I'm currently 28 and have lived in the Reno Sparks area my entire life. I grew up in a very outdoor and hunting oriented family. My dad and grandfather were always out hunting when ever possible. I never accompanied them but did spend many, many days in the woods with them growing up. My grandfather owns a cabin along highway 50 in El Dorado county California. That is where most of my woods experience comes from until 2010 when my brother and I started hunting hard with our stepfather. November 4, 2012 is the night I started to question what I knew about the woods and the animals that potentially called them home. Before I go into that I want to say that until this time I never had any reason to think sasquatch was ever anything more than a good story and something that crazy people claimed to see. I'd seen the TV shows and the PG film footage from the 60s. They never really did anything for me. I was that person that said well if they are real I think I've spent enough time in the woods and backcountry through out my life that I would have come across some kind of evidence such as a footprint or even just seen one. Turns out that was a very ignorant, naive and closed minded way of thinking. So back to the night of November 4, 2012.
My brother, step dad and myself were out in the Carson Range south of highway 50 and Spooner Summit Bear hunting. We weren't using dogs it was strictly spot and stalk style hunting. We arrived on the afternoon of November 2nd. We immediately set up camp and hit the mountain for an evening hunt. The nights of the 2nd and 3rd were very uneventful we hunted hard during the day came back to camp at dark ate dinner, sat by the fire and went to bed by 9pm. The night of the 4th was no different by 9pm my brother and step dad decided to turn in for the night and hit the sack. I stayed out by the fire until 9:30pm to let it burn down to a comfortable level before I decided to turn in.
I was sleeping in the tent we had, my step dad was sleeping right outside the tent on his cot. He enjoys sleeping under the stars when possible. I would have done the same but it was early November at 8,200' in elevation and was frosting heavily at night. I didn't want to wake up with my sleeping bag covered in frost and damp. My brother slept in the back of his truck bed with a tarp draped over it so we were spread out a good 10yds from each other. Anyway I get into bed and lay there for 15 or 20 minutes just going over the next days plans in my head. I can never fall asleep right away when hunting I tend to get myself amped up for the next day and it takes a while to fall asleep. In this case I'm glad I had that problem this night.
As I was laying there I started hearing something moving through the woods to my northeast and think very little of it. There was a lot of deer in the area and it sounded like nothing more than deer moving around 80-100yds away. Probably 30 seconds or so goes by and I realize the noise is getting louder and moving towards us. Its also starting to sound more singular than a group of deer would sound. As it keeps moving closer its really starting to sound heavy so my mind switched to thinking we may be getting visited by a bear. It keeps coming and by now is maybe 50 yards away tops. So I was maybe a fraction of a second from yelling out to let this bear know we were there so it would go away and not be a problem. That's the point when I picked up the rhythm with which it was walking and it made me freeze because it was a distinct heavy footed bipedal walk.
So I'm laying there basically having an internal argument with myself because I cant be hearing this right or so I was telling myself. At this point I reached for my pistol only to realize I had left it in the front seat of the jeep so I'm pretty pissed at myself and pretty worried about what is outside and the whole time this thing keeps coming. It finally stopped 25 or 30yds out and just shuffled a little bit back and forth and I'm assuming it was watching our camp. My brother and step dad were both lightly snoring so I knew I was the only one hearing any of this and was laying there unarmed. So I had finally had enough of this and started yelling out to my brother and step dad to wake up and grab there guns while I was climbing out of the tent to get to mine.
During all that commotion whatever was there decided it was time to leave and left with the same bipedal two legged walk it came in with only softer and considerably quicker back the same way it had come in from. Now everyone is up and wondering what the heck is going on and what's wrong with me. I explain to them what had happened and how I thought a bear might have been coming in but then I could swear I heard it walking on two legs and how close it got and how I left my gun in the jeep. They just kept telling me you know you're tired you are mistaken on what you heard its no big deal everything is fine all that kind of stuff but I remained very adamant about what I heard and how it happened so we stoked the fire back up and sat and talked for a while and then it hit me about what it may have been.
During this entire time I'm refusing to think bigfoot. There had to be a reasonable explanation that didn't involve bigfoot. It did cross my mind but I had no evidence to go on and it seemed way too outlandish. Then it hit me that people knew we were in the area because we had come across a few dirt bike riders and another group of hunters who were deer hunting. I didn't think the deer hunters would be messing with another hunting camp like that plus they were driving in from Reno every morning. These were good guys who stopped by our camp early every morning and sat by the fire and had coffee with us before it was time to hunt. The guys on the dirt bikes were pretty annoyed we were hunting in the area and when they found out my brother was hunting a bear they became unfriendly and really not happy we were there. So I really started talking myself into the idea that somebody wanted us out of there and it accounted for the two legged strides I was hearing. I started making complete sense to me and the two others. My brother and I went out and looked around the woods for any sign of people moving in and around our camp. there was a few patches of snow left from the first storm that had come through about 5 days before that but we found nothing hard that pointed to people being there but it was not surprising given the terrain either. My brother and step dad had gone back to bed after that and I spent the rest of the night sitting by the fire until sun up without further incident.
The day of the 5th we spent hunting and really didn't put too much thought into the events of the previous night. We ended up in a canyon just north of our camp to finish out the day, I believe it is called water canyon. It is just south of Duane Bliss Peak and above Jacks Valley. We were quietly moving through the canyon hoping our luck would change and suddenly these two female deer just walked up on us and fully knew we were there. It was very strange they didn't seem scared of us at all. We kept moving through the canyon and realized there was something that was in the wood line we couldn't see but it kept pace with us. Even stranger yet the two deer kept skirting our side. There were times these deer would come to within 10 yards of us. It was like nothing I had ever experienced. The deer finally moved off and my brother and I had found an older pile of bear scat so we were looking at that and a bear track we found. During that our step dad said very loudly "Holy shit look at that track"! We looked up and walked 30 feet over to a large patch of shaded snow and found a five toed 16 1/2 inch bare foot print. We were completely dumbfounded by what we were looking at. Our step dad just looked at us and said aw that's got to be fake. I wasn't convinced of that neither was my brother. It was a large patch of snow and anyone trying to pull something off like that would have in my opinion left other evidence of that happening.
To go beyond that we decided to follow the track and look for another. Sure enough almost 7 feet in front of that was another print and beyond that another and another. There were 4 prints in total, we found a right print first and then a left in front of that, then another right followed by the last left print. To make it even creepier they were headed toward our camp that was maybe 1/2 a mile away. Then of course that brought up the events of the previous night and washed away any thoughts of people trying to harass us in our camp. This is the point that I finally had to look at the real possibility that there could be something to the whole bigfoot, Sasquatch idea. I didn't sleep that night at all and we left the next afternoon after a morning hunt. That is what got me interested in the whole subject of sasquatch. However I still had doubt even though I felt I had laid my eyes on some credible evidence I always had a nagging doubt about the whole thing.
Unfortunately, Mr. C, nor anyone in his group had cameras or phones with them when they came across the tracks, so there are no pictures available. I spoke with Mr. C for some time on the phone, and I find him to be very credible, otherwise, I would not be posting this report. There's more to come.
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