Tonight we welcome Kyle to the show, and he writes, “My brother and I are avid hunters and spend and have spent many years both big game and predator hunting. I live on Long Island in New York which is mainly a suburban area. Our hunting trips mainly take place in the catskill and Adirondack mountain ranges in Upstate NY. On the weekend of February 5th this year, we ventured into the area we would normally deer hunt in Wilomec NY with the anticipation of calling in some coyotes. This is all state Forrest land we hunt on. The tactic we employ to hunt coyote are late night hunts involving loud rabbit distress calls or coyote communication howls. So on Feb 5th at around 11-1130 pm, we walked into our blind location, got settled and started calling. We got some responses from some distant coyotes several miles away. We let out a few more calls to try to bring the dogs in closer. After the 2nd group of calls, surrounding woods became deathly quiet. Soon after that we heard what sounded like an owl very close to us. It made some vocals which To me and my brother didn’t seem right.
The owls “whoing” sounds too deep to be and owl but we both kinda shrugged it off. As the owl continued to vocalize, we started hearing faint response vocals from another owl that sounded like it was coming from across a flooded timber area about 200 yards away. At this point the hair on the back of my neck was starting to stand up because not only did the owl closest to us sound “off” but so did the responses coming from across the flooded timbers. (We refer to this spot as the beaver dam spot). Then out of no where it all just stopped. The woods fell silent again for about 5 -10 minutes. We both employ night vision scopes as well as laser designators for night hunting. We were trying to get eyes on the owl that was calling out but we couldn’t. As we scanned the surrounding trees, both owls started right back up but this time the two vocals seemed to be right next to each other.
The sounds got Intensely loud and almost sounded panicked, and that when we heard the sounds go from “owl” to a loud what I can only describe as an excited screaming monkey. Seconds later I heard extremely heavy foot falls that were clearly bi-pedal jet right past the back of our blind. Needless to say we were both equally confused as to what exactly was going on here. My brother turned to me and said “something isn’t right here” to which I staunchly agreed. We both agreed that maybe we should call it a night and come back in the morning to breakdown our blind and get the remainder of our gear. So cut to 9am the next morning. We are walking in to our spot to get our gear out. The hike in is mostly uphill. At the top of the trail it levels out and surrounding the trail is bamboo that someone had planted a long time ago. That section of trail is only about 100-150 yards away from where our gear was. My brother was walking in front of me when we reached this bamboo areas and this is where the trail levels off. He took one step into the trail at the bamboo thicket and we were greeted my a lowest most guttural growl either of us had ever heard.
He immediacy stumbled back 2 or 3 steps into me. I chambered a round in my gun and we stood still and quiet as to not disturb what we thought was a possible sleeping bear. We listened for a few minutes and finally I told my brother that we needed to just press on and collect our gear. So we did. We packed up our blind and our seats and headed back down the trail away from our hunting spot and now we are approaching the bamboo thicket again to make our exit. As we approached we heard a really loud “huff” and again we froze. We both had our heads on a swivel looking for this “bear”. That’s when at about 30 yards away I saw a huge dark creature standing upright pulling the bamboo aside to peek through. I brought it to the attention of my brother and we both stood there in amazement. We saw what looked a lot like a man.
I would say it was between 7.5-8.5 feet tall, black brown hair covering all of the body that was visible to us. The shoulders were as wide as the tailgate of my pickup truck, I mean just tremendous. We also noticed that there was a musky smell reminiscent of a buck during the rut. The forehead had little to no hair on it and the skin was a grayish color. We both saw this creature blink it’s eyes and for whatever reason, I feel like that’s the only thing I was able to focus on was its eyes the eyes were set deep in the skull and almost looked black. I mustered the courage to take a step forward and this thing took off like a dragster. Ive never heard any animal tear through the woods like this thing did. I’ve had trouble recounting all the details but I’m going to see my brother this weekend and we are going to compare notes as to what we both witnessed. You are the first person I am telling. I’m married , have 2 beautiful daughters. I feel like I can’t tell anyone due to criticism and risking my employment. Any info you guys could help me with would be awesome. It’s really hard for me express through email the whole encounter. I get too excited and feel like I cant type fast enough to keep up with my thoughts.”