Michigan Bigfoot field journals

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The following field-trip log was originally posted at bigfootforums.com. Minor changes have been made to reflect the participants' real names and to smooth the transition of the report from message board to article format. Please utilize our MBF Forum with any further comments or questions. We welcome them all!

Weekend of 7-24 to 7-27, 2004, North Central lower Michigan.

On the weekend of Saturday, 7-24-04 through Tuesday, 7-27-04, some of us Michigan folks got together again for another trip up north to do some squatching. This trip would have been written up and accompanied by pictures even if nothing notable had occurred, but on this trip something very interesting did happen. The three of us who were there have worked together to write up this report so as not to omit any details or make any mistakes in the timeline of events. So here’s a summary of our weekend, with the exciting stuff occurring on the first night:

7-24-04

Paul, Destin, and Stacy met at 11:30 at McDonalds, with three possible campsite locations in mind. After driving around the back roads and two-tracks for a couple of hours, we decided on a location 9-10 miles southeast of town (and this is a little one- stoplight northern Michigan town), on a two-track that had no recent tire tracks, off of a dirt road way out in the middle of the forest. It was a beautiful location, with hills rising into dense brush and then becoming heavy forest on both sides. This was part of the reason we settled on this spot, but another big reason was that it was less than half a mile from where Destin had his possible encounter two years ago.

After setting up camp, we headed first to an area of old growth forest along the river, where we hiked in a quarter mile or so to see the large pines. Then we drove out to the Foley Swamp area to have a look around. The area had grown up considerably since our last trip out there, and ripe blueberries lined the sides of the footpath we took to get back into the area. In some of the muddier areas we found raccoon, porcupine, deer, and several nice, big bear prints, which we decided to return to and cast the next day. After leaving the swamp, we spent another couple of hours driving around exploring, before returning to camp at 9:30 pm. We built up a nice fire, cooked and ate dinner, and sat for awhile talking quietly.

At this point, we’ll describe the rest of the evening/early morning in a timeline. Understand that we are not claiming this as a definite sasquatch encounter, but it was odd and unnerving enough for us to want to report it in this manner.

This log was started at 1:30 AM, so all the events prior to that time are estimated, but relatively accurate. (We were noting the times of most events out loud, just didn’t start writing until 1:30.) Weather conditions were cooler than normal with cloudless skies that were semi-hazy due to ice in the upper atmosphere. Daytime temperature was mid 70’s but we hit record lows for July that night, with the temperature dipping into the upper 30's..

11:00 – 12:45 PM : We began call blasting. We did 3 separate sessions during this time. During this time, the northern lights became very bright and noticeable and we frequently walked down to the two-track to view/photograph it. Calls were generally blasted for 30 seconds to a minute or so, and then repeated 30-45 minutes later.

4-25-05

1:00 AM: A total of 5 distant gunshots were heard from the north over the span of two minutes. They sounded miles away. The gunshots gave us the idea to try some wood knocking.

1:05 AM : Destin uses a larger piece of wood, 3-4 inches in diameter, to make two separate wood knocks on an oak tree 3-4 feet away from the fire-pit we were all sitting around. Paul then makes a single wood knock with a smaller piece of wood. The smaller piece makes a somewhat sharper, higher pitched but maybe slightly quieter sound.

1:06 AM: Paul drops the piece of wood he made his knock with and starts walking west. Stacy and Destin are seated around the fire. Paul gets approximately 10 paces when we all hear a very sharp, very loud wood knock that sounds like the knocks we just made. It sounded exactly like what Paul had just done. It was so close and so loud that we all looked up at the tree -- Stacy and Destin expecting to see Paul there, Paul expecting to see Destin there -- but nobody had knocked. Paul was still behind Destin, who was still sitting down. This caused a several seconds of some confusion, as we determined that none of us had made the sound. It was just that close and loud. It was a confusing and "jumbled" couple of minutes.

1:11 AM: Paul walks towards his vehicle, across the two-track to the west, to get his night vision and hears three distinct steps further west towards the tree line.

1:21 AM: We hear a soft but clear noise that can best be described as a "woo-woo" noise then seconds later a twig snap to the west.

2:03 AM: Paul is scanning the wood line with his night vision on the east side close to where our tents and the loud wood knocking response came from. He turns on the IR emitter on the NV and immediately a “crunch” noise in the brush is heard by all of us, right in that area where the IR beam would be pointing. Nothing was seen in the NV.

3:04 AM : In the southwest direction, all of us hear a fainter wood knock like noise.Paul hears it as a single noise while Stacy and Destin hear it as double-rap noise, almost overlapping itself.

During the time between the first occurrence (the loud, close knock) and the time we went to bed, there were several more little sounds here and there which could easily be attributed to other things, small animals, etc., that normally one wouldn't pay much mind too. There were though, several low, soft "whoop" sounds heard by Paul and Destin to the north of camp, however they were in the same direction and about the same distance as we'd heard owl vocalizations earlier.

4:00am: Bed. Nothing further noted, although Paul did report hearing some rustling in the brush outside camp to the east, up on the hill behind the tents. Again, this could easily have been just about anything. Deer, bear, and assorted small animals are in great abundance in the area.

7-25-04 continued....

Spent several hours in the morning exploring the area looking for tracks and/or other possible sign, and also trying to recreate the sound we heard, trying to come up with any possible explanation for it. Extensive testing of all manner of possible explanations for the sound eventually brought us to the conclusion that only a 2-3 in. diameter stick of fairly hard wood, about 3 feet long, hit as hard as possible at 20 yards or less against a decent sized tree, would come close to duplicating the sound we heard. Rocks thrown at trees could not do it (only making a soft, dull thud), nor could breaking branches of any size, nor falling branches (we tried all the above).

For the rest of this day we drove back out to the swamp and casted 3 bear tracks, and did more driving and exploring in the area. Arrived back in camp at 9:30pm again, when another bigfooting acquaintance, Bruce, surprised us by calling to say that he and his wife Sue were about 45 minutes away... they’d decided at the last minute to come up for the night. So they joined us around the campfire for a couple of hours before leaving for their cabin several miles south of town. We did several sets of call blasts, as well as some tree knocks this evening, with no concurrent response. Shortly before retiring at around 3:00am, a clear and sharp crack of wood on wood, or large branch breaking, was heard from the hillside to the West-Southwest of our location. This sound appeared to be moderately close to camp, perhaps 100-200 yards or so..very much estimated distance of course. It had the "sound" of significant weight or force, but again this really could have been anything (bear are quite common in the area). Nothing else of significance happened this evening.

7-26-04

Met Bruce and Sue for breakfast and headed back out to the swamp with them to pick up the bear track casts, only two of which turned out. One of them had both the front and back paw in it. Spent a couple of hours out there and drove back into camp to leave the casts safely behind. We then decided to take a drive along the two tracks and forest roads to the south of our area, and check out an extensive burned forest fire location. We then continued exploring the area by jeep, looking at a small stream and a power line location, and decided to return later to those areas for call blasting. After this, we returned to camp for a couple of hours until dusk. At dusk, we left camp again, to do an hour or so of "shining", primarily in the area south of camp and in the burned over area. We saw nothing of interest other than a handfull of deer.

After 11:00pm (legal end of shining here), we went back to the stream location to call blast. Nothing of interest answered, although we got a pack of dogs going bonkers! Another call blast session was done at the powerlines (again, no response), and a last one (from the car), done on a two track a bit closer to camp. That call elicited a coyote response, and an owl, but nothing else. We returned to camp about 1:00 am and call blasted, and again had an owl respond but nothing more. The remainder of the evening was uneventful, and we retired at around 2:30am.

7-27-04

We spent the morning breaking camp, and around noon or so, we each headed home. Other than the giant wolf spiders, nothing significant visited us this morning!

Again, we are NOT claiming unequivocally that this was a sasquatch encounter, as we did not see what hit the tree.....but we all agree that we cannot come up with any reasonable natural or other explanation for the event, and the lead up with call blasts and our own wood knocks immediately before the event, is at minimum very interesting. The entire evening continues to leave us stunned in some ways. We might also add that this event occurred less than a half mile from Destin’s possible event two years ago, as well as less then five miles from a daylight road-crossing sighting by Angie, another member the group we hit the field with, which is listed here.

So that’s it...This is a run down of the basics. Please visit our discussion forum, ask anything, and we will try to answer as well as we can. If you have visited the original thread at BFF, please continue the discussion and ask questions here on our Michigan forum.