DATE:  01/16/00

LOCATION:  NW Louisiana, Location withheld due to ongoing investigations by the GCBRO

TERRAIN:   Wooded, with Creek Bottoms .

OBSERVED: One of several field reports from "THE BIG HUNT" hosted for GCBRO members beginning the week of January 15, 2000, and lasting until January 25,2000.

About an hour or two after it became really dark I heard something very large enter the trail on my side of the fire lane.  It walked noisily a short distance on two legs as though stopping from a sprint or a jump, then walked more quietly down the trail a few steps and stopped.  About 15 minutes later another big bigfoot came crashing in in similar fashion following immediately by another one.  The one which had first arrived made a little noise in the brush and the other two moved it's direction.  Then they all became quiet for about twenty minutes after which they began to take a few steps then stand still for ten minutes or so before moving forward again.  At least one of them approached the rear of my tripod stand very closely and stood still for twenty minutes before moving again to a new position to watch me.  I never could see it and it continued sneaking and peaking around my stand while the other two moved deeper into the brush.

After it had been quiet for a very long time I heard the brush scraping loudly off of something very large walking from the west toward the east. It was walking on two legs and was not making any attempt at being quiet. It's pace was like that of a man walking very briskly, but whenever it's feet struck the ground it sounded just like the one of those giants in the movies where the ground shakes!  I did not actually feel the ground shake, but it was literally that loud.  This thing was unbelievably heavy by the sound of it's footsteps and was definitely walking on two legs.  At first it sounded as though it was approaching my tripod stand but It walked right past without breaking stride and then veered off to to the northwest.  I quietly turned with my rifle to face the direction it was approaching long before it passed me but it never passed close enough to see through the brush.  The brush and branches could be clearly heard scraping over its body and it sounded like some pretty tall branches were scraping!  It walked over the hill toward a nearby dairy farm where it howled or moaned and all of the dogs around started barking and howling hysterically and the cattle started bawling frantically.  Then other creatures of the same kind were heard yelling back down across the bottoms in several places.  It was an unusual sound like only a bigfoot can make.

About 15 minutes after the large one walked through I heard the other three (or possibly more) which I had heard enter the woods previously move out in the direction the giant one had gone.

Going on this well organized and planned hunt was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream for me.  Getting to sit in that tripod stand and hear that giant bigfoot walk past was an experience which I shall never forget for so long as I shall live.

It was necessary for me to return to Oklahoma on the Monday following the first weekend of the great GCBRO bigfoot hunt and I was unable to return until late Friday night.  The second Saturday night of the hunt I was placed
by aluminum ladder on a Baker style tree stand facing a recent clear-cut  with a stream bed down the hill to my left about 70 yards,  timber and brush to my immediate rear and uphill 60 yards to my right was the entrance from the clear-cut into a fire lane that leads to a field.  There was also a small spring of water perhaps 150 yards through the woods to my left rear which I could not see.

Although there should have been nearly a full moon that night it rose late and there was heavy cloud cover making the generation 1 night vision optics useless without the illuminator turned on and whenever the
illuminator was turned the branches around my stand reflected the glare so badly that I could not see beyond the branches.  Shortly after it got so dark I could not see the branches around me I heard a bigfoot enter the
timber near the fire lane and creep up behind me on my right to watch or listen or whatever it is that they do back there.  I could hear it step on sticks and break them and I could hear it slowly pull branches aside to step
through making as little noise as possible.  It was really pussy-footing around back there and after a while it made a wide half circle around the rear of my stand and crept along to the stream bed on my left  where I heard
it moving around for awhile.

One of our hunters whom we had placed in the creek bottom to the right of me over the hill a considerable distance away from me came walking over the hill through  the clear-cut shining his light all around him every few steps around 8:30 P.M..  He made a beeline for the entrance to the fire lane that led back toward base camp then he stopped right before he entered the fire lane and shined his light directly at my position and he whistled for me.  I did not wish to give my position away since I hoped not all of the bigfoot knew exactly where I was yet, but he would not leave or quit shining his flashlight around toward me so finally I whistled back.  This seemed to
satisfy him since he immediately entered the fire lane and left.  Shortly after he entered the fire lane, perhaps 15 minutes, I heard a couple of bigfoot enter the timber on my right next to the fire lane.  Then a little later i heard a very loud commotion coming from the bottom over the hill like trees or large sapling being snapped by a really angry bigfoot.  The sound moved up to a small stand of sapling pines at the top of the hill to my right between the fire lane and the creek bottom which the hunter had walked through earlier.  i heard saplings being shaken and broken vigorously there as well.  It was very much like the documentary films of silver back male gorillas shaking trees and breaking saplings prior to a bluff charge.  I immediately afterwards heard a second large animal crashing through the brush at the entrance to the fire lane and he might possibly have broken branches or saplings in that area by the sound of it.  I did not look.

But it was plain that two of the bigfoot had stalked the hunter from the bottom.

One from the open had followed him making loud noises while another had hurried up the hill along a large trail there to cut him off at the fire lane.  Whenever I had answered the hunter's whistle I had given away my presence to the one hiding by the entrance to the fire lane, thus spoiling his plans to ambush the hunter or jump out and scare him or whatever.
Another shooter who was sitting in a tripod along the tree line confirmed that he had heard both of them headed in the direction where I had heard them from.

The moon was now up but obscured by clouds so that I could se the shape of trees 80 yards away.  I heard no more from the one in the clear-cut stand of saplings, but the big one in the woods just across the fire lane crossed the fire lane and moved fairly quietly from my right to my left down the hill behind me on the trail out of view in the timber in the direction of the stream bed where the first one had gone.  As he crossed the fire lane and entered the timber another smaller animal called out twice with a sound like an infant chimpanzee calling for it's mama and as the bigger one which I believe was probably a male passed where the call had come from a small black erect figure about 4 feet tall ran a couple of steps out of the woods to my right about 20 yards away then ran right back in after I heard the bigger one go through.   There was a lot more of the sneaking around and
watching me that went on for about an hour and a half but since it was impossible for me to see anything through the optic's due to the overcast and since the bigfoot were already all gone except for the ones that were hiding and keeping an eye on me from the brush behind me I called to be taken back to camp.

Bobby answered the radio but told me that he was right in the middle of chasing a couple of bigfoot so it would be a little while.  The hunter who had dropped his monkeys off on me walked back down the fire lane through the
woods in the dark to come keep me company until the pickup truck arrive with the ladder.  When he arrived he was so scared he had trouble speaking.  We teased him a lot later about how scared he was but we all really knew how much courage it took for him to walk back out there by himself to keep me company after he has just been escorted from the area by two aggressive bigfoot.

I began to form the opinion that the curious ones which come up and watch stand hunters for hours so stealthily are females while the large ones which break saplings, shake trees, and walk right through the brush loudly are the males.  This is only my opinion based upon the presence of young bigfoot accompanying the stealthy curious ones and the fact that all of the stealthy ones seem to give a large leeway and remain silent whenever the big loud one come walking by.  It's only my opinion, so just take it as that and nothing more please.

On the second Sunday night of the hunt  I sat  with Bobby Hamilton in the same ground blind from which a bigfoot hunter had been escorted out of by two bigfoot the night before.  We were sitting facing opposite directions so that we could signal one another while still observing both directions.  I was facing a log which some bigfoot had been using to cross a creek sometimes.

Bobby told the driver whenever he let us out to wait until we were hidden in our blind then to slam both doors of the pickup before he drove off so maybe if the bigfoot were hiding nearby listening they might think we had
all left.  Before the driver was even out of earshot we heard the bigfoot walking around in a small piece of brush about 40 yards away across the creek.  They scared off several birds while moving through the brush and it
sounded like they were about to step right out into the open.  I got very excited since I was the one facing them and I had brought a rifle that could shoot through a little brush if they showed enough of themselves to present
a definite target.  At one point we both heard the exact same chimpanzee-like sound which I had heard the night before and which I thought that the little one had made.  It sounded like at least three bigfoot moving in the brush to me although I never asked Bobby how many he thought there were.  They moved around a short while from one end of the brush to the other end of it and right up to the log which I was sure they were about to walk out on and cross but they never showed themselves.  They came right up to the edge of the brush and at one point I had my rifle to my shoulder and the safety disengaged because it seemed like they were coming out, but they
never did.

They eventually moved off down the creek to the North and I was very hopeful that Bobby would shoot one after they crossed the creek down there.  It was dark by then and it was impossible to see underneath all of those
trees in the bottom even with the generation 3 night vision monocular which Mike had loaned us.  I thought that I heard them on our side of the creek for a while then later back on the other but I cannot be sure.  They
eventually moved off.

Later in the night we heard a very loud sound like the sudden explosive exhalation of air from really big lungs or perhaps a branch being broken. It was nearby whatever it was.  We later heard a bigfoot moan in the
distance followed by coyotes responding nearby, then the bigfoot moaning closer to the coyotes while they were all yelping and the coyotes began yelping more frantically.  Then the bigfoot make a lame imitation of a coyote yowl, but it the coyotes were yelping so loudly they probably thought it was another coyote.  Then we heard a coyote making a sound like a dog makes when it is caught by something but the sound was suddenly caught off
with a sound like something knocking the wind out of it.  Then we heard it happen to another coyote.  I believe that the bigfoot yowled to get the coyotes all calling one another to gather, then it called the coyotes in to
it and killed two of them, or perhaps two bigfoot were working together to kill one apiece before the coyotes could get away.  Whether it was to eat the coyotes or whether they kill the coyotes because they compete for the
supply of rabbits, raccoon, opossum, etc. I do not know.

In the end we did not have any more bigfoot activity except for hearing a couple of really unusual sounds which i cannot describe adequately.  I wish to thank Bobby Hamilton for hunting that creek bottom with me at night since
I do believe I was almost the first man to kill a bigfoot that evening and I had already told Bobby that I did not have the nerve to hunt it by myself (even though others already had).