Advocate I
I find myself watching YouTube WAY too much, what with the politics you don't get from the main stream and who is divorcing who in Hollywood... My favorite stories, however, are the Bigfoot or Sasquatch ones. Just for grins and shiggles, with all the adventurous and outdoorsy types here on the forum, SOMEONE must have a Bigfoot story, so let's hear them!
I will start. Back when I was in high school (graduated in 1985), a couple buddies and I would camp and fish regularly. Our regular haunt/hunting grounds was Poe Paddy State Park, on Penns Creek in Pennsylvania. My Grandfather owned a cabin there, the only one on one side of Penns Creek, along with a Ranger Station that you had to walk through an old rail road tunnel the went right through a mountain, to get to.
On one of our trips, during my Senior year, near the end of the summer camping season, we drove up to the Paddy for a long weekend-three day trip to fly fish for Browns and Rainbow. At night, after dark, we would use the chubs we caught (and we always did) for catfish bait. Channel cats were feisty and were fun to catch too.
Anyway, on one late Summer trip in early September of '85, we had arrived on a Friday and after sorting out a meal and sleeping arrangements had gone fishing. We did pretty well and ended up with about three trout each along with several chubs we intended to use for catfishing the next nite (Saturday).
My buddies, Chip and Tony, slept in but I was up early and out on the creek just at daybreak, trying to beat Chips record from the previous day. He'd caught a beautiful 15 inch Brown the day before. Our catch from the day before were kept alive in an ice chest on the back porch. The chubs we caught had been cut up into chunks and tossed into an old coffee can that also had some chicken liver chunks we had bought, also for catfish bait, while driving up to the cabin.
So While on the creek, enjoying the quiet, the sounds of the creek and nature, I ended up catching a lunker rainbow on a wooly-bugger and a fly rod my grandpa had given me several years earlier. I was stoked because it was 17 inches and went almost 2 1/2 lbs, easily beating Chip's Brown. So back to camp I headed, to add my catch to the cooler and wake the boys with the smell of cooking bacon and eggs for breakfast.
As I got to the cabin, I headed to the back porch to the fish cooler, but it was not there. I thought at first someone had taken it inside, but it wasn't there either. As I was looking around the back of the cabin, there was the distinct musty smell of skunk. Now I thought maybe our coffee can had attracted some skunk during the night, but that didn't account for the missing cooler. I figured I'd put my rainbow in another cooler we had inside the cabin, make breakfast and wake the fellas, then after we ate, we'd go look for the fish cooler again.
Now except for the area right around the back door, the cabin backs up to a mountain, the one we walked through the rail road tunnel. So a little bit of dirt and lots of rocks. Still I didn't really see much in the way of tracks, skunk, coon, or otherwise. The skunk smell had kind of mostly dissipated, but was still faint so we still thought that was our bandit. That is until we found the cooler. It was about 30 or so yards up the bank behind the cabin, smashed to bits, with no sign of our fish anywhere. The entire hill was rocky, so no prints were obvious. At this point tho, I was thinking maybe a black bear, but those hadn't been in the area since my Grandpa had bought the cabin, nearly 30 years earlier. Between the fishermen, Rangers and campground back on the other side of the mountain, I was pretty sure the bears were no longer in the area.
My buddy Chip suggested the idea that Big Foot Had paid us a visit during the night. We nervously laughed off the idea and made sure we didn't leave any more coolers outside the cabin that weekend. We also locked the doors and we all kept a shotgun, loaded, next to our bunks that night. Nothing else happened tho and we didn't smell any skunky odors either.
Well that's my story. Probably just an opportunistic scavenger, but the smashed cooler is a head scratcher to this day...
Anyone else have a story to tell?
I will start. Back when I was in high school (graduated in 1985), a couple buddies and I would camp and fish regularly. Our regular haunt/hunting grounds was Poe Paddy State Park, on Penns Creek in Pennsylvania. My Grandfather owned a cabin there, the only one on one side of Penns Creek, along with a Ranger Station that you had to walk through an old rail road tunnel the went right through a mountain, to get to.
On one of our trips, during my Senior year, near the end of the summer camping season, we drove up to the Paddy for a long weekend-three day trip to fly fish for Browns and Rainbow. At night, after dark, we would use the chubs we caught (and we always did) for catfish bait. Channel cats were feisty and were fun to catch too.
Anyway, on one late Summer trip in early September of '85, we had arrived on a Friday and after sorting out a meal and sleeping arrangements had gone fishing. We did pretty well and ended up with about three trout each along with several chubs we intended to use for catfishing the next nite (Saturday).
My buddies, Chip and Tony, slept in but I was up early and out on the creek just at daybreak, trying to beat Chips record from the previous day. He'd caught a beautiful 15 inch Brown the day before. Our catch from the day before were kept alive in an ice chest on the back porch. The chubs we caught had been cut up into chunks and tossed into an old coffee can that also had some chicken liver chunks we had bought, also for catfish bait, while driving up to the cabin.
So While on the creek, enjoying the quiet, the sounds of the creek and nature, I ended up catching a lunker rainbow on a wooly-bugger and a fly rod my grandpa had given me several years earlier. I was stoked because it was 17 inches and went almost 2 1/2 lbs, easily beating Chip's Brown. So back to camp I headed, to add my catch to the cooler and wake the boys with the smell of cooking bacon and eggs for breakfast.
As I got to the cabin, I headed to the back porch to the fish cooler, but it was not there. I thought at first someone had taken it inside, but it wasn't there either. As I was looking around the back of the cabin, there was the distinct musty smell of skunk. Now I thought maybe our coffee can had attracted some skunk during the night, but that didn't account for the missing cooler. I figured I'd put my rainbow in another cooler we had inside the cabin, make breakfast and wake the fellas, then after we ate, we'd go look for the fish cooler again.
Now except for the area right around the back door, the cabin backs up to a mountain, the one we walked through the rail road tunnel. So a little bit of dirt and lots of rocks. Still I didn't really see much in the way of tracks, skunk, coon, or otherwise. The skunk smell had kind of mostly dissipated, but was still faint so we still thought that was our bandit. That is until we found the cooler. It was about 30 or so yards up the bank behind the cabin, smashed to bits, with no sign of our fish anywhere. The entire hill was rocky, so no prints were obvious. At this point tho, I was thinking maybe a black bear, but those hadn't been in the area since my Grandpa had bought the cabin, nearly 30 years earlier. Between the fishermen, Rangers and campground back on the other side of the mountain, I was pretty sure the bears were no longer in the area.
My buddy Chip suggested the idea that Big Foot Had paid us a visit during the night. We nervously laughed off the idea and made sure we didn't leave any more coolers outside the cabin that weekend. We also locked the doors and we all kept a shotgun, loaded, next to our bunks that night. Nothing else happened tho and we didn't smell any skunky odors either.
Well that's my story. Probably just an opportunistic scavenger, but the smashed cooler is a head scratcher to this day...
Anyone else have a story to tell?
