Sasquatch Chronicles Blog

This last hunting season I was at a state park in Lupton Michigan. It is called The Rifle River Recreational Area and is around 4,450 acres of land that is near the Huron National Forrest. Most of the land surrounding the park are woods and corn fields. About 25 minutes from there is West Branch which they call the “Bigfoot Capitol of Michigan” (not exactly sure why).

I hunt in a pretty remote area of the park down some deer trails, then through a thicket before it kind of opens up again, so if you didn’t know where my tree stand is, you’d never find it. This is my second year in this spot, and since it’s so hidden I left my stand up all year (even though you’re not supposed to).

Right around dusk on opening day of rifle season (November 15th) I heard some weird animal noises (see attached video). You’ll hear a noise right at the beginning of the video, and another around 18 seconds in. You may have to turn up the volume. It happened 4 times around 15 seconds apart and was coming from far off into the woods ahead of me. These two noises in the recording were the last two sounds I heard. I couldn’t recognize the sound, so if you can, I’d love to know what animal was making it. Because it sounded like it was far away, the animal much have been large to have travelled that distance to me.

The Event

Anyways, about 5 days later I was out for my last evening hunt in the tree. I got there around 1pm and was very silent. About an hour and a half later (around 2:30pm) I heard out of nowhere footsteps behind my tree. It sound like it started around 20 feet behind me and went from complete silence to something actively moving. At first I thought a deer must have been bedding in the thicket behind my tree and just got up and started moving around. The noise was heading straight to my tree, so I froze and didn’t make a sound, thinking a large deer was going to walk toward the clearing in front of me. As I listened I could tell it was not a deer, it sounded more like a man kind of dragging their feet into the leaves, and little sticks breaking under the larger steps. After around 6 heavy steps coming my direction, and this thing sounding like it was right next to my tree now, I was certain it was either another hunter or DNR. So I sat more upright and swung my head around the side of the tree to see what was directly behind me, but nothing was there. Then I thought maybe I can’t see anyone because the guy is directly under me, so I moved my legs to peer under the slats of my stand, but nothing was there either.

I didn’t hear anymore noise, but I kept feeling someone must be right there so I stood up around 15 minutes later and leaned way out to get a better view all around me, but nothing. I stayed out until dark, around 6pm and didn’t experience anything else. Out of the 12 or so days of hunting that spot, It was the first day that I didn’t see a single deer there. In fact the woods were completely silent the rest of the evening.

Some Background

I am 36 years old and grew up on 22 acres of woods in Michigan. I was always exploring day or night, building forts and goofing around with friends. I’ve been hunting for about 9 years around different areas of Michigan but have never hear the noise in the recording, or experienced anything like I described.

One Other Incident

There was one other incident that I couldn’t explain when I was around 14. My dad and some of my buddies and their dads all rented a houseboat in Tennessee. We drove down there, got on this big boat and drove it to the far end of the lake (can’t remember the name) and parked it in some little cove we found. The cove was surrounded by woods and hills, and we parked the boat by tying the motor end to some large trees on land, and the nose of the boat across to the other side (hopefully this makes sense).

One night my friends and their dads all wanted to watch a movie, but my dad wanted to bond with me by fishing off the motor end of the boat. I really wanted to just watch the movie, but humored my dad by casting in a few times. It was very dark out, so other than the deck light we couldn’t see anything. Maybe 45 minutes in we heard a large crash in the water on the other side of the boat. We put our poles down and ran through the boat to the other side to see a tree that had fallen. We thought it was weird, but figured it could have just been an old tree. The next morning we looked out there again and noticed it wasn’t an old tree, but one that was 8”-10” wide, and it had snapped about 5’ from the bottom and fell in the water towards our boat. Me, my buddy, and my dad all swam over towards it later that day and looked around to see what could have caused the tree to fall, but didn’t see anything. It wasn’t windy or raining the night it happened, and it was just one tree that fell. It was splintered where it broke and didn’t appear to have any rot or other damage, so it seemed like something broke it. Just another weird instance I can’t explain.

These are no way show worthy stories, but thought I’d share them none the less.”