Around 2012, Oscar was back visiting family along the Copper River when an auntie asked him to collect fireweed. Armed with a .357, he hiked a trail beside a smaller river that flows into the Copper, about a quarter mile from his relatives. Out of the corner of his eye he saw something brown hopping in the grass 30 or 40 yards out. He took it for a bear, drew the pistol, and yelled "hey bear," but the shape kept hopping just above the grass, unlike any bear he'd seen. Thinking it might be injured or in a trap, and close to family, he started toward it, then decided a .357 wasn't enough and went back for his uncle and a shotgun. The hopping had stopped, and it had gone very quiet.
His uncle came along grudgingly. They followed a fresh path of laid-over grass and, in a muddy patch just before the trees, found tracks one in front of the other about four and a half feet apart — bare footprints, not bear tracks. Oscar thought they were a bear's double step; his uncle said it was a hairy man and refused to go farther. A sharp, piercing whistle then came from behind them, toward the cabin, so loud Oscar felt as if his ears were going to bleed. As they sidestepped back to the trail, a second whistle came from their left, and a single spruce was shaking while the other trees stood still. Farther on they looked back and saw a dark figure standing between two spruce trees, holding and shaking both, then lifting its head to whistle again; Oscar thought the jaw seemed to widen. A return whistle came from their right. His uncle yelled at it to go away, and everything went dead quiet.
It felt like a standoff. His uncle pointed out the same brown color hopping just inside the trees. After another whistle he grabbed Oscar's coat and started dragging him down the trail, then tripped. As Oscar helped him up they heard a large animal scurrying in the late-fall undergrowth. His uncle whispered to look right: a slender, brownish-orange figure almost 11 feet tall — Oscar later measured the tree beside it — with a flat nose, eyes like big dark sockets, and basically no neck. Oscar glanced left and saw a smaller one duck behind the brush, then hop through the grass toward the tall one. It stood up just under the tall one's shoulder and looked back at them with really big eyes and a jaw that looked extra wide. Both quartered away into the trees. Back at the cabin, his uncle said he'd seen those two three years earlier, when the smaller one was about half as tall, hopping and half-galloping in the open, and the other was standing in the trees staring at him. Oscar wouldn't give the exact location, because his family still lives there and the activity is ongoing.
