Navy Veteran Details Two Bigfoot Encounters in Louisiana and Idaho

Posted Thursday, October 01, 2026

By Squatchable.com staff

A Navy veteran with a sharp eye and a well-trained canine companion recently shared not one, but two unsettling experiences that are sure to send a chill down the spine of anyone who's spent time in the deep woods. The story comes courtesy of the Bigfoot Society channel, where host Jeremiah Byron brings firsthand accounts from folks who claim to have crossed paths with something truly unexplained. This particular witness has a military background, which gives his observations a certain weight. When you're trained to stay calm under pressure and pay attention to your surroundings, you tend to notice details that others might miss. And notice he did. The first encounter goes back about a decade, to a swampy, flood-prone stretch of land outside Lafayette, Louisiana, near Palmetto (or "Pal") Meadow State Park. The veteran was living off-grid on a buddy's 10-acre property, doing a bushcraft setup with paracord, a handmade cabin, and a small fire. His dog, a Belgian Malinois-beagle mix with serious military-style instincts, served as his nighttime lookout. This dog was no stranger to barking at bobcats, bears, and hogs, so when he started behaving strangely two nights in a row, snapping his head back and forth between the darkness outside and his owner, trembling and letting out quiet whimpers, it raised serious red flags. On the second night, the witness decided to investigate. What he heard was heavy, bipedal footsteps circling his clearing. When he stepped out with only a headlamp, he was met with a pair of yellowish-green eyes set unusually far apart on a tall figure. At 30 to 40 yards away, he was still looking up at it. The eyes just stared back. No claws digging into the dirt, no tracks the next morning, just that hard-packed clay that swallows evidence like a vault. He retreated inside and never heard the footsteps leave. Fast forward to more recent times, and the veteran is now living out of a truck camper in the northern Idaho woods, preparing for a move to Alaska with his current Belgian Malinois. This time, he was camped alone along a river outside Sandpoint, near Bonners Ferry, in a spot popular with off-roaders and snowmobilers. It was dusk, end of summer, nobody around. That's when he heard it, a rhythmic beeping that immediately triggered his Navy training. It sounded exactly like a life buoy beacon, the kind used as a last resort when someone's gone overboard. His first instinct was rescue. Someone must be in trouble. But here's where it gets weird. The sound was coming from right next to the main road, in dense brush, and his dog, usually hyper-alert, was picking up absolutely nothing. No raised hackles, no focused stare, just a pup having a good time sniffing around. That alone is enough to make the hair stand up. When the witness climbed back up to grab a high-powered flashlight and his handgun from the truck, the beacon sound followed him, or rather, it was suddenly right where he stood the moment he returned. The discussion cuts off there, but the implications are haunting. Whether this was some kind of vocal mimicry, a deliberate lure, or something else entirely, it speaks to a level of intelligence that researchers have long suspected. The use of a distress signal, something that would specifically trigger a trained responder, suggests an awareness of human behavior and psychology. That's not the behavior of a simple animal. That's strategy. Witnesses like this one, calm, articulate, with military discipline and no obvious motive to fabricate, are exactly the kind of accounts that keep the conversation alive. The dog reactions, or the curious lack thereof in Idaho, add another layer. Animals often sense things we don't, and when a Belgian Malinois trained for high-alert work goes completely blank, that's worth paying attention to. The full account is worth listening to in its entirety. Jeremiah Byron has a knack for letting these stories breathe, and this one has plenty of room to grow. Check out the Bigfoot Society channel and hear it straight from the source.