Florida Footprint Find
Posted by: Craig Woolheater on August 7th, 2015
Bigfoot? Sasquatch? Skunk Ape?
In the winter of 1991, a family in Levy County found what is believed to be a bigfoot/skumk ape track line on their property. They were able to make casts of the footprints and this video shares their evidence. This video is a companion for BFRO Report 48599: Family retells documenting a possible mile-long line of tracks north of Yankeetown.
Photo of the casts:
He unwrapped the casts that were in newspaper dated March 1991. A toe on one of the casts was broken. He chuckled that he had them tucked in a closet and forgot about them until recently. He admitted that although he owns these casts and saw the track, he still can’t explain what could have made them. He admits he is somewhat skeptic when it comes to Bigfoot, but that is the only thing that could explain the find.
He is a very credible, honest and humble man. These casts are 25 years-old and it is evident that he is not looking for any publicity or notoriety. The family has remained quiet about the find for the usual reasons of criticism and ridicule.
His step–father had a hunting cabin in Levy County on Spring Run for many years. The family spent many weekends hunting there.
On one particular winter weekend in 1991, his step-father went to the cabin to open it up before everyone else arrived. He discovered the prints, drove back to town and used a pay phone to call home to tell them to make sure that they brought a camera with them.
Once the family arrived, they were amazed to see the prints. Someone took photos and another drove back to town to purchase Plaster of Paris. The right print measured 18″ long and 8 1/4″ wide, the left measured 17 3/4″ long and 7 3/4″ wide.
The tracks came from the north, walking to the left of a footbridge over the creek. The creek was muddy and they were able to make casts from the prints there. They only took two – one of each foot without considering to make more.
The tracks continued around their cabin and headed southeast. The footprints were not always visible but they were able to follow its trail by following broken branches and trees. It wandered down, then turned east and circled around three other vacant hunting cabins. The owners of these cabins were alerted to the presence of the footprints. The trail turned north again and crossed the creek, once again to the west of another footbridge before heading north and walking through a barbed wire fence breaking at least five posts.
None of the cabins had been broken into. Each cabin had compost piles of garbage and areas where they dumped the remnants of the hunted animals. It appeared the creature had “toured” those areas.
The men scouted the area looking for more evidence and found what appeared to be a bedding area made from palm fronds. Near there they discovered several palms that had been pulled up with the hearts eaten. This was in an area they referred to as “Tangerine Island”; it had a tangerine tree on it and was high, dry ground surrounded by a wet marsh.
Video footage the witnesses filmed about a week after the original discovery is included in the following video. The family has additional photographs that will be added at a later time.
The witness claims that hunting was always very good in the area, and they never experienced anything unusual except for the footprint discovery.
The family did not have a set schedule for visiting the cabin so they find it very unlikely “someone” did this as a joke because of the effort and timing.
The step-father’s name was Bill, and the family requests that in his honor the casts be referred to as “Bill’s Spring Run Casts”
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.
A very compelling find. Everything about this screams: they found something unusual; they were very reticent to share it; and although they might have made more print casts, the two they did look more like what a foot only superficially like ours – but much bigger – might do going over an uneven terrain than like what a hoaxer would do (a pair of naively humanoid rigid stompers).
No. Hoaxers aren’t subtle. And these were hunters, who followed this trail for a mile. Their actions show their conviction that they’d run into something way outside their experience.
And before you toss this off with a wave of a hand chew on this: were hoaxers laying all these tracks, the effort and machinery required absolutely ensure that we’d have caught numerous of them in the act by now. In fact, we probably would have caught hundreds of them – all using a machine that no human has been intelligently able to speculate upon much less create – because *they wouldn’t be leaving tracks in places like this.* They’d be leaving them where they would assuredly be found. (Any find by a hunter is such a random occurrence that it would take a fool to fake it. But it’s where you’d expect an animal not interested in being seen.)
And the bedding, and the feeding? Apes do those things.