During the final cleanup phase of a seasonal placer gold-mining camp situated off the Yukon River drainage, an imported heavy equipment operator named Doug was running a loader in a deep mining pit. During his pre-dawn shift, he noted an edge-of-vision dark form darting into the tree line. At midday, while sitting in the camp smoking area, Doug heard a terrifying, screaming howl echoing from the pit, prompting him to ride a four-wheeler down to investigate under the assumption that a co-worker was injured. Navigating a perimeter trail behind the site, Doug located an immense, fresh pile of waste that he initially mistook for an operational mud glob thrown from a backhoe.
Continuing down the rim, Doug observed a wooden grid-marker stake flags moving in a total wind absence; suddenly, the stake was cleanly snatched downward out of view. Halting 25 yards away, Doug stared into the trees to discover a giant black silhouette standing motionless, executing a subtle torso-sway while issuing a pig-snort mixed with a guttural growl. Terrified, Doug pinned the throttle, causing the four-wheeler to violently flip over the pit wall, landing upside-down and pinning his loaded .338 Winchester Magnum rifle underneath. Looking up the steep clay bank, Doug observed the massive creature—clearly wider than the loader's tire tracks and standing over 10 feet tall—staring down with a flat nose and a fur-hooded Neanderthal facial profile.
Doug rolled the machine over, but the action had bent his rifle's barrel and jammed the bolt mechanism inoperable, forcing him to flee on foot. Returning two hours later with a handgun-armed co-worker, both men were targeted by a deafening, chest-vibrating shriek from just ten yards inside the timber canopy, causing them to bolt back to the trucks while the entity heavily paced and paralleled them along the pit rim. Returning later with an armed four-man posse, they discovered the heavy four-wheeler had been moved by the entity from the bottom of the pit and flipped completely upside-down on the upper rim, with the broken rifle deliberately laid across its chassis, surrounded by massive moss compressions where the creature had sidestepped up the vertical clay wall.
