Wellsville Mountains

Sighting In Bushes and Scrub Oak, Wellsville Mountains, Utah, 2009

Written Account:

October, 2007

I was 21 and had just returned about 6 months before from living in Japan for 2 years. The general season mule deer hunt had just opened and I decided to go hunting one day after my college classes had ended, I remember thinking how stupid it was that I had to go to class during the hunt and didn't want to while I driving/sliding my car up a snowy road.

I turned off the paved road onto a farm road and went past a house that was under construction and parked in the small trail-head lot. Instead of going up the mountain I walked a short distance around a field and sat down on a steep slope overlooking a valley, a few hills and some trees.

I sat looking through my binoculars at the deer bedded down in the trees wondering why they wouldn't get up and forage in the trees for nuts or grasses. As I sat watching I heard a loud crashing sound coming from the trees nearer to the house/barn that was being built, it may have even been watching them as it was very close to the house.

I looked through my binoculars and could see a large black shape moving through heavy cover and at first thought it was a black bear but as I watched it didn't have the bouncing motion that bears have when they run because their front legs are shorter than the rear legs. It was moving very gracefully.

I watched as it plowed through thick brush like a bull until it made it to more open ground in the trees and noticed how strange it really was. It was moving on two legs and moving fast. I looked and saw all the deer running. Unfortunately it was in the other direction and turned back to the animal.

I watched in amazement was it went straight into a massive stand of buck brush that I couldn't have gotten through with a machete. It kept moving at a phenomenal pace and was gone over a ridge in just a few seconds.

I've hunted and hiked alone for years and come toe to toe with both black bears and mountain lions and never, ever been that afraid before. I immediately put a bullet into my rifle and backed away from the spot, never turning my back. I got in my car and left.

My dad and brother and brother in law keep wanting to go back there because we've seen deer there but I have never gone back. even when I hunt the other end of the Wellsville mountains I stay with someone because of the experience.

After I read that Bigfoot supposedly hit sticks or rocks together to communicate I had to wonder if it was a attracted to the sounds of hammers and nail guns while they were roofing on the new house.