Tennessee Investigator Recalls First Bigfoot Encounter at Rock Quarry

Randy Hutchkins has been digging into Sasquatch reports across Middle Tennessee for decades, and the story of how he got started is enough to make anyone's hair stand up. Back in May of 1998, Randy and his cousin hiked about a mile and a half up to an abandoned rock quarry just outside of McMinnville, Tennessee, looking for a peaceful afternoon wading in the water. What they got instead was an experience that would change the trajectory of Randy's life forever. The two had only been sitting with their feet in the water for maybe five or ten minutes when something up on the cliff sides started vocalizing at them. Randy describes the sound as something like a howler monkey mixed with a very angry bull, this deep "moo" sort of noise that neither of them, both raised in the sticks, had ever heard before. Thinking it was some hunter messing with them, they started making the sound back. The vocalizations stopped. Then, about thirty seconds later, a boulder weighing well over 300 pounds came flying off the cliff, sailing an easy 25 to 30 feet before splashing down in the water about 60 feet from where they were sitting. The ripples from the splash actually hit their legs. His cousin looked at him and said, "You'd have to have thumbs to throw something like that, right?" They high-tailed it out of there and never looked back. That encounter sent Randy down a rabbit hole that has lasted over 25 years. After talking with family members who hunt and getting nowhere with explanations, he stumbled onto some primate sound recordings on the old BFRO website. The sounds matched what he had heard. He reached out to the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, and the investigator who contacted him told him point blank that rock throwing is classic Sasquatch behavior, a way to push intruders out of their territory. Randy had never heard that before, and he was immediately hooked. From there, he spent a few months doing field investigations for the BFRO before meeting Mary Green, often called the Tennessee Bigfoot lady. Mary took him under her wing and taught him things the BFRO never covered, like how encounters affect people psychologically, how witnesses make sense of their experiences through their own belief systems, and how to actually listen to the people who come forward with stories. Randy credits Mary with opening his eyes to the human side of the research, something that often gets overlooked when everyone is so focused on footprints and vocalizations. Through Mary, Randy connected with the Gulf Coast Bigfoot Research Organization and their sighting database. Suddenly he was flooded with field investigation requests across Middle Tennessee. Over the years, he has completed around 135 field investigations, spanning from West Tennessee to East Tennessee, but the Cumberland Plateau region has become his specialty. He even wrote a book about it called "Bare Mountain Bigfoot: The Case for Sasquatch on the Southern Cumberland Plateau," which is available on Amazon and packed with stories from that area. One of the most fascinating parts of the interview is when Randy talks about the five hotspots his team has identified across the Cumberland Plateau. These hotspots are roughly 24 miles apart from each other, and they believe each one represents a different family unit of Sasquatch. The reason they think that? Different sized footprints have been found in each area. In one of the regions, there is a well-known individual who has been described over generations as having a distinctive gray swath of hair on his head. The idea that these could be multigenerational family groups staying in their own territories is the kind of thing that makes the research feel so much bigger than just chasing reports. The quarry where Randy had his first encounter is one of those five active areas. Since that day in 1998, he has talked to people living in a nearby subdivision who have had their own encounters. The quarry itself has several caves cut into the mountain, and Randy's team has found footprints inside one of them, giving the strong impression that a family of Sasquatch has actually moved into the site. Considering how remote and difficult the quarry is to reach, down a dead-end road and then a mile and a half hike, it makes sense as a perfect hideaway. Another one of the active areas sits right up against a very popular state park, though Randy keeps the name of the park to himself to protect the location. The Cumberland Plateau is a massive tableland stretching across Tennessee, parts of Alabama, and Kentucky, with rugged terrain, dense forests, and countless caves and rock shelters, basically prime Sasquatch habitat if you ask anyone who has spent time researching the region. If you want to hear the full story straight from Randy, including more about those family units, the quarry caves, and how he approaches field investigations, the episode is definitely worth a watch. Randy is one of those researchers who has put in the years, done the legwork, and has the stories to back it up.