During a spring bear hunt expedition, a veteran Alaskan bush pilot named Buck flew two out-of-state hunters to a remote base camp east of Salcha. Left with an hour of free fuel time, Buck puddle-jumped his Piper Cub onto a nearby open tundra ridge flanked by a sparse black spruce tree line and large old-growth timber stands. Encountering an uncanny, absolute silence upon stepping out of his cockpit, Buck slung a .454 Casull revolver on his chest and hiked 500 yards out into a tundra berry patch to engage in wildlife photography. Squatting near the black spruce margin, he vocalized a series of female moose grunts to draw in a bull moose, only to be hit by a sequence of small pebbles methodically thrown out from the branches, splashing directly around his feet.
Shouting into the foliage under the assumption that a lone hiker was playing a prank, Buck was instantly slammed by an overwhelming wave of absolute dread that exceeded his past encounters with charging polar bears. Moving 20 yards inside the spruce line, a continuous, deep guttural grunt rolled out for a solid minute. While Buck was attempting to clear a nylon release tab to swap batteries on his digital camera, an immense close-range shriek exploded directly overhead with such staggering acoustic volume it felt as if it would shatter his eardrums and vibrate his lungs, forcing him to drop his gear and cover his ears. Scrambling backwards, his flashlight beam illuminated a massive, 10-foot-tall slender entity with a neckless profile, deep black eyes, flat broad nose, dark Buckeye-colored skin, and a striking coat of straw-blonde or grizzled hair framing its bare face like a hoodie rough.
Buck fired a defensive warning round into the canopy, causing the creature to keep parallel stride step-for-step with his frantic flight back to the plane. Looking back every third step, Buck noted the entity maintained an identical close-range boundary while casting a giant, eerie un-toothed smile of pure pleasure. Reaching his cockpit, the entity vanished into the timber, where Buck watched it handle his abandoned camera backpack with its foot before he rapidly throttled away.
