Texas Hunter Has Close Encounter in Sam Houston National Forest
Posted by: Craig Woolheater on August 13th, 2013
Here’s an interesting sighting report from the NAWAC.
Report# 01130050
Occurred December 20, 1983 (Submitted July 22, 2013)
Witness Observation
While hunting on the Sam Houston National Forest, I encountered a weird ape-like animal that was like nothing else in the forest. I saw it a couple of times as it followed me and finally I saw it really good from about 10 to 15 yards away after I had tripped on a log. This thing was the size of a brown bear except that it was on two legs! It was huge and I remember it like it was yesterday.
Sounds
It huffed and grunted.
Time and Conditions
10:00 am – It was very cold. It had sleeted and snowed the night before and the ground was covered with a thin layer of snow and ice. I had always wanted to hunt in the snow.
Investigator’s comments:
The witness sat stunned as a huge, hair-covered, bipedal figure walked from the woods on his left directly toward his location. He watched the creature cover 20-25 yards very quickly and smoothly. The animal stopped just behind several small trees on the edge of the logging road. As the witness sat amazed, the animal pushed two trees apart and stepped into the gap. No farther than 10 yards away, the animal’s hands remained on the trees as it leered at the witness and huffed/grunted twice. The animal then stepped back, released the trees, which snapped back into place, turned and walked back toward the woods. The witness said it never looked back once it turned to leave. “It seemed very confident that I was no threat,” he said.
The witness described the animal as absolutely huge. He compared it to the overall size of a Kodiak brown bear “only upright.” He estimated the creature stood between seven and eight feet tall. The animal was covered in hair from head to toe. He could not recall seeing anything that might identify the creature a male or female such as breasts or genitalia. He did state that the animal did not appear to have a neck and the arms were very, very thick. The witness was struck by the sheer amount of air that the creature apparently exhaled as it huffed/grunted at him. He could see the vapor pour from the creature’s mouth due to the extremely cold temperatures that day so much so that it obscured the animal’s face for a couple of seconds before dissipating.
When asked if he could describe the subject’s face in more detail, the witness again noted how hairy it appeared. He said, “There was no skin showing like on a gorilla’s face—just hair.” He noted that the hair below the nose and around the mouth was white from ice that had formed due to the cold temperatures. “It looked kinda like some of those football players with beards get up in Green Bay and places like that,” he said. The witness then added that the eyes of the animal were huge. He struggled to come up with something comparable in size to which he could compare the eyes. I offered up the example of one of those old football-shaped coin purses that you would squeeze at the ends to open. He said he knew exactly what I was talking about and that the eyes were not quite that big but not too much smaller. He then added that the eyes were a “bright aqua-marine” color. When asked if he was sure about the color, he remained adamant that they were a very light bluish-green.
The witness did add one more detail that he noticed as the creature walked away. He said that the torso was long and the legs relatively short. He noted, “The torso to leg ratio (length) was opposite of what you see in most people.”
Co-founder of Cryptomundo in 2005.
I have appeared in or contributed to the following TV programs, documentaries and films:
OLN's Mysterious Encounters: "Caddo Critter", Southern Fried Bigfoot, Travel Channel's Weird Travels: "Bigfoot", History Channel's MonsterQuest: "Swamp Stalker", The Wild Man of the Navidad, Destination America's Monsters and Mysteries in America: Texas Terror - Lake Worth Monster, Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot: Return to Boggy Creek and Beast of the Bayou.
crazy story.
a few things caught my attention
huffed/grunted twice.
The witness was struck by the sheer amount of air that the creature apparently exhaled as it huffed/grunted at him.
the torso was long and the legs relatively short.
these are all very interesting, details… if an animal is that large, YES, it would have huge lung capacity and require a lot of oxygen to breathe and move.
so that makes sense.
the long torso and short legs…. seems to be similar to the PG one….
“While hunting on the Sam Houston National Forest, I encountered a weird ape-like animal that was like nothing else in the forest.”
What made it “ape-like”? Was it eating a banana and signing with Dianne Fosse?
“I saw it a couple of times as it followed me and finally I saw it really good from about 10 to 15 yards away after I had tripped on a log. This thing was the size of a brown bear except that it was on two legs! It was huge and I remember it like it was yesterday.”
So, this guy has seen “huge” brown bears in Texas?
MY TURN to huff and grunt. TWICE.
Well, checking the Farmer’s Almanac, I see that the low temperature in Huntsville that day was 34. So it seems that at the time of the sighting it would have been above freezing. Hmm.
More creative writing, but nothing else here.
While hunting on the Sam Houston National Forest at 10:00am, December 20, 1983…”It was very cold. It had sleeted and snowed the night before and the ground was covered with a thin layer of snow and ice.”
Weather records from the Houston airport for that day show a high in the upper 40’s. The day before? Mid 50’s. And so on for the previous 5 days with almost zero precipitation. The Houston airport is 45 miles southwest from the middle of the Sam Houston National Forest.
And it took me less than 5 minutes on google.
Great research in-depth research NAWAC!
A thirty year old sighting and narrative with no corroborative evidence of any kind. The only interesting detail here is the light blue eye color. While Black bears have blue eyes as cubs, they turn dark as they mature. Grizzly Bears have dark eyes as do gorillas of normal coloring. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of Bigfoot having light blue eyes either, but I guess anything is possible with an old time tale.
I find myself far more interested in the “leer”ing part than anything else. How does anyone know when a Bigfoot… er, Ape-Bear is “leering” at them? Did it make any salacious remarks?
good points guys….
to me, the lung/air thing was most interesting… since this thing is so big, it must require more oxygen to breathe, to me, thats a critical detail i rarely see mentioned.
I think it would be more useful to know if there were an incidents of snow or ice around the SHNF around the date given. That somebody could get the exact date wrong after all those years in understandable. Too, is there any elevation difference between the weather station at the airport and the NF?
After years of cross-examining witnesses in front of juries, I can tell you two things: No witness remembers all details with absolute accuracy, and your average juror is not likely to believe someone who does. We don’t expect anyone’s account to be perfect, and if this person were to get every detail correct, I would be more suspicious.
The idea that somebody not remembering the exact date something happened, after decades, negates everything in the account is the very essence of tossing the baby out with the bathwater, in my opinion.
Everyone knows elephants, rhinos and hippos are larger and need more oxygen. Why is it surprising no one feels the necessity to deny what would obviously be true of a large primate? No one would assume they have human-sized feet.
Ploughboy: Yeah, I very much agree. I remember the day and month I got hit by a car extremely well, but I’ll be damned if I can tell you whether or not it was in 2003 or 2004. But I know it was one or the other.
Not remembering the date of the event is essentially meaningless.
They do seem to blur, dont’ they Goodfoot? If somebody in my early days had tried to convince me I could easily confuse the year something significant happened to me, like say 1975 when I got my driver’s license, with 1976, when I graduated H.S., I would have laughed out loud at them.
Goodfoot, dconstrukt, Ploughboy, et al.
This is just an unsourced internet “story.” I can write these all day long.
The ONLY part that can be sourced is the location, date and weather conditions which apparently prove to be highly inaccurate.
You’re now making excuses for an arguably debunked piece of fiction? Just how naive are you?
corrick: I hope they’re not naive enough to simply swallow a negative take on a story because some of the details don’t jibe for the totally reasonable reasons stated.
(Including the likelihood of significant temp difference between encounter location and Houston airport.)
I don’t see anything that tells me to just toss this one. It correlates on too many particulars with too many others. The actual date would be one of the last things I’d remember about something like this.
I rescued a stranded cownose ray on a beach a few weekends ago. Something one might remember doing. Not sure of the exact date without looking at a calendar. And don’t try me 20 or so years from now. (Like the stranded shearwater I rescued, shoot, might have been the same beach, about 30 years or so ago, give or take.)
I strongly distrust the approach of searching every single irrelevant detail to find one thing that isn’t perfect and allows me to, as Ploughboy put it, toss baby and bathwater together.
NOT a scientific approach, methinks.