Grant County, John Day, Oregon

I have a very interesting sighting, well three sightings or events that took place over time near John Day, Oregon.

The encounters took place on three separate, consecutive archery hunting trips, but all in the very same camp. Myself and one other friend witnessed the first experience. The two of us and my fiance' the second, and a group of six of us the third.

We got some pictures of footprints after the second encounter which culminated in an actual sighting of a large, dark animal jumping out of a creek bed a mere 10 feet from my friend.

Startled, my friend fired a handgun at the creature as it ran past him onto the adjacent hillside. We then tracked the animal using a high-powered spotlight as it loped across the hill.

The tracks were cut off at the arch of the foot because the creature stepped on a limb, but the front part of the foot was about 11 inches long and 8 inches wide.

The first encounter was merely a series of very strange, high-pitched yells very much like the recordings taken by the patrolmen in Washington a few years ago.

The last encounter involved a large animal repeatedly retrieving a deer carcass from a nearby tree, despite our efforts to scare off the animal. The last time that the thing took the carcass down from the tree, it methodically peeled away all the meat around the ribs, leaving no claw or scratch marks on the surrounding flesh.

Since then, I have talked to others who have had sightings in the same area, one of them in broad daylight. This lady and I got on the subject of camping in the Strawberry Wilderness when she surprisingly asked me if I had ever seen anything strange in the area. I told her that I had and asked her what she was getting at. She told me that a big, upright bear ran through their camp in broad daylight, then told me that she knew it wasn't a bear at all, that it was a Sasquatch.

A guy that I used to work with told me a story about an encounter at their archery camp way up in the wilderness. A Sasquatch repeatedly bothered their horses and hung around the camp every night for over a week.

Eventually the horses panicked and ran off in the middle of the night, leaving the two men 10 miles in with their whole camp. The Sasquatch circled their tent the following night, tapping the sides of the canvas as it walked.... the two men left the next day, abandoning their camp and never returned to the area after hunting there for over 10 years.

Witness requested anonymity...
Thu, 24 May 2001 15:48:47 -0700 (PDT)