Scary Night On The Lone Star Trail

This happened to Travis and I about fourteen years ago, while we were on an investigation on the Lone Star Trail. We had been getting reports from people we would meet on the trail that you did not want to camp about six miles up from the trail head.

This area is near Cold springs Texas. We had not made it into that area yet. We had been spending time on the other side of the trail head So like all good researcher’s we began to make plans to get in this area and do some tracking.

After a couple weeks planning we set of to walk the six or so miles in and were amazed at the amount of food baring trees, and gape vines in this area. We came across deer, rabbits, and lots of hog sign.

Well we found a wounderfull camp site that had been used before in what I thought were years past. We could not understand why anyone who loved the lonely places like us would not want to camp here.

We set up our camp and Travis layed out a fire to lite later. We walked on down the trail to do some more tracking and  found a cold water creek comeing up from the ground and flowing on into the forest. I told Travis that if I were the big man this is the place I would chose to live.

Walking on we came the to San Jacinto river. There we found more grapes,wild plums and lots of deer and more hog sign. There were fish in the river and freshwater clams. This was a great habitat for the big man to live in.

Making It back to camp we sat down to watch the shadows grow long on the ground and waited for the stars to show themselves in the sky. The sweet small of pine was everywhere. I told Travis lets don’t lite the fire, lets just listen to the night. I am telling you the night brings the best music in the world. The stars are better than any TV.

There came a smell on the wind that we knew well. We had smelled it many times. We had a Sasquatch near by. I could hear some moving around behind the camp. It was coming closer to us! But that was ok, we had this happen before.

There was a row of eight to ten inches round pines right next to my right side. Those pines began to shake as something was coming through them right at me! The screams were making my ears ring. I saw huge hands coming right for my head and so I dropped to one knee and put my shotgun in this enraged Sasquatches middle. I was about to shoot this thing, but it backed off quickly.

Travis went for the fire and I stood at his back shaking the whole time. Lord this thing wants to kill us! Travis got the fire going and this thing I realized was a female.

I put our two small camp lamps at the back of the tents so she couldn’t come in that way again without us seeing her. The whole time we were lilting camp fire and gas lamps she was screaming and throwing sticks and dirt and small pine trees at us and everywhere else.

We had rocks thrown at us before and sticks and dirt, but never had we feared for our lives like this.

Well she screamed in rage at us through the whole night and went round and round our camp just out of the light. She threw stuff at us and when It would suddenly get quiet was the worse of it all because we didn’t know where she was.

We stayed put because I was not going to do six miles in the dark with her on our back trail.

I swear we didn’t think morning was ever going to come,and we were so cold and shaking with no control. I realized that we were in some  kind of shock.O and we had no dam cell service out there.

We broke camp at daylight and made the six miles back in short time. Travis and I found her tracks and discovered that she had a bad foot with toes turned under. A few weeks later we came back with a full crew and made casts of her prints. She was none to happy to see us again too.

I have been going through some of my old reports.All the way back to the 1970s and 80s and 90s some have been lost in moving. But I plan to write them on this Blog and I hope that my readers will like to hear them.

The Hermit

Sasquatch And Hogs Field Report 1

I have been putting some of my older field report on my blog. I have notebooks from the 1970s to today. Most of these reports are uneventful, and were just a record of my daily life in the high lonely of Colorado.I wrote them for my children and my grand’s to read one day. But It  became a habit to sit down by my fire in the evenings and write down events from my day.

In the spring of 2001 Travis and I had heard of an old church park that had been bought up by the state and was now open to the public. The park was around fivethousnd acres with a large creek that empty’s into lake Houston. It turned out to be a wonderful park with just enough remoteness to hold our interest.

We had a choice of camping areas. From unimproved to a little

better. We chose the little better and set up camp right on the bend of the creek. there were some other campers in this area and everyone was friendly.

We went down the creek walking along its banks and in the creek itself due to shallow areas. There were a lot of wildlife here due to no hunting. Deer, hogs,bobcats and all the little critters you could want. O and that wonderful spring time breeze was bringing out all those sweet forest smells. And there were Hugh patches of wild onions to my delight. I love wild onions, and I picked enough to put in my famous camp chili.

We weren’t out there for field work. WE were just on a camping trip and we were having fun making all these new discoveries.

Well we had walked about four miles and we started back along the main trail.It was close to dark so I set about cooking and the few campers beside us were all doing the same.

At about nine people were washing up dishes and kids were playing with flashlights. We could hear the soft murmur of voices from the other campers. It was just the close of a wonderful day.

Well it came with the first squalls’ for some pigs on the other side of the creek. Than came the grunts and screams, and that smell! Travis looked over at me and he was grinning. This turned out to be a great surprise, and learning experience.

The Big man was hunting hogs! lord! it was so loud. The hogs would scream bloody murder and the big guy would scream right back. We could hear a load crash  now and then and we knew what it was. It was a very large pine tree that had been cut down for one reason are an other and the big guy was using this as a weapon!.

They were herding these hogs one way and turning them   back pass this tree. When the hogs got in range they would throw this tree on top of them.

The night was so dark all we could make out were shadows running back and forth and that big pine tree going up in the air! It was so assume and scary and so brutal, all at the same time.

You could go in the field all your life and never see such a thing. Than to have this happen by chance. It taught us a lot about Sasquatch that night, lessons we wont forget.

O and if you want to know how the other campers took all this, well when it was over we stood alone in the campground.

    The Hermit