Hunters

Around 2012, a native villager and his hunting partner portaged their skiff across an ice-overflow gravel ridge into Henry Slough, a specialized secondary channel of the Nushagak River located just south of New Stuyahok. Spotting a bull moose over a mud-and-grass cutbank, the men anchored the skiff using a concrete stake and initiated a silent layout stalk through the alders. While tracking the antlers, an interactive clacking sound erupted from multiple directions, which they mistook for a competing bull.

Around 2019, a first nations hunter named Jack and his less-experienced partner, Eric, executed a remote catch-and-release style caribou hunt via single-man kayaks, launching from the Maclaren River bridge off the Denali Highway down to the Tyone Creek confluence. After pitching pop-up tents on the river's west bank, they awoke to an absolute, deafening silence that dropped over the tundra canopy. Proceeding on foot down a game trail through heavy morning fog, Eric spotted an edge-of-vision dark shadow tracking them.

Around 1997, a fly-fisherman named Daniel chartered a bush flight to drop him off alone on a sharp grassy spit at the first major bend of the Tikchik River system, northwest of Tikchik Lake. Armed with a heavy .480 Ruger revolver in a chest vest, Daniel finished a four-hour trout session. While packing his rod at the slough edge, a shift in the august wind parted the dense, 12-foot shoreline willow wall to expose a massive dark silhouette that towered far above his own standing height. Out of extreme caution, Daniel backed up flush to the river cutbank.

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.

Ten years ago, a few hunters were at the Kanik Glacier on their 4-wheelers hunting moose.  They look up and saw a Sasquatch on the ridge, swaying back and forth and dropping behind the rocks.  They felt a sudden urge to leave and immediately left.  In this area, there's many, many "soft" encounters.

Two brothers went on a moose hunt and things didn't go as expected. This encounter highlights the inconceivable strength of these creatures when considering the weight of a moose.

A bush pilot shares another experience from remote Alaska west of Illiamna Lake.

An encounter from Jerry who told me his story over lunch while I was in Togiak about how he and two others were chased by a Hairy Man while caribou hunting. Another common consequence of such encounters, which happened to Jerry, is those involved, regardless of how close they were, no longer communicate and drift apart. 

In 2005, an elder shared with me around the campfire this incident that took place in the late 1960s around the Kvichak River. As the elders would tell us, don't go in the woods alone, and don't whistle.

Craig and John were on a caribou hunt where they had a terrifying experience.

Glen shares his experience from a sheep hunt on the Brooks Range back in the 1980s.

I share an encounter from my cousin Nicholai and a few other relatives that happened on the Nuyakuk River.

I share an encounter I had with a hunting guide and his client who was looking to bag a Hairy Man after an experience he had years prior. Spoiler alert: he changed his mind.

I share an encounter from mid-winter of 1982 by Johnathan, who was trapping with his brother James near Lake Illiamna, Alaska's largest lake.  Johnathan nor his brother ever returned to the area.

I share a terrifying encounter from Jason who was on a hunting trip with his two young sons in the Fall of 2021 South of the Denali Highway.