Stalking

An indigenous village hunter embarked on a multi-day backcountry moose hunting trip miles away from his community. On the third or fourth morning, while scanning the open landscape, he spotted a large brown form moving on all fours across the tundra, initially assuming it was a bear. Through his binoculars, he watched the creature travel over several tundra ridges until it suddenly stood completely upright and continued down a slope, leaving only its massive head and shoulders visible over the crest.

Around February 15, 2019, an experienced outdoorsman and former law enforcement officer named Mark Frank was exploring a remote seismic trail roughly five and a half miles down Oil Well Road near Ninilchik. Glassing through his binoculars in a low-horizon winter landscape with four feet of snow, he spotted what initially appeared to be a hunter crossing the path 150 yards away. Mark gave a friendly hand wave, and the entity immediately mirrored the identical gesture with its right hand.

In the mid-1970s, a geology student named Alexander and his partner Carol chartered a boat to drop them off for a week-long backcountry expedition up the Nellie Juan River drainage toward Wolverine Creek at Kings Bay on the Kenai Peninsula. On their third day, following heavy storms, they paused on a river gravel bar to construct a small spike camp behind an old tree stump to shield their campfire from the heavy valley winds. While Carol cooked a pot of beans, Alexander moved 50 yards up the slough to survey rock strata.

In late August, a long-distance runner named Russell Bradshaw traveled to the Denali Highway near the MacLaren River to support a caribou hunting group, opting to stay behind in a rental RV. During his routine morning jog toward Paxson, Russell paused about two miles out to observe a flock of ptarmigan get startled from a 50-yard willow slough. Dropping into an S-curve washout, he spotted what he assumed was a large black bear stalking the birds through the six-to-eight-foot tall brush.

Over seventy years prior to 2023, an elderly witness named Grandma Ruby was a young girl living in a remote village along the Yukon River. Following a large salmon harvest that was hanging in the family smokehouse, she walked to a trail corner near the dense tree line to sit on a doghouse belonging to her sled dog companion, Blackie. While wearing a newly tailored, rabbit-fur-lined kuspuk hood and practicing traditional native drum dance songs, she heard movement behind her in the thicket.

During an autumn backpacking trip along the Resurrection Pass Trail system stretching from the Girdwood/Indian area toward Eagle River, a medical professional named Bailey and her younger brother Brian set up camp in a remote valley pocket. After hearing an identical series of sharp, crisp whistles tracing their trek, they pitched a bright neon yellow-green dome tent within a grove of black spruce and willow trees.

An Ahtna tribally enrolled woman named Mary recalled a profound historical account from her childhood in Chitina during the early 1970s, where a village elder shared an encounter from his youth on the eastern side of the Copper River. While hunting deep inland on an open flat situated directly above Horse Creek, the hunting party experienced an intense, creepy atmospheric dread and followed a strange chattering sound up a ridge line.

In the fall of 2019, just before the pandemic, a local high school senior named Jane was babysitting five young cousins (ranging in age from roughly five to twelve) at a federal HUD housing unit in a remote northwest coastal village of under 500 year-round residents near the Bering Sea. After coming indoors, the two youngest children were caught staring out a bedroom window, giggling and waving at a 'silly man' standing inside the immediate willow and scrub brush lines. Assuming it was an overactive imagination, Jane dismissed the event.

During a fall caribou hunting trip along a trail leading past Swede Lakes down to the North Fork of the Gulkana River south of the Denali Highway, an eight-man group of experienced hunters successfully harvested five caribou. Late one afternoon, a solitary hunter stayed behind to watch a fresh carcass while his companions returned to camp for additional game bags and tools. Left alone in the gathering dark with only a headlamp, the hunter was aggressively confronted by a 9-foot-tall, bipedal creature that issued a highly abnormal, complex 'chirping and bellowing' vocalization.

Some thirty years prior to 2023, a Bristol Bay native woman named Julie experienced an encounter as a young girl during a combined moose hunting and salmonberry harvesting trip up the Kvichak River channel with her grandfather (Uppa), father, and uncle. Landing early before sunrise, Julie and her Uppa combed the tundra slopes for blueberries and blackberries.

Over forty-five years prior to 2023, an interior village native named Jonah was breaking winter trail with his six-dog sled team to transport supplies between a major hub and his 100-occupant home community. Armed with a moose rifle, Jonah spent hours packing the deep snow across flat muskeg segments that led into thick timber valleys. As his team negotiated a sharp 'dog-leg' curve on the packed trail, an immense, 350-to-400-pound dead beetle-killed spruce tree was violently hurled down onto the path directly out of the overhanging brush.

An experienced river guide named Rick ran a rinky-dink charter service on the Nushagak River for ten years, ultimately retiring after enduring four separate encounters with the Sasquatch population. His first event occurred near Sophie's Landing when three clients fishing for king salmon pointed out a large black figure that abruptly shifted from a crouched stance to stand erect and walk into the timber just 25 feet away from their anchored skiff. The second event involved five clients who were targeted by an intense shriek emerging from a slough near Portage Island.

Following a successful solo caribou hunt the year prior, an Anchorage resident named Doug brought his wife Claire and their 15-year-old son back to the North Fork of the Gulkana River, traversing a steep, frosted trail past Swede Lake down to the river crossing. Seeking to avoid a crowded hunter 'shanty town' near the foothills, Doug steered his four-wheelers and an equipment trailer Due West along a rough, overgrown river slough trail, eventually establishing a 'glamping' site on a flat shelf at the base of a prominent tundra shale-rock Butte.

In the autumn of 2011, a Yup'ik villager named Vincent Wasley, his sister Grace, and a cousin traveled by skiff up the Kayugajak Lake River system near Nunapitchuk for a moose hunt. Stepping onto the riverbank, Vincent walked 200 feet onto the open tundra to forage a local berry patch, where he was suddenly halted by a colossal, booming cow-moose call imitation that echoed powerfully around the entire lakebed. Recognizing that the extreme acoustic volume and length exceeded human or animal capabilities, Vincent retreated to the skiff in shock.

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.