Whistling

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.

Around 2012, a man named Oscar returned to his family's traditional native homelands along a remote tributary channel feeding into the Copper River near Chitina. While harvesting fireweed blossoms for an elder auntie a quarter-mile from their rural cabin, Oscar witnessed a large brown form performing a series of strange, vertical bouncing movements through a 6-foot tall grass slough 30 yards out. Armed with a .357 handgun and believing it was a maimed, trapped bear that posed a community safety risk, he returned to camp to recruit his elder uncle, who brought a 12-gauge shotgun.

In the 1980s, lifelong outdoorsmen Spencer and Max returned to a remote, reverse-Z-shaped muskeg swamp line near the boundary of Denali National Park, ten years after discovering an abandoned camp layout and enduring anomalous mimicry whistles and gibberish vocalizations in their youth. Operating a high-speed Honda 250R three-wheeler, Spencer hopped off the rear rack to escape exhaust fumes, walking the spongy moss edge while Max opened the throttle down a 3-mile valley trail.

While investigating an active beaver dam system on the Kings River, the channel researcher and his companion, 'Squatch Bait,' documented complex engineering in the form of multiple, multi-cut tree trunks and a submerged, canopied beaver tunnel. Transitioning to a specific encounter site marked by orange surveyor tape, the researcher noted the exact location where a local witness named Daniel observed a large, dark-brown figure squatting on a log segment that jutted into the water.

In the late 1970s, retired oilfield worker Johnathan and his then-wife were travelling down the AlCan Highway in their RV and decided to pull over at a rest stop, where a Sasquatch began to open the roof and reach into the vehicle.  With is wife hiding under the bed, Johnathan began to look for his machete to hack at the arm.  After a loud whistle in the distance, the Sasquatch attacking the RV stopped and left, along with footsteps of others who were also outside.

Michelle shares an experience she had with her husband and their son on the Nushagak River.

This is a share from Caleb from an experience back in 1988 on Lake Aleknagik in Rainbow Valley.

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.

Here's a story of mine from my younger days back in 1984 when hiking with my older sister and her boyfriend, when I heard a distinct whistle and voices in the distance where nobody was.  I also share a scarier experience of mine of voices in the wind that happened while camping with friends in Sunshine Valley.