The Confessionals - RELOADED | 52: Wes Germer's Bigfoot Encounter

Episode Date: May 6, 2024

In this reloaded episode of The Confessionals, we revisit a monumental moment with special guest Wes Germer from Sasquatch Chronicles. Coming right off the world premiere of the new documentary "Sasquatch and the Missing Man," starring Wes Germer himself, this episode takes on an extra layer of excitement and significance. Wes shares his intense Bigfoot encounter, shedding light on the mysterious world of Sasquatch. His appearance not only marks a celebration of our podcast’s journey but also honors the very person who inspired Tony to start The Confessionals. Join us for this thrilling episode where intrigue meets inspiration.Sasquatch and the Missing ManWatch the Live Premiere on REPLAY here: https://www.moment.co/sasquatchTeaser Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3b4tTY9bssThe Confessionals Members App:Apple Store: https://apple.co/3UxhPrhGoogle Play: https://bit.ly/43mk8kZBecome a member for AD FREE listening and EXTRA shows: theconfessionalspodcast.com/joinWatch The Shape of Shadows: merkelfilms.comWatch Expedition Dogman: merkelfilms.comAFFILIATESPrepare with Valley Food Storage: https://alnk.to/2uG55AOGet your Nephilim Blaster 2000: https://alnk.to/9mnHak1Bluecosmo Satellite phones: https://alnk.to/e769EipSee Bigfoot with Sionyx night vision: https://alnk.to/bEhxr3FEmergency medical with My Medic: https://alnk.to/dpr6QM4Black Beard Fire Starters: https://alnk.to/4BFcIbeEcoFlow Power Generators: https://alnk.to/flvpAQwGoDark Faraday Bags: https://alnk.to/5jke3rkEMP Shield: empshield.com Coupon Code: "tony" for $50 off every item you purchase!SPONSORSSIMPLISAFE TODAY: simplisafe.com/confessionalsCONNECT WITH USWebsite: www.theconfessionalspodcast.comEmail: [e-mail] to the Newsletter: https://www.theconfessionalspodcast.com/the-newsletterMAILING ADDRESS:Merkel Media257 N. Calderwood St., #301Alcoa, TN 37701SOCIAL MEDIASubscribe to our YouTube: https://bit.ly/2TlREaIReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/theconfessionals/Discord: https://discord.gg/KDn4D2uw7hShow Instagram: theconfessionalspodcastTony's Instagram: tonymerkelofficialFacebook: www.facebook.com/TheConfessionalsPodcasTwitter: @TConfessionalsTony's Twitter: @tony_merkelProduced by: @jack_theproducer

Merkel Media I guess it's time to go back in time Are you telling me you built a time machine Kind of a Dolion Time is but a stubborn illusion

I have a lot of memories Of the past People are time traveling Within themselves Time travel Is possible Okay tonight I have a great guest coming on a good friend of mine actually, Wes Germer.

Wes, how are you today, man? I'm doing good, brother. I'm doing good. I'm doing good. This is a show I've been wanting to do for a while, and I thought, why not do it on the one-year anniversary of the show? So we were talking and stuff. And, you know, it turns out, like, I talk to people on the show. And when I'm, you know, doing interviews and pre-interviews and all that stuff, sometimes I get people saying that the only reason why they heard about your show,

Sasquatch Chronicles, is because I've made. mentioned it. And I actually started thinking, I wonder how many people have actually heard your Bigfoot encounter because, I mean, it's a pretty good Bigfoot encounter. And so I started talking to some people. And it turns out when I was listening to your show, one of your guests asked you a question, I don't know if you've ever saw a Bigfoot. And I just made me laugh because it's like everybody knows you saw a Bigfoot. But apparently as time goes on, you know, people don't realize that you have actually had a big foot encounter. Do you run into that a lot?

Do people a lot of times, you know, just know that you've had a big foot encounter? No, I do. And you have to forget my voice tonight. I'm still fighting that walking pneumonia. So if I, hopefully my voice doesn't crack or anything tonight. But no, I do get that a lot. And I think that is somewhat intentional because the show, I try to make the show about other people's encounters,

not about me, not about my encounters. sometimes I'll talk about it. But for the most part, I try and make it about the guest, and I try and make it about their encounter. And so maybe that's why I do remember him coming on the show, though, and he did say, I don't know if he had an encounter or not. I just kind of let it go. But, you know, I try and make it about other people

and about their encounters, not so much about myself. Yeah, I can understand that. I mean, that's kind of like how I pursue this show as well. I mean, that's kind of, when this whole show started up, and you were a big part in helping me form the, you know, the whole process of getting this show up and running. I remember that's one of the things you said to me is that when you're interviewing people, you got to try making it about them, not you.

So, you know, less of you, more of them because people are tuning in to hear the guests. And I took that to heart and hopefully the audience feels the same way. So we're here tonight because we want to get your Bigfoot story out there again. We want to share what you saw, which you and Woody saw, actually, your brother. So if you want to just walk us into, you know, what exactly happened the night that you guys saw this stuff? How did it all develop? Well, and I don't know how far back you want me to go. It all started.

We actually went for a drive one night. And there's kind of a backstory to that. I don't know if you want me to go into it. Yeah, go ahead. The reason why a lot of people want to know why we went out for a drive that night. and we actually went out for a drive that night because it was 2012, man, and it was a rough, rough year for me, a very, very rough. A lot of family deaths.

My dad died of cancer and my grandfather died of cancer all within a matter of a couple months of each other. You know, I was out of work. I'd been laid off and it was just a rough, a rough year, man. It was just a really rough time. Probably one of the worst times in my life was 2012. And what ended up happening is Woody had come over one night. And I was actually up looking for work.

You know, it was probably almost midnight when he came over somewhere around there. And we were just talking. Him and I were just talking. And if you know Woody, he's not really, he's not a man to tell you about the way he's feeling. I mean, you know him, Tony. Yeah. He's kind of a, he's a tough guy. You know, he's a tough guy.

And he had come over, and I know he was kind of, you know, I think at that time in our lives, both of us were kind of lost because, I mean, hell, my dad just died, grandfather just died. You know, it's, and so he had come over and we were just kind of, we started talking about everything. And I had said to Woody, I said, let's just go for a drive, man. Let's just go for a drive, man. let's get out of here and just go and talk.

And that's what we did. And we decided to go down some of the backcountry roads. And we decided to just go out and be us. And that's kind of how the night started. We'd been out just driving around on back roads. And I really wasn't paying attention to where we were at. What ended up happening is we kind of got turned around. The road, we were coming out and people in the area will know.

know it, we were by molten falls and we had taken a turn heading up towards sunset falls. Now, I hadn't actually been up to sunset falls. I'd been to molten falls many times, but I'd never actually gone further into sunset falls. It's kind of a side road and if you blink, you'll miss it. And I don't think a ton of people go to that area. And anyway, we'd driven, it's in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. We'd driven past the sunset falls campground where the sky disappeared.

And we just kept going. And when you go past that area, the roads, they aren't real roads. It kind of turns into dirt roads. And there's a lot of erosion on those roads because there's a lot of runoff from the mountain. And so what you'll find is there's potholes about every 10, 15 feet. So you really kind of have to watch yourself. it's not a place you want to really break down. But we had driven, we'd come up to this fork in the road, and we were on Yakult Mountain.

And at the time, I didn't know we were actually on Yakult Mountain. It's not really a mountain per se as far as what we consider mountains out here in the West. It was more of a hill. But we started driving up this road, this backcountry road, and we'd come to another fork in the road. and it wasn't really a fork in the road. I'm sure at one time this turnoff was a road, but it's more or less like a game. It's a little bigger than a game trail.

I mean, you can fit a car down it, but you can't turn around. You have to back, back out if you go down this road. Anyway, as we're pulling up, I was trying to figure out why we were stopping, and Woody's starting to throw it in four-wheel drive. And it was a beautiful night when we're out there. I mean, it really was a beautiful night.

We even had the, this is still wintertime. We had the windows cracked down. It was beautiful. But one thing I noticed when we pulled up, it was silent. And I'd been in the forest my whole life. I'd been a hunter my whole life. I'd never heard the forest act quiet. I mean, it was just, and this is going to sound odd.

It was so silent, it was almost deafening. It's almost like you get a ring in your ears because it's, quiet. And I'm asking, what do you, what are you doing? And he's saying, I want to go down this game trail. I want to drive. I want to put out for a little drive. I want to go down this road. And it's like two o'clock in the morning. And I'm like, hey, man, I don't. So we start arguing. I mean, you've heard us off here with the renegade podcast. We will argue. And so we're sitting there arguing. And I'm telling him, begging Woody, I'm like, don't go to, you know, because he's, he's an idiot. He's going to drive down this road. We're going to get stuck. There's

no cell phone service. It's 2 o'clock in the morning. I don't really, I'm not really quite sure where we're at. So I'm begging him not to do it. So he jumps out of the car. And I know what he's doing. He jumps out. He walks to the front of the car and he's looking at the game trail.

And I know what he's doing. He's going to come back and say, hey, everything's a okay. We're good to go. Let's go down this, let's go down this trail. Well, as he's standing in front of the car, start yelling. at him to get back in the car because he left his door open and everything. So he comes back, he gets in the car. He's like, what's wrong with you? And I'm like, just listen for a second, man. Just stop and listen to the surroundings.

And he did. And we both sat there probably for about 10 seconds. And then he looked at me and he said, you know, it's it's dead silent out there. And I said, yeah, have you ever heard the Foresec, quiet? And I want to back up for a moment because if you're ever out in the Foresight, During the day, you think it's loud. Try going in the forest in the middle of the night. It's even louder. I mean, the forest just comes alive. And there was nothing.

No crickets. There was absolutely, it was so silent. It made me nervous. And as we're sitting there on Woody's side of the car, we started hearing something walking in on the car. It sounded like a man. It sounded like a very, very large man. I pictured like Andre the Giant walking towards the car.

And it was probably, you know, I'm trying to think of the distance. It was still quite a ways away, maybe 150 feet, something like that. But you could hear it. And it was just walking towards a car. You could hear every time it took a step. And we kind of looked at each other. And I was telling him, what is the deep? What is that?

You know, what he's like, you know, is it a bear? And so we start having this conversation about what we think it is, pretty soon on my side of the car, we could hear another set walking in. And it sounded like people. I mean, it sounded like two feet walking in, but the way he had parked, so when we started going down this game trail,

the way he had parked, the car was kind of not elevated, but the nose into the car was kind of pointed down. We were on a downslope. And the main road was still up there. The main road was level, but we were kind of on a down slope. And so the butt end of the car, if you look back, I mean, really just see sky, you really wouldn't see anything because we're the way we were parked.

And I didn't like, I didn't like what was going on. I couldn't understand how these people could walk in without flashlights. It just wasn't adding up. Something just was not making sense. Down the game trail, we're just about to drive down. We could hear someone else walking up. And when I say walking up, I mean, the leaves were down. There was no foliage anywhere.

This was like November. And you could hear these things walking in the leaves. And all three of them were merging on the car. I mean, they were obviously coming towards the car. And so we're sitting there and we're trying to have conversations about what's going on. And, you know, I don't know if we just walked into like someone into marijuana grow operation. I mean, it's legal now, but, you know, these things are going through my mind. Did we just walk into a bunch of military guys out here?

I just couldn't place what was going on. And, you know, we're a bunch of tough guys sitting there. And we had our guns still in the car. I don't remember if we're out shooting or if we're out hunting. We normally don't ride around with an arsenal of weapons, but we had guns in the car. So I reached back and I grabbed my pistol. and it's loaded

and I reach back and grab Woody's and I hand him his but Woody, if you know Woody's kind of a short temper guy he puts his gun right out the window he rolls his window down and points it right at in the general area of where we can hear this thing coming

and I told Woody don't do that don't I don't listen I don't want a gunfight I don't this is the last thing I want and so he rolled his window back about halfway up and I was telling Woody, I said, listen, if these guys want a fight, we'll give him a fight, but I don't want to initiate a fight. I'd rather, you know, let's, you know, I'm trying to keep Woody cool in this situation. And in the meantime, I'm talking because I'm trying to keep myself cool in this situation, because I'm, I'm unnerved.

And behind the car, about the time we're having this conversation behind the car, you could hear this thing break out of the, out of the, out of the brush. I mean, it sounded like a tank coming out of the brush. And it was probably 30, 35 feet behind the car. I'm going to go back up there when I look for this missing guy and I'm going to I'll probably shoot video of the area so you know

what I'm talking about. Awesome. But you hear this thing come out of the brush and it sounded like it didn't quite sound like it was on four legs but it sounded like it was crawling. I mean, it's, it's, I don't think it was crawling, but it

I can't describe it. It sounded like it was down low. And when I say that, I mean, you could hear it coming. It immediately rushed the car. It came up like five or six feet and it stopped and it growled. And I'd never heard a growl like that before. I mean, I just, the growl was very deep. It was very low and it was very guttural.

It sounded like it was coming from the thing's stomach. And we kind of looked at each other and it rushed the car again. I mean, you could hear it quickly move towards the car again. And it comes up and it growls again at us. And the growl, I'm telling you, the growl changed every time. It wasn't like, I compare it to like, you ever heard your dog growl or you don't have a dog, Tony? I grew up a dog. I'm sure.

Yeah, so you know, the dogs, when they growl, it's always one growl. Whether they're mad, they're scared. there it's always one growl this growled this growled changed i'm telling you this growled it got matter as it got closer and the second time it growled what he looked at me and he was like do you do you hear that i mean is both of our eyes must have been you know the size of saucers and i'm like yeah i heard the growl and i and it kind of hit me at that moment like we're pinned in we got one on what he's whatever's coming in we got something on woodie's side of the car. I got something on my side of the car.

There's something coming up from down that trail. Now there's something behind us. And we are absolutely pinned in. Well, it moves up again, another five, 10 feet. And all of this is happening really fast. It takes me forever to tell it. But all of this happened within seconds. This thing

comes up again and it growls again. And I mean, every time it growled, it sounded like it was more pissed and it was more um i i wish i could describe it it um it is and i'm just sitting there my hands are shaking at this point i know what he's shook up at this point and it sounds stupid to say that over a growl you know we're again we're a bunch of idiots and we're tough guys and blah blah blah but i i felt like i had been reduced down to like an eight-year-old and it comes up um it's probably

10, 15 feet from the car and it growls a fourth time at us. Now, I felt this growl. I physically felt this growl. It might have been fear. It might have been, oh, man. It might have been fear. I don't think it was because I physically felt it. And I can barely talk at this point.

I mean, I'm so shook up. My hands are shaking. I know what he's shaking. And I'm just, I don't know what to do. and it comes up, it's probably within a foot or less of the back bumper. And it growls at us, the last time I had growled at us. And it felt like being hit with a baseball bat. It was that, I mean, I remember even leaning forward.

It felt like a demon sitting on your shoulder growling right in your ear. I mean, it was so powerful. It felt like it was right there on top of us, growling at us. It didn't feel like it was buying the car anymore. it felt like it was on it felt like it was just uh you know and i my hands are man i'm even starting to shake talking about it i um now i know how my witnesses feel i um so i look at woody and i'm trying to talk and what he's like hey he's not really saying anything he's just kind of looking at me and i'm like back up back up back up start the carum back up and

I'm like, but do it slowly, but back up. And so he does. He starts a car. And when we started backing up, I thought for sure we were going to hit the thing. No doubt in my mind, I thought we were. And I was praying that we didn't hit it because from the growl alone, it sounded bigger than the car. We still hadn't seen anything yet. So he backs up, turns a car around.

And now I'm on, we're reversed from where we're at. So now I'm on Woody's side of the car, and he's where I was on that side of the car. And he gets up on the main road, and he drives probably, I don't know, 20, 30, maybe 40 feet, something like that. And he throws it back in park, and he shuts a car off. And I'm, I'm, you know, I'm screaming at him. I won't tell you what I said. Every other word was the F word, but I was like, what the F are you doing? let's go, what are we doing?

And he put his hands up and his hands were just shaking and my hands were shaking. And coincidentally, we're both still holding our guns. I don't think we even realized at the moment we're still holding the guns. And he said, you know, man, I just, I can't drive us at the moment. I need a minute. And I understood what he meant because as I told you, the road's coming up there, man. you don't do over 20 miles an hour on these roads unless you want to blow out a tire.

And they're dangerous roads. You can go off the side of the mountain. They're not roads you really want to go full blast down. And so we're sitting there in the car and he looks over to his, he's looking out of his passenger side window, or driver's side window, I'm sorry. And he's kind of just looking up and I'm looking straight ahead. and I felt like I was in a daze.

I mean, I felt like, I think it was just fear, but I really felt like I was in a daze. And I looked over at him, and he kind of looked back over at me, and he said, do you see what I see over here? And I said, what is it?

He goes, I don't know. And I looked over and I looked up. And up in this tree, you could see, there's all of these birch trees out there. And they have white bark. This thing had its arms. It was probably 15, 20 feet up in the tree. It wasn't really that high up in the tree.

And it had its arms and its legs wrapped around this tree. And again, I'll send you a picture of them, Tony, because there's not a ton of branches on these trees. They just kind of grow straight up. And it was looking at us. And it was just a black figure up in this tree. And it was real shifty moments. real shifting movements.

It would shift from the left to the right with its head and kind of upper body. And it was kind of looking down at us. And it reminded me of a monkey. Honestly, it reminded me of a monkey. The way it had its arms and legs were. And just the way it moved, it reminded me of a monkey. And so I kind of just sit back in my chair and I said, are you talking about that thing in the tree? And he goes, yeah.

Did you see what I'm talking about? I said, yeah, I said it looks like a monkey in a tree, man. I don't know. And about that time, we both looked back up and this thing's gone. Now, we still had her windows down, for the most part. I mean, I think his was about halfway down. Mine was somewhat cracked. And we never heard this thing leave the tree.

Never heard it drop. It was just gone. And off to my right, I could hear, and again, this was Woody's side of the car. and it kind of goes up this little embankment, and then it's a tree line. And you could hear this thing breathing inside this tree line. And I've said like Darth Vader, I've said, you know, like a fat guy that just got done running a mile,

it would breathe in just as hard as it would breathe out. And it was just inside the tree line. We couldn't see it. But you could hear it just breathe in and breathe. It kind of like how I'm breathing now being sick. It was very raspy. It was very, very, it sounded like a sick bear. And I'm telling Woody, I'm like, do you hear this?

Listen over here. Do you hear this? And so he kind of leans over. And I'm looking, it's kind of diagonal to my mirror, my passenger side mirror. And I'm looking kind of at the mirror and I'm kind of looking up. About that time, I saw something run behind the car. It was just a flash, like a black flash. And then it took off again.

And then it came back and then it took off again. And I was about ready to tell Woody, I want to leave. I don't want to be here anymore. I want to leave. And about that time, he leaned over and said, I think we're being surrounded again. And I said, yeah, I just want to go. Whatever's going on up here, I want no part of it. I, you know, I just, I want to leave.

I felt like Alice in Wonderland at that point. It was just like, I just want out of here. So he goes to start the car and take off. And that's when we actually saw it. This thing stepped out off the embankment into the road. Now the embankment, again, because I've been back to the area, you can't step off of it. Like I couldn't step off of it. It would take about three or four steps for me to get down to the road.

This ain't just one step and it's on the road. and I wasn't, you know, I didn't know what I was looking at. It was huge. It looked like a man, but it wasn't a man. It looked like a gorilla, but it wasn't a gorilla. It was just this huge, bulky thing. And it was muscular. And it started walking across the road.

It took about three or four steps, walked across the road. But it would stop. It would take a step, and it would kind of stop. it would turn its whole upper body and look at us. And then it would take like one or two more steps and turn its body and kind of look at us. It was very, I felt like it was meant to intimidate us. And this thing was doing a good job of intimidating us. And it goes across the road.

And I'm sure we were yelling at the time. What the F was that? You know, I just remember my jaw being down. My jaw just being on the floor. my eyes being real big. And it goes across the road and it goes behind this

kind of a deadfall tree. The tree had been broken. It was about eight feet up, but it was just kind of this dead tree. And it walks behind it, it stands there. And we could still see it. I mean, it was taller than the tree. We could still see from about

the shoulders up. So it wasn't hiding from us. We could still see it. and Woody goes and he's acting like he's going to start the car and he's going to drive us out of there and I'm like, don't, I'm begging him at this point. Don't drive past that thing. Tony, this thing was so big. I think at the time of when I first started,

I thought it was like 12 feet tall. I think when we went back, realistically, it was more like nine feet tall. But at the time, I mean, this thing could have been 50 feet tall. I had just never seen anything this physically big before.

But it was about nine, nine and a half feet tall, and it probably weighed about a thousand pounds, minimum. And I was sitting there thinking like, please don't drive. And I was talking about he, please don't drive past it. Because I honestly, in my heart, I felt like it could have grabbed this. It was so big. I felt like it could have grabbed the side of the car and flipped it over. And there would have been nothing we could have done about it. And we couldn't turn around and go the other way because this is the only way.

them out. So we're, we're stuck. If we turn and go the other way, we'll be on some crazy road. I don't even know where it goes. We have to go this way to get out of here. And so it's kind of a one road in, one road out type of deal. And it comes out from behind this tree. And it got down like it was going to charge us. I mean, it got down on all fours. Not kind of on all fours. It got down like you'd see a runner get down. You know, like a runner right before it takes off for a race.

They kind of have their butts in the air and their hands are down. That's what this thing did. And it would pump, pump its butt, like it was going to charge us. And I'm sitting there with my gun. My hands are shaking. And I'm in my mind. I'm thinking, please don't, please don't charge a car, please don't charge a car, please. Because I knew our guns weren't going to kill us saying. There's no way our guns were going to even take the same down.

And then it stood up and it went back to the dead fault tree, it stood there. Pretty soon it'd come back out, did the exact same thing, act like it was going to charge us. And then it would stand up and it would walk back. And it must have done this. Woody and I still argue about this, but Woody's, says, you know, it was, I don't, I don't know what he, five or six times, I think is what he says. I swear the same did it way more than that. I mean, we sat there and every time it came out, my heart sank, I thought for sure it was going to charge us, but it didn't. It stood back up,

started walking back over behind the deadfall tree. And about that time, we saw where that one had stepped off the embankment, there was another one. But it was, it was different. It jumped across the road, bounced off of it like it was a trampoline, and then went off into the bushes and it was gone. The one that, the big one, if you can picture like Arnold Schwarzenegger a thousand pounds and nine and a half feet tall,

that's kind of what this thing looked at, looked like. The head was very small and it sat right on the shoulders. But the head, I say at the time, it reminded me of a kind of a cartoon character because the head seemed like it was too small for the body. The shoulders were extremely exaggerated. I remember just focusing on those shoulders every time it came out because the shoulders

had to have been at least six feet wide. I mean, it was the biggest thing I'd ever seen in my life. And it went down to like a V. You know, like when you see Patty, she's big, but she's not stacked. She's not like ripped out. Seems more frumpy. Yeah, very frumpy. This thing was not like that at all, not even close. And it was narrow in the waist. The legs on it were like tree trunks. The one thing I can tell you about it is the knees aren't in the same place where our knees are at. The knees are actually farther down. And it walked bent knee the whole time. It never straightened up. And it kind of walked, I say hunched over what he said more like, slouched over, but it reminded me of, I did an interview with Chris Jericho and I was looking at

some of these wrestlers. And you ever see a guy that works out too much on his chest? And what ends up happening is the muscles tend to pull, roll the shoulders forward and kind of pull the shoulders down. And I think that's why I say hunched over. It kind of had that. It was like, it was too, I don't know, I'm not doing a great job of describing it, but it was kind of not hunched, but it looked like it worked out too much in its chest and kind of pulled. The shoulders are kind of rolled forward. The arms went down to almost the knees. Not quite, but almost to the knees.

The one that jumped across the road was built nothing like this other one. It was skinny. It was tall. It was, you know, kind of a light gray, whiteish color. And it reminded me of like, a female jogger, that type of body type. It was still big.

I mean, I'm sure it was bigger than me, but we only saw it for like 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, and it's gone. And when I say it bounced off that road, man. It bounced off that road like it was a trampoline. And as soon as it came across the road and went off into the bushes, the big one stepped back out.

And I honestly thought he was, I thought we're dead. And he never, when he stepped out this time, he never, he never, well, through the whole encounter,

he never turned us back on us. But when he came out this last time, he was squared up with us. And he came out to the middle of the road, and he just like collapsed. And what I mean by that is like, he dropped down to all fours, not like before.

This was actually dropping down to all fours, but it wasn't. like how you and I would get down on all fours. This thing just collapsed. And it was down on the ground like a spider. It used its fingertips and its back toes. And it crawled about halfway out, stopped for a second, and then crawled off into the bushes.

And it was gone. And I told Woody, I said, let's go, go, go, go, go. And he started the car. And we came down, remember I was telling you before that mountain, you really don't want to go over 20 miles an hour coming down. we were probably doing 70, 75 coming down that. We hit every pothole. I'm surprised we didn't wreck,

but we hit about everything coming down that mountain. And I can go into this if you want, but the sun was coming up when we're coming down the mountain. Now, I swear it was like 2 o'clock in the morning when we got there. And it was about five something coming down the mountain. And so I started arguing, what are you about? I said, oh, the clock in your car's wrong.

He said, no, it's not. I said, no, it's not 5 o'clock in the morning, man. And he said, no, I think that's right. And I was like, were we there that long? And so it still bothers me to this day because I can't, I know we weren't there in three hours. I know we weren't.

Anyway, I can come back to that. So I I come home and my wife's taken off for work and I'm white as a ghost and she's like, where are you guys at? She thought we were out drinking all night. I'm like, no, we weren't. She's like, what's wrong with you? You're white as a ghost.

And I just said, I couldn't even talk at that time. I just said, I don't know. I don't know. We saw something, I don't know. And then I sat down on the bed and literally my knees and my hands shook for about three hours after that. But that's the encounter, man. It changed my life.

I mean, it's, you know, it's, it's probably the, it's probably the worst thing that's ever happened to me in my life. And probably the one of the better things that have happened to me in my life. It's not, it's probably more negative than positive, but it was a real eye-opener. That's for sure. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, a lot of good has come out of that encounter as well. well. So, I mean, I can totally understand what you mean by that. With everything that happened,

I know you and Woody have different takes on different things and stuff. When I was talking with Woody, you know, I don't know, while back, I know he kind of described it. Like, he felt like it was more, I guess, at times paranormal and stuff. I know Woody's not here. But you know what I'm talking about? Like, he kind of, I think you said that you seemed like this is more of a natural occurrence. But Woody kind of feels like maybe there's some kind of paranormal aspect to it as well. Am I getting that right? Yeah. And I hope I did an okay job recounting it. I'm fighting a fever. So I don't know if I sound coherent or not. But yeah, we do have a difference. We had a difference of opinion at the time. Woody felt like it was, you have to understand, at this point,

we still didn't think Bigfoot. I don't think we, one of us said Bigfoot. I said we ran into monsters and Woody thought it was something more paranormal. The reason why Woody says he thinks that something more paranormal is because of the way they moved. The one that jumped across the road, it's, I mean, you'd almost have to see it to believe it. I don't know anything physically that could do that or move the way it moved. The big one, even the way he walked, didn't seem natural. You know, it seemed like the way he dropped down to like

almost like a spider, nothing about it seemed natural. And Woody's always thought that there's something very paranormal about Bigfoot. And I think it's mainly because of the way they move. Yeah, I mean, I guess, because I know there's a lot of people out there, you know, obviously it's a big conversation.

You know, are they natural beings? Are they more paranormal? But, I mean, if they're moving like that, I mean, I could totally see how people would think that it's something other than a natural creature. I mean, like when you were talking about how you guys, I think you just started going or getting out of there and you stopped and you saw the one in the tree

and then it was just like, it was just gone. Like they moved so fast that you don't even really get a chance to comprehend that they're moving. Yeah, and that's one of the things we talked about too after the encounter was the one in the tree, the fact that we never heard it drop. Because where it was at, we would have heard it come down.

I mean, we were thinking it was some monkey at the time. And you would have heard we, it was about my size. It was bigger than a monkey. I'm a pretty big guy. So, but it was about my size. But we never heard it leave the tree. And so, and the growl. That's the other thing, too, if you talk to Woody, which I tend to agree with him on,

that he and you can ask him on the Renegade podcast. He's at work right now. But that growl was not. a natural growl. If I can replay that growl for you in my head, you would say that's demonic. Because, you know, and I've watched ghost shows where, you know, these demons do growl. And it kind of does sound like that. It sounds very, it does not sound natural at all.

But, yeah, I mean, even to the day, if you ask Woody about Bigfoot, he's going to tell you, he thinks that there's something very paranormal about it. I don't think he thinks it's necessarily physical. I mean, I don't want to speak for him, but he's more on the Ron Moorhead. Him and Ron Moorhead get along really well because he tends to agree with him on a lot of things. Which is odd because Woody is not, if he know the guy, he's very cut and dry. He's very black and white. I mean, prior to our encounter, he would make fun of people who saw Bigfoot.

He thought it was a joke. and I kind of understand why because we had been hunting in that general region, not in that specific spot, but in that general region, we've been hunting our whole lives. We'd never seen anything.

I mean, we weren't looking either, but we'd never seen anything. We'd never really heard anything. We did find a footprint one time, but that's a different story. But Woody's very black and white. And so for him to be, if you know what I think about Ron Moorhead,

what he's kind of on the same line of thinking as Ron. You know, I have a friend that I used to go to school with back in elementary school, and him and I have kept in touch over the years, and he's a big time outdoorsman. I mean, the guy could literally live outside year-round. He's a huge guy with outdoors. And he doesn't believe in Bigfoot. Actually, I should say that up until recently,

he was adamant that Bigfoot's not real. And he would come on sometimes my YouTube channel as a skeptic and give his take on certain things that are being in presented it as Bigfoot evidence. And it was very interesting to have him come on. But recently, he's been changing his tune a little bit because of the Todd's standings documentary that had come out. So it comes out and he sees the black face at the end of the documentary.

And he said to me that either that's absolutely 100% real or it's a hoax. But for him, it's actually pushed him closer to belief and stuff. So I find it interesting how the guys who are outdoors all the time, they never see anything. And so they think there's no way because I would see it if it was out here because I'm out here all the time. But it's just, it's fascinating how people, their mindsets can change over different evidences and stuff like that. But for you guys, I mean, there's just no way around it. I mean, you saw what you saw. And so like, you're just thrust into this belief. I mean, you have, I'm assuming it was an alpha that probably stepped across the road and was strutting

itself. Is that what you think? Yeah, he was the biggest out of the three that we saw. he was definitely the biggest. And he seemed to have the most attitude. I think the one in the tree was just more curious. But again, it was about my size. The one that walked across the road was not my size. That thing was huge. And he did carry him.

This seems odd. My impression of it, I used to be a bouncer in Vegas. And I actually made pretty good money. That's the whole, we'll have to do a renegade show about that. Yeah. Because I have all kinds of stories I can tell you about that. that. But I could walk, I got to the point where I really didn't like fighting. I got to the point where I'd been in enough fights. I would try and avoid a fight if possible. But I could walk into

a bar there in one of the clubs and quickly scan the room and tell you who I think is going to be trouble, who wants to fight, you know, who doesn't. And you learn to read people's body language. my impression of this thing was its body language was bring it you guys want to fight bring it and it was it was doing everything it could to intimidate us and it was doing a damn good job of it

but when I thought it was going to charge a car man my heart sank every time it came out my heart sank because I thought this is it and yeah I do think he was the alpha male yeah I mean that's what it sounded like to me and stuff when you were talking about it It just sounded like the leader showing everybody else that he's not scared of these guys in a car and he's going to show them what's up.

That's what it sounded like to me. Well, what's interesting is if you go back and I've had time to really think about this, he left. I say he, I don't even know if it was built like a he. After the white one had come across that road or light gray one had jumped across that road, the black one came out, did his little Spider-Man move, and then he left. That was it. And so I don't know if he was clearing the path for me.

Me and Woody both think the white one was more female. I don't know why I say that. It just reminded me it was more of a female-isque type of look as opposed to the other one. But I don't know if he was clear in the path. I think what happened was we had driven up there. They were making their way down the river. And I can tell you more about that area if you want.

But they were making their way down to the river. And I think we cut them off. And they weren't going to go around us. They were going to make us move. And I think that's what happened. I think we just cut them off from going down to the river and it pissed them off. Do you think that it could have been hunting? I know that's obviously a common question when people encounter these things like you did.

Do you think it was feeding time or anything? I mean, were they changing the menu? I don't know. Well, if you go up there and you're on top of that mountain, around 2, 3 o'clock in the morning, you can hear them up there. You can hear them whoop. You can hear them scream. Not every night.

I don't want to make it sound like that. But oftentimes you can hear them up there. And I think they mainly come down at night in that area. I don't know that there, maybe it was feeding time. I don't know. The direction they were all going was towards the river, though, towards the east fork of the Lewis River was where they were all headed. So it's hard to say, man.

But it, you know, it really did change things for me a lot. Change things big time in my life. So do you think that you experienced lost time, or do you think it was just like an adrenaline pump thing where you just didn't realize how much time was passing? because you were so focused on what was happening around you. I think it wasn't a journal and dump. I didn't think that much time had passed, but obviously it did.

But there's not a moment. I think people when they experience lost time, they can't remember certain aspects. I remember everything from that night. There's not a moment where I think, well, it seems like we lost an hour there, where we can't remember anything. Both of us remember everything.

So I think it was an adrenaline dump. It's interesting. When we got back, I'd actually called Fish and Game. And I was telling, I was rambling off a million things, a million miles an hour. And they put me in touch with a guy. It was an old man that got on the phone. And he said, slow down, West. What did you run into?

And so I'm telling him monsters. You know, I'm now at like an eight-year-old level of conversation. And I'm telling him we ran into monsters. And so I went through the whole story with them on what happened. And he said, well, was your brother with you? And I'm like, yeah, he was with me the whole time. And he said, I'd like to talk to him. So I gave him his number.

And about an hour or two later, he called me back. And he made a comment to me. He said, you know, I believe you was. there's too many things regarding what you guys saw that night. He goes, I believe you. He goes, I think what you ran into was Sasquatch. He had a Sasquatch encounter. And I was like, well, whatever you want to call it, man.

But I'm telling you, there's monsters up there. And it took a long time for me. He had said that. I didn't really stop and think about what he said. I just kept going. And it wasn't until about a week later. I was like, I wonder what he meant by that. and that's how we kind of came to the conclusion that it was Bigfoot

because of talking to him. But prior to that, we just said monsters. We ran into monsters. Wow. So a fishing game guy told you that he thinks you saw a Sasquatch. So at least there's one fishing game guy out there that actually believes in Bigfoot. Yeah, a lot of them do. A lot of them do, especially here in Washington State.

Can kind of pull these guys off to the side. most of them have either encountered the creature or they have a co-worker that's run into it most of those guys do actually believe in Sasquish. Wow. That's totally different than around here, I'm assuming. You know, northeast, much more industrialized. But let me ask you this.

The days after your encounter, so you said about a week later is when you guys started connecting dots that it was Sasquatch, the time between the actual encounter and the times you figured it out, what was life like that week for you and what do you? Did you guys talk at all? Were you guys kind of just standing off? Because I know when people experience these dramatic things, whether it's a paranormal thing, it goes, big foot, whatever, sometimes they shut themselves up into a shell and they just don't talk about it. What was your reaction to this afterwards?

We didn't really talk a whole lot. The biggest problem I was having is at sleeping. I couldn't sleep after this encounter. And I would lay in bed and I would close my eyes and I would just hear the growl. And I would see this thing. And it seemed like the encounter kept replaying and replaying every time it got quiet at night and I tried to go to sleep. So I hadn't really slept and probably it took me a couple months actually to get decent sleep. I mean, I'd sleep every now and then, but I would try and avoid sleeping. and Woody and I talked about it probably a week later

and I told him I can't sleep at night and I'm having trouble sleeping and he said yeah I am too and that's when we really sit down and start talking about it and Woody was really the only one I could talk to about it you know what I mean because I didn't who do you talk to when you've had any

there was no I know you see all these bigfoot podcasts and now everyone wants to talk to eyewitnesses but back then it wasn't like that no one really wanted to talk to eyewitnesses on any of these shows. And so there really wasn't anywhere to go to talk about it. And I just, so we would sit down and talk about it all the time. And one time I had called into Chuck Prawl show, Chuck's passed away now, Bigfoot Tonight's show. But, you know, him and I were, I went on that show, and I told the encounter. And I felt like this huge, just weight had been lifted. Chuck was very kind to me, very nice, very

respectful. And I just felt like this huge weight had been lifted. And that's kind of how we, we ended up going back up to the mountain. There's a lot of other things that happened between that time. But that's really where I thought, you know what? How cool would it be to start my own podcast and just talk to eyewitnesses? Because it feels so good for me to get it off my chest, to actually talk to someone and not have them go, okay, well, what were you guys drinking that night? You know, or start cracking jokes. And that's kind of how the podcast started getting formed at that point. I was like, you know what, let's just talk to people about their encounters.

Little did I know it wasn't quite as simple as I thought it was going to be. Sorry, man, I'm rambling. No, it's actually fine because I was actually literally going to ask you that next question, which was going to be, you know, I had the show start, which you kind of just filled in there for us. I mean, with the show itself, you know, how do you think the show Sasquatch Chronicles has affected the Bigfoot community of people over the last,

I don't know, was it five, six years, seven years? How has it affected the Bigfoot world? Yeah, I mean, like, before you started the show, there was nobody doing shows with Bigfoot Encounter Stories. and since then, it seems like it's a go-to thing for a lot of people. Do you think that you and the show itself has helped propel the Bigfoot community in a certain direction as far as awareness? That would be pretty arrogant, I think, for me to assume. I don't know if my show was the cause of all these other shows popping up.

I mean, God, the last time I looked, there was like 10 different Bigfoot shows, and they all do encounter stories, and they have eyewitnesses come on. And, you know, I guess it would be nice if I felt that way, like, hey, I was a part of that. I won't say that I was. But the shift changed a lot because back then, everyone wanted to talk to authors. They wanted to talk to eyewitnesses, or not eyewitnesses. they wanted to talk to authors, they wanted to talk to researchers, they wanted to talk to experts.

And I wanted the show to be different. I wanted to talk to eyewitnesses because I never really thought there was a ton of information coming from authors, researchers, and experts. It seemed like people who just had encounters and now give themselves titles, but I wasn't such a hard-ass

back then like I am now with these people. but yeah it would be nice to think that I changed it somehow I won't say that I will I did but it is nice to see these other shows pop up where their focus is eyewitnesses

because that's really where you get the bulk of your knowledge is from eyewitnesses and behaviors you know I've learned so much from talking to other eyewitnesses and I've become more open when I first started the podcast I wouldn't hear of anyone

saying it looked human or I wouldn't hear of anyone saying it had glowing red eyes or I wouldn't hear of anything weird I wouldn't hear it. No I knew it all at that point in my life. I knew it all and I was very arrogant about it. You know, flute players and everything else. And then my mindset, my mind, I can't even talk. My mindset started changing to where let's listen to everyone. if you're truly in this to solve this mystery, and if you're truly in this for recognition of Sasquatch, then you have to hear everyone out. It doesn't mean you believe everyone,

but you have to hear everyone out. And if you don't, you're being very disingenuous in your pursuit of trying to find answers. And so I started changing my mindset on the show. And, you know, a lot of things I wasn't prepared for with the Big Four world. I wasn't prepared to deal with a bunch of crazy people. I wasn't prepared to deal with egos. I wasn't prepared to deal with an arrogance of a lot of these researchers.

And I give researchers a hard time, but there's an ego and an arrogance about them. and, you know, I feel like I speak kind of for the guy that had an encounter, you know, the guy that's not well known in the big foot world. They speak. And so a lot of these guys, I like to put them to task. You know, if you come to me with an arrogant attitude and you got an ego about you, believe me, we're going to go to task when we talk. I'm going to put you to task, and you're going to answer questions.

If you know so much and you're such an expert, we'll find out. And most of them, I've never had it. anyone that I sound like a dick, but I've never had any of it. I've never had, and I'm not like that with everyone. I try and be very respectful to everyone, but if you come to me with an ego and arrogance, that's one thing I can't stand. I just can't, it drives me nuts, especially in this field, because the public thinks we're chasing unicorns anyway, and now you have an arrogance and ego about you. So I'm not really in the Bigfoot world, so I guess I can't speak for the Bigfoot world. I'm kind of the outsider and I kind of do my own thing and I do what works for me. So

they can go and do whatever they want to do, you know. Yeah, for sure. I mean, it kind of speaks a lot, though. I mean, you're, you said about how you've changed your mindset throughout the years of doing the show. And I kind of respect that a lot because, I mean, just this year, past year of me doing the show, you know, there's a lot of thoughts and opinions that have evolved over the last year. So I'm sure if I listen to my first 10 episodes, I'm probably going to say something in there that I don't necessarily feel like I believe today or I might have a little bit of a different opinion on today. But that just speaks to somebody who's willing to, you know, accept different thoughts and opinions and grow mentally along the way with time. I know for me personally, my entrance into the Bigfoot

community online, like I was always interested in the topic and I would look into it here and there, but the actual Bigfoot community and the online community especially, my entrance into that was through Sasquatch Chronicles. I remember what happened. I was sit at my house. I was getting ready for work. I was getting ready to leave for work. And I was watching Monster Quest and they had a Bigfoot show on.

And I was like, I don't want to leave right now. This is awesome. I want to watch it. But I had to get going and just hit me. I was like, I wonder if there's any kind of Bigfoot radio show that I could listen to online. I didn't even know what a podcast was. And I just Googled it. And I came across your,

your show that morning before I walked out of my apartment and I hit play. I listened to like five minutes. I was like, dang. And for like the next, I don't know, month and a half, two months, I was hooked. I binged through all your shows to catch up. And ever since then, obviously, I've been a faithful listener. And, you know, hearing that, I would ask you, like, I know you personally and I know who you are as a person. And I know that you care about people. And if you, you know, one day, if, you know, West Gürmer, hangs it up and he just sails off into the sunset. If that would ever happen, what would you want as a lasting memory for people? Like, what would you, how do I say this? What kind of impact would you like to be able to say you had on people's lives in a positive way when this, you know,

referring to the show and what you do for people as far as I'm coming on the show to share their, you know, experiences and things like that. Do you know what I mean? Does that make sense? Yeah, and that's kind of a hard question to answer. one day I will hang it up. And I don't know that I necessarily want to be known as the Bigfoot guy. I hope when I leave the Bigfoot world, and eventually I will. I hope people remember, I guess the biggest thing is I would hope people say, hey, he was a pretty nice guy.

I think that would be good enough for me. You know, the day I leave for people to just say, hey, you know what, he was a pretty good guy. He was an okay interviewer, and he always treated people with respect. You know, I would hope that I left, even though I said I'm not a part of the Big Fort World, I would hope that I left it better than where I found it.

And, you know, there will always be Bigfoot shows. There are always be guys that come along better than me. I'm sure there's guys out there now that are better than me. But I would hope that they say, hey, you know what? He was a nice guy. that's what I want my legacy to be. He was a good guy.

Again, he was an okay interviewer. You know, he always treated people with respect. And in the Bigfoot world, those are things that are lacking. Not a lot of nice guys. And when I say the Big Four world, I mean like a lot of the researchers and experts and a lot of, not all of them.

I feel like I'm bashing everyone. But there's a lot of humble pie that a lot of people could use in their life. Sure. And, you know, I guess just treat people the way you want to be treated, you know, talk to them the way you'd want to be talked to. And there's a lot of that lacking right now. And I think part of it's social media and a lot of other things.

But I don't know. Does that answer your question? I feel like my fever just answered your question. No, absolutely. Absolutely. I just wanted to, you know, hear that, hear what your thoughts were on that. Because I know, you know, I'm the kind of person that even at my day job where I drive truck by myself all day when I'm around the guys at work. I just have this attitude where I would

like to think that I'm impacting people's lives in a positive way. It's funny because my mom made this big scrapbook for Christmas of us kids, pictures and stuff like that as we were little. And she gave me this note that I guess apparently I wrote to Bill Clinton when I was in elementary school. And it was full of spelling errors and things like that. But the whole thing was littered with me trying to ask the president to just, help people and make sure people are okay. And just like, I just wanted to see people, you know, okay. And I wanted to help people as much as I can. I think I even asked them, like, if there's any kind of help you need, I will help you, all that stuff. And so, I mean,

even from a little age, I was always the kind of person. I just wanted to impact people's lives. And I've noticed with my show, I get emails such as that, like people saying that, you know, my show with whatever interview I did really helped them further their thought process on certain things. And they thank me. And then it's just like to hear that. It means so much to me personally. I know for you, it means the same way. Yeah, it is kind of nice. You know, I get a lot of very kind emails from a lot of people.

And people who are sick, you know, stuck in a hospital bed that, you know, just wait till every show comes out every week. That's the biggest thing going on. They can't wait until the next show comes out. And that means a lot to me. You know, sometimes I think I tend to forget there's so many people listening to the the show because I know I don't say things right the right way sometimes or sometimes I'll give my opinion and then I'm always shocked the next morning when you know I got like a hundred emails that people tell me they disagree with me and I'm a scumbag and I'm this and I'm that

I'm like I don't remember saying that during the show and I go back and listen I'm like oh yeah I did say that during the show and so yeah it's nice it is nice you know the fans I guess she asked about the biggest thing. The biggest accomplishment I can say is my fans that listen to the show. The one thing that I love is they've become very smart on the subject because they've listened to so many encounters. They've listened to behavior. They've listened to descriptions.

They listen to, you know, they're a very well-educated audience. And, you know, I'm happy that I was a part of it because they know their stuff, man. You're not going to come on and BS them. They know their stuff. And a lot of times when I have like a researcher on or an author on, you're going up against a very intelligent audience. And you better know your stuff when you come on as far as those guys go because the audience will eat them alive. And so I don't mean that in a bad way. I hope that came across the right way.

but they're just a very well-educated audience. And I think that's maybe a nice legacy to walk away with people who listen to the show, go, hey, you know what? I know so much more because I listen to the show. But again, it's not really about me. It's about people's encounters. So it's kind of its own little community. You know what I mean?

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I agree with you 100%. So today you're going up there to the mountain and to look for that. guy that went missing, or at least helped to. And you told me that that's in the area generally where you had your encounter, right? Yeah, it's about half a mile, maybe a quarter of a mile from where we actually had our encounter. And what's interesting, so in that, Sunset Falls Campground, I'll send you the video again. I don't know if I've ever sent it to you, Johnny.

We recorded a ball of light. We were up on the main road opposite of the campground, on the the backside and we come across the ball of light. That was only about 500 feet from that campground and we filmed that thing. But where that guy disappeared is right there. That Lewis River, it's a very fast-moving river, but it's a very shallow river. It's not a river I don't think you could drown in. Even if he was drunk, I don't know that he would necessarily drown in that river. And it's interesting his clothes were found along the river, but not in the river. And the story for the audience listening, forgive me, this guy, he was in it, they were in the Sunset Falls campground. They were out four-wheeling. They came back because he wanted to go

and lay down. He wanted to go back to camp, so they dropped him off. And then they go back up four-wheel-in. But when they came back, he was just gone. He just vanished. And there's, and when I show you the video of that area, you don't just vanish in that area. There's a main road you can stay on, and I'm telling you that river, if he had drowned in that river, he would have washed up about

200 feet away where it's not very deep. He would have washed up on the rocks. I think the deepest point of that river is probably 20 feet max, and that's one of the deepest areas. So yeah, I'm going to go, I've been looking, I went up last weekend. I looked for him

and it's sad, man. It's a very, very sad story. It breaks my heart to hurry. He disappeared in that area. There's something with that region, that whole Eakolt Mountain. There's a lot of strange things that go on up there. And so, yeah, I'm heading back up later today to look for them. That's really cool, man, that you're going and helping with that effort.

It sounds very 4-1-1 to me. You know what David Polite does. It just has a lot of the similarities. and stuff. And, you know, I know David never comes out and says that things that he's describing as Bigfoot, but, you know, most of us feel that what he describes is Bigfoot. And, you know, knowing that you had your encounter in that very area, it does lead to a lot of suspicion. And it's not like you can go up there, look for them with people and say, you know, I really think that there could be something else going on here. I had a Bigfoot encounter up here and we should really think about

that because people are going to look at you like, what? You know, like, especially in that kind of moment, so they're going to probably think you're pulling their legs. So the fact that you're going up there and helping and everything like that, I think that's really cool. Wes, I really appreciate you coming on to the show today

and sharing your story and just chat with me a little bit. Where can people find your show at? You can go to Sasquatch Chronicles.com and check out my website. I'm on iTunes and Stitcher Sasquatch Chronicles.

But, Tony, I appreciate you having me on, man. and the confessionals is an awesome show. You do a great job with it. And thank you again for having me. Absolutely, man. And thank you for all the encouragement you gave me over the last year. I thought it was only fitting to have you on today. And we'll talk soon because later on tonight, we're doing a live show on Blog Talk Radio. Sounds good, brother. Well, that's the show, everybody. I really hope you enjoyed it. As always, I enjoy talking to the guest, and especially this week because Wes is a good friend of mine. Now, remember, tonight at 8 p.m.

Eastern Time. That's 8 p.m. Eastern Time. Go to blog talk radio.com backslash the Confessionals, and you'll have access to the live show that we're going to be doing called the live show after party. We're going to have Wes Germer on there, Dave Groves, and a bunch of other people, and you can call in at 713-955-0696. That's 713-955-0-616. And you know what? I just thought of it now. let's continue this show a little bit. Let's give you guys some post-show interview with me and Wes. Hope you enjoy. I guess I forget what it's like to tell an encounter.

My hands were shaking, man. When I was talking about the growling, like, I look down, my hands are like, really? And I'm just like, Jesus, man. Like, I've told this story a million times. And it still does affect you. It really does. I mean, it's it never goes away.

It never goes away. You constantly I made the comment on the dogman episode I did. You can clearly include this as an after conversation too if you want. Are you still recording? Oh yeah. Yeah.

I knew you were. But no, I didn't realize how much it would affect me talking about it because I haven't told that encounter and probably it's been probably a couple of years because I don't do a lot of it. I don't do a lot of shows, but I forget what it's like, man. My hands are shaking, and you really do go back into that moment.

You know what I mean? You really do go. Yeah. After you have an encounter, you go back. Like, I could see it walking across that road. I'm just, you almost feel kind of ill. You know what I mean? But yeah, it's, I guess it is what it is, man.

I just wish I felt better, like I said. I know I'm running a fever today, so. Really? And you're going to go out there. looking for the guy up in the mountain. Well, every day that he's lost is his chances of being found alive go down a lot. So I'll get well, but he's still lost, you know what I mean? And so because I know that area, I'm not saying I'm going to be the one to find him.

I hope he's found whoever finds him. I hope he's found alive and well. But every day I sit here and I don't look for him, the percentages of finding him alive or go down. I mean, his chances of being alive right now are slim to none. But so. I mean, around here where I live, I mean, if anybody goes missing, it's not because they disappeared in the forest. It's because somebody abducted him. You know what I mean?

I live in such a populated area. People go missing all the time and stuff like that. Well, what's interesting is that that campground right across from there is the park ranger. And it's this old man that's in this park ranger and he, or that's in this camper. And he, if you ask him about Bigfoot, he'll smile at you. And he won't tell you anything because I've asked him. Okay. And I'll say, have you ever seen anything strange up here or anything that, you know, doesn't belong?

And he smiles and goes, mm-hmm. and I go like Sasquatch and he just kind of gives you a smirk and go and he he won't talk about it but that's the other thing this guy right across from this campground is this freaking park ranger he's got his own little setup

across from the campground so this whole vanishing nonsense I just don't buy it I don't I don't buy he fell into the river okay let's say he fell into the river and drowned did he climb out take his clothes off and then jump back in the river

I mean, that makes no sense. Was his clothes wet when they found him? Probably. It's been raining. Oh, yeah. A wet from the river, I don't know. I should have told you about our footprints. I had so many other things I could have told you about. The day we found footprints.

Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. Go ahead. No, so you saw footprints? But no, we actually saw a footprint. We were on our motorcycles. we were heading down we were I'm trying to think

we were just outside of Amboy and we were along I think it's another fork of the Lewis River that was off to our right and we were on our motorcycles did you tell you this story? No.

We were heading down and we pulled over to go down and check out the river it was like 80 degrees it was like a perfect day absolutely perfect it couldn't be

I mean that it was just perfect and we got to off our motorcycles. And I said, let's go down and check out the river. And so we started making our way down this hill. Well, it was a steep hill, man. And I had my steel-toed motorcycle boots on.

And Woody had his on. And we could barely get down this hill. And Woody was in front of me. And as we're making our way down this hill, he goes, hey, look, a footprint. He goes, no, he goes, hey, look, a big foot. foot footprint. And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, because if you have brothers, you're always screwing with each other and you're

always trying to like piss the other one off. Or you're always trying to like, you know, just mess with them. So I thought he was messing with me. I was like, whatever. I was like, get the F out of here. And so we walked down and we came across these trees, dude, and the branches were about this wide. And they looked like someone went like this, just twisted them like matchsticks.

and I was we're looking at the trees I was like what is this and what he's like I don't know is that that's not weather damage and so we keep walking and there was a bunch of them and so we keep walking and this tree had been picked up out of the ground and looked like it had just been thrown off to the side the roots and everything literally picked up there was even a hole where the tree had been physically lifted up and just thrown off to and I mean a big

tree. A tree I actually had to like climb over to get over. And he's like, what do you think that is? He goes, that tree didn't fall. That looks like someone pulled it up. And this is before our big fun counter. So like, I was like, I don't know. I don't know what caused that. We got down to the river and we're standing on the bank of the river. And it was eerie, man. I mean, I felt like we were being watched. The minute we were there, I felt like we were being watched. And we heard what sounded like a bird whistling across the river, but across the river, it's so dense in foliage. You can't see across the river, but it wasn't a bird whistle. It sounded like a person slash bird slash something else doing a weird whistle I'd never heard

before. And we stopped. We both looked and then it did it again. And then it did it again. And I told Woody, I said, let's get the hell out of here, man. I don't know what's going on. So as we're leaving, we're walking back up. We go back over the tree and past all the tree breaks and we're walking up the hill.

And I'm almost like leaned over trying to get it back up this hill. And I stop. And there is a footprint there. It looked like Fred Flintstone's foot. It was about this wide, about this long. And it was very square. It was very boxy. But it looked like a human footprint just on a larger scale.

And I, but it wasn't a human footprint. But it was very odd. And I was like, well, what the hell is this? And I was telling Woody. I was like, we need to work on our communication, man. Because I just assume you're scurring with me most of time. And you need to tell me we're being serious. So we get there.

We're arguing again. We get on our motorcycles and we leave. And we were telling people about this. And they were like, yeah, right. Do you guys take any pictures? And we had our phones on us at the time. It never even occurred to me to take. a picture. We just thought it was weird. And so, like, two or three days later, we're like,

let's go back. Let's go back and take pictures. I know exactly where the footprints at. And it was deep down and on the side of the hill, like it was walking down in the mud and put its foot down in the mud. It was only that one spot where we saw the print. We go back a couple days later, and it looked like a crime scene had been cleaned up. I mean, you would have never known that tree was pulled out of the ground. Really? The tree was gone. There was now leaf litter down.

The twisted trees were all gone. But there was no place where you go, oh yeah, someone came in and sawed this off or someone came. It looked like it had just been whitewashed. The whole place had been whitewashed. Footprint's gone. Everything's gone. And I was like, are we at the right place?

What he's like, yeah, this is it. And I'm like, we walked back down to the river and it was the right place. All that stuff was gone. And I don't know how they got the tree out of there. I don't know if they airlifted it out. They had to have airlifted out. But it was very odd. It was very strange, but that's a footprint.

So I was going to say, like, I mean, you think it was somebody came in like a cleanup crew to clean up, you know, the obvious big foot activity. I do. I absolutely do. And normally I wouldn't say that. But this was like a crime scene that had been cleaned up. and you would never know anything was there. If you came back the next day, you would have never known anything that stuff was there.

Wow. So I do think someone came in and whitewashed it. That's crazy, man. You never told me that before. Yeah, it was a trip, man. It was a, and even then, I mean, what he kind of laughed about the big footprint we found? He's like, oh, someone probably just took off their shoe.

And I'm like, no, the foot didn't look right. It looked like Fred Flintstone's foot. It was very boxy. and it just did not, it looked human-like, but it wasn't a human print. But yeah, that's the story behind that. Wow, that's crazy. The only print I've ever found was, I mean, I think it was a big footprint because of all the other activity around us. But it very well could have been a bear paw overlapping each other.

I don't know. But it clearly had five toes. You could feel the impression. And it was about, I'd say, oh, I don't know. I think it was, I can't remember. I think it was like maybe 11 or 12 inches, something like that. But I made a video about it on YouTube and stuff like that. But we had found a really big tree structure there. And, you know, I used to think like, I didn't know how I felt about tree structures and all that stuff. And I guess I still don't totally know how I feel about them. But I certainly think that it's feasible that these things could be using tree structures for a form of communication or things like that. Just because, you know, Native Americans did that back in the day. I mean, back in the day, Native Americans, would actually tie trees so they would grow certain ways to signify, you know, if you go this way, there's another tribe there. Or if you go this way, there's water. Like these structures that they would

actually make meant certain things. And even Boy Scouts do that. I started looking into that stuff when I was really debating with myself about the tree structure stuff. Like Boy Scouts, they're taught to do tree structures. They're taught how to make different signs with different tree structures. And so when other Boy Scouts come up behind them, they know this structure means don't go down this path. We went to the right or whatever. And, uh, So, I mean, if that's the case and these things are as intelligence we think they are, and clearly as massive as they are, you know, okay, it makes sense that they could do tree structures. I don't necessarily think that they live in huts, you know, but, you know, I think tree structures can be definitely something of interest. So I know some people bash it, though.

Yeah, I didn't buy into tree structures until I went out to the Browns property and I saw them firsthand. And I know Jonathan and his brother, and I know they're, you know, they're strong guys, but they're not. that strong. Woody and I went out and there was a it looked like a hunter's blind. These trees that had been ripped out of the ground, basically put in place, and then the trees were actually wrapped around each other.

And I went to lift one of the trees off. I'm twice the size of Jonathan. And you know, all muscle baby. And I couldn't pull the tree off of the tree structure. I mean, I couldn't physically lift it. And I told Woody,

he had to get in here, help me lift this. Woody and I both couldn't lift it. So whatever put this together, I know it wasn't Jonathan or his brother. And I don't think men put this thing together. But it was weird because it was, if you sat in it,

you could watch the house. And you would know, and you could look out from the house and you could never even know anything was there. You would never even see anything there. But you could have a clear view of the house, the backyard, everything. and then because I was trying to figure out why it would build this structure.

If it was Sasquatch that built it, what's the purpose? And I was looking at it and then finally I decided to get in it. And then it hit me, I could sit and watch a house. I could watch everything going on in the house. And I even had Jonathan go back towards a house and look back to see if he could see me and he couldn't see me. And so I think that's part of it. But I think a lot of the tree structures can be explained, not all of them. But I think a lot of them are weather, or even a lot of tree breaks, I see people post stuff and say, oh, look, Sasquatch did this.

I'm like, no, that's actually weather damage. I've seen that a million times. Yeah. I, the day that we found the big tree structure, it was like a big TP. And like, I mean, everything that was there wasn't, everything that was made of wasn't sawed. It was all broken. And it was like made of like legit trees. Like the one tree was going from the base like 40 feet into the air.

It was amazing. And then as we were hiking around more, I found another, what I just called a blind. And it was maybe I'd say 30, 40 feet off trail and maybe a little bit more. And I saw it off trail. And if you weren't looking for it, you wouldn't notice it, you know? And so my wife is there, Lindsay's there, Don's there, and two other people are there. I can't remember their names. But we were all hiking.

I left them on the trail and I got back there. And it took about five minutes to get back there. And so I'm sitting behind this blind. And behind the blind, it's all open. Like, you imagine, like, I don't know if you're familiar with the northeast woods, but like it's really thick and lots of deadfall. And it's just not clean. It's very messy.

And so when I got back there, getting there, it was just tons of weeds, tons of just you're climbing through a bunch of crap. As soon as I got behind that blind, it was all dirt. It was all matted town. And maybe I'd say about 10, 12 feet. beyond the blind, all the grass and the thick brush and everything picked back up again. And so I'm sitting back there. I'm actually taking pictures and filming them out on the trail. You could see them out in the trail? And later on, I asked Lindsay, I said, could you see me back there?

She said, no, we didn't know where you were. I thought you were. I was actually getting nervous. And so, and I'm back there. I think I was wearing maybe camo or something. I don't know, like tan clothing. But I did have a red vest on, I think. But she couldn't see me. And I was just like, you know, is it a big foot blind? I don't know. Probably not. But it's possible. And it just shows you that it's very easy to be back there and hiding anywhere, really. If you want to hide, it's not too hard. You know, the one thing I forgot that I wanted to have you talk about,

and I can't believe I forgot until just now, was when you and Woody heard that horse going through the forest. It wasn't big for related, but dang, dude. Like, that was insane. Like, I mean, what happened? Like, you guys were hunting, I guess? Is that what happened? And you guys heard it? Yeah, what happened was is we were, this is way before Bigfoot.

We were hunting in an area. And Woody and I are actually pretty, even though we fight a lot, like I know what he's thinking. He knows what I'm thinking. And especially hunting, Woody's a perfect partner for me to be hunting with because I can look at him and do a couple hand gestures and he knows what I mean. And we don't even have to speak. I mean, he just knows what I'm doing. and he does it, you know, I'm the same way with him. He'll do hand gesture and I know what he means.

My younger brother's a different story. My younger brother will put a bullet in your back. Not intentionally. So I'm more leery of hunting with my younger brother, but yeah, we were hunting. We were climbing down this hill, and we were in this area called the Suson. And I'll tell you all about the Susan.

It's a very eerie area to hunt. It's an area where no one hunts, but it's the best place to hunt. You literally, if you want bear, bear, if you want bear, bear deer, elk, anything, this is a place to go. So we were in there. We're coming down this hill, and I'm doing hand gestures because I think I hear something. So we're doing hand gestures. We're coming down this hill, and we come to this opening. It's just kind of a, what's a word I'm looking for?

Kind of a clearing. So we walk out to this clearing and there's nothing there. And so I look at Woody and we're still doing hand gestures. And I'm like, you know, it's got to be right here. So I tell Woody kind of get down low. We get down low, we start crawling into this area. And there's nothing there. So we stand up and I'm like, God, I could have sworn I heard something down here.

And about that time, we hear what sounds like a horse coming. And we both look at each other and we look at the direction we think it's coming. And there's nothing there. And it sounded like not just a horse. What's those really big horses? The Budweiser. Not Mass. Yeah, it's.

You know what I mean? I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And it sounded like one of those coming. And it. Clydesdale. Clydesdale.

Yeah, Clydesdale. It ran between us or the noise came between us. us and it just kept going. And we both looked at each other and I put my hands in there like, what just happened? And Woody, his eyes were about this big. And he's like, I don't know, man. And it was just an odd. It wasn't, I'd like to say it was sound bouncing, but I don't think it was sound bouncing.

It literally the sound came between us and it sounded like the Clydesdale. And then it was just gone. It was weird, man. That's crazy. It was a weird, weird experience. We didn't see anything. There was no ghost or anything. It was just noise coming.

And it was a trip, ma'am. It was a trip. Yeah. Did you ever tell that story on your show? No. No? Okay. I don't think so.

I can't remember if you told me it personally or if I heard about it on the show first. I guess you told me personally. Yeah. So when you were doing the, what's his name, Chris Jericho show, Did he contact you or did you contact him? No, Chris contacted me and asked if I'd like to come on his show. And that's kind of a funny story in itself.

So, you know, being kind of a bigger guy, I pull up, Chris goes, just, he goes, I'll tell you this story real quick. He goes, just go past security and just come on in. And if they wave you to stop, just keep coming. It was at the Portland Moto Center. And I'm like, and I'm trying to figure out how to get into this place. And I'm not really a huge wrestling fan. I know who Chris Jericho is. But I'm not really into wrestling.

And as I'm pulling up to the motor center, dude, there was a line of people, like going down the street waiting to get in. And so I call Chris again. And I'm like, Chris, well, where do I, I don't understand where I need to be. So he goes, go around here. And he kind of explains me where to go. go and he goes, come around back where they do the deliveries and stuff. And he goes, you're going to, your security's going to want to stop you, but just keep coming. Just go ahead and go on in.

And I'm like, okay. So I come around and I'm in my Hummer and I drive through and the security guys don't even try and stop me. Really? They just let me drive through. Act like you belong and you belong. Yeah. And I park and one of the security guys comes up to me.

and he goes, yeah, who you, who are you here to see? And I go, Jericho. And he goes, oh, you're wrestling Jericho, huh? That ought to be a good match. You're a pretty big guy. He goes, I bet you your chances have beaten any. What is this guy talking about? Like, I had no clue what he's talking about.

And I was like, in about that time Chris walked up. And they go, Chris, you're going to wrestle this guy. and they're kind of giving Chris crap and I'm thinking if I ever got in the ring with Chris Jerko he would mop the floor with me like I would not stand as a chance against this guy I'm bigger than Chris

but I know for a fact he'd mopped the floor with me Chris was hands down the nicest guy you've ever you'd never know this guy was a celebrity you would never know he had money he was he was very down to earth probably one of the nicest people I've ever met my life but that's how I got on a shit

Wow. That's crazy. He's coming to Portland. He invited me. He's got a band called Fawsey. And they're actually pretty good. But he invited some to go see them play here in Portland when they come. So Chris is pretty talented, man. He's a wrestler.

He's a great interviewer. I would love to have his skill set. But Chris really is probably the nicest guy on the planet. You know, I find that people that are highly successful, You know, not always, but people that are highly successful in athletics like that or something that they often have several skills that they excel at. And it's because in order to become professional at anything, like you have to obsess over it until you're like, like, I always use this example. When I coached college basketball, before before I was coaching and I used to play all the time, like I knew athleticism. I knew like, oh, dude, that guy is really good, you know.

but once you're around these college athletes that, you know, they're jumping, they're jumping through the roof, it's amazing. Wow, athleticism. What you see before your eyes and their athleticism is nothing compared to what the professionals are able to do. So you see a guy in the gym and they do a windmill dunk and it's like, whoa, you know, incredible. That most, if you're in the NBA, like 99% of the players in the NBA can do that. You know, like that's just a prereck, you know? And so, like, when it comes to, like, Jericho and the music and all that stuff, I mean, like, it doesn't surprise me because, like, these guys are passionate about things and they have this obsessive attitude in order to get to where they are in the first place that makes them great, you know? Yeah, I was kind of surprised at how many of the wrestlers listen to my show when I was there.

I was really surprised. Yeah, I was really surprised because I wouldn't think the wrestling world would be into Bigfoot, but I guess they are. And I'll tell you the other thing, too, a lot of those wrestlers, and I don't know their names. You know, as far as I can't tell you, oh, I met, you know, I know Hulk Hogan and macho man Randy Savage and, but those are old men now, you know, that's not the wrestling world today. Well, you do know that? Well, no, no, I mean, like, I know of them. Oh, okay, got you guys.

Those are the wrestlers I know. Because they were big when I was a kid, you know, and I was really into it. But the wrestlers nowadays, I don't really know a whole lot of them. And I was, the other thing I was surprised about was how nice everyone was backstage. I mean, because I was backstage when we're doing the podcast before Chris went on. And Chris was like, hey, man, if you want to set front row, man, I'll get your front row. But I felt like I was, I didn't want him to feel like he owed me anything. So I didn't take it.

I wish I would have because I would love to sit front row. But I didn't want to feel like I was, I felt like I was. Mooching. Yeah, exactly. And I didn't want that. and because Chris was such a cool guy, man. He was so nice. And,

but yeah, those wrestlers, man, it was crazy. I couldn't do what they do. There's no way in hell. No. I could do what those guys do, the way they fly off.

And Chris isn't that big of a guy, man. I'm telling you, Chris is probably 5-9, 5-10. What? Really? Maybe. I hope he doesn't listen to this because he's mad. But, you know,

maybe 200 pounds. Chris really isn't. Don't get me wrong. I think he'd mop the floor with just about anyone. But as far as like size goes, like you see him on TV, we're standing next to each other. And the top of his head comes to about my cheek. And so I was kind of surprised on,

I pictured him being this huge, huge guy and he's really not. Yeah. Dang, that's crazy. That is absolutely crazy. Did you ever connect with Shaq about that podcast? I know he contacted you about doing a podcast with him. I haven't. I haven't yet.

I need to. You do. And then you need to tell him about your friend Tony Merkel, who is a huge MBA guy and would love to talk with him and get him on his podcast. Oh my gosh. I see what I can do. I'll see what I can do. I need to get some poll like you, man.

I'm waiting for my first celebrity to email me. It's kind of crazy to when they, you know, there's a lot of guys like Nicholas Cage is really in a big foot. And you wouldn't think he would be, but he really is. there's a lot of celebrities that are really into it, which is kind of surprising to me. But, you know, I guess it's a mystery. We all love a mystery.

You know what I mean? I think, you know, a lot of times we look at celebrities and we put them up on pedestals. I mean, you and I, we've experienced just in the Bigfoot community. People would say to me, oh, you're a celebrity. I'm like, no, I'm just a truck. I just had a guy message me. We scheduled an interview for late March,

and he messaged me back saying, oh, man, I'm really nervous now. I told myself about what? To talk to a truck driver? I literally do that. I'm doing that right now. As we're talking, I'm in a truck driving a truck. I'm just a truck driver with a podcast, you know, but people, you know, think that, you know, we're just, you know, oh, man. And I can imagine it's the same thing with real life celebrities, like actual celebrities.

They're just normal people, you know? Yeah, it is. I always say I'm a nobody. And it is kind of weird when people come up to you. I think when people listen to podcasts, I think there's a connection that you have. You almost feel like you know them. You know what I mean? You feel like you.

And so if you listen to someone every night, I think I could see why someone would feel that way. But at the end of the day, man, I'm nobody important. Yeah. Like he said, is, you know. If people could see the timeline of my life, they'd know it. They're like, oh, yeah, Tony just, Tony's a nobody. I mean, seriously, I spent most of my 20s doing odd jobs. I was a mechanic.

I was a parking enforcement officer. I was a truck driver, school bus driver. I mean, I've done everything under the sun, you know. And when I was a kid growing up, you know, from, I don't know, elementary to junior high, I was picked on every day of my life. Every day of my life I was beat up. Like, honestly. Like so, I mean, I'm nobody.

I'm the kid that got beat up all the time, you know? Yeah. So. You do a good job, though, man, with the confessional. Keep it up. You definitely, there's a lot of, you know, we talked about all the big foot shows coming up. There's a lot of bad ones. Yeah.

Just terrible. Just absolutely. terrible. But you do a good job, man, and it's, you know, it's not rocket science by any means. Right. Well, I think it takes, what it takes is somebody to accept the fact that they're not perfect and they need to continue to get perfect. Like, I mean, if I would have just settled for what I put out for episode one, I don't think the show would be what it is right now. Because when I look back to episode one, it's not awful compared to, especially compared to most people's shows, but it's not anywhere compared to what it is now.

You know, and you can hear the progression of the show as is going on with the production, the audio quality and all that stuff. And I think there's sometimes people, they start things like this, and they have no perfectionist bone in their body. And so they just, it is what it is. And they think it's good. No, it's not. I mean, it's just not.

And I mean, how many times do you hear people, especially, you know, with trying to do live shows and stuff, I mean, there's absolutely no script. They just go on and they just start talking. And they think it's, and they think that people want to hear them just talking, you know. And it's like, no, bring something to the table, bring a topic to the table to discuss something.

But, you know, I don't know. I just think that people, if I think podcasting and podcasters would be so much bigger and a lot more successful if they actually took the time to perfect their craft. but they just pursue it as a little side hobby. Like it's building a little model or something like that, you know, they'll do it when they can. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, if you go back, I don't think any of the old Big Phospot radio shows are available, but if you go back and listen to Woody and I, man, we were terrible. It was absolutely, I cringe hearing. Even old shows, I mean, I'm talking like back when I had Will on, man. A lot of those shows were terrible, just absolutely terrible. and the audio quality I wasn't happy about, the interview style I wasn't happy about.

There's so many things I was so unhappy about that I wanted to fix. And you're right, you've got to have that mentality of wanting to be better and wanting to create something people want to listen to do. Listen, if you want to get on there and BS for an hour, hour and a half, you better be as good as Howard Stern if you're going to get on there and do that. And there's very few Howard Stearns out there that could pull that off. And so, you know, and that's where a lot of these guys make the mistake. They think they sit there.

I just listen to a show. I won't tell you what show, but because I know you're still recording. And it was terrible, man. You know, they're sitting around talking about they're going to monetize their show. And, you know, they just sit there and it was an hour of my life. I'll never get back because it was this big. huge circle jerk and it was a lot of patting each other on the back and I they in in that hour there was probably five minutes of real content and the rest was all just BS. And that's what drives

me nuts with these shows man because you know that's why you don't hear me BS a lot in the beginning like I get right to the encounter because I mean I could sit there and BS with the rest of them but do people really want to sit and hear me talk for 10, 15, 20 minutes before I actually get to the show. No, no one wants to sit there and listen to that. I'm not that interesting. See, and that's the thing. I mean, like, people, I just think it's probably a lot, with podcasting and podcasters,

there's a lot of lack of thought process going into your show. It's not just turning on microphones or recording. It's literally, like, I spend all week thinking about Saturday's show. You know, not every moment, every day, but every day, at least every day, I'm thinking about at some point what I can do to make the show better or what I'm going to be doing that week. And I told you this before, like, right from the beginning, when I started this show, I pursued it like, it's a job. That's what I did. I work 60 hours a week. I come home. I would go up in my office and I'd be working on my show. Even if I didn't have a direct plan as to

what I was going to do that night, I still came upstairs, sat in front of the computer and started pushing buttons until I found something to do with the show. It's just putting yourself in that environment to be creative. You're not going to find your creative juices if you're not actually putting yourself in a situation to be creative. I actually heard Joe Rogan say that recently. He said when they're writing their jokes and everything, it doesn't just come to them. Sometimes it does. But he said a lot of times you have to forge yourself to go sit down and just start writing. And you have to write through all the BS in order to find five lines that are good. And it's like a lot of people think that, you know, Joe Rogan and people like that or even

us, like we can just sit down, we just boom. You have to work at this craft in order to make it better. I mean, not everybody's Michael Jordan where it's just natural, you know? Yeah. I'll tell you about the time I met Joe Rogan too in Vegas. You met Joe Rogan? Yeah. Dude, man.

Like, seriously. But before I get to that, you know, you're right. And that's the way you need to look at it with podcasting because, and that's why you have a quality show, man. You know, it took me years to ramp up to a halfway decent show. It didn't just happen.

But I think your curve, as far as creating a quality show, your learning curve, there was almost no learning curve. I mean, you had the sound quality down, you had the creativity down, you had the intros down, your outro's down. Andy, I think you're a better interviewer than I am. What? I know it's not like a circle jerk, but I think you're a better interview than I am. And so you have all these qualities, man. And I'm telling you, the confessionals is going to, it already has taken off. But I think you're going to see every year you look back and you're like, wow, I really accomplished that.

You know, I'm on almost 400 shows, but it's realistically, it's probably more like 440. And half of those shows are terrible. They're absolutely terrible, man. But yeah, I mean, just keep it up. You're doing a good job, man. I mean, there's very few podcasts I can sit and listen to. I just told you about the one I sat and listened to and I listened to them probably once every month or two

and they do an okay job it's just they don't have the audio quality they spend too much time BSing there's no content there's so I guess maybe they don't do a good job but can they get a A or B for effort I get my D for effort

oh geez well there's there's a problem fam that up to a B and you're good yeah but I mean who cares what I think. But I mean, there's a lot of shows like that to where I just can't listen to them. And then there's other quality shows that you listen to and you're like, wow, that guy's really on top of it. This is an enjoyable experience to listen to the show. I think if you go with that mindset, you can really create something. Yeah. Yeah. I just, I don't know. I approach things in a very, I guess matter of fact, realistic way. Like, if something's not good,

I'm probably the first one pointing it out. Like, I just, for me, I mean, like, as far as my stuff. Like, I just, I want to be real, you know? And in order to do that, you got to be truthful with yourself. Yeah. And so that's what I do.

I mean, I appreciate that, man. I didn't expect to hear you say that, but it means a lot. Yeah, man. It's a process. And I can't tell you, like,

there's been times over the last year. Because, I mean, I see the show growing, but, you know, I always say that, you know, I told you this way back, like,

and I mean this. I work with a macro vision, but with micro efforts. Like I work every day, like tomorrow, like success is going to happen tomorrow, but I know it's not going to happen tomorrow. So I had this long-term vision in play. And sometimes I look at like the stats on blog talk and you can see the graph. You know what I'm talking about. The graph that kind of shows your show going up.

And there's maybe like two or three months. I think it was during the summertime, like June, July, August, where it was just kind of like really plateauing. And like I was like, is this where? we're just going to, you know, wrap up at, you know? And, you know, I, I, um, I honestly thought that maybe it was going to be a one year show. I really did. At that point, I was thinking, well, maybe I can squeak out a year and stuff and maybe it will die off. And that's okay. Because I, like I told you before, I mean, I'm fine with whatever. I mean, if I'm a truck driver

for next 30 years my life and podcasting is as good as it gets kind of thing, I'm good with that. Yeah, it's not a bad life that I have right now, you know? So, I think you have the right mindset. I hear a lot of these guys getting into it and they want to create membership sites and they want to make money and they want to do the, if you're in it just for the money, you'll never cut, you'll never make it. If your mindset is, I'm in this to make a buck, you'll never make it. You have to have the passion. You have to have the effort and work on creating something really cool. Eventually the money will come. But if your mindset is nothing more than the money, if that's what your ultimate goal is, you'll never cut it.

And I'll tell you the other thing, too, man, for the amount of abuse I've taken in the Bigfoot world, money ain't worth it. People are delusional if they think the money's worth it. I can go work somewhere else and not be abused like I've been abused. I don't want to sound like a pussy or a victim, but, you know, and actually, you know, make a decent living and not have to put up with everyone's nonsense. So it's a big disappointment if you're in it just to make the money. because the money at the end of the day isn't worth it. Yeah. You know what I mean?

Absolutely. I totally get it. The grass is always greater on the other side. Absolutely. And you find out it's not. Once you get there, you find out it's not. But yeah, man, it's crazy. I know.

I got to take my son to his guitar listen. Oh, okay. Then I'm a head out. I'll tell you the Joe Rogan story real quick. The Joe Rogan story is I met him. It was very brief. This was when he was doing, I think he was doing Fear Factor. I think this was even before the UFC.

And he was drunk. Joe Rogan is actually a pretty small guy. Oh, really? Yeah, he's actually a really small guy. He's only like, he's shorter than Woody. I think the guy is only like five, eight. But he's not a real big guy, and he was kind of a quiet guy. He didn't really say much.

I say drunk, but I mean, not like, maybe I shouldn't have said drunk. I could tell you he had had a few drinks. Right. But he was actually a really quiet guy, and he was actually a really nice guy when I met him. And I ended up calling him a cab. He asked me to call him a cab. And it was when I was in Vegas, but I'm sure Joe Rogan could again mop the floor with me with all his fighting skills. But he's not a big guy and he, you know, he's kind of a quiet guy.

I was kind of surprised by that because you always saw him on Fear Factory. You know, Fear's not your factor of you or whatever he used to say. And but anyway, that's just a Joe Morgan story. It's not like to set out and had drinks or anything. Well, I love his show because, I mean, the guy just, he can talk about anything. anything. It's unbelievable. He does a good job. Yeah, he does a really good job. I almost think Joe Rogan's better than Howard Stern. I agree. Howard Stern today. Not Howard Stern, 1990. I mean, Howard's turn today. I think Joe Rogan's better than Howard Stern. Howard Stern's lost his mojo,

I think. But he's an old man now. I mean, God, what is Howard's almost 70, isn't he? Oh, he's got to be. I mean, he was what in his late 40s, early 50s in the 90s. Yeah. So, you know, I think that, But he is a godfather radio, man. You can't take that away from him. That's right. He's absolutely the godfather radio. So yeah, man, I got to take

off, though. All right, dude. I'll talk to you later. Well, that really is the show now, and I really hope you enjoyed it. Head on over to blogtalkradio.com backslash the confessionals at 8 p.m. Eastern Time to continue this fun day of one year celebration for the confessionals.

Live after show party. Come on over, hang out, call in at 713-955-0-06. And that's on blog talkradio.com backslash the confessionals, the confessionalspodcast.com, the confessionals' Facebook page, or the confessionals' Twitter. I'll see you guys there. Call in.