Experienced Hunters Share Close Encounters With Mysterious Forest Creature

There's something about a seasoned hunter telling their story that hits different. These aren't folks looking for attention or trying to make a buck off a blurry photo. They're people who spent decades in the woods, learned to read animal behavior, and knew when something didn't belong. That's exactly what makes this video so compelling. Over on the Buckeye Bigfoot YouTube channel, there's a video featuring five different hunters sharing their encounters, and two of those stories are absolutely gripping. The first comes from a guy named Brian, who was elk hunting with his cousin Eric in northern Idaho back in September 1998. They'd been hitting the same spot every September for three years running, so they knew that creek crossing like the back of their hand. When they arrived, they noticed someone had recently camped across the creek, but the fire had burned down to ash and coals. Standard stuff. They set up their own camp and went about their evening. Then the animals started acting weird. A doe walked out from the timber, headed toward the gravel crossing, and stopped dead in her tracks. She stared into a stand of cedars on the opposite bank for several seconds before turning around and trotting back into the trees. Twenty minutes later, a raccoon did the same thing. Then a red fox. Brian and Eric laughed it off at first, but they started paying closer attention to those cedars. By dusk, the woods had gone completely silent. That's when Brian noticed the coals across the creek flaring back up, like someone was stirring them. In the fading light, they could see what looked like a person sitting beside the old fire ring, poking through the coals with a long stick. Brian called out a greeting. No answer. Eric walked closer and waved. Still nothing. Then the figure stood up. And kept standing up. Brian describes watching this thing rise higher and higher until it towered over the fire ring. His first thought was that it was a hunter wearing one of those heavy ghillie suits, but the proportions were all wrong. The legs were straight, not bent like an animal standing upright, but the knees sat lower on the leg than they should. The body was massive, wider than his fridge at home, covered in thick hair from the mid-torso down to the tops of the feet. The glowing coals cast this eerie red light up to about waist height, and above that was mostly shadow. When the figure started walking toward the creek crossing, Brian finally put it together. Every animal they'd watched that afternoon had stopped at that exact spot because this thing had been standing under those cedars the whole time. It was an ambush spot. Brian shouldered his rifle and yelled for it to stop. It did, just for a half-second, then turned and disappeared into the trees in four or five strides. Neither Brian nor Eric slept a wink that night, and they packed out at first light. Looking at the tracks in the damp sand the next morning confirmed what they'd suspected. Every animal track came down to the crossing, stopped, and turned back. The wildlife knew. The hunters were the last to figure it out. The second story comes from Kevin, who was hunting the Bitterroot National Forest in Montana during archery elk season in early October 2014. Kevin had bad knees from years of construction work, so he'd drive his SUV as far as the logging roads would take him, sleep in the back, and hike the last mile or two before dawn. He'd done this dozens of times without ever seeing another soul. This particular night, he parked at an old turnaround where the logging road simply ended, cooked a freeze-dried dinner, and climbed into the back of his SUV around sunset. He was out cold by the time full dark settled in. He woke up at 2:11 a.m. to the sound of slow, deliberate footsteps outside. Heavy. The shuffle of dirt, grass, and rocks underfoot. At first, he figured another hunter had driven up after dark, but then he realized he hadn't heard a single vehicle approach. Something was circling his SUV. Kevin watched the outline stop by the driver's door. He held his breath. Then he felt the SUV rock slightly, and heard the door handle release with a loud snap, like someone had lifted it too far and it slipped off their fingertips. Someone was trying to get in. Kevin had locked the doors before going to sleep, thank goodness. He quietly fished his 9mm pistol out of his gear bag while telling himself it had to be a moose, an elk, maybe a curious bear. The thing moved to the front of the SUV. The moon came out from behind the clouds, and the light grew. Kevin looked up through the windshield and saw the biggest living creature he'd ever laid eyes on. It was bent down, peering through the glass into the cab. Shoulders as wide as the hood of the SUV. Dark fur covering its entire body. The discussion cuts off there, but the video continues with the rest of Kevin's story and three more hunter encounters. If these first two are any indication, the other three are worth sticking around for. What really stands out about these accounts is how the witnesses describe the animals' behavior. Deer, raccoons, foxes, all of them knew something was there long before the humans caught on. That's a pattern that comes up over and over in credible sighting reports. Wildlife doesn't lie. When every creature in the area is avoiding a particular spot, there's a reason. These weren't folks who went into the woods hoping to see a Sasquatch. They were elk hunters, deer hunters, regular outdoorsmen who stumbled into something they couldn't explain. That's what makes their stories hit so hard. Definitely worth checking out the full video to hear all five encounters straight from the witnesses themselves.