Saturday, November 3, 2012

South Weber, Canal

 Canal, South Weber, Utah, 2011

This story happened in South Weber, 1977.

A young girl was getting ready for church and looked south out her back window and saw a large biped walking down the hill behind her house. She went to church and that’s when this story begins. After the whole congregation got out of church the area was in an uproar.

It was the next day that Mr. Sanders (about 24) and his friend decided they would try to find tracks and follow them. Mr. Sanders took me to the Weber Basin Canal where it goes under the road right where the young girl’s house still stands. The canal is fenced off now but wasn’t then so he pointed out to me what he found as we stood on the road looking directly west.

We picked up a set of very large tracks at the bottom of the hill as they were easy to spot and followed them to the canal not far where we are standing now (this was about 30 yards from the road.) We could clearly see prints that came up to the edge of the canal (which is about 24 or so feet wide and at that time was empty with about 4-6 inches of snow in the bottom.)

There was one single track in the middle of the canal and two tracks on the other side where the creature landed and walked west along the north side of the waterway. Can you imagine the strength of muscle to propel and 800 lb creature 12 feet across and then drop 6 feet into the canal and on that same foot jump clear across to the other side? Incredible and unbelievable.

It was not very far when we spotted another set of tracks smaller than the first and they walked together. The smaller ones must have been another creature like a youngster. The tracks later turned north and we lost them for a while but picked them up in some tall cottonwood trees north of where we lost the tracks as they crossed the road.

We had to circle around to find them again. They walked around in those trees a lot but eventually went north east and we lost them altogether as if they were heading up Weber Canyon.

Source: Dave Carver

Friday, November 2, 2012

Hamblin Valley


Hamblin Valley, Utah/Nevada Border, 2012

My name is Carol and I live in Modena, Utah...along the Nev/Utah border. I was hunting on horseback in the Hamblin Valley in February of 2004 here..and my horse all of a sudden became panicked. He reared up...with nostrils flared...and I looked in the direction of where he was looking.

I saw it...I believe it was female..about 8 or more feet tall....black..and it was doing something in an old rock burned out root cellar. It was bending over and saw me..and stood up. I was a hundred yards from it.

My horse was spazzing out and terrified....It was dusk and the creature just looked at us....in heading out.. I saw a big pile of poop...it looked human...but on a larger scale.

The area is called Deadhorse corner..named by local residents...and has old horse skeletons to mark the road. I' am still curious and going to return with my camera.

 There is no doubt that this is Bigfoot.

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Butterfield Canyon

Butterfield Canyon, Utah, 2012

It was late summer and the antlers were hard now, if still velvet covered… The beginning of what the Indians called the Moon of the Crying Elk, though there was no evidence of them bugling yet. In fact, the bulls still seemed to be running in bachelor bands as we saw three different such bands on this day.

It was in the early 1990s and my son in law had graduated from BYU the previous spring and had taken a position with a firm in the Salt Lake Valley and was living in the Holliday, UT area. Cabin fever was hard upon us when we decided a voyage of exploration might be in order. Why we chose the west side of the valley that day, I have no idea. Perhaps those in charge (our wives) had placed a time limit on us for our excursion as our previous outing that had begun at Provo Canyon had lasted until the wee dark, single digit hours of the following morning… they were prone to do that in those times for some perverse reason. I can’t say that those restrictions ever really limited our outings to any degree although that lack of limiting discipline might have been the cause of the two of us fixing our own dinners from time to time. Today was to prove no exception.

We traveled west across the valley on one of the streets that was a direct route… 4100 S. I think, in looking at the map... we intersected the main road on the west side of the valley near a powder company (Hercules Powder, perhaps?). From there we journeyed south with the idea of finding a likely looking canyon that would allow us a hike into its bowels. Several times in this area, we saw elk in the distance, including two bachelor bands, one of which held two exceptional bulls, the larger of which would have probably been a 320 class bull or better. Since all of these appeared in direct correlation to an ample supply of “No Trespassing” signs, we assumed that Utah elk had the ability to, if not actually read, at least to recognize signs! On one occasion we spotted a band of six Mule Deer bucks feeding on some green feed very near an old farmstead. As this area was lacking those hated signs, we decided to put a stalk on them, eventually closing to within bow range of the bucks. There were two in this band that I would have happily brought home. Both were 4X4s with extremely high and wide racks though still fully in the velvet yet.

We traveled on south past the great mine at Bingham Canyon to a point just south of there. There is a road there that turns up Butterfield Canyon and we decided we had time to explore this area before curfew… well… at least not MUCH beyond curfew… How far up that canyon we were, I, at this late date, cannot recall. I guesstimate about five miles. In glassing to the south, slightly past a large pile of rock that I guessed to be tailings, we spotted another bachelor band of elk. We could not see how many or what quality these animals were, but, since there were no signs to tell us otherwise, we decided to check it out. I parked my old Bronco, Widowmaker, out of sight of the road and we headed up a small draw…

It was not far up this gulch that we came to a split and my son in law took the south arm while I took the north. About twenty minutes later as I lay glassing a clearing that lay before me and between me and my son, I saw a shape in the small trees that defined the far side of the clearing. I lay very quietly in my place and watched closely, fully expecting a muley doe to come out of that brush as the glimpse I had had been far too dark to be an elk. Very suddenly, the dark shape darted from the cover it had been in while hiding from me and entered an even thicker, darker copse beyond. It was a large being… running on its hind legs… at least seven feet tall and possibly as much as seven and a half feet. It was massively built and very dark. Its arms were long, as they had to be and it was very cautious of me. I had no problem understanding what it was, though I was mildly surprised to see it here. I wondered why it had revealed itself to me with that sudden dash when I heard brush cracking and Lynn emerged from the thick cover. He had followed his branch to where it had become too difficult to continue, since we were not really hunting, but just out curing a fever, and had decided to move in my direction.

As had happened so many times before in our years of hunting together, his move was timed impeccably and worked to our mutual benefit. I did spend a bit of time looking for tracks which were evident only as disturbances of the leaves on the ground. I also took the opportunity to unobtrusively estimate the height of the small trees he’d been standing amidst while hiding from me to better determine a height estimate.

We then retraced out steps to ol’ Widowmaker and headed on home… first stopping at a Burger King along the way to preclude the “punishment” we had waiting for us on arrival.

Source: Account provided by Thom Cantrell