Jan 5

Strange day while hunting

A listener writes “Hi Wes, The main reason for this email is to thank you for your show.

It helped me immensely after my encounter. I was very confused after the experience, and was grasping for some kind of information to validate what had happened. It completely turned my world upside down. I found your shown when I was searching the internet for information on weird things that had happened in the Frank Church Wilderness area in Idaho.

I have hunted elk and deer almost my whole life and I thought I knew every animal that lived in the Northwestern United States. Boy was I wrong!

The encounter happened last year in November of 2015. My best friend and I decided that we wanted to do a backpack elk hunt in the Frank Church Wilderness area. The season started on September 15th and ran until September 30th. It’s kind of a strange season because it shuts down for the month of October and then opens back up on the 1st of November. We hunted the first part of the season in September but were pushed out of the back country by weather. We made another game plan to go back up to a different area around the second week of November.

We decided on an area outside of Warm Lake in unit 27. We left our homes and headed for the back country. There wasn’t as much snow up high as there normally is. We got  close to the spot where we wanted to get out and walk. We had about a 3 1/2 to 4 mile walk to get in to the area where we wanted to be. The snow started off at around 8 inches. The farther we got in to the back country, the deeper the snow got, but we were prepared for it. At one point I remember the drifts being up to my knees. My friend and I are both in the realm of 6’5”.

I had been so focused on finding elk that I didn’t realize that there was absolutely no sound! I really noticed this when we got in to the area that I wanted to be and sat down to eat lunch. I shrugged it off as just being winter time. After lunch I decided to go out to a point and glass a big basin. My friend opted to stay behind and nap. I walked over to a point about 500 yards to the south of my friend and sat down to glass. I couldn’t shake the feeling of being “watched”! I kept looking behind me, but saw nothing. I’ve had similar instances with cougars. I walked back over to my friend, and when I got there he gave me a really strange wide eyed look. I told him that something isn’t right. He proceeded to tell me that he was hearing things moving around behind him the entire time I was gone.

I’m shaking as I write this email. We started moving down the ridge again. We heard two strange noises that I had never heard before. It was a short sound that started at a low pitch and ascended to a high pitch. Kind of like a whoop, but not the same. I turned to Bryce and smiled and said, “maybe it’s Bigfoot”. He promptly told me to fu#$K off! I laughed and rationalized it as a wolf.

I had a wolf tag so I wasn’t concerned about wolves.  We walked farther down the ridge and got in to some bad dead fall. It was around 1 in the afternoon now and we decided that we would turn around and take our same trail back out. We were starting to get fatigued and didn’t want to be stuck in there after dark.

I think we were both more concerned than we wanted to let on about the lack of noise and the strange noises that we had heard earlier.

Things got really strange when we got back to the area where we had heard the noises. We started getting the feeling of absolute primal fear. Fear to the point of making us sick to our stomachs. I almost felt disoriented as well. Kind of like everything was in slow motion, but not quite. I kept asking Bryce if he was feeling like I was, and he said yes. He asked me if I smelled “that”. I said no because my nose was partially plugged.

I asked him what it smelled like, and he said it kind of smelled like dead flesh but not as strong and offensive. We walked under a dead tree that had fallen down and rested in the fork of another tree. The tree was in the 5″ to 8″ diameter range. The fork of the tree was around 8 to 10 feet high. We got 50 yards past this tree and the silence was shattered! It sounded like someone touched an ought six off right behind us! Bryce spun around quickly enough to see the tree that was resting in the fork jump up from something pulling the tree down to break it.

That was when things got really intense! The sickness and fear were almost unbearable! We wanted to run but we were drained!  I pack a .338 win mag for elk, and something told me that it wouldn’t have had enough knockdown power to kill this thing if things had gone sideways. We had no choice but to keep calm and walk the 3 miles out of there!

We continued switching the lead person so that nothing could pinpoint one of us as being weaker. We got another mile closer to the pickup and the fear and sickness stopped. Still felt as if we were being watched though. We never saw anything that day but we never really tried. I don’t think either of our minds could have handled it.

After the ordeal both of us were drained and had to eat a lot of food like our bodies had used up all of its reserves and needed to replenish. I now know that we were being hit by infrasound. I had no idea this even existed before my encounter. There are many more details to this account, like the wind direction and almost feeling like I was hallucinating. Give me a call if you have any questions.

Thanks again for taking the time to read this, and thank you very much for providing the information to help me through this.”

11 Responses to “Strange day while hunting”

  1. NW Mike

    Leave it to hunters to pick up on all those details. These guys were under observation by one of the big guys. Even though they didn’t recognize it at the time, they were being threatened, driven out. Sasquatch didn’t want them in the area, didn’t want the competition of other hunters. Luckily they left and no escalation of force was needed to further convince them to leave. The tree breaking behind them was just the icing on the cake, reinforcing the idea that leaving the area was the best course of action. Good for them.

  2. Stephanie G

    Whew! I didn’t realize I was breathing shallowly until after I finished reading this. Had to take a deep breath. Whew! Hope Wes can get him to come on the show and elaborate on the details.

  3. Glen K

    Interesting. I’ve heard of infrasound , but never knew what it was. Apparently, elephants use infrasound to communicate with one another. With infrasound, or infrasonics, the sound is below the level of human hearing, but can have strange effects on humans.

  4. Tedd

    That’s a good one for Duke to join Wes in the possible interview. I could be wrong but seems to me like the terrain Duke is more familiar with. Either way, thanks for sharing!

  5. Kathryn C

    He told his account so you felt like you were there. I actually got sick to my stomach about the time the tree was pulled down. Sure would like to hear additional details. The guy is a natural story teller.

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