Texas Bigfoot Research Conservancy

• Reports
• Texas
• Piney Woods
• Harrison County
• Marshall

Class 3b

Retired USAF Lt. Colonel (now a TBRC investigator) and hunting party hear intriguing vocalizations in Sabine River bottoms.

Report#

01060001

Occurred November 1992

(Submitted January 1, 2006)

Witness Observation

Three of us were in a 100 acre wooded area, with the west end of the property fronting on Hwy 59 South. We were deer hunting, and I had found myself a hardwood tree the previous day with a fork which I could climb up into and sit comfortably. The time was at least 30 minutes prior to sunrise. It was very dark in the thick woods. The woods were a mix of pine and hardwoods, with some very large hardwoods as this land had never been timbered. Even the under brush was very thick in places. I had walked most of this place prior to this time, and never noticed anything I thought was unusual. Of course I did not have bigfoot on my mind at that time. Some areas I could not walk through because of the denseness of the cover. On this particular day, I had climbed into the tree fork, only about 8 feet off the ground. It is cold, dark, and as usual you just sit there listening and wait for daylight and hopefully deer activity. Very suddenly, without any other sound occuring, I heard a vocalization like I had never heard before. I grew up walking the woods of NE Texas, hunted squirrels, deer, fished lakes, observed wildlife, been in the woods at night, called fox up on dirt roads at night, etc. I thought I knew all the sounds one would likely hear, day or night, but I had never heard this sound before. The sound was like this: Whoooope, Whoooope, Whooope, gurrraaall, gurrrraaall.

The "whooops" were ascending in frequency, evenly spaced, each about two seconds in length.

The "gurrraaall" were guttural sounds, much lower in pitch than the "whooops", and perhaps slightly less long. This occurred two times, i.e. the entire series, whooops and gutturals, twice. About five minutes later, I heard the whooops from an estimated distance of about one mile away, across Hwy 59 to the west. My reaction was that this was a reply to whatever I had heard very close. I would estimate that the vocalizations I first heard were 100 yards or less from me and to my east. They were close, as far as I was concerned. Well, as you might imagine, I was startled. I remember my reaction was "What in the world was that?" H--l was not in my vocabulary at that time or I'm sure I would have used it. I sat there running through the data base of my experiences, trying to come up with some animal or bird that would make such a sound in the complete darkness that morning. There was a tiny pond about 100 yards from me, and I tried to visualize a water bird that would make such a sound. I just did not have anything in my past that would come forward to explain what I had heard. I recall also that for some reason, it occurred to me that I was only 8 feet from the ground, and that I felt vulnerable. Now why this came to mind I'm not sure. It's just that the sound was so close, so impressive, so unknown, that my mind allowed for it to be a very large creature.

Going forward, no other similar sounds were heard, and sunrise came uneventfully, much to my pleasure and relief. Small birds in the leaves around my tree kept me on edge until first light permitted me to begin to make out the normal images of early morning. Later that morning, around 11:00 am, we gathered back at the truck. I asked if the others had heard the sounds. All were in the affirmative. One young man in his late teens had been deep in on the property in a box blind on the ground. As we discussed coming back out that afternoon, he spoke up and said he was not going back to his blind. He said, "I'm not going back in there." He never said he saw anything, but he truly appeared unnerved by the vocalizations. And he did not come back out that afternoon. I never thought of bigfoot at that time, although the sounds are still vivid in my memory to this date. Only later in the year 2003 did I began to read about bigfoot on some of the web sites. One reported incident I read was in the Sabine river bottom. The reported vocalizations as described were EXACTLY as the ones I heard including the guttural sounds. I was shocked and thrilled at the same time.

Additional Observations

In the Sabine River bottoms, maybe 3-4 miles north of the river itself, very close to the Panola County line.

Time and Conditions

1/2 hour prior to sunrise - Clear sky, no rain, cold. Wooded, only rural homes on acreage.