In late August, a long-distance runner named Russell Bradshaw traveled to the Denali Highway near the MacLaren River to support a caribou hunting group, opting to stay behind in a rental RV. During his routine morning jog toward Paxson, Russell paused about two miles out to observe a flock of ptarmigan get startled from a 50-yard willow slough. Dropping into an S-curve washout, he spotted what he assumed was a large black bear stalking the birds through the six-to-eight-foot tall brush. A passing motorist named Trevor stopped his red Ford truck briefly to trade bear warnings before continuing toward Glenn Allen. Left alone, Russell suddenly endured an incredibly loud, sharp, and crisp whistle originating a couple hundred yards behind him, which was instantly answered by an identical return whistle coming directly from the position of the black dot in the willows.
Realizing bears do not whistle, a panicked Russell turned to jog back to his RV, pausing every twenty feet as an intense sensation of pursuit grew. Stopping near a roadside culvert where the tundra cleared, Russell was targeted by another piercing whistle and watched a massive black silhouette stand up fully in the tall brush just 100 feet away, its fur gleaming a dark auburn-red color under the rising sun. Russell drew a 10mm Glock pistol from his fanny pack, at which point an identical sharp whistle blasted from a second hidden entity paralleling his movement across the road. Russell fired three defensive rounds into the willow thicket and sprinted down the middle of the highway. He could distinctly hear a heavy bipedal presence crashing through the foliage right beside him, matching his pace.
Overwhelmed by absolute terror and exhaustion, Russell tripped twice, turning to fire several high warning shots above the brush canopy to break the tracking sequence. Collapsing wet with sweat in the center of the gravel road to chamber an extra magazine, he was rescued by Trevor, who had turned his truck around after forgetting his wallet. As Russell scrambled into the passenger seat to explain the pursuit, a final sharp whistle echoed directly outside the vehicle, and both men watched a massive auburn-haired humanoid stand erect, silhouetted in the immediate roadside willow line before they sped away.
