Certain that his fishing captain was just trying to prank the new guy with local tall tales, Caleb arrogantly agreed to camp out in Rainbow Valley near Aleknagik in the late 1980s. His skepticism vanished on the third morning. While brewing cowboy coffee over the fire, Caleb felt a massive presence behind him. He turned to find an enormous entity crouched on all fours just 25 feet away, staring directly into his eyes. In a state of pure shock, Caleb let out a nervous laugh—which the creature immediately mocked back at him with a terrifying, booming baritone. The loud, deep mimicry woke Caleb's captain, who burst from the tent and immediately fired warning shots into the air.
The creature stood upright, sprinted to the tree line, effortlessly uprooted a small tree, and dropped it before vanishing over the ridge. When the captain went to investigate the tree line, he made a bizarre discovery: the creature had been caching a massive pile of fresh-caught pike and had purposefully ripped up the tree to hide its food stash before fleeing the gunfire. Later, while Caleb was packing up camp and whistling for his friend to hurry up, the creature perfectly mimicked his whistle from the high ridge. In the brief window while the captain was walking back to camp, the creature silently rushed back down the mountain, tossed the uprooted tree aside, scooped up the entire pile of pike in one massive hand, and vanished into the brush. Fred also closes the episode by sharing a vivid memory from Kodiak Island of watching a pod of orcas tactically hunt a 700-pound sea lion right off the docks.
