Why am I so sure Bigfoot is real?

I have never linked the account of exactly what happened in Myakka on our expedition in detail with the video I made. Because of what happened over the course of those three incredible days I have not been able to let go of the fact that nothing is being done about validation this species.

From my personal research journal-

August 18, 2012 Myakka State park 

My son is a very mild mannered and unassuming young man. He’s well adjusted socially and got good grades in school. In point of fact, he’s never really been a problem for his mother or me. He’s very active and successful in whatever he sets his mind to doing. Really…He’s the best son a father could have hoped for. His mother and I separated when he was 4 years old. I was devastated and have never really recovered from that. He was everything to me.  As time went on she remarried to a really nice guy and I moved on as well. I have always tried to respect my son’s journey in life. I never tried to control or direct him in any way. I was simply there when he needed advice or guidance and those times were in fact few. Looking back over the years, I think that although he listened intently to all my rants about Bigfoot, he really didn’t understand my interest in the subject. 

As time passed and my interest and knowledge on the subject strengthened…he had developed his own belief about Bigfoot…It wasn’t real. 

Being the respectful young man he was, he’d never shared this belief with me. In my mind I assumed that who I was and what I thought had somehow through osmosis, been absorbed by his mind.  I had no Idea that my own son, my own flesh and blood… really thought that I was crazy and all of this was ridiculous. To him there was no such thing as Bigfoot…period. Upon realizing that this was how he felt, I thought a dose of reality would be a good idea, I really wanted to take him with me on an expedition, now that I knew what I knew.

"Jurassic Park"

I’d been researching Myakka state park for over a decade, reading reports, developing my own maps and sightings comparison overlays. Based on my extensive map and satellite research of the park, I was very sure of exactly what areas in which we’d find evidence of Bigfoot activity, despite their proximity to humans. You see, here in Florida, the dry areas of the state are currently occupied by human habitation and most of the reports from Florida are in close proximity to human activity or actual human habitation. Although I’d researched Myakka for a very long time, up to that point I’d spent only one night inside the park, it was the single most unnerving location I’d ever camped or hiked at night. The wildlife has boomed in that park. Hiking a trail there at night in the summer is an exercise in self control.

The events of the expedition I’m about to describe to you, were something that neither my son nor I were expecting. The account of this expedition is taken directly from my journals.

All of this, however impossible it may sound, happened exactly the way it is described and had a profound affect on my life. 

Day 1 Ft. Lauderdale, 4:00 a.m.

We loaded the night before and left for our three day expedition to Myakka on the west coast of Florida. As usual when traveling to the west coast, I took I-75 and cut across the everglades. When we reached the other side I came north and headed toward Sarasota. After stopping for breakfast, we arrived at the park at approximately 8:30 a.m. As we pulled up to the entrance on the left, there was a very large wild hog, around three hundred and fifty pounds I’d say, rooting off the side of the road beneath the Myakka State Park sign. I looked over at “Lil Z” as I call him, and smiled. “Welcome to Jurassic Park,”

He was like “Wow, look at that thing, that’s a big one!”

We checked in with the office ranger and headed for the “Big Flats” campground. Big Flats is not “Deep” in the wilderness. It sits on the eastern side of a very large wetland prairie with a paved main park road leading up to it. The park itself is visually stunning. The wildlife, including every native species that originally inhabited the state of Florida, abounds and is easily viewed from a car by simply driving on the main park road, and of course there are thousands of wild hogs.

Chris was amazed at how the deer were just standing on the side of the road chewing on stuff. We slowed and rolled the window down a few different times to get some photos. Sometimes they’d stay right there, ten feet from the car.

Day 1-9:00 a.m.

We arrived at “Big Flats” and started unloading the gear. We set up the campsite in about an hour and started getting ready for our first hike.

There are no firearms allowed in the park. We had one machete each, one large hunting knife, five pounds of plaster for casting, water, energy bars and two cameras, one video and one digital still photo. I like to use a natural mosquito repellant that contains eucalyptus. It smells a lot better than the other more popular brands and once applied to the skin has a cooling effect, especially when the wind hits you. This aids in staying cool on hikes and man, it was a typical Florida August day, it was around ninety-five degrees out with ninety-nine percent humidity.

Day 1-10:15 a.m.

We jumped in the car and headed for the research area. The spot we were headed to is not off the beaten path; in fact it’s heavily used every single day by the people that camp in and visit the park, the main trail observation towers. A few weeks earlier I’d read a report online that was filed by a professional nature photographer who had recently visited the park. She stated that in the early morning hours she climbed to the top of one of the towers to get a bird’s eye view of the park from above the jungle canopy. While up there photographing the vast jungle and forest treetops she heard a noise from below. She looked down and to her own amazement there was a giant, heavily muscled, hair covered humanoid feeding on something at the base of some cypress trees. She said she was so shocked by what she saw, she forgot all about her camera and never even thought about taking a photo until whatever it was had moved off and disappeared into the jungle.

This was our starting point for the expedition; however ridiculous it seemed, I had the feeling that it was a good move. We pulled into parking lot at the trail head and got geared up. We checked the batteries in our cameras and started shooting video right then. We joked about what we might see or find. And of course Little Z was hamming it up. He seemed excited to be with me on the expedition, I felt great about that. I went over a few important things right then before we left the parking lot.

Knowing what I knew from the other encounters I’d already had, I learned a few things.

This is exactly what I told my son: “Christopher, what you do or don’t believe is real, has no bearing on reality. I know it’s real and I can tell you that it’s very big, very scary, and capable of ripping your arm off and beating you to death with it, or worse, so don’t do anything stupid like wander off on your own or try to chase after anything you may see, tell me first, don’t run off without me, this is not a joke, were here and we may get into some serious shit, Ok?”

To which he replied sarcastically, “Got it daaad!”

Day 1-10:30 a.m.

We headed in under the canopy of the main trail. I slowed us down immediately and started looking for tracks, figuring this would be a good time to show my son what to look for. I explained how and what to look for given the varying substrates we were on. The fact is; it took all of two minutes and seventy-five yards of hiking to find our first track. Right off the bat, we came upon a perfect thirteen and a half inch long, six inch wide, flat, barefoot track. The toes were visible even though it was in a harder, rougher substrate. The track was so obvious we both spotted it at the same moment. Immediately I noted that my own weight left no visible impression at all. Whatever left this track was big and very heavy. This is the first clue to the validity of a track; could it have been made by a normal human being? It was right on the side of the main trail you couldn’t miss it, if you were looking. Christopher was flat out shocked, and even though I knew they were here in the park somewhere, so was I. We filmed the find carefully, measuring the track with a tape. It did not appear to be human though it was a human type of track. We commented on the obvious nature of the track itself and scouted the area for others.

Little Z stated on camera, “We can still see the car through the trees and here it is, this is our first track already, and this is just the beginning.”

Now…He was looking and he was officially “On expedition.”

As we stood there shooting video and documenting the track, some people started coming up the trail heading towards us from the parking lot. Remember, this is not a spot that is way out in the middle of nowhere, it’s literally the most visited spot and heavily used trail in the park. We stood there in amazement as these people simply walked right by us like nothing was going on at all. We stopped filming and remarked at how truly unaware they were of what was so obviously going on right under their noses.  We decided to go straight to the area of the nature photographers sighting, after all, we just found a track and were no more than a hundred feet from the exact spot of her encounter.

Upon reaching the observation tower, we looked around for more tracks and that’s when I noticed a small game trail leading off to the south into the thick jungle. I looked at little Z and asked him if he was ready to go in, he said “Let’s do it.”

We turned off the main trail into the brush, heading south from the base of the observation towers. At that moment I was hopeful we’d find more evidence, But neither of us were prepared for what was about to happen. As I stated, my son was not a “Believer” that any of this was real, all that was about to change.

Day 1-11:00 a.m.

Hiking in Myakka is like traveling back in time. The trees have a prehistoric look to them. Some of the most incredible photos I have ever taken have been in this park and they’re just photos of trees from the trail.

 Although there are several types of trees in the park; Banyans, oaks, cypress, pines and palms to name a few, the palms make up the majority of the off-trail cover. For the purposes of describing this encounter I’m going to use two general descriptions, Ground palms and tall palms. The ground palms, consisting mainly of cabbage and saw palmettos are larger in Myakka than I'd ever seen anywhere in Florida up to that point. Typical ground palms in the state of Florida will rarely get over six feet in height. The ground palms in Myakka rarely get less than six feet in height; some of these cabbage and saw palmetto hammocks were in excess of twelve feet high. The patches or hammocks of these ground palms grow so thick that in most cases you cannot get into them. The saw palmettos have long, flat and thin branches that are covered in saw teeth the entire length of the branch itself. These palmetto hammocks appear in front of you when you’re hiking a trail and are approaching a clearing in the canopy above. Suddenly you’re stopped in your tracks by a huge impenetrable wall of ground palms. It’s because of these “Walls” of ground palms that when we cut off trail one of the first things we realized was we going to have follow whatever “lesser” trails we could find. I found a few very small but well used game trails heading into an area that borders the swamp that winds its way around the entire area. Skirting the huge patches of ground palms, we were led to an opening in the canopy and yet another giant patch of saw palmettos stood in front of us.

 That’s when the owl first appeared. It was huge; it flew in and landed about twenty feet away from us up in an oak tree. We took pictures of it for a few minutes as it stared at us and “Hooted” loudly. 

We didn’t know it right then, but this owl would shadow all our movements in the park for three days. It showed up everywhere we went, on foot or by car. We both remarked on the owl’s presence several times over the course of our expedition to each other, it was strange to say the least.

 Little Z was standing on my right side surveying the eight foot high wall in front of us, when he looked over at me.

“Do a couple of calls dad.”

What he refers to as “Calls” are actually more like aggressive, frightening loud, low pitched screams. I believe the species is highly territorial, like us, so I want them to know someone has just aggressively entered their area. I used this same type of “Intrusive” scream to illicit my first close encounter; if it works don’t fix it, right?

I took a couple of deep breaths and screamed out at the top of my lungs like a madman. Instantly, I caught movement off to the left of my position. Several wild hogs shot out of the hammock in a panic and ran off screaming and grunting. I was focused on that when little Z called to me softly from his position.

“Dad, did you hear that?”

“The hogs?” I replied as I walked to him.

“No, something else, something moaned like HMMMMMM! Right over that way in the there.”

He pointed to the right, out in the hammock, not the left where the hogs came rushing out. I realized it could have been another hog and asked him if it could have been a hog, he said yes.

I decided we needed to make sure. So we went into the saw palmettos, very carefully. In spite of our efforts to remain as quiet as we could be, we were making so much noise it was all you could hear. To say we were loud is an understatement. I was bogged down and being torn apart by the saw blade covered branches. I fell several times caught up in the thousands of razor sharp swords.

 I realized we would never hear anything else in the hammock so I waved him to stop like me and when we did, we could hear something moving just ahead of us inside the patch around sixty feet away. Then it stopped. We moved, it moved. We stopped, it stopped. We kept looking at each other in disbelief like, “Someone’s toying with us!”

This game of “cat and mouse” went on for almost forty-five minutes. We could not see what it was, but it sounded like heavy human footsteps, like ours, and we were starting to get a bit freaked out over this. This is not the behavior of hogs, or deer or any other animal for that matter, this behavior was sneaky and intelligent not instinctive.

You see, wild hogs have absolutely no desire to be near humans; they are instinctively afraid of humans and will flee, most times at the sound or sight of a man.

Day 1-11:45 a.m.

 I decided that since we couldn't see whatever it was, we should move as fast as we could to the other side of the hammock and get out to the edge into the open. I explained that once we got out of the hammock, we would run down to the end and try to cut off whatever was in there with us, hopefully before it exited the hammock itself. It seemed like a good plan, so we took off for the edge of the patch.  Of course I fell again, bogged down and bleeding like I’d been in a sword fight. “Shorts, why did I wear shorts?” I kept thinking. Finally we reached the outside of the patch regained our footing and ran for the other end to see if we could get a look at whatever was in there with us. As we reached the end of the saw palmettos we came upon a large clearing that was in the open sunlight with no canopy over head. This was the first time since we entered the park that we were in direct sunlight. There at the end of the hammock we’d just exited was the edge of a swamp and lots of water. We noticed the area was recently cleared and the ground was mulched. This clearing looked very different from anything we’d seen in the park that day. Little Z walked up to the end of the palmettos, I paused and started to change the batteries in my video camera, they had gone dead inside the hammock.

He was standing around ten feet from me on my left past the end of the palmettos with a clear view ahead of him for around fifty yards or so, the wall of palmettos still blocked my view ahead. All of the sudden, Christopher made a strange, guttural sound, one of shock and disbelief. I looked up at him as I placed the new battery in the camera. He was looking straight ahead, his mouth was hanging open.

 He said softly, “What? What is that?” Then he shouted, “There it is! There it is! It’s Right there! Its right there, it’s fucking right there!”

Then, he tried to chase it.

I hit the power button on the camera and ran at him, I had not seen what he’d seen, so I didn’t know what we were up against; I reached out, grabbed his shirt and yanked him to a stop.

“Hang on man, what was it?”

 I wanted to make sure of what he saw.

“It!”

 I looked off in the direction he was looking, but saw nothing.

In sixteen years I had never heard my son use profanity; he’s a devoted Christian and simply does not, in spite of my regular profane outbursts. I was a little shocked at first, but then it made sense, he was in shock too.

The camera came on; I hit record and went after it with my son just behind me, hoping to catch him in a few frames.

“How far? And Where?” I shouted back at him.

“Right there, it was right there.”  We took off in the direction it was walking. We tried to catch up to it, by the time we got to the exact spot that if firsts appeared, I would estimate approximately twenty five seconds had passed, I panned the camera in the direction my son said he went in, it was very thick brush and nothing else. Already, thirty seconds or so had passed since he saw it. We gave chase, but he was gone. I was amazed and excited and disappointed all at the same time. I’d missed a chance at seeing a Bigfoot for the first time because I had to change the batteries in my camera. I felt good about putting us in a position to see him, but honestly I was envious that he saw what I had searched for all those years.

I kept saying, “I knew it! I knew it was here!”

We checked the entire area for tracks, but found only disturbances and dig outs, no discernible tracks. The leaf-litter was too thick to allow for any significant tracks or a trail to follow.

This is my son’s description of what he saw:

He was looking straight ahead as it walked right out in front of him from over by the swamp on the left side of the trail; it walked out in front of him heading back towards the palmettos. It had apparently in spite of how fast we ran, beat us out of the hammock and was hiding at the edge of the swamp.

No chance of "mis-identification" in this instance, he got a good four to six second look at it as it passed behind a standing coconut palm on the left and walked out onto the trail directly in front of him. He watched it cross the trail from left to right. He described the creature to me as being at least three or four feet higher than the saw palmettos that were between five and six feet tall. It was massive, beastly huge.

He said this “person” that he saw, was all black and hairy, he had very broad and muscular shoulders, a big chest, and a very thick torso. He said he couldn’t make out the face it was so dark colored but that the head was coned, huge and he had a very large and pronounced lower jaw. As it “Power walked” it passed behind another palm on the right side of the trail, at which point little Z took a step forward as he started to lose sight of it, and he saw it for one more second as it disappeared behind the wall of saw palmettos that blocked my view.

It was interesting watching my son process the encounter. At first he stated that it could have been a really, really big hairy black man. I asked him if he thought that it was possible “Shaq” was visiting the park that day and was in a Bigfoot costume. Then, as he worked out the explanations in his own mind he was amazed and excited about the entire encounter. In the end, he concluded that he did indeed see a real wild man, a Bigfoot. With all this having happened in such a short period of time…We were a little taken back. We’d only just arrived in the park three hours ago, and here we were witnesses to something that was not supposed to be there. I asked my son what he wanted to do; “Should we report the incident?” He insisted it was the right thing to do and I was curious to get the park officials reaction to the incident. We humped it back to the car and headed for the Ranger station at the entrance. I pulled in and we got out. My son was just ahead of me as we entered the front office. I opened the door of the ranger station to hear him asking the on duty ranger for a piece of paper and a pencil so he could “Draw what he just saw in the park.”

She eyed him for a second and said with a very matter of fact tone, “Is that thing still in here?”

My son replied, “Yes, I just saw it, and I want to make a drawing of it.”

The ranger retrieved a pencil from the desk drawer and handed him a sheet of paper from the copy machine.

She said, “We get these reports from time to time, and I remember back in the nineties, we had a bunch.”

I didn’t say much, just listened to the information she offered and the way she offered it.

She then said, “We better call the park biologist and let her know what’s going on.”

They had a really old type of answering machine telephone that looked to be from the nineteen eighties, she walked to it hit the speaker button and appropriate extension. The biologist picked up after a few rings, on the loud speaker. My son and I listened carefully to what was said.

The ranger said, “Good morning, ahhhh….We got a couple of guys over here at the front office that say they saw something in the park about a half an hour ago and I think you need to get over here and talk to them.” There was a pause for a second and the biologist spoke.

“Tell’em it was a bear.”

My son and I looked at each other and I shook my head in disgust.

The ranger quickly interrupted, “Uhh…they’re standing right here listening to you on speaker, you better come talk to them.

She said she was on her way.

At this time in my research, I was unaware that most state parks and preserves have biologists that are on staff and most of them are stationed in the park and live there in cabins.

We walked outside and she literally walked out of the bushes from a small trail on the other side of the parking lot. From her quarters, I assume.

As we stood waiting for her to cross the parking lot I asked my son to see his drawing of what he saw. This is his actual drawing of what he saw that day. How could anyone explain this as misidentification? Not a chance.

She walked up and we introduced ourselves.

To my surprise, she asked us, “Where did you see it?”

Not, “What did you see?” or “Please, describe what you saw,”

She asked only one question about the encounter, “Where did you see it?”

That was enough for me. I went for the throat.

I said, “I research this kind of thing, we’ve been here for a grand total of three hours, we’ve already found tracks and seen this thing, what’s going on here in your park man? You’ve got hominid tracks right off the main trail, and this thing is wandering around out there walking right out in front of us? Have you been studying it? You know this thing is in here don’t you.”

She did not appear amused with my questions and what I said. In fact, she immediately went after me and started asking me questions that had nothing to do with the incident. She wanted to know who I was, why I was in the park, where I lived and my address, my phone number, and how long we were going to be in the park. She never even asked to see the drawing my son made of what he saw. Right then two maintenance men pulled up on mowers, I assume the ranger in the office got on the radio and called them. The word was out, the park staff was responding to our report. They pulled up and immediately asked us what we saw and where we saw it. I described the area of the encounter to him and he stated that he had just been over there a few days earlier cutting, confirming the tree cutting I’d seen in the area we had the encounter. I started to think there was more going on here than they were letting us in on. The biologist stated that she had everything she needed, whatever that meant, and walked off to the office. We got in the car and went back to our campsite for lunch, blown away by our first hike together in “Jurassic Park.”

Christopher's drawing of what he saw-
Does this look like a bear to you?

Back at the campsite I started to absorb this new information I received while observing the park staff. All of what happened with the ranger in the office and park biologist points at some very important things to consider.

Day 1-12:45 p.m. Mission Accomplished.

The fact that all of this occurred within a few hours of us arriving at the park, was a lot to process for both of us. Back at the camp we made a small fire to cook lunch on and keep the mosquitoes away. I set up the tri-pod and shot my son’s encounter interview. If you’ve ever seen the interview you probably agree, he’s a calm and credible witness. We made plans for our afternoon hike considering everything we learned earlier that morning. The Bigfoot we encountered was heading toward the swamp that borders the first of only a few main dry areas in the publicly designated areas of the park. If we were going to find more tracks, the muddy areas surrounding the swamp would be our best bet.

We needed an easier way to get there. I checked my maps and found a back door route into the swamp he seemed he was headed to…The power lines.

The power line trail is exactly what it sounds like, the route of the electrical power lines coming and going from the park.

3:00 p.m.

We arrived at the power line trail parked and set off for the cypress swamp in the rear of the hiking areas. The power-line trail is around a mile long and basically would allow us to walk freely to the rear swamp area without having to hump through the thick stuff we encountered earlier in the day. The straight, flat, clear trail was perfect to hike on. We made great time and arrived at the swamp in about a half an hour.

3:30 p.m.

The area we ended up in was at the edge of a very large cypress swamp. We immediately found that this area was littered with thirteen to fourteen inch human type foot shaped punch holes. They were left foot shaped punch holes and right foot shaped punch holes. I estimate based on my own foot impressions in the substrate that the person/persons who left the tracks weighed about four hundred pounds more than I did. We found no such impressions, other than the first single track we found earlier that day off the main trail that resembled “Giant Human feet” anywhere else in the park up to that point on the expedition. The point is, this was not an anomaly, or a natural occurrence and I can only conclude with common sense and everything that had occurred up to that point; that a giant human type being made these tracks. There were dozens of these in the area. The quantity and confusing lay of the tracks suggested that the Bigfoot was loitering in the area at the edge of the swamp for a while, milling around for some reason. Eventually we found a few heading out into the deeper part of the cypress swamp. We shot some footage of the tracks and while we were there, from out in the swamp-we heard some very loud limb breaks and knocking sounds. It was our distinct feeling that it was out there, within a few hundred yards of us, but concealed by the mass of cypress trees.

All of this was quite disconcerting to me given the massive size of the individual my son saw, our current location and its proximity to any help if something was to happen. I felt waves of “WE NEED TO LEAVE RIGHT NOW!” washing over me. I remained calm and told little Z we should get going and head back to the car. We humped out of the area immediately, reached the car and headed back to camp.

Day 1-5:00 p.m.

A storm of epic proportions hit the park. The wind was blowing at least forty miles an hour and the rain was coming down sideways. We were pinned in our car watching as our entire campsite was dismantled by the wind and heavy rain. The tent spikes pulled out of the ground and the tent started to blow away, we jumped out of the car, fighting the wind and pelting rain and ran over and grabbed it. The bedding and pillows inside were soaked and weighed a ton.

Quickly, we refastened the tent to the ground, tied it to the surrounding trees and ran back for the car. We were exhausted at that point and with the pinging sound of the rain on the car, I fell asleep in the driver’s seat.

Day 1-7:00 p.m.

I woke in the front seat of the car to a stick tickling the inside of my nose and my son bursting with laughter. The storm had passed. The sun was back out and it was hot.

“Ha, Ha, good one,” I said.

We rebuilt and stabilized our encampment. Then we loaded the wet bedding and pillows into the car and went off to town to find a Laundromat, turns out the only Laundromat we could find was in the Myakka state park, back at the campground an hour later. After we dried our bedding and clothes we went back to camp and started a fire as the sun went down on the first day of our expedition. We ate like pigs and laughed about the things we’d done and seen that first day, but one thing we both agreed on, was that the day’s adventure was far from over. We were going back at midnight to the area of the sighting to see what was around in the pitch dark jungle.

Day 1-11:00 p.m.

The storm had dumped close to four inches of rain on the park in less than two hours. I did not expect to be wading, knee deep-in alligator infested swamp in the middle of the night; but as we pulled up to the main trail at the observation towers it was obvious, that would be the case. I briefed my son on the importance of awareness when hiking a swamp at night. He seemed confident about going in, so we left the safety of the parking lot and the car for the flooded trail and the area of our encounter earlier that day.

Alligators have a bright amber eye-shine when hit with a spotlight. The general rule is; for every inch in between the eyes, is a foot of length in how big the gator is. All of this was on my mind having seen the hundreds of massive alligators all over the river and both the upper and lower lake areas. We checked our gear and set off into the flooded jungle. The trail heading to the observation towers was shin deep. We moved slowly, scanning with our head lamps looking for eye-shine, cautious of every step we took. We came upon the towers and the spot we would need to leave the relative safety of the main trail. I was carrying a two million candle led spotlight. This lamp is literally capable of turning pitch dark into day in a twenty foot perimeter.

We turned off trail; the water deepened and flooded my boots. Eventually it shallowed again and we came upon a small dry game trail. I stopped and emptied my boots. We pressed on. Then as we came upon the first patch of saw palmettos I turned on the big led and shined it on the front edge of the palmetto hammock on my left up ahead. The spotlight lit up the entire trail. About twenty feet away on the left, I caught something beige and white out of my peripherals, I glanced over and there sitting up on its haunches, ears pinned back, was a two hundred pound Florida panther.

“Freeze!” I whispered urgently to my son who was a few steps behind me. He stopped instantly.

The cat eyed me and sniffed at the air. It then turned and looked in my son’s direction as he stopped.

“Back out slowly, do not turn around son-just slowly…start backing up.”

“What is it?” he asked, he could not see the cat from where he stood.

“A very big cat, it’s a big panther, real big panther, back up slowly.” I said.

We slowly backed out of the area watching for the cat until we got around a hundred feet away, then we turned around and quickly headed straight for the parking lot.

“That’s enough night hiking for one evening, were going back to camp.” I said, disappointed at our results, but happy we were both still in one piece. We hit the tent and passed out exhausted from the days experiences. That was the closest I’d ever come to a big Florida Panther, I wouldn’t complain if I never saw one again.

Day 2-(Site 2)

Research site two is lower Myakka Lake or more accurately; the swamps and jungles that surround the entire lake. Myakka Lake is actually two lakes that are interconnected by the Myakka River, upper Myakka Lake and lower Myakka Lake. I chose the lower lake area as our secondary expedition site because of a report I read that was filed in the mid 2000’s; the encounter was corroborated by both men. Two young men rented a canoe from the upper Myakka lake canoe rental to go Bass fishing in the lake that day. The canoe comes with a battery powered trolling motor and two paddles. The two men were busy fishing and followed the river out of the upper lake area, without thinking they ended up in the lower lake a few miles to the southwest. The battery on the trolling motor started to die and then went completely dead. Looking around at everything, I’m sure these guys were freaking out. It was late afternoon with only a few hours of light left they needed to get out now. They had to be horrified at the prospect of being stranded in the canoe at night with hundreds of giant alligators cruising around them, so they decided to beach the small canoe and hike out of the jungle back to the main park. Obviously they felt like they could make the hike in time to beat the dark. Of course once on shore they realized their predicament. There are no trails leading out of the area it’s just thick, wild Florida jungle.

Eventually they found a route on the edge of a palmetto prairie that was relatively easy hiking and were heading out of the area confidently when all of the sudden, a large rock went flying past one man’s head, almost striking him. The two men stopped and watched in the direction the rock came from. They could hear someone trailing them off in the brush to the side about thirty yards away. Whoever it was-was big and didn’t mind hiking in thick, razor sharp saw palmettos. They kept moving, listening and watching as the rocks kept came every so often. The ordeal continued the whole way out, the unknown rock throwing assailant paralleled their position all the way out to the main road from the thick bush. The men, terrified and exhausted were relieved to see the park rangers were out looking for them. 

This report blew my mind, how is it that something like this goes uninvestigated by the park staff? I don’t buy for even one second that this kind of activity goes uninvestigated, quietly.

Day 2-8:00 a.m.

We got up early and cooked a big breakfast of eggs, bacon and left over Italian sausage from the night before. We set off for site two, and the “Rock throwers” territory. We pulled into a large dirt parking lot. There I noticed several cabins off to the side with quite a few official park vehicles that I had not seen before sitting parked in front of the stilted cabins. It appears that not only do they have “Park Staff” in Myakka, but they have a lot of unseen park staff in Myakka. I noticed several wires coming off telephone poles, only the wires went into the forest. I wondered if they had sensors or perhaps camera/video traps out in the forest. I would, it makes perfect sense that they would have such research tools active in the park, especially if they are actively studying the “Wildlife.”

My son and I stood for a moment at the edge of the trail and looked out over the vast plain, you could just make out the tree line of the swamp at the edge of the lake on the horizon.

“That’s we’re we are headed.” I said pointing at the barely visible tree line.

“That’s real far, dad.”

“Yes…it is, are you ready for this?” I asked.

Little Z shouted excitedly, “Let’s do it!”

We hiked the three miles to the lower lake and then another mile or so into the swamp on the outskirts, we saw only alligators, and wild hogs.  We found no giant human type tracks anywhere and it was hot, I mean “Africa” hot. I was dying.

I thought perhaps we should have looked for a thick, shaded forest canopy in the area to investigate but we were exhausted and still had to hump all the way back to the car. We’d reached our half-empty tanks, and turned around for the return hike. In total, I figure we hiked a little over nine miles that morning. The afternoon sun cooked us, it was almost a hundred degrees and muggy. My son seemed fine. As for me, when we reached the car I was on the verge of heat exhaustion and physical collapse. I said I was fine, but he knew I’d had enough.

We drove back to the campsite, rehydrated and relaxed for the rest of the afternoon. We were planning on going back to the area we had the encounter and also saw the panther the night before. All things considered, we had no Idea what to expect at this point in the expedition. We were in for a hell of a night.

When considering a baiting technique for a Bigfoot, it all seemed ridiculous. But, ridiculous seemed to be par for the course so far so why stop. We left the large bag of red delicious apples in the hot trunk of the car for two days on purpose. I thought the heat would ripen them and increase the apple scent. In addition to that I purchased ten apple scented car fresheners to hang from the trees around our Bait. Given the obvious intelligence of the species, I didn’t put much stock in baiting him to get footage or a photo. However, to leave a gift of food with no intent other than to see if it was touched the next day could be a good Idea I thought.

I had my doubts, but if I lived out there…I’d take the apples.

We loaded the car and geared up for the night hike. We had to get in there, regardless of the other wild life that was standing guard.

Day 2-11:30 p.m.

We pulled up to the trail, got out grabbed the bag of apples and checked our gear-especially our batteries for our head lamps and spotlight. We re-applied the eucalyptus oil mosquito repellant all over ourselves, which turned out to be a good thing, I will explain that later. Given the situation and everything that we’d seen and experienced up to that point, I was surprised that my son was still willing to go back in there. I was more aware of the reality of our situation having spent all my life in the wilds of Florida dealing with the usual wildlife, I was very apprehensive.

We set out into the pitch black flooded area and headed to the observation towers. There was no wind at all and it was dead quiet. Our head lamps only lit up around ten feet in front of us so I turned the spotlight to the trigger mode, this gave me instant access to the powerful led’s that lit up the jungle like daytime. We were both as quiet and as cautious as we could be. We arrived at the towers and considered things for a moment. We decided it was better if we didn’t go off the trail into the area we saw the panther the night before, we stayed on the trail. The water deepened in the pot holes, but always shallowed out again in the higher spots. We came to a very large palm tree on a sharp left turn in trail. The palm had grown sideways across the trail due to thick canopy overhead. The tree was trying to reach an open hole in the canopy for sunlight, funny how even a tree can figure out how to survive. My son went under the trunk of the tree and I climbed over it.

Day 2-12:00 a.m.

 The trail was higher in the stretch after the tree so it was dry. We both whispered that it was good to be on dry land. We felt relieved to be out of the water for a minute. We got about thirty feet from the palm and all of the sudden a very loud “Snap!” broke the silence. We both whirled around in an instant. I hit the spotlight and there, falling from top of the bushy palm tree we had just past under was the broken branch and what I perceived to be; a juvenile Bigfoot. It fell with its arms up over its head and rotated while falling to the horizontal position. It hit the ground with such a thud that the concussion traveled through our boots. I heard the air expel from its lungs like the wind being knocked out of somebody. Both of us screamed loudly, jumped back and looked at each other terrified. His head lamp blinded me for a second, as mine did to him. He shouted, “No! What is it? Don’t look at me!” He raised his arms to block my light from his eyes.

Blinded, I shouted “NO! What is that thing?” I looked back at where it hit the ground a second later as my vision returned, it was already up and running off, its arms were flailing wildly in a very disturbing way as it ran off. Christopher jumped backwards into me as he saw all this and I backed up a few steps as well. We kept screaming the whole time this was going on. “Holy Shit! What is it? What is that? Holy shit! What is that thing?”

It was fast. Faster than anything I had ever seen in my life. In less than two seconds it covered around twenty-five feet or so and was gone into the palmetto hammock. The weird thing was that as it reached the thickest part of the hammock and we lost sight of it, all the noise it made as it ran suddenly stopped and everything went silent again. We both noticed that and assumed it had stopped and was hiding right there. We collected ourselves for a second and stared in the spotlight at where it disappeared, waiting for something else to happen. Nothing happened.

We pulled out our machetes, just in case and walked over to where it ran into the hammock. We stood there for at least five minutes watching everything in the spotlight carefully, but we neither saw nor heard anything else. Somehow it just vanished without another sound into a hammock in which there was no way anything could vanish into without making a ton of noise. That alone was freaking both of us out and we were completely freaked out of our minds.

Christopher said “I don’t want to do this” chuckling nervously.

Then he said “That was really freaky.”

I agreed with him but said let’s calm down for a minute and think. We had to get past all of this somehow so we could plant the apples in the trees. I said let’s keep going and he reluctantly agreed saying “This is crazy.”

I said “I know Z, what’s gonna’ happen next, right?”

That’s what we both were thinking at that point.

We left the area on the trail and headed to the bridge that leads to the Island in the main swamp. We made it to the bridge; I think we both felt relieved at that point to be on “Firm” ground. It actually seemed to settle us down a bit, being on something man made. We both remarked about felling better. I think we were actually grateful we made it. The bridge to the island is approximately seventy yards long. In the center of the bridge is a little bench. We took our packs off and pulled out the bag of apples. The swamp was alive with the sound of frogs. It was so loud it was incredible. We walked across the bridge to the edge of the island and carefully placed a few apples around six or seven feet up on the thick branches and headed back to bench.

Day 2-12:45 a.m.

We sat for a few minutes and Christopher asked me to make a few calls. I agreed to do it and stood up to make the calls. I let out one hell of a scream and the entire swamp went silent all at once. We looked at each other like, “Wow that was cool!” It was suddenly dead quiet.

A second or two later as if on cue, out on the island about a hundred yards off, we heard a tree shake violently and then something very, very large landed on the ground with a powerful thump. Whatever it was, landed on the ground so hard, the entire dock vibrated under our feet. As the vibration shook the dock we both looked at each other again, this time in complete disbelief.

“He’s here.” I said. We were stunned.

 I took that kind of response to my scream as a warning. Like… “Yeah, I’m here and you’re pissing me off, so leave now!”

We had to go out onto the island and at least try to get close again.

We gathered our courage, got all our gear back on and walked off the bridge onto the Island.

This hike was not a good Idea, we were both very fearful of what we might see or encounter. It was pitch black accept for where our lights hit. Every now and then I’d pull the trigger on the spotlight and light up the whole area we were in. We could hear the distinct sound of palmettos being smacked in the distance, but never saw just who was smacking them. Every time I lit up the jungle around us, I expected to see him coming right at me. After about a half an hour or so of absolute terror, we’d had all we could stand so we decided to call it a night.

We couldn’t wait to get off that island and the hell out of that jungle. We walked at a brisk pace glancing back every now and then, until we reached the palm tree that blocked our trail. Then we slowed down, carefully snuck past it and jogged for the safety of the car. The night was not over yet. Now that we were ok, and we lived through it, we were all excited and couldn’t stop talking as we drove back to the campsite. We climbed into the tent and passed out from emotional exhaustion.

Day 3 7:00 a.m.

We got up, grabbed our packs and supplies and quickly drove to the trail head. No one was there yet. We ran down the trail, passed the palm that the thing fell out of and headed for the bridge.

“Stop!” I yelled. Right in the middle of the recently flooded trail was a single 14 inch human foot shaped punch hole. We stood quietly and listened for a second. I turned on the camera and started recording the track when suddenly from behind us I heard two rocks being smacked together four or five times. I spun around and held the camera up as high as I could get it over the palmetto hammock that the sound was coming from. As we listened, about fifty feet away in the middle of the palmetto patch, a vine that was connected to a large banyan tree started to swing back and forth. The rock banging started again we both heard it there was no mistaking the tic-tic-tic-tic-tic sound of the two rocks hitting each other. We were getting ready to charge in and then as if nature was saying “You’re done here.” It started pouring down rain. We forgot the water for making the plaster. I sent Christopher back to the car. “Go Z, as fast as you can!”

I hovered over the track to keep the rain from washing it out worse than it already had. He must have run as fast as he could because it only took about twenty minutes for him to get back with the water. I mixed the plaster, poured it into the track and covered it with my poncho. The track cast came out as good as could be expected given the circumstances. We pulled it and headed for the car in the heavy rain. We were drenched by the time we got back to the car. We left Myakka with an incredible sense of accomplishment and my son knew now that there are indeed giant hairy wild-men roaming around in Florida’s own Jurassic Park.
The idea that we hallucinated all of this is insulting and preposterous, we know what we saw and experienced. I have every intention of pursuing this campaign to confront science about this and I hop you will join our movement to bring the truth of what is "really" going on out there to the world.