Oct 16

“Were You Guys Throwing Stuff At Me?”

A listner writes “I am from Nebraska, but currently live in Wisconsin. I drove back to Nebraska on the evening of August 28th to meet up with a buddy to go elk hunting (bow) near Meeker, Colorado. We left very early on the morning of August 29th to drive 11.5 hours to meet up with our guides at their ranch. This was my first fully outfitted hunt, so I was pretty excited, our guides were very experienced, and they were great people – we were in great hands.

The next morning, the 30th, we drove about 40 miles to the Papoose trail head where we set out on horseback to ride about 6.5 miles into the high wilderness for six nights and five days of hunting. Camp was at about 10,000 feet and we were out there, no cell phone reception, couldn’t even tell you how close the nearest town was. It was incredible.

That night we drew cards to decide what hunter was going with which guide(s). I ended up with the owner of the outfitter while my buddy ended up with the other two guides. We hunted like that for a couple days but didn’t see any elk. It was unusually warm, and the mosquitos were horrible, so the elk likely vacated the area and/or hunkered down. Because of the difficulty we decided to group up and try something different.

So, here’s the brief encounter begins. I’ll say this off the bat; compared to many of the other stories your guests have shared this is a minor encounter. But it was my first encounter none-the-less and I’ll never forget it. This was now our fourth day of hunting. Being so warm, we would get up around 4:00 a.m., eat breakfast, get dressed, and set out to hunt for the morning. Typically, we’d hike a good hour, hour and a half from camp, cover a few miles, and set up to call in elk right as the sun was coming up. This was the first morning that our entire group of five was hunting together, so we could spread out a bit more when we would call.

We came up to a park, or clearing in the dense forest, to make our first calls of the day. This park was relatively small, I’d say probably 60 yards long by about 30 yards at the widest point. As we approached it I was to setup on the East end, my buddy about right in the middle and the three guides scattered in different positions. So I hiked up and around the side of the park (which was to our left); which meant I had to get around a very thick patch of trees because I was not able to walk through silently. I’ll say this much, when I got to my spot the forest was so dense around the park that I could not see anyone else in the group, even though they were only 25-30 yards away. I posted up in between two pine trees and had a straight view all the way down the park from my elevated position. We called for probably about 45 minutes but nothing came in. It was eerily silent – no birds, no sticks cracking, no wind, nothing. You could hear a pine needle crack, it was that quiet.

After some time I heard the signal from our guides to regroup, which was a short cow call. Right at about the time I heard that call, I started hearing things hitting the branches high up in the trees above me and to my left, and they would make a thud sound when they hit the ground – so they weren’t small objects. This would have been on the opposite side of the park from where my buddy and the guides were. Looking up and around I couldn’t see any wildlife, and it wasn’t windy, so nothing was blowing out of the trees. Figuring it was my buddy or the guides trying to get my attention I started making my way back to where we came up to the park. As I was getting closer the thudding started to become more frequent – at this point I’d say I heard it anywhere from 6 to 8 times (I wasn’t necessarily counting them).
Because of that I started to pick up the pace and forged my way through that thick group of trees, figuring they had spotted something, and I needed to hustle – this all occurred in a matter of a couple minutes. As I was almost out of that thick group of trees I heard something falling through the branches right above me; I looked up and could see a 10-12” piece of wood falling to the ground – like a small log. It looked like it was coming from the north which was opposite of where the other guys were. I couldn’t see anything through the thick trees, but admittedly I didn’t want to stop too long to look. About 10 seconds later I finally made it out and saw the guides and my buddy. Promptly I asked, “were you guys throwing stuff at me?”. I proceeded to tell them what I heard and how I heard it about a half dozen times. The owner of the outfitter, who was closest to me, said nobody was throwing anything but he heard it as well and thought it was me. He looked somewhat startled and confused, but naturally just brushed it off and we had a laugh about it and went on our way.

To paint a picture of this guy, he’s 39 years old and has been guiding hunters since he was 9 – very seasoned, spends a tremendous amount of time in the wilderness. The sort of guy that made you feel very comfortable being so far out in the wilderness.

So later in the day we stopped for lunch and afternoon naps. At about 2 o’clock we all kind of woke up and started bullshitting and swapping stories. Finally, I asked, “so what else besides a bigfoot could have been throwing those sticks and logs at me?”. I mostly wanted to see his reaction, so I thought I’d be direct. He chuckled to himself and said, “ah, it was probably just squirrels dropping pine cones from the trees”. While I’ll acknowledge that is a possibility, I have never seen a squirrel throw something twice its size over 30 to 40 yards. But based on his expression and the way he answered, I firmly believe he knew exactly what it was, and he didn’t want to worry us as we were so far into the wilderness and away from camp.

I know many of your guests say they have a unique feeling or fear when in the presence of one of these creatures – while I was not overwhelmed by fear, I felt like I was being watched that morning as I stood between those two pine trees. I think as hunters we have some sort of primitive intuition that tells us when we are in the presence of another animal, predator or prey – I definitely had that feeling. Again, I wasn’t alarmed but something was off. In fact, I had that feeling at the next spot hunted which was relatively nearby. Once we left the area, that feeling was gone.

Anyway, not a super crazy encounter but after listening to your show for the past year it was pretty interesting to me. It was undoubtedly my first encounter with something of higher intelligence.

Thanks for all you do Wes, take care and be safe!”

4 Responses to ““Were You Guys Throwing Stuff At Me?””

  1. Todd W

    I like how he tells wes to b safe… u b safe stupid ,Wes sittin at home behind the keyboard at home in the warmth pimpin havin a cocktail, ur out there stumblin stupid wonderin if squirrels r throwin 40 lb pine cones at you an ur buddies

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