20-22 April, 2009

We arrived at the Base Camp campground at 10:30am and began to set up camp and make lunch.  After camp set up we decided to take the cameras to the new location and set them out for overnight surveillance.  On the way up, we stopped at several fishing holes on the creek to try our luck catching some trout. We were skunked with the exception of the fish that Sterling almost caught.  It flipped off the hook before he could get it to the bank.

We arrived at the area where we would park the trucks and begin our journey into the dense forest.  Shannon, Jerry, Sterling, and Ryan went West and Clay and I went East.  After hanging my second camera, I caught movement of something across an opening to a section of thick brush.  This was about the first time Clay smelled the foul odor.  The chase was on.  Clay was hot on the trail of the odor and sounds of movement through he brush.  I was about seventy five yards behind him, but was managing to keep Clay in sight most of the times (my knees would not allow me to keep up). 

I lost sight of Clay, but was following his tracks when I noticed a second set of footprints which paralleled Clay's prints, only these new footprints had toes.  I figured Clay was tracking the new prints, but it just didn't seem right.  I called out to Clay and he doubled back and found me studying the prints.  He specifically stated these new prints were not there when he passed through that section of soft dirt.  Then it hit  him.  He had become the hunted and not the hunter.  We decided to return to the vehicles and meet up with Shannon's group.  Then we could return to cast the best print in plaster.   We made it to the vehicles with no problems. 

When Shannon retuned to the vehicles we were waiting for him.  He told us that he could hear wood knocking and it was no woodpecker.  Sterling tried several different sticks on a pine tree to duplicate the sound.  Eventually, he picked up a rock and hit the tree.  Shannon's group stated that was the wood knocking sound they had heard.  Shannon went on to say they all could hear someone talking in a low rough voice, and he assumed it was Clay and I talking and knocking on the trees.  It was not us, and we told him so.  Just to make sure it was not other humans, we drove up the road to the last possible parking place and looked for cars.  There were none. 

We doubled back in the vehicles to a place where we figured we could get to the footprint we wanted to cast.  We had no problems relocating it, and soon had it covered with plaster.  When the cast was hard, we washed it off in a near by stream and found the foot only had four toes.  The big toe was missing.  To make sure we didn't mess up the big toe, we studied the left over print marks in the ground, and it confirmed there were only four toes.  Could this be an injury, or was it born this way?  The other toes were quite visible.

By this time, the shadows were beginning to lengthen and we decided to head back to camp for dinner.  Along the way we stopped to gather fire wood at convenient places were trees had been pushed down over the road.  Fortunately, the Forest Service had been in there and cut these trees into smaller sizes just right for the campfire.  We had plenty of wood for two nights. 

We arrived in camp and immediately set about fixing dinner.   We were finishing up when Mary arrived.  After introductions she set about fixing her dinner.  When we finished, we as a group decided to do some night vision work in a large meadow that had a spring and three apple trees.  This would require us to go back to nearly where we were before.  There was no moon, and therefore was a very dark night.

Mary and I stayed at the vehicles to listen for vocalizations, while the others hiked up the trail to the meadow to view it with night vision scopes.  The were gone for about 20 minutes when I saw the first hint of flashlights piercing the trees and sky.  They were returning to the vehicles in a hurry.  When they reached us, Shannon told us they were doing good until he stepped on a large stick and frightened something in the bushes.  It ran way from them sounding like a "freight train".  Shannon stated there were "a lot of animals" in the meadow but he could not tell what they were.  When they jumped the freight train, it spooked them and they decided to return to the vehicles.  Shannon remarked several times that it could have been an elk, but he couldn't tell. 

We walked down the road for a while looking for "eye shine", but did not see anything. We eventually decided to return to camp for the night.

We were sitting in camp with a nice fire talking about Mogollon Monster stuff when we heard the first scream.  It seemed a long ways away, but it kept screaming as it got closer.  All of us, admitted it was nothing we had heard before with the exception of my self.  I had heard the same screams the year before in the very same campsite.  We agreed it was not a coyote or wolf.  More like howler monkeys.  There seemed to be three of them.  The screams continued to get closer and louder until they  sounded as if they were on the top of the hill overlooking our campsite.  By this time I had found my recorder and sound amplifier and was recording the cries.  The cries continued for over 30 minutes and we decided to chase the sound down.  We knew the main road cut back behind the screams so we decided to try to get a better location of the sound.  We drove down the main road until we thought we were in the right area and stopped.  We turned off the lights and killed the engine.  We had passed it, and it was somewhere behind us.  We tuned around and found a small fire break road and turned in.  We came to a clearing and we stopped, shut the engine off and turned off the lights.  To our surprise, the next cries that came sounded like they were only a few yards away.  I must admit, I was getting a bit spooked with the lights off in the pitch black thinking something might reach through the open window and drag me out of the car.  Upon the next scream we began to exit the cars and proceed into the forest to track down the screams.  Unfortunately, the car alarm went off on the other car when the doors opened.  This silenced the screams.  We waited and listened, but no more sounds.  Eventually, we gave up and returned to camp.  We had on sooner started warming our hands by the fire when the screams returned.  They lasted for about five more minutes.  Almost like they were defying us to come and chase them again.

Finally, it died down and the rest of the evening was quiet.  It was over.  Was it a challenge to us?  Was it upset at us for disturbing it in the meadow a couple of hours earlier?  Was it lost and trying to locate another of it's kind?  Consensus, was it was telling us it was his territory and for us to stay out.  Of course, we didn't.  The next morning we started out by going back to where we had parked the cars during the chase.  We found no concise proof of anything.  However, I did find many places where turkeys had moved the pine needles to create a dust bath.  Could the screams have been to alert others where dinner was located?

After breakfast we headed back to the camera areas to check the photos.  I got 10 pictures (but the pictures have not been analyzed at the time of writing this synopsis).  We changed out the memory cards and reset the cameras.  While we were doing this Clay found a large grey hair stuck to the camo on the camera.    We later determined it to be a match (not in color but in size and composition) to the baby Bigfoot hair we got last year.  Notice there is no medula which means it is not  human.  Here are the pictures for them:

We then headed up the road to where I had spotted my first Mogollon Monster the year before.  We spotted nothing, but the cave.  We then went to visit a local ranch.  It was a beautiful place with over 20 apple trees in some very nicely trimmed fields.  Afterwards, we gathered more fire wood, because the wood we had before was consumed after the screams.  They had kept the fire good and high all night long.

When we returned to camp, Marry had to depart and head back to the real world.  But before leaving she left a nice big navel orange sitting on an empty campsite table.  I had forgotten about it until the next day.  After Mary left, I decided to place a trail camera down at a permanent spring and cement trough.  While heading that way we discovered a turkey kill.  It had not been there the day before.  Sometime while we were out of the camp someone or something had came down within 50 yards of our camp and plucked a turkey.  There were no head, feet or guts.  Therefore,  we concluded it was not human.  Everything was missing but the feathers.  Then not more then 10 feet away from he feather pile we discovered some small bare foot prints.  If it was a Bigfoot, it was a baby.  It left three good prints in the wet sand.  Could it be a baby playing in the creek while mom or dad plucked the turkey for dinner?  Could the turkey have came from the area we found
the dust baths?  Were the screams maybe the celebration of a successful kill? 

We cast the prints in plaster, but due to the wetness we would have to leave them in place over night. 

The evening was very peaceful.  No screams or out of place noises.  I got some much needed sleep.  However, our two young men spent the night watching over the camp and keeping the fire high. 

The next morning, it was time to break camp.  I had retrieve the cameras up near the meadow.  Clay and I took this on early while the others slept.  As we headed up the road, we came upon 5 turkey running up the road.  They keep just in front of the truck for about 75 yards before they finally decided to get off the road and head up the mountain.  It was a very rare sight indeed. 

Clay and I retrieved the cameras with no out of the ordinary circumstances, and we returned to camp.  On our way back there was another turkey standing in the road.  It soon ran away, and we continued back to camp.

We started to break the camp down for us to return to civilization.  But, I needed to retrieve my camera near the cement pond, and the three prints we had cast in the sand.  We found the three prints.  One of the prints had already been removed from the sand and was upside down in the water.  Someone or something was interested in the plaster in the sand.  We saw no other Bigfoot prints,  I suppose it could have been a raccoon or skunk curious with the funny white rock in the sand.  But then again, maybe it was something else that had moved the footprint.   We retrieved the three prints and headed back to camp.

We finished breaking camp and started to leave.  We spotted the orange on the table and thought we should retrieve it before the Forest Rangers found it and blamed us for baiting bears.   We found the orange was squished and the slices removed from the peals leaving a round hull of peal.    Very strange indeed. 

The trip was over, it was a long, boring trip back to town.

video, audio, and pics to follow shortly