SC EP:537 Do Not Point A Weapon At These Things

Dylan writes "Wes, I want to tell you about an experience that I had with Bigfoot around Lena Lake in Washington state in the Olympic National Park.

It was during a camping trip that I had with my dad and the interaction occurred while we were sleeping in our hammocks. We both awoke to what I first assumed was a bear because of the breathing noise it made. It wasn't until I looked through the gap in my tarp that I realized that the creature was standing and had arms. This camping trip was cut a little short because of some other concerns that we had while we were hiking. My dad and I only spoke once about this the next morning and after he told me that he was convinced that we had a bear problem I decided not to tell him what I saw.

Shoot me an email if you'd like to hear more about the experience and why we decided to cut our trip short. To this day I haven't told anyone about the encounter because I've always thought of Bigfoot as a dumb joke and I never wanted to sound like a hypocrite to my friends."

My second guest is Joe. Joe writes "Hi Wes, I'm from Ohio. I'm a huge fan of your show and I have been wrestling with the idea of mailing you and telling my story. But I guess if I'm going to tell anyone (outside my family) it would be you.

Im an avid outdoorsman and have been spending as much time in the woods hunting, fishing, and hiking since I was six years old. My brother and I started out as our fathers hunting dogs, tromping on brush piles kicking up rabbits and pheasant for our dad and I've been hooked ever since. My Bigfoot story starts a few years back when we started hunting a new lease. Our second season in, It started out with hearing what sounded like someone talking far off in the woods , but you just couldn't make it out. Which seemed odd but there are some(not many) but some people who live around the area. I brushed it off the first time, then a few days later my brother and I went hunting again and I heard the same thing, I was beginning to wonder what it was and was going to tell my brother about it, but I didn't have to say anything to him. When I came out of the woods that evening he meet me at the truck and the first thing he said was "did you hear those people talking?" Not wanting to tip my hand I said I thought I did but couldn't make it out,,, and he said "yeah same here. But it got kinda close and it was like they were talking gibberish!" That ride home was spent talking about what we both heard and then I introduced him to ur show. He wasn't sure what he wanted to believe but he was about to get on board really soon. We both hunt pretty often and two weeks later we had both been to the woods multiple times and each had a few more "odd" things go on. A few more talking episodes a whoop or two a rock clacking incident, a few weird things but nothing that was definitively anything.

All could possibly be explained away essentially. Then one morning about 3weeks after the initial incidents I had a work commitment and couldn't join my brother in the woods. At about 530-6 in the morning I get a call from my brother, hoping nothing went wrong as I knew he'd be walking into his stand I answered and he immediately sounded upset. After a few minutes of calming him down, I finally got it out of him that something had "screamed at him as he was almost to his stand". My brother is a tough guy, always was the bigger brother, my protector. And I had never heard him sound as scared as he was in that call. He told me it was like nothing he had ever heard before, it sounded like it was wanting to rip him apart he said. He also said there was something that sounded like grunting and growling together after the screaming, he said he could feel it shaking in his chest. He wanted to run, and hide all at the same time. He chose getting up in his stand and waiting on the sun to rise. He called me from his stand. He made me stay on the phone with him until he was ready to walk out.. I should probably mention that this is taking place in mid October. Ohio's hunting season starts the last weekend of sept and my second time in the stand(which was day two of the season) is when this all began. It had been a pretty wet year so the majority of the leaves and foliage were still hanging on. My brothers stand was in a pretty thick area of our property. So as I tried to keep him calm and quiet and have him listen for things moving around him. Suddenly as we were on the phone he heard something and shushed me and said he thought he heard something. It was approaching that point in the morning when the woods seem to suddenly appear b4 ur eyes, that special morning time. Suddenly he panicked and said something exploded out of some brush about 75yds away and sounded like a freight train going thru the woods,, luckily going away from him and not towards the car. He waited till he couldn't hear anything else and high tailed it outta there. A few days later after the shock of it all kinda subsided we went back to our land and tried to find some signs of the thing. Other than a few broken branches there wasn't much and needless to say my brother, who I credited for even going back, wasn't wanting to stay real long. So we got his stand and left the area.

We stayed outta the woods for a few days, but the rut was about to start and we couldn't stay away forever. We're just to big of hunters and as I was thinking about it and discussing it, my brother and I convinced ourselves that if whatever made those screams wanted to hurt him it could have done whatever it wanted. It was probably just a warning. So we decided to give whatever it was that side of the property and we'd move to another part of the lease and just be careful. So back to the woods we went. A few hunts later, about a week or so, I was in my stand enjoying a beautiful afternoon. Now the woods at this time end of October early November are starting to thin out a little bit. It was one of those days when a strong breeze makes it look like it's snowing leaves. It was about the last hour or two of the day when I heard it again,, the chatter. Only this time it was a little higher pitched than I remembered. I was on full alert at this point, then I started to hear something that sounded like it was approaching,, but it just didn't sound right.. now my stand sits on top of ridge there's about 30yds of flat(that is loaded with oaks) then it goes into valleys on either side. On my left which is the side my stand is on,, on the hillside there is two natural shelves one about 20ish yds down (which by the way the bucks love to cruise and scent check) and another about 50-60yds down. I can always see the closer shelf but the further one down is hard to see because of all the brush. But I do have two shooting lanes cut down there for gun season. Anyway just laying out what I'm looking at. So like said I could hear something coming my way but sounded weird. As I'm studying the woods the chatter and sounds start to become clearer. The chatter sounded like two monkeys chitchatting and the sounds seemed to be coming from the up in the trees and something walking on the ground. Suddenly I swore I could see the trees moving out in front of me to left. And it seemed as soon as I thought I was seeing that, I heard a noise I never heard in my life. It was like a grunt and huff and deep bark all rolled into one. And after that everything went silent. It was eerily quiet, no sound no movement nothing. Sat for what seemed like an eternity, probably two minutes lol,, but then the wind started moving and as a bigger gust came along the leaves began snowing again and I heard it again only in two tsk tsk sounds and at that point I heard some limbs breaking and what sounded like two tree stumps landed with two distinct thuds and was followed by two clearly running down the hill sounds. I never saw what made that noise but definitely sounded like two separate things running away an