These shares involve berry picking and berry scouting in tundra, river country, and roadside patches—family outings and seasonal harvests that take a dark turn.
Common threads are open country, berry patches near timber or water, and groups (often family) who came for food and left with a story. Browse these shares if you want encounters tied to gathering, not only hunting or camping.
In July 2015, a military veteran named Brian worked a reconstruction contract to clear a helipad and migrate a field recreation camp from a low-lying, flood-prone lagoon island near Bear Glacier outside of Seward to safer high ground. On July 18th, while resting inside a small nylon tent with his head protruding to manage a severe knee infection, Brian was abruptly awoken at 1:00 AM under a dense, black coastal sea fog.
While managing a salmon subsistence set-net site on the Wood River drainage above Dillingham near the McClung River mouth, a man named Keith, his wife Danielle, and their three young children (ages twelve, nine, and five) were targeted by an unusually bold entity. While stacking gear and mending twine on the riverbank, Keith's 12-year-old daughter pointed out a 'man' inside the 12-foot shoreline willow brush who was actively waving and smiling at her. Keith investigated with a shotgun, firing a warning blast into the air to deter what he assumed was a routine bear.
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.
In a village panel recording, a Dillingham-born Yup'ik woman named Hillary detailed the traditional, generational safeguards and encounters surrounding the communities of the Nushagak River drainage, including Ekwok, Portage Creek, Stuyahok, and New Koliganek. Raised under strict elders' warnings that stepping into the dark sloughs or river bluffs would cause children to be abducted or eaten by the 'hairy man,' Hillary noted that the presence of inverted, root-up spruce tree markers cleanly jammed into the soil was a routine sight in the region.
Around 2014, two brothers, Kyle and his younger sibling (spaced less than two years apart), were foraging wild berries along a remote backcountry trail roughly a mile and a half deep from any actual road system on the outskirts of Fairbanks. After picking berries, they detected an unsettling, low-frequency 'grumbling' acoustic pattern that seemed completely constant and unceasing within the thicket, prompting them to pack their buckets.
In an extensive panel interview, a mainland native resident named Mike detailed the profound oral histories and recent close-range encounters on a remote, windswept island in the Bering Sea. Mike's grandfather (born in 1904) maintained historical accounts of a rogue 'hairy man' who systematically abducted and consumed disobedient village children caught out past dark, culminating in a historic campaign where a local shaman tracked and dispatched an entity, slicing open its stomach to recover nine hairless, amnesiac children.
During an autumn gold prospecting trip, two first nations brothers named Ivan and his sibling navigated their 18-foot Lund skiff as far upstream as possible into the headwaters of the King Salmon River, north of the Nuyakuk confluence. While meticulously searching the bank cuts for gold-bearing quartz veins, they pitched a light spike camp using a Coleman cookstove. On their third night, a terrifying vocalization that sounded exactly like a woman being murdered erupted from the opposite bank.
Approximately 20 years ago, a couple named Margaret and Kyle were foraging for wild berries along a remote muskeg slough near the Alphabet Mountains, south of the Denali Highway. While separated by 100 feet to maximize coverage, Margaret heard a deep, guttural grunt; assuming it was her husband, she called out until she caught sight of a massive, dark movement through the alder brush that did not correspond to her husband's location.
I share some oral history from my elders, and an encounter of mine with some cousins while picking berries during the Fall of 1998.
This encounter happened to Dee, his little sister, and two of his aunts in 2017 outside of Ruby, located in the interior of Alaska off the Yukon River. This is another encounter that demonstrates these creatures are not our friends.
This is my first video for the channel. In my experience, they are not our friends, and in Alaska, they are more aggressive than encounters I've heard from the lower 48.
This first encounter I'm sharing happened to a cousin of mine back in 1967, and it shows how cunning and intelligent they are. I also share another experience from two other relatives from 1994 from Bristol Bay, and another encounter up the Denali Highway.
