A listener writes “For some time I’ve wanted to send this to you about an experience I had with a group of my friends back in the early fall of 1983 south of Mt. Shasta, CA. For many years I never gave much thought about the incident, but watching shows like MonsterQuest and Finding Bigfoot leads me to believe that it was a bigfoot. I was 15-years old and I belonged to a group called the Royal Rangers. It’s similar to the Boy’s Scouts but it was a religious organization thru the Assemblies of God. We came up to hike Mt. Shasta, canoe, and camp, and it was just my outpost alone.
There were three adults and nine boys, ranging from 13 to 16-years of age. On our second day, we canoed the river leading to Lake McCloud (I always remembered the name because of the Dennis Weaver tv show by the same name McCloud). I’ve googled Earth the area recently and I recall the river being a bit wider than what it may be now and I don’t remember seeing any houses that are now seen along the river. We began the canoe trip near the waterfalls. The water was not rushing and was easy to control the canoe. We had three canoes, each with one Ranger Commander and three boys.
I was in the middle canoe. About 30-minutes into it, and coming across a bend in an area where there was a high brush and tree area, the guys to our right smelled a “rotten smell”. It’s been a while and I can’t speak for the guys in my canoe, but as for me, I didn’t smell a thing. We were joking with them about not passing gas in the canoe when a large rock flew from out of the bushes and hit the water to the right of our canoe about 15-feet in front of us. The adult men told us to row faster.
The guys on our right were close enough the edge of the river and heard footsteps keeping up with us and they continued to smell the bad stench. There were no vocalization, and I never saw anything in the tree line. I would say it followed us for about 100-yards and until the guys on the right were stating that the smell was gone. I remember later that night that they adult men were apprehensive and edgy, and us boys were oblivious to what happened.
It was many years later after watching these shows that I pieced the events of that day together. I found two of my old friends Epi, a church pastor living in Bakersfield, and Pedro in Pennsylvania, and I had mentioned that event to them in our conversations, and Pedro actually believed that it was a bigfoot after discussing some the characteristics that bigfoot has been known to display. I do believe it was because the size of the rock that was thrown. It had to weigh between 5 to 8-pounds about 2 ½ times the size of softball, and was thrown about fifty feet, give or take. In conclusion, I really believe that it was a sasquatch that we happen to come across that day.”