CLASSICS An Elk Hunter's Sightings!

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Big Food and Beyond.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
With Cliff and Bobo.

Speaker 1 (00:08):
These guys are your favorites, so light say subscribe and
rade it. I'm stuck and me listening, oh watching, Lim
always keep it swatching.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
And now you're hosts Cliff Berrickman and James Boobo Fay,
Hey Bobs, how you doing?

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Man?

Speaker 4 (00:32):
All right? How are you doing? Cliff?

Speaker 3 (00:34):
Pretty good? Pretty good, Just cruising along at the end
of my day, doing a podcast with some of my
best friends. So everything's looking down.

Speaker 4 (00:39):
Guys, who's that.

Speaker 3 (00:43):
Matt Pruitt and Bobo of course?

Speaker 4 (00:47):
All right, Hey Bobs.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
We're pretty excited. Why don't you let's get us into
the guests. Man, this is too good to talk anything
else about.

Speaker 4 (00:54):
Yeah, I've heard of this guys.

Speaker 5 (00:56):
Uh, you know, I heard about him for a while ago,
but I don't remember the details ory thing. But yeah,
our illustrious producer Matt Pruitt actually got in touch with
him and it was pretty shocking to hear that's who that.
When I heard he said he got ahold of him,
I was like, Wow, that's nuts. So Matt tell us
tell us how you got ahold of him?

Speaker 6 (01:15):
Yeah, it was really funny. One of our beloved members.
One of our Patreon members had reached out to me
and said, hey, I understand you know, we live in
the same town. We should meet up and have lunch
talk squatch. And no one's ever accused me of not
talking enough, so I was like, oh, I had an opportunity.

Speaker 4 (01:30):
To go talk, you know.

Speaker 6 (01:31):
So we're hanging out and making small talk. And I'd
asked him like, what got you into interested in the subject,
and he said, well, I was always kind of interested.
But I met a guy here in Nashville who had
seen one and I was like, well, that's cool, and
he said yeah, he was actually an elk hunter and
a guide in Colorado. And I was like, oh, that's
really interesting and he said yeah, he watched it through
binoculars for a few minutes, and I immediately recognized the

(01:54):
story because I was always a big fan of the
writings of a researcher from Kansas named Keith Foster, and
he actually worked with a number of elk hunters and
people that were prominent in that community in Colorado to
put together a lot of information about Sasquatch sidings there.
And then there was a journalist for the Denver Post
named Theo Stein who had written this. So I immediately

(02:15):
I just took a chance with this guy and I said, Hey,
is this friend of yours? Is his name Jeff die Singer?
And he was like, yeah, how did you know that?
And I was like, I got a pretty good memory
man for sasquatch related stuff, and so to learn that
he lived here in the same area as I do,
I reached out and we had a great conversation, and
I thought, we've got to get him on the podcast.

(02:35):
And so I know you guys are somewhat familiar with
the story, but I'm going to let Jeff tell it,
so you guys can host the conversation and I'm all
here for it.

Speaker 3 (02:45):
All right, good score pro So welcome Jeff, thanks so
much for coming on.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
Hey, thank you guys, Hey, Joe, Hey, Bobo. I will
say this to just begin that I have never done
a podcast on this ever. I've done a bunch of
podcast on elk hunting and backcountry bow hunting and and

(03:09):
shooting professional archery but in the military stuff, but I've
never done this, so so this will be a first
for me.

Speaker 3 (03:19):
Yeah, us too, We've never had you on this. It'll
be great.

Speaker 7 (03:22):
Yeah, this will be fund you condense your like what
you usually say on a on a podcast about hunting,
kind of kind of gave us a prettif inch on
you like what your what your qualifications in the woods are.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
Sure. I grew up here in middle Tennessee, small town,
grew up hunting, uh, you know, mostly small game, that
kind of stuff. Grew up hunting a place that y'all
are probably familiar with. I heard of called Land between
the Lakes. Never once in my life have I ever

(03:57):
thought about Bigfoot, especially all the time I spent down
there as a kid. And then, you know, after high school,
I went to the military. I was a part of
the seventy fifth Special Forces out of Fort Benning. Been
deployed in South and Central America, Africa, over in the
Middle East. So did that, and I was with a QRF,

(04:21):
a Quick Reaction Force team, so if people got in trouble,
it was our job to go and get them out
and that sort of thing. I was a part of
Somalia where I was you know, wounded three times over there.
And so anyway, I got out, went to college in Oklahoma,
played a little baseball there, and then after college I
came back to Nashville, and played music professionally for about

(04:45):
three years.

Speaker 4 (04:46):
What'd you play.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
I'm a piano player by trade. Yeah, I've been doing
that my whole life. But and I'm it's weird because
you know, of course Nashville is a country vibe and
all of that. But I grew up playing a lot
of blues, Southern Almond Brothers, that kind of stuff. Those
were my influences. And anyway, when I was on the road,

(05:10):
I would always go out to Colorado and go elk hunt.
And one year, the year before I got out of
the music business, I had called in this bull elk
and had shot him with a recurved bow, and I
thought I was the only person in the world. And
I'm down there, you know, quarnering and skinning this thing.

(05:31):
And I was about six miles in I was backpacked
bow hunting, and this was probably like ninety five, maybe
ninety six, somewhere in there, and this cowboy rode up
on a horse with like two mules out of nowhere
and scared the snot out of me and ended up
being the owner of one of the largest outfitters in

(05:53):
the country, really is Pike's Peak Outfitters. And he said
he'd set up on the mountain and watched that whole thing,
and he goes, you ever want a job, call me,
And by Georgie the next year, I've had enough of
the music business, and and so I called him and
kind of escaped out to Colorado and and started guiding

(06:14):
full time. So and you know, did that in the fall,
and then they also had a wilderness program and was
an instructor there during the summer and and you know,
book tunts and that sort of thing. So I was
I was only one of two guys that were full
time there when everybody else was seasonal. And so I

(06:34):
spent literally probably three hundred days a year out you know,
in the outside. So so yeah, and then you know
that brings that brings us to when when the sighting happened? Really,
you know, so, uh.

Speaker 3 (06:50):
Before we do go onto that, how did you take
Dicky Bett's death? By the way, Uh, guitarist for the
Almen Brothers.

Speaker 2 (06:56):
Do you want me to be honest? Not a huge
Dickey fan. He was the mean one of the bunch,
you know.

Speaker 3 (07:04):
I got to say, I've never seen a picture of
him smile.

Speaker 2 (07:06):
Good player, no great player, great player, But I mean
when you're playing beside Dwayne Almand. I mean, does it
get much better than Dwayne? Really? But I will say this,
Dicky's a heck of a songwriter and a heck of
a player, and I'm sure that his fans are sad.
And of course, you know, half of the Allman Brothers

(07:30):
are gone now, but as far as the band is concerned,
most all of them are gone. Really, But I didn't
take it too hard, not when Dicky died.

Speaker 3 (07:41):
So gosh, well, you mentioned that's the timely sort of thing.
I wanted to ask about that. Why had a chance?
So okay, so let's get get back to the big
foot thing, which I guess is important for this podcast
before your encounter, which we'll get to in just a moment.
How much credence or how much thought ever went into
the big foot thing at all? Was?

Speaker 2 (08:00):
He wrote?

Speaker 3 (08:01):
Zero? It was just nonsense, this background garbage noise that
you've been hearing about probably most of your life. Never
really thought about it, that's kind of thing.

Speaker 2 (08:08):
The only time that Bigfoot ever came up in my life.
And this is gonna sound bad because I should have
probably researched this. But when I was a kid, maybe
twelve thirteen years old. There was a movie how and
and this is y'all might can help me with this.
But I remember in the movie they'd put out like

(08:29):
this electric fence out in the middle of nowhere, and
this thing was breaking all the barriers. And I had
gone to see that, and you know, when I walked
out of that, I was like, Oh, that's crazy there.

Speaker 4 (08:40):
You know, those things don't aren't real what you're about.

Speaker 2 (08:44):
Oh so if I was so seventy seven, i'd have
been ten. So probably seventy eight seventy nine.

Speaker 3 (08:50):
Maybe that's a Probably that Sasquatch one where all the
guys going that that horse train out into the woods.
Get Yes, that's it, Yeah, that one. What is it?
We have a poster of it on staves in the
museum a Sasquatch.

Speaker 6 (09:02):
It's called Sasquatch the Legend of Bigfoot.

Speaker 3 (09:04):
There you go, yeah, thank you, Matt Pruitt. Sasquatch the
Legend of Bigfoot. Yeah, nineteen sixty eight or something like that,
or I mean nineteen seventy six rather.

Speaker 2 (09:12):
Yeah, so yeah, I was like nine, nine or ten. Yeah,
So anyway, I saw that, and you know, had no
credence towards that at all, Like you know, I'm in Tennessee.
You know that's it's a big old hoax. And I
don't know that you even really see sasquatch in that movie.
And so I never believed in anything like that ever.

(09:37):
So you know, even when I got to the Mountains
of Colorado, I just nobody ever brought it up, and
you know, and I honestly never thought about it.

Speaker 3 (09:49):
So well, then let's let's go into your sighting. What's
the context? What were you doing out there? When was this?
You know, all that sort of stuff kind of lead
us up to a walk us through it.

Speaker 2 (10:00):
So and I'm sorry, I am so unprepared. I did
a report right after the right after I had the
second sighting, So that report on the BFRO will tell you.
I want to say. It was like ninety eight. Maybe
I had been guiding for a couple of years, had
won Colorado Guide of the Year the year before, I

(10:22):
do remember that, and so we me and the head
guide that summer had found a spot on the backside
of PAC's Peak back in the wilderness area there that
summer and had found just a bunch of elk, And
so he and I decided that two weeks prior to season.
We would go in, take a couple of the new

(10:44):
guys and set up some wall tents and you know,
corrals for the horses. Because it was my horse. It
was probably about a three and a half four hour
ride by horse. And so we'd gone in and you know,
a couple of weeks prior to the season, and by
that time I had clients that repeat clients, so they

(11:04):
had hunted with me in years, you know, a couple
of years passed and he had definitely had repeat clients,
and so we're like, man, let's let's give these guys
a great hunt. And so we took me and him,
Bob Gorman. We had we each had two clients and
then we had a cook, slash, a wrangler. He took

(11:27):
care of the horses and stuff. And so the day
the clients get in we have so four six we
had seven horses and probably eight mules to pack everybody
stuff in on and all of that for a seven
day hunt. And each client had an elk tag and
each client had a deer tag, and one of my

(11:50):
clients actually had a bear tag. So we went in
that you know, we went in on a Saturday. We
got there Saturday afternoon and got it. Everybody settled, and
you know, the cook did his thing and just had
a great afternoon and evening riding in. And next morning
we get up and we killed three elk right away,

(12:12):
three bulls, and we're having like, we're like, holy cow,
this is amazing. I don't know if you've ever done
that or not, but when you kill an elk, it's
it's an all day process, really, and so when you
kill three elk, it's really an all day process. And
so you know, we didn't finish till late at night.
And then the next day my other client who didn't

(12:35):
kill he and I went out by ourselves while the
rest of them went meal dier honey, and my client
killed a bull that morning about nine o'clock. Well, so
we start working on that elk and we get back, well,
the other three guys had already killed a mule dinner.
I'm like, holy cow. They're like, we're having a like

(12:57):
the best time ever, you know. And so anyway, the
next morning we get up and my client kills a
mule deer and we went back to one of the
gut piles, and that afternoon he shot a bear. So
in three days we had killed you know, four four
deer and a bear. I mean, it was just the
most amazing thing. And so it was on a Wednesday,

(13:21):
Wednesday or Thursday, and we decided that we were going
to pack the meat out, and where the wrench was
was close to a town called Cripple Creek. They're on
the back side of Pike's Pee. And so we were like,
let's let's pack out in the morning or you know, whenever.
We get everything packed and ready to go, and we'll

(13:42):
go back to the ranch. We'll get the meat hung
in the coolers and all that, and get the hides
and the heads taken care of, and then we'll go
spend a couple of nights in Cripple Creek and have fun.
And everybody was up for that, and so that's that
was the plan. So by the time we got off
our gear and everything situated and horses ready and every

(14:04):
you know, meat and heads and all that, by the
time we got ready to go, it was it was
probably one or two o'clock in the afternoon. And so
we're coming back and we're about more than halfway back
to the trailhead where the trucks and the horse trailers
were at and we're coming along the side of this

(14:26):
mountain and on the trail it does like almost a
ninety degree loop, if you will, like a horse shoe.
And so I'm in the lead. I've got two or
three pack animals, and then we've got the four clients
just on horses, and then we've got the cook and

(14:48):
he's probably got a couple of pack animals, and then
the head gud Bob was riding drag and he's got
the rest of the meals. He's got probably six meals
with him. So we're in this horseshoe and I get
through the horseshoe and my horse just started acting crazy,
like he wouldn't go anywhere. He was like trotting, like

(15:12):
just his front feet, like he was trying to stemp
out something. And so Bob's on the other side of me,
not fifty yards, and we're looking at each other and
he's like, what's going on. I said, man must be
a bear or a mountain lion or something. I said,
he smells something, cause I mean I'd had that horse's
and parades and nothing really bothered that horse. And so

(15:35):
Bob's like, we'll get off and lead him on up
the trail, and so where we were at it was
pretty steep grade right there. And so instead of getting
off on the downhill side, because I'm only five to
nine so I'm not real tall, so I got off
on the right side of the horse on the upside
of the mountain. And as soon as I got off,

(15:57):
this thing burst between everybody down this valley. And I'll
be honest with you, the only thing I really saw
was like a head and the shoulders, and I'm I'm going,
is that a bear? Like? What is that? Is that
a bear? And this thing is so fast, so fast
didn't make a noise, like like you could hear the

(16:20):
pine vals like you know when you're running on them,
but like it wasn't any crunching or any sticks breaking
or anything like this. I mean, it was like full
speed down this mountain.

Speaker 3 (16:34):
Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and beyond with Cliff and
Bobo will be right back after these messages.

Speaker 2 (16:46):
And so all these guys are freaking out and I'm
thinking bear, I'm like, is that a bear? Like?

Speaker 4 (16:52):
You know?

Speaker 2 (16:53):
Because all I could I could barely see over the
saddle where I was at. And so anyway, my horse
starts acting weird. So, you know, twenty thirty seconds, maybe
a minute later, everything kind of calms down. I get
back on my horse and off we go, and I'm
asking Bob. I'm like, man, I've never seen a bear

(17:15):
do that. And Bob goes, that was no bear. I'm like,
what do you mean? That wasn't no bear. Well, the
clients right away started yelling bigfoot, and I'm like, what bigfoot? Like,
that's not a thing. Come on, that was a bear, man, No,
come on as a bear, and Bob goes, dude, it
was on two legs. And I'm like, are you kidding me? Like,

(17:37):
no way. So I was still doubting what I saw
because I didn't I didn't get a clear, clean look
at it. So anyway, we get back up to the
horse trailers and the wrangler has the big horse trailer
and then I have a horse trailer, and then we

(17:59):
had somebody meet us down there to pick up the clients. Well,
we got every the clients got picked up, and we
never really had a conversation at all with them, you know,
unloading horses and geared meat and all that kind of stuff,
and so it was just me and the wrangler and
Bob there and we're getting everything loaded up, and the

(18:20):
Wrangler's like, dude, that was bigfoot. I'm like, man, there's
I said. It's not even real. Man, Like, come on.
And so Bob gets in the truck with me and
we've got probably about an hour drive back to where
we're going, and we're going up the mountain and Bob's like, man,
I've heard people talk about that thing, but I've never,

(18:41):
ever in my life, ever thought i'd see one. And
he'd been doing he'd been guiding. He was probably in
his sixties then, and I mean this guy had been
guiding since he was thirty, so I mean he's got
thirty years out there and had never seen this thing.
And so one of Bob's big things was, look, when
we get back to the ranch, we don't talk about it.

(19:04):
We like, this never happened. And I'm like, what are
you talking about? He goes, man, what if it gets
out that we saw a bigfoot? He's like, and it
gets out like big time. And this was way before
like social media and all that match, right, and so,
and what was I mean back then, we were getting
like all the good write ups and like Western Horsemen

(19:27):
and you know, Bow Hunting magazine, North American Hunting Magazine,
and so his big thing was don't say a word.
I'm like, no worries by me. You know, I'm not
gonna say anything. So I never paid any attention. And
so fast forward almost a year to the day, almost

(19:48):
it's opening season. So I've got two brothers that are
coming in from Michigan that had hunted with me the
year before, and so they had booked another hunt with me.
So everybody comes in on a Saturday, and not that
it matters, but when you're a new guide, these people
show up, you kind of mingle with them. And if

(20:09):
you hit it off with somebody and they like you
and you like them, that's who you got. Well, I
was in a position where I didn't have to do
that anymore. I had to repeat customers, and I knew
who was coming in, and I know what they liked
and what they didn't like, that sort of thing, and
so you know, I'm just kind of sitting there at
the lodge and I'm mingling with people and I'm waiting

(20:29):
for my guys to get there from the airport. And
I get a phone call from the two brothers saying
that their dad had passed away and that they weren't
going to be able to make it. And so this
was like nine o'clock at night, and so by that
time all the other clients had been taken. So here
I'm left with not having any clients for the for

(20:52):
the week. And so I go to the owner and
the head guide and I said, Hey, do you guys
want me to stick around this week? I said, I
have an elk tag in my pocket. I'd love to
go hunt. And Bob goes, where are you going to
go hunt? I said, probably down there. We had that
great hunt last year. And Bob goes, I don't know
if i'd go down there. I'm like, come on, man, really,

(21:12):
And so anyway, the next morning, I get up and
I go to the trail head and so I hike in.
You know, I have a backpack, got my bow, and
I even took a fishing ride because it's a couple
of beaver ponds down there that have brook troiling in them.
And you know, I was just going to do it
up for a week and have fun. And if I'd
killed one, I'd hiked out and come grab my horse

(21:33):
and packed it out. And it'd been a lot easier,
you know that way. So anyway, I hike in there
that afternoon, and I get in there, you know, fairly
late in the afternoon, probably three o'clock or so, because
it takes me about five hours to get in there,
walk in five or six, and I get in there,
and I set up a tent, and I'm at the
very last beaver pond. And where this place is located,

(21:58):
to the south is this big, huge ridge that goes
on for like two miles. It's just solid rock and
it's probably a couple thousand feet tall, like the only
way anybody's going up or down that way. You'd have
to be a professional rock climber to do that. But
there's this valley that comes out of it, and it's

(22:21):
meadows with aspen and it's just like the perfect little
cubby hole for elk, and there's lots of water in there.
And so I'm at the very last beaver pond and
caught a couple of brookies and cooked those up, and
the elk were bugling, and I mean, it was just
a perfect night. And so I get up the next

(22:43):
morning and make some coffee, and I hear the elk bugling,
and so I go up and I passed a couple
of these beaver ponds. Is I'm headed kind of up
towards the cliffs, and to the right there's an outcrop
in there. So I crawled up on the outcropping and
I was gonna wait for the sun to come up.

(23:04):
And during all this, like I said the elk word,
screaming and bugling and doing everything, and I was so excited,
like like I was having so much fun. And so
the sun's starting to come up a little bit, and
to where I can use my binoculars. Now, when you're guiding,
binoculars is your number one friend. I mean, if you

(23:27):
don't have binoculars, you're you're gonna miss so much out
there in that big country that's out there. And so
we had become sponsored by all these different manufacturers, like
you know, we were sponsored by Rocky Boots and you know,
real Tree camouflage, and but one of our best and

(23:48):
biggest sponsors was Seiss binoculars. And it was kind of
before Sarovsky had come out and become big and all that.
So Seiss was as good as it gets, when you know,
it was as good as it got during that period
or whatever. And so I had a pair of ten
by fifty Zeiss and when you're guiding on just a

(24:10):
regular hunt, you were in those binoculars probably eighty percent
of the time, so you know, and then with all
my training and stuff in the military, there's a way
to glass areas and especially if you're looking for you know,
enemy guys and all that, and it pertains the same
way basically to Honey. So anyway, I'm up on this

(24:34):
out cropping and it's daylight, it's getting daylight, and so
I hear an elp bugle, and I would, you know,
I'd get my binoculars up and oh, there he is.
He's three hundred yards away. And another one would bugle,
and you know, he's five hundred yards away. And all
in all, there was probably seven or eight different bulls
than this herd of elk, and they were just scattered

(24:56):
all along this like meadow area. So anyway, I heard
just bugled down by where my tent was, and my
tent was probably about three hundred and fifty four hundred
george away, and so I just glassed down there and
it bugled again, and I realized that he was closer
to me than my tent. So I'm kind of working
the glass back up towards me, and I'm hitting these

(25:20):
beaver ponds. You can see these beaver ponds, and I
noticed this thing in this beaver pine. Like I said, man,
those elk are down there wallowing in those beaver ponds.
And so I'm, you know, it's right at first light,
and so I'm, you know, I'm really focused on what's
going on down there, because I could get to those
elk fairly quick, you know, if I wanted to. And

(25:44):
so I'm looking at this beaver pond and then all
of a sudden, this thing raises up out of this
pond and I'm like, holy cow, like, what in the
world is this. So then it gets out of the
beaver pond, and right away I'm thinking, Okay, that's the
bigfoot that they're talking about. I'm freaked out inside a

(26:08):
little bit because, I mean, nobody, if you've never seen one,
I mean, you don't know till you know, right, I mean,
I don't know how else to explain that. I Mean,
you know, we can say there's aliens, but until you
see one, you don't know how you're going to react,
especially with a big foot or a sasquatch. So this
thing gets out and he kind of shakes off a

(26:32):
little bit, and man, I am like zooming in on
this thing, and he's probably about one hundred and fifty
yards out, so with ten by fifty s ice like,
I can see this thing blinking, you know. And my
first thought really wasn't you know, oh my gosh, oh

(26:54):
my gosh or whatever. My first thought was, this is
a monster. And if he comes at you, and I'm
hunting with a recurved bow like the Indians used to do,
I'm like, if this thing comes at you, you're gonna
have one shot. That's it.

Speaker 4 (27:14):
Did you have a sight on?

Speaker 3 (27:15):
No?

Speaker 2 (27:16):
I still don't even, like, even to this day, I
don't carry a gun in the woods. It's not an
ego thing. I've seen too many people carry firearms and
shoot animals that they think they're getting attacked by that.
If you had just used a calm head, it wouldn't

(27:36):
have happened, you know kind of thing. So I'm not.
I don't claim to be something I'm not or anything.
I just never have. I mean, I'm holding a bow
in my hand, so you know, if I can't get
something to stop by me shooting it with an arrow,
you know, and I've had some close calls, you know,

(27:57):
up in Alaska, I had a close call. I've had
one mountain lion experience that was kind of a weird thing.
But you know, in all my years of doing this,
I've been doing this for over thirty years, and you know,
I'm just I've never put myself in a position to
where I felt like I needed to carry for arm.

(28:18):
So but so anyway, this thing kind of he's kind
of shaking the water off of him. I guess you
would say, not like a dog, but you know, there's
like one arm and then the other arm. And while
he's doing this, I am noticing that, like this thing

(28:39):
is built like anything I've never seen. Like the forearms
were massive, the hands were massive. I mean the legs
were like like, man, you know, looking back in a
calm area, I'm like, man, I wish I had legs
like that, you know. I mean, this thing was just

(28:59):
for a reacher or whatever you want to call it.
I mean, this thing was in peak physical condition. And
so I'm sitting there watching it and he's kind of turned.
I'm I'm sitting facing to the to the northeast. That's
kind of where he's at but he's facing more north

(29:21):
than east, and he hasn't I don't he hasn't seen me,
at least I don't think he had. And he turns.
And when you're when you're in a when you're in
glass like that ten by fifty binoculars like that, when
he turns and looks up towards me, you think he's
looking you through your soul, you know, when in fact,

(29:44):
he's probably looking past me, or he could have been
looking at me. I don't know. But through the binoculars
it was like he was looking through my soul. But
he didn't look he didn't look scary though, I mean,
he looked to me more man like. Then you know,
people describe gorillas or whatever. And we'll get back to

(30:06):
Keith Foster, because he did a drawing that was just amazing.
I mean it was so spot on. And so I'm
sitting here and this thing doesn't appear to be a
threat to me, and so I kind of you know,
I'm at a twelve, and so now I'm at like
a ten, and I'm thinking strategy more than anything else,

(30:27):
Like if he comes at me, what are you gonna do?
Da da da da? That kind of thing, and but
I'm getting to watch him and he's just middling around
this beaver pond, and you know, I watched him mess
with his face, like he touched his face. I'm watching
his eyes blink, you know. At one time he reached

(30:48):
down to get like a clump of mud off his leg,
which was kind of different. And so then he turns
and he walks north towards my camp, and he's having
to go up this hill, and so he gets kind
of cross side heeling, if you will, and he gets
about even with my tent, and he squats down like

(31:12):
he's using the bathroom, and he's looking right at my
camp and he's just sitting there and he's watching my tent.
And so I've already decided that once he crosses that hill,
I'm going to give it about ten minutes. If he
doesn't come back, I'm going to go down there and
grab my gear and I'm getting out, because I mean,

(31:33):
he was scary enough that I didn't want to be
in there by myself with him. I don't care how
many Elko's in there.

Speaker 3 (31:41):
Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with Cliff and
Bobo will be right back after these messages.

Speaker 2 (31:52):
So anyway, he sat there probably about two or three minutes,
and he gets ups and he goes up and over
the hill. And so, like I said, I waited ten
or fifteen minutes, and I crawled down off that rock
that I was on, and I ran down to my
camp and I quickly packed it. And it took me

(32:14):
about five or six hours to get in there, and
it took me about three and a half to get out.
So I basically ran or jogged all the way back
to the car or the truck. And so yeah, I
mean the whole episode of seeing this thing was probably
about ten minutes long. And once I get back to

(32:38):
the vehicle, of course, coming out of there, I was
totally paranoid, like it's this thing following me, Like you
know what happens he jumps out blah blah blah, and
so you know, this total state of paranoia hiking out
of there and running and you know, just almost killing
myself to get out. And so I get to the
truck and immediately I go to the ranch and it's

(33:03):
probably gosh, I don't know, it's probably around lunchtime, maybe
at one o'clock, and so everybody's out hunting like, there's
no guides there, there's no clients there, but the owner
was there, Gary Jordan, and I go into Gary's office
and he's like, man, did you kill one? Did you

(33:24):
come to get the horses? And I'm like no, Gary,
I said, you know that thing that happened to us
last year with me and Bob and the coat, And
he goes, yeah, I said, I saw this thing up close.
And he goes, what are you talking about. I said,
I watched him for ten minutes this morning and he's like, no,
you didn't. He goes, it was a bear. I said, Gary,

(33:44):
I have how many bears have I got it on?
I had up to that point, I'd killed probably me personally,
had probably killed like five bears, but I had got
it on probably twenty five or thirty by that time.
So I know what a bear is, you know. And
that's what I'm telling Gary. I'm like, that was no bear, man.
I'm like that, I don't know what it is, you know.

(34:08):
And like I said, I'd never researched sasquatch or Bigfoot,
didn't have any knowledge of any of that, and so
I didn't have anything like nowadays you hear people go well,
it's a mix between a man and an ape or
a monkey or something. I didn't have that. I was like,

(34:29):
it was one of the best built men. Harry people
that And I came up with like Neanderthal because that's
what I think of Neanderthal would look like. And that's
what I told Gary, and Gary goes, well, he goes,
you're obviously shook. And I had an apartment down in
Colorado Springs at the time, and he goes, you need

(34:51):
to go home and spend a couple of days and
come on back up here Friday night and let's get
back on the saddle and start guiding again. I'm like, okay.
So I go down there, and I do have a
computer at the time, and I get on there and
I google Bigfoot or Sasquatch, and I start seeing all

(35:12):
this stuff. And it's the first time of me seeing
the Patty film and this thing looked a lot like Patty,
except the mail version. And because it was a mail
and so anyway, I come across the BFRO website. Didn't
know they even had a thing like that, and it said, hey,
if you've had a sighting or whatever, please tell us.

(35:37):
So I sat there for like two hours typing, and
I would like, you know, like I'm going, is this
too much information? Not enough information? You know, blah blah
blah whatever. And it's on like a Wednesday. No, it's
not even that. It's on like a Monday or Tuesday.
And so I write my story and tell what happened,

(36:02):
you know, both accounts, the first one and then this
last one, and I write on there you know, this
happened yesterday. And I submitted it. Well, within like less
than an hour, I get a call from Matt Moneymaker.

Speaker 4 (36:18):
Oh how was that?

Speaker 2 (36:21):
I had no clue who he was. Like, he goes, hi,
am Matt Moneymaker and you know President bf R own boom,
and he goes tell me about your story. And I'm like, okay,
you know, and he's like, can we if I get
a guys out there, can you know, can we come
and look? And I'm like, I said, well, I'm a

(36:42):
full time guy. And I said, if you got somebody
out here that the only way I'd do that is
if they came in the next day or two. Well,
by George. That night, I get a phone call and
to my for my life, I can't think of the
name of these two guys. One of them's name was
Jim and maybe y'all can help me with this. But

(37:04):
he and I don't know if he was just telling
me a story or what, but he had said that
he at one time he had set like the highest
altitude sky diving record or something, and his name was
Jeff something. I took him in there and we looked around,
and sure enough, we found prints around that beaver pond,

(37:27):
and up until a couple of years ago, I actually
had a copy of that casting and or had the
original cast really and through a divorce and all that
and moving, I have no idea where it's at. But
so anyway, so that happened, and shortly after that, man

(37:49):
I started getting phone calls from all kinds of people.
And what was one of the weirdest things that happened
to me was I get a call from this guy
like I didn't and he goes, hey, is your address
blah blah blah blah, and I'm going yeah, he goes, good,
at four o'clock today, you're going to receive a package.
He goes, I'll see you there at like five o'clock.

(38:11):
I'm like, who are you? He goes, I got this
coming to you. He goes, I got to know if
this is what you saw. And it was the original
copy of I want to say, Memorial Day footage where
the people were in the boat and the and the
bigfoot runs across the side hill and then jumps that
big gully. It was that footage. And I'm going, well,

(38:34):
who are you, like? Where did you like, are you
CIA or FBI or something? You know, because I've worked
with those guys when I was, you know, in the military.
I'm like, this is some CIA FBI stuff going on here.
And so he actually I told him, I said, man,
I don't have a VCR. He said, he brought a

(38:54):
VCR with him and we hooked it up to my
TV and watched it. And I'm going, well, the one
I saw wasn't quite as big as that. I mean,
the one I saw was probably like seven foot maybe.
I mean, he wouldn't know. It wasn't like ten twelve
foot or whatever something like that. He wasn't. I mean,

(39:14):
seven foot's pretty big. But I mean this dude, this
thing I saw was just jacked up. I mean just
every part of his body was just muscled up. And
so when this thing jumped that gully, I was like,
I could totally believe that, and he goes, what do
you mean, I said, the way these things are built,

(39:36):
I said, I said, he could have probably jumped up
on that rock outcome cropping and ate me for you know,
breakfast that morning, and just the way he was built.
And so after that, I really I never really had
any more interaction. It didn't really change the way I

(39:58):
felt in the woods. And I think the reason being
is that, for lack of a better word, was a
peaceful encounter. You know, I didn't feel like this thing
was going to eat me or tear me apart or
any of that. And you know, and I was fascinated
by how it looked and all that. But you know,

(40:21):
weeks and months following that, I kept thinking that, you know,
that thing probably watched me walk right by him, because
I followed that series of beaver ponds going up to
that rock out cropping, and so that kind of set
me on edge a little bit. But you know, I
never had any ill will or bad feelings or you know,

(40:47):
anything like that towards towards what I saw, and so
you know, I carried on as normal. You know, I
still guided, I still hunted, but hoping that maybe I'd
see another one something, you know, because it was just cool.
So now I'm not going to tell you that coming
out of a mountain, you know, and you're six miles

(41:08):
from your vehicle and your own foot and it's dark,
you don't think about that because you do. But you know,
as far as ever being scared or you know, beyond
being able to do whatever, and just never happened for me.

Speaker 3 (41:26):
So well, at the end of the day, I mean,
if they're real, they were real before you saw them too,
So what why should anything change?

Speaker 2 (41:33):
Right?

Speaker 5 (41:34):
Could you describe how it moved asarng as you said,
it shook, It shook itself.

Speaker 4 (41:38):
Dry when it got out of the water.

Speaker 2 (41:40):
Yeah, you know, so like when you get out of
the shower, you know how you might take say the
right arm and you and you kind of brush your
left arm just to get the excess water off. Yea,
it's kind of like that.

Speaker 3 (41:52):
Was it just to the arms or did it do
It's all over the body too.

Speaker 2 (41:55):
He kind of like from the shoulder to probably the
mid forearm. He kind of did that, and then he
did it like where his belly would be like there,
and he like his thighs and then he bent down
and was picking like I assumed it was a clump
of dirt or mud or something since he had been

(42:15):
in that beaver pond, and like he was picking something
off his leg, like mud or or something like that.
And so that's that was the when he got out
of the beaver pond there.

Speaker 5 (42:28):
How about the eyes you said you saw the you
saw the eyes through the did Yeah?

Speaker 2 (42:33):
I don't know if you did. I did. I send
you a copy or a photograph, Matt, of the drawing
that Keith did.

Speaker 6 (42:44):
No, I don't have that, but I'm going to try
to search for it right now while we're talking to it,
and I'll send it to you. Oh that'd be great.

Speaker 2 (42:51):
Yeah. So I mean this thing it looked ninety eight
percent human to me, with the exception that it had
a lot of hair. So I mean it kind of
had like a everybody says a crowned head like, but
it was it was more like a domed kind of

(43:12):
rounded head. His nose was almost like that of a person,
you know, a little flatter against his against his face.
But his lips were I mean, can you use the
word normal, but I mean they were normal for what
I was looking at I guess, and the eyes just

(43:34):
looked they looked like our eyes, really, I mean, you
know they there wasn't anything crazy about on.

Speaker 4 (43:42):
Could you see the whites there?

Speaker 2 (43:44):
No? I couldn't. No, I didn't see it that good.
But I couldn't tell when it was blinking because the
whole forehead would move when he blinked.

Speaker 5 (43:52):
So did it blink like a human like I've heard
they don't blink very much compared to humans like they
they don't blink his office A lot of people have
reported did you notice that?

Speaker 2 (44:02):
No, I mean as far as how many times he
blinked or whatever, not really, but I do recall that
he blinked. And the reason I do is because he
had like this above his eyes was like a brow
line kind of thing, but it wasn't like huge, But
when he did blink, that brow line would move and
you can see that, And so that's that's how I

(44:25):
know he was.

Speaker 4 (44:25):
Blinking like fat There was fat up in there, not
just like the bony brow.

Speaker 5 (44:30):
It was like like a fat depositive or something.

Speaker 2 (44:33):
You think maybe, I mean, you ever seen those old
guys that have like the unibrow kind of kind of
look like that, except it protruded a little bit, So,
you know, I don't know if that was just like
a unibrow kind of thing where if that was a
part of his you know, muscular makeup. I'm not sure,
but I do know that when he blinked, that whole

(44:55):
section moved, and you know, I didn't notice that he
didn't have much of a neck on him.

Speaker 5 (45:02):
How is the body proportions like limb legs and comparison,
like a human was like.

Speaker 2 (45:05):
Longer his legs, and his arms weren't proportional to his body,
Like his arms were longer than normal. I don't know
that they came down to his knees, but they definitely
hung lower than what a person's would. But I could
tell that like his torso was the bigger part because

(45:26):
his legs were so massive, like just so massive, and
so his legs were smaller than the rest of his body.
I guess is the best way to say that. I
don't know any way describe that, I guess. So I
guess his torso from his waist up was bigger or
taller than from the waist down. So I don't know

(45:49):
if that makes the arms look different or not.

Speaker 4 (45:51):
So.

Speaker 3 (45:53):
Stay tuned for more Bigfoot and Beyond with clipp and
Bobo will be right back after these messages.

Speaker 2 (46:05):
The hands big hands, and I mean full on massive,
massive hands, because I noticed his hand when he reached
down to pick whatever was on his leg. Off, I
noticed that his hand like was as big as his leg,
if that makes sense, Like it was huge.

Speaker 3 (46:27):
Did it seem proportional to the size of the body
or is it a bigger in proportion or smaller in proportion?

Speaker 2 (46:33):
I think it was proportional. I do think they were
probably proportional, because I mean this thing, I mean even
making a reference to like I don't know the body
of the.

Speaker 4 (46:47):
Actor of Arnold Schwarzeninger.

Speaker 2 (46:49):
Yeah, thank you Arnold's I mean, as far as his
physicality was, he was all that and then so like
had you know, I couldn't actually see the six pack,
you know, abs, but I mean you could tell that
it was just built. I mean, this thing was just

(47:11):
built to live there. It was it was unreal.

Speaker 4 (47:15):
How about hairlict and coloration.

Speaker 2 (47:17):
So he was between like so when the when he
when he did that side, he'll he kind of got
up into where the sun was finally cresting over the
mountain a little bit, And up until that point he
looked brown to me. But then when he hit the sunshine,
the sunlight a little bit, it kind of almost had
like a reddish tint to it. So I don't know

(47:38):
if that was just the sun reflecting off his brown hair.
But the hair was pretty proportional. I mean, you know,
it wasn't like long, stragglely something crazy like you see
in some of these movies. I mean, it was pretty
I don't want to use the word man or groomed,

(48:02):
but I mean, you know, his face probably had maybe
an inch or half inch hair, and his head probably
the same, and then.

Speaker 8 (48:13):
Around his neck was had like a almost like a
maine kind of like you could his hair started getting
longer at his in his chest, in his arms, and
so his hands were.

Speaker 2 (48:26):
Didn't have any hair on at all, like you know,
especially the palm of his hand had no hair at all.
So and it was it was like a and I
haven't thought about this in forever, but I remember it
was like a baseball, mit is what it looked like
to me.

Speaker 3 (48:45):
What color was the skin.

Speaker 9 (48:47):
Almost like a almost like a grayish black color, more gray,
I think, so it was like a weathered I remember
it being like this weathered look.

Speaker 3 (48:58):
I've heard reports of people who have said, I've spoken
to people actually who like yourself, who had seen them
very close or through binoculars or something like that, and
they commented about how the face look weathered. They did
use the weather just like you did, but they also
use things like wrinkled and old, leathery, and like, did
they have any of that kind of characteristic to it,

(49:19):
like in desperate need of moisturizer?

Speaker 2 (49:22):
Yeah, no, because he, the one I saw, had like
quite a bit of hair on his face. The only
place void of hair was kind of around his lips,
in his nose, and then the rest of it, you know,
was pretty hairy. But it was weird because it looked
almost groomed, like if he'd gone if you'd gone to

(49:42):
a barber and had it shaved to a certain length
or something. But what what I looked at didn't appear
to be old at all. No, I sent Matt the picture.
I mean, that's exactly what what you're looking at is
exactly what I saw exactly. I mean, so if you
look at that picture, I mean, I don't know if

(50:05):
you could age that or not. I mean, thirties forties,
I mean not old enough to be like an old
withered man kind of thing, you know.

Speaker 3 (50:13):
And for the people listening who are members, I guess
we'll go ahead and put that on the on the Patreon.
Is that right foru?

Speaker 4 (50:19):
It?

Speaker 6 (50:21):
Yeah, I'll post that there and yeah, Bobo, I sent
it to the group.

Speaker 3 (50:23):
Text oh, text email, Jeff, you mentioned earlier when you
first put your eyes on this thing, you were actually
looking for an elk bugling? Was there was there an
elk in the area or was the thing making that noise?

Speaker 2 (50:40):
No, there was elk, because there was elk everywhere. There
must have been. Yeah, there must have been probably, and
I don't want to exaggerate, but at least seventy five
to one hundred elk in that little valley.

Speaker 4 (50:52):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (50:53):
Yeah. So I can't say that he was making that
noise because I'd heard all kinds elk that morning and
actually had glassed up two or three that were bugling.
So I was just up there trying to figure out
which one I was about to go after.

Speaker 3 (51:10):
So do you have photographs of the original cast that
you mentioned?

Speaker 2 (51:15):
I don't. I don't have any, but you know, I
think I think my sister might have one because I
moved back to Nashville for a short stint and I
had it sitting on a coffee table, and she took
a picture with it. So I'll get with her and

(51:37):
see if she has it, and if it does, I'll
certainly afford it to you guys. But I remember the
dimensions of it, so it was it was probably somewhere
between sixteen and eighteen inches long, and it was the
width of my hand and then some so probably I'm

(51:58):
guessing four or five inches wide. Made me.

Speaker 4 (52:01):
You're the perfect guy to ask.

Speaker 5 (52:02):
I mean, boat hunters, and you're a guy, so you've
chopped up tons of animals.

Speaker 4 (52:08):
If you think it's seven foot tall, how much you
think it weighed?

Speaker 2 (52:11):
That's a great question. So the way the way I
would probably approach that is, we know Shaquille O'Neill is
seven to right, and Shaquille probably weighs three hundred three
h five something like that. Maybe I'm guessing this thing

(52:32):
was probably because of how muscular it was, because you know,
muscle weighs more than fat. Anyway, I'm guessing, if I
had to be accurate, probably somewhere between three fifty and five.

Speaker 4 (52:49):
Hundred because shack's about three fifty.

Speaker 2 (52:52):
Yeah, so then this thing probably had to be at least,
you know, four to five hundred. Then there's no way
at weighed eight one hundred or one thousand pounds. I
just that'd be hard to say for me, but I'm
guessing probably on the high end, probably five hundreds.

Speaker 3 (53:11):
After the sighting and and the realization, after your two sightings,
and your realization that like, oh they smoked, these things
are actually out there, These things are real. I have
looking back at your previous guide experience and all the
time you spent in the mountains, do you think you
might have ever been close to one before that and
you just didn't know because they weren't on the radar?

Speaker 2 (53:31):
You know what? I do think I have and it's
only one one or two occasions because somebody else had
asked me that. So when you're when you're hunting elk,
elk put out a smell that you can if there's
especially if there's a bunch of them during the mating season,

(53:51):
a bull elk will will urinate on himself and and
he'll get in what we call walls, which is they
dig out of and it'll kind of that has water
and they'll make mud out of it, and they'll get
in there and they'll coat themselves in this mud because
an elk will spend more time. A lot of people

(54:12):
don't know this, but elka spend more time trying to
stay cool than he will anything else. And so by
kicking himself with his mud and all that, it helps
him stay cool. And so during the mating season, what
an elk do. He'll get in there and he'll start
wallowing and doing all that. And while he's doing that,
he'll urinate in the mud on himself. And so when

(54:35):
the rut occurs, it usually goes on somewhere between anywhere
from twenty five to forty days long. So you're thinking
that this thing is doing this, you know, at two
or three four times a day, and so that creates
a smell. So it gives you that musky smell. And

(54:55):
so a lot of times when you're hunting and you're
down when of an elk, you can smell long before
you ever seen them. And there had been a couple
times that the stitch has come over us and you're going,
that's not like, man, that is the grossest smelling elk
I've ever smelled. You know, and in the back of

(55:18):
your mind going, you know that don't even smell like
an elk, and so so, not knowing one hundred percent,
you know, if I had, I would say probably, just
because I think I've smelled them before.

Speaker 10 (55:31):
So yeah, probably Did you talk about finding that gutted
or female elk the cowk that was gutted that you
didn't see the actual antle that you heard it?

Speaker 6 (55:43):
Yeah, I was gonna say, like, there's there's some really
cool stuff that happened in the aftermath of all that
that I think would be great for the member section
that involved some of those things and some tracks and
some sounds that I think you guys would love to hear,
and I know our members would too.

Speaker 3 (55:57):
All right, well why do we do that? Then? Why
don't we skid out all over to the member Because
if there's follow up things and other unusual finds and
observations in the area, I'd like to hear about those,
and I'm sure our members would as well, And of
course are any of our regular listeners. If you want
to be a member, it's just five bucks a month
and you get an extra hour of content every single
week as well as the regular episode with zero commercials

(56:20):
at all. No commercials, no advertisements, just our beautiful voices
in your earballs there. So if you want to do that,
be a member. Go to the Bigfoot and Beyond podcast
dot com website, hit the membership link, and then I'll
tell you everything you need to know.

Speaker 5 (56:34):
All right, folks, Well, thanks a lot of Jeff Desich
for joining us. It's really important you know that we have,
you know, qualified eyewitnesses.

Speaker 4 (56:43):
I mean disguis.

Speaker 5 (56:44):
I mean we're talking about a guy that's one outfit
of the year for Colorado.

Speaker 4 (56:48):
I mean, so this guy's an expert.

Speaker 5 (56:50):
So I appreciate his uh an applaud his candor and
honesty and bravery to come forward. So thank you, Jeff,
and until next week, y'all keep it squatching.

Speaker 3 (57:05):
Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Bigfoot and Beyond.
If you liked what you heard, please rate and review
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(57:25):
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