Siberian Hunter Saves Yeti From Drowning
Posted by: Loren Coleman on April 29th, 2010
Kemerovo Region is located in the southern part of western Siberia, about 3,500 km from Moscow. Over 3 million people live in the Kemerovo area, mostly in large cities. Only 13% of the population lives in the rural areas of the Kemerovo Region, which may be inhabited by the region’s version of the “Snowmen.” The Kemerovo Region is also known as Kuzbass – from “Kuznetsk basin” – the name of the largest coal deposit on Earth, which is located there.
Kemerovo Region resident claims rescuing Yeti in spring flood.
29 April 2010
ITAR-TASS World ServiceKEMEROVO, April 29 (Itar-Tass) A resident of the village Senzaskie Kichi, Kemerovo Region, hunter Afanasy Kiskorov, claims that he rescued a Yeti during a spring flood on the mountainous river of Kabyrza. His actions were witnessed by local residents, Itar-Tass learnt at the administration of the Tashtagol district of the Kemerovo Region, a supposed habitation place of a hominid.
While fishing, Kiskorov and other local hunters heard strong ice crushing and shrill howling. Rushing to the piercing shriek, the huntsmen saw “a creature, covered with dark-brown fur,” in the river some ten metres from the bank.
“The strange creature, looking like a huge man, tried several times to get out of water and to stand up on both feet, but dropped into the water each time and was howling. The hunters stood frozen, and only Kiskorov hurried to offer help: he threw the creature the dry trunk of a young aspen tree, the creature clutched to it and crawled to the bank,” the district administration said.
The Kemerovo Region registers a high spring flood this year, and many mountain rivers just started breaking ice. Ice at some sections persists, but very thin. The village of Senzaskie Kichi, located 140 kilometres from the Tashtagol district centre deep in the taiga, has no electricity and a road. A helicopter flies to the village once a week.
The last flight brought a letter, signed by Kiskorov and another three
huntsmen, to the head of the Tashtagol district administration with a story about this incident.
Thanks to Paul Cropper, for this news tip.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
I’m really interested in seeing the follow-up to this story.
yes, but is this really believable?
Seconded! More info on this would be great… especially what happened after the creature crawled to the bank. Did it recover? Run away? Attack? Is there any evidence? Footprints? Hair samples from the branch? Inquiring minds (and Squatch fans) want to know!
I know this doesn’t sound nice, but surely the creature would have been tired after the ordeal and collapsed on the bank and with this opportunity why didn’t they capture it or at least take pictures? i find it hard to believe in a distance rural town that none of them has a camera phone
I find this hard to believe, all fishermen know that you cannot fish when a river is in flood. Perhaps it has to do with the translation.
One would think that at least they would have collected hair samples, as these peoples probably do not carry cameras or cell phones.
Will any of the Russian researchers take a look at the report and investigate ?
Yukon red man, I don’t know anything about fishing but that was my own first thought: surely severely flooded conditions’d be anything but conducive to catching fish – line or net?
That set me off wondering, then, about the tree trunk: even if the guy who tossed it was strong enough to chuck something substantial and lengthy, surely the general momentum of the torrenting river, plus the weight of the ‘creature’ clinging to it’d make it more likely the rest of the tree trunk’d get sucked in, too; not to mention the hunter, if he was holding the other end?
As I say, my experiences as a denizen of the banks of the relatively tame River Mersey’re rather limited in this area.
Does being a former dragon boat racer count for anything?
Maybe the fishermen know something we don’t about fishing in floods. Then again the report did not say it was flooded, it stated that this is the time of the year for floods.
As far as these guys having cameras with them, c’mon people, we are talking villagers in Russian territory, did you read the part about the helicopter stopping by once in a Blue moon?
Think about this, it took over 30 years before the first expedition got to Tunguska (close to where this happened), these people are so far from civilization it is incredible they survive. Mostly native people that live on rheindeer farming and trade. The statement about the aspen tree though, it may have been a very thin trunk, maybe it was already down and all he did was push it, if the roots are still in place the trunk would of moved but not broken off.
The interesting part is what happened afterward. We would expect the Yeti to fall exhausted, but remember, it is in a survival mode, adrenaline courses through its veins a million miles an hour, it would have most likely ran away from the scene as fast as possible, specially if it was young, and inexperienced. Its first contact with humans is a good one since they didn’t try capturing it and they facilitated its survival, who knows, it may try to approach humans at some other time.
Romantically, in my heart of hearts I would love this to be true. But then, Yeti has not survived for all these millenia by being too stupid to recognize thin ice and needing some arrogant human to save him! Come On! Sweet story, but likely bogus.
MindEcdysiast: It is not unreasonable for someone in a Siberian village to have a phone or camera, it is wrong to assume all people who are ‘yolks’ are not up to date.
Steleheart: It doesn’t matter how may millenia a creature has been around, any creature on the planet can make a mistake; especially if young.
An interesting tale and quite possible. The incident is a little short on detail but the aspen tree could have been tall and slender and 30 ft long, being aspen, light in weight and manageable by a fit man with some skill. This could have enabled the creature to scramble to the bank somehow. Which the creature had not been able to manage because of ice movement and breakage. It would be nice to see some follow up and more detail.
There is an impression about these place that they have a similarity to America and Canada about the beginning of the 20th century and the reports that came from there. This suggests new opportunities to get evidence like those which were not exploited in early times in the N. Americas. One hopes these chances will not be misssed this time!
First, one would have to read the letter itself, not some re-telling of the telling.
Who knows, maybe they just call one of the neighbouring clans for “yetis”. Let’s not forget that some people who are _believed to be_ related to almas are _also called_ almas..
Whatever you do, don’t patronize local fishermen/hunters. They usually know pretty well what’s normal and what isn’t. But I just feel that the story is significantly lacking in detail.. Though I wish it was true. It would be a perfect area for “them” to live, so far away from us.
A couple of things. Since we do not have all of the information, we can only speculate. So, here goes.
Flooding rivers in spring thaw are basically un-fishable. I know this because I have fished on, in and along rivers my whole life. However, there are always back-wash or tributary type areas during the spring floods, and they receive little or no current, and are very fishable. Food items wash into these areas and during these flooding times, those places can be very good fishing spots. So, fishing near a flooding spring river is possible.
It was mentioned that that they heard “strong ice crushing” and I have personally witnessed spring floods that literally run beneath the ice. Now, an inexperienced creature could very well began to walk on the top of the ice and fall through, ice being thicker towards the shore, thinning underneath by the force of running water out near the middle. And because the current was so strong, it could not either regain it’s footing on top or through the ice, or as it tried to get back on top of the ice, it kept crashing back through. That would cause me to howl, too!
Ice on the river top makes dropping a young or thin sized tree to the creature entirely plausible. The tree falls onto the ice, the creature grabs it and uses it as a life line, walking and breaking through the ice all the way to shore. Or in an extreme instance, laying on top of the ice, grasping the young tree, pulling on it and dragging itself to shore.
I am also sure that no matter how tired it was when it got to the shore, if it didn’t want to shake the hunters hand and offer him a beer for saving its life, it could easily have, at the very least, exited the area quickly with a very spirited walking pace.
But, it is still all speculation and may be completely off the mark, until we get the real story or some type of research follow-up. My two cents worth, anyway.