Shots Fired

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.

While house-sitting a rural property north of Glennallen along the Richardson Highway to protect against localized equipment theft, a married couple named John and Betty jackknifed their 16-foot fifth-wheel trailer across the driveway entrance, placing their camper a mere 100 feet off the primary asphalt road. While returning to the rig at dusk after utilizing an outdoor fire pit behind the main house, they were unsettled by a low, non-animal gurgling throat-clear emerging from the foliage.

While traveling along a remote stretch of the Taylor Highway near the Mosquito Fork bridge of the Fortymile River, north of the Tok junction, an out-of-state family—parents Walter and Bernice, and their adult college-graduate son Michael—experienced an unprecedented multi-creature encounter. Approaching the bridge clearance zone at a 300-yard distance, they observed three colossal figures walking single-file across the asphalt road.

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.

Fred and Squatch Bait hike two miles deep into the dense, overgrown brush along the Kings River to document the site of a harrowing encounter from the previous year. After navigating past massive beaver dams and deeply scarred timber, they reach the exact spot where a man named Daniel was stalked and chased from his isolated camp.

Two shares, the first a retired fish and game biologist that had an experience ten years ago off the Mulchatna river while gathering data on salmon with three others, where they realized what they at first thought was a person exiting the freezing cold river was a Sasquatch they estimated to be over 10'.  They later met up with a group of observers who didn't believe them at first, but did later after they had an encounter, topped off with screams.  When both groups tried to relay their experiences to a fish and game trooper, they fell on deaf ears.

Mark was camping with his family off the Matanuska River back in 2020 when they heard a scream and loud splashing in the river.  After he saw it in the water, they had sunlight and used it to pack up camp and leave.  He has not camped since.

John, a long-time trapper, had to cut short his trapping season once he realized what was stealing from his traps. As he decided to hunker down at his remote cabin until his resupply plane came through, he was surrounded by three Sasquatches attempting to intimidate him. They failed and John instead went on offense.

Jim and his neighbor on the Kenai Peninsula thought the other was causing problems on the other's property until they saw the Sasquatch about 3 weeks ago. About a week after the sighting, outside Jim's house, it mimicked a meow that was unique to his cat that died the previous year.

In 1997, an experienced bush pilot flew a wealthy, inexperienced hunting client west of Iliamna toward the Bering coast to scout for massive moose. After landing his floatplane on a remote lake and tying off the pontoons near a beaver slip, the two men hiked a narrow game trail into the dense black spruce. The situation took a disastrous turn when the client pulled out an elk bugle he didn't know how to use and blew a horrific call into the woods, instantly triggering a terrifying chain of events that sent them sprinting back to the water.

In the winter of 1970, Thomas traveled to Kaltag along the Yukon River to help his recently widowed niece with house repairs. Hyper-vigilant from his past terrifying encounters, Thomas spent his afternoons scouting the nearby valleys on a snowmachine. His worst fears were realized when he spotted a Hairy Man sprinting up a mountain and disappearing into a cave. For weeks, he desperately tried to keep his niece’s two young children close to the house, but his refusal to explain exactly what was out in the woods caused a bitter rift between them.

Four years after the terrifying standoff in the Tongass National Forest, Thomas traveled deep into the remote Copper River Valley to help his friend build a cabin on a Native allotment plot. The peaceful construction project took a dark turn when Thomas discovered his friend had been casually dumping food scraps behind the tree line, inadvertently feeding and habituating a local Hairy Man. Thomas immediately warned him about the extreme danger of creating dependency, but the warning came too late.

Stranded and broke on Prince of Wales Island after being denied logging work in 1961, Thomas and his two friends set up a survival camp in the towering old-growth timber of the Tongass National Forest. Their desperation deepened when a massive arm reached from behind a tree, ripped down the rope holding their freshly hunted black-tailed deer, and vanished into the 200-foot canopy above. Upon returning from a day-labor job the next evening, they found a towering entity rummaging through their camp before it effortlessly scrambled up a massive Douglas fir.

Inspired by legendary wilderness survivalists, Jacob set out to hand-build a remote homestead cabin near Lake Clark, north of Iliamna. What began as a peaceful five-year plan slowly unraveled over three seasons. In year three, the subtle harassment escalated into a targeted siege. After returning from a hike to find fresh, massive footprints heading directly down the trail toward his campsite, Jacob found his canvas tent smashed and his partially constructed log cabin violently twisted off its foundation.