, and then just kind of huffed and shook his head and walked off.

Like, you know, don't scare me again. You know, almost. And again, you know, that's hearsay. This is me repeating something that a guy told me 30-some-odd years ago. I was like you, it was interesting that it grabbed the bag and just flung it. I will tell you this, and even before the fire, the fire didn't consume that area of the, we found his hat again. We never found that bag.

And, you know, it's behavior, too, of circling around back behind you guys, almost like it's not over yet. you know, a normal animal would just run off, you know, if you confront it like that. Well, this is why I say, it's not a bear. Yeah. And in both cases, in the first instance in the river, I think it walked up on us, and then I think it was reacting, what are you doing here? Because we only went up there a couple three times a year, a couple times a year, really. And nobody else went into that area.

I would bet not a dozen people have been into that area in that area by that time. The second instance, I think the fire drove it away from where it ran into us. Now, I'm guessing here. I'm not a guesser. Imagine this thing related the fire to us. In the woods, out of sight, it didn't come running across the clearing at us. It backed into the woods. I've seen bears back up. I've seen dogs back up.

And they look left, they look right, and they back up a few steps. Then they turn around. A four-legged animal can turn around pretty quick. this thing took several deliberate steps walking backwards, as if it wasn't sure we had seen it, and then it began circling. And that's when I kind of get the, you know, basically get out of Dodge,

and we circled in the other directly, almost to where it had been. Did Dobbs ever give you the impression, like he kind of knew what it was, or do you think he was just as lost as you were at the moment? I mean, you had that encounter earlier, so you kind of, I'm sure it's all coming flooding back to you. But did Dobbs ever mention anything about ever seeing anything strange like that?

Or had any of those guys? You know, Dobbs was an experienced ranger, and he'd never seen anything like it. And we both sat there and agreed. We'd never told anybody about it. One that had been a big fire, the fire was, he wasn't an idiot. You don't work for the national forestry, so, you know, the federal government like that. I think you've snapped your cat. Forest rangers that had never seen.

anything and he'd never seen anything like that. And he, you know, to mention the word Bigfoot, he just kind of wince, you know, he didn't like that label, but that's what it was. And one thing we agreed to, and we almost kind of laughed about it is, you know, one thing's for sure, it's no damn bear. Dobbs was not young and inexperienced. He'd seen a lot of animals. He'd seen animals under stress.

He'd had to put down animals before. They'd have to re they had to relocate with, you know, biologists and park service people, nuisance bears and things. He'd been around wildlife and in the woods his whole life, as had I. This was no bear. Yeah, I always think that's a ridiculous argument you hear. Even sometimes from Bigfoot researchers where they're like, you know, there's a lot of people misidentifying these things as bears. And then when you listen to the witnesses tell what they saw and explain what they saw. saw, I don't know how you could say it was a bear. I mean, in most cases, when that argument

comes up, and then you hear someone's description, I mean, even your first encounter where it was 1,000, 2,000, and it's gone, and you describe it stepping up on the bank, bears can't do that. They just don't move like that, you know? And in your second encounter, you can see the intelligence behind this thing. You know, if there would have been a grizzly bearer and it was pissed, you guys were there, it would have just came for you. It wouldn't have sit and danced with you guys. Or it would have ran off. It's either one or the other, but it's not going to stand there and, you know, have like a Mexican standoff on who's going to make the wrong decision. And I think you were smart not shooting it. I think that would have gone extremely bad for everyone involved. I think it probably would have turned into a mess if you were to try shooting any of the thing right there, especially in the dark. And I've heard a few and they talk about, I don't think I could have shot it. I don't think shooting it would have stopped it, that sort of thing.

I didn't have that sense. I've seen bears that were bigger than this thing. Not in the Smokies. In the Smokies, you have black bears. You get a 450-pound black bear. You've got a really big black bear. But I've been out west. I've seen Kodiak's and I've seen grizzlies and I've seen brown bears.

I've seen bears that were bigger than this thing. But this thing was tall. And I don't want to describe it as lean, but lean to. you know, a bear has some bulk to it. He's got a gut than he is at the show opposite. This thing had more of a V-shaped. Dobbs' description of it was the size of a really big basketball player,

like a 7-foot-2, 7-foot-3 basketball player, kind of fits. This thing didn't have a whole lot of bulk to it, but it was not small. Way bigger than a man, bigger than a basketball player, so to speak. But it was leaner than what, you know, I've looked at bears.

This thing was leaner. And it had to be very long, nor Dobbs shot. I just think maybe it would be a sin to shoot one of these things. Chewing on my leg, well, of course I'm going to shoot it. If it's break it into my garage or something, well, then, of course. But just standing there staring at each other, regardless, I had the sense that I had the upper hand. Yes, it's bigger. Yes, it's huge.

But I don't think it's bulletproof. It would be wrong to shoot one of these things. I don't know why I think that. gut feeling. Well, that's something good men say. You know, I mean, and maybe I'm not a good man because I'm all for killing one. But I understand what you're saying, too. I mean, you're standing there in front of it. Why execute it when you're not really in danger? I get completely what you're saying. And I think that's a good opinion to have. I want to ask you, what do you think that these things are? Ash, you've had these two encounters for a lot of people. It's life-changing.

But what do you think that they are? I believe, of humanity as a missing link. Some people describe it as more animal. It's more like a cryptozoology animal. I don't believe either of those explanations. I think it's something different. I think it's wrong. I think it's out of sort. It's definitely more animalistic than human.

We don't see these things. We don't see them on game cameras. We come up on one tearing into a trailer so they shoot it. I never got the impression this thing was bulletproof. It was an animal. You know, we've taken, you know, mankind has taken polar bears with bow and arrow, before. This thing could be easily killed. But there's something about it. I mean, every sense of place in this environment, I mean, it goes deeper than just human or animal. I don't know if

it's a spirit, a manifestation, but I kind of agree. There's no easy explanation. Longs of these things, we've had a lot of people pull hair. There's never anything super conclusive like there would be if this was purely just another mammal. So I think it's beyond that. I'm funny saying that, but it's not what I think. You know, what do I think it is? I don't know. And that's why I think, not, I didn't think about not shooting it.

I didn't have an opinion as to whether to shoot it or not. I just had the gut. Yeah, no, no. And I appreciate you saying that. And I, you know, there is something to what you're saying. I mean, anyone who says it's just a normal animal, you can take apart that argument in two seconds. And you brought up the fossil record. And so, but.

to say it's completely human, you can take apart that argument in two seconds, too, as well. It's a bizarre subject, and there's a lot of people that run into these things, and they're not really sure what, I've heard that from many times from hunters, one comment that you've made where it's not a bear. Then I'll ask hunters off the air, well, what is it that you saw? And they'll explain what they saw, and then I'll ask them, what do you think it was? And they'll say, I don't know, but it wasn't a bear. I can tell you that. Wasn't a man, wasn't a bear. It was something very different. And so it's a mystery. You know, it'd be nice if we could solve it in our lifetime, but I have a feeling it's probably not going to be. But it's a fascinating account. I really appreciate

you taking the time to come on and share it, Ash. I told my wife, and she attempted to believe me. She was more empathetic than believing, but I told my daughter, who's pretty young, and she kind of went. And she had told me about podcasts because she knows I drive a lot between Tennessee and another area where I work. And I've retired from law enforcement. I have a different job now. And she said, well, you know, instead of just listen to, you know, old music or something, you can listen to these. And it's like listening to, you know, old talk radio or something. And she turned me on finally to a couple of different shows, but she said, listen to this one, listen to Sasquatch Chronicles.

and I enjoy this show. It just has a little bit of a class fashion after talking with her and talking with my wife. They encourage me to, you know, write you. Well, I'm glad they did, and thanks for listening, and thanks for sharing your encounter again, Ash. Absolutely. Thank you. And that's it for tonight, everyone to remember if you've had an encounter, shoot me an email. My email address is Wes at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. Have a great night, and I hope to see everyone in Houston.

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 Sports Garden Network's Wagering Week help your buy. bottom line.