That you might be interested in this story.
When I first moved "out west" from Ohio, I landed in a little town called Corvallis,Or. I had just gotten out of the Air Force and I had decided that anything mainstream just was not for me. I hooked up with a person who turned me on to the mushroom picking buisiness and soon I was making trips into the Cascade range for chanterelles,oyster,and other valuable 'shrooms. I was making a pretty good living and had very few expenses as I was spending most of my time camping out in the wilderness,making trips to Alpine for supplies.
After a while my friend and I began to realize that,while we were sleeping, something was coming into our camp. I actually thought for a few days that the "something" was either a brown bear or another person. It did not occur to me for one minute that it was something totally different. Soon after however, we began to hear the vocalizations of what I later learned was assumed to be the Sasquatch. Several different ones.
We had been making small trails into various spots of viny maple growth because we had very quickly realized that the mossy ground cover underneath was an ideal source for white and yellow chanterelles. If you have been to the back country of Oregon and experienced large patches of viny maple, then you know how difficult it can be to move through it, hence the trails.
Very soon these pathways began to be blocked by good sized trees that appeared to ripped out of large logging waste piles, and some looked as if the had been torn from the earth. We still did not really understand what was going on.
After a time we began to realize that we were definitly not alone out there. We had blundered into an area that was home to a small population of these creatures. We jokingly told ourselves that we were in "bigfoot central". They kept their distance, we did not ever try to pursue them. Their presence was as natural to us as any other animal, but smellier!
I only saw one one time and did not have a camera, as this was before the digital camera days, and way before cell phone cameras. Neither of us owned an SLR, and even if we had we would not have had it with us in that rainy wet environment. It was just not a neccesary peice of equipment.
One day as we were leaving the camp by car on an old logging road we stopped to check the oil in my friends old Toyota. As we were standing in the road with the hood up, we became aware of a crashing sound coming from the hillside next to us. As a hunter I was very well aware of the sounds that a large animal can make as it runs through a densly forested area. The sounds came closer and we braced ourselves for a bear or a moose or an elk or maybe a big buck. I stand well over six feet tall, and the creature that came running out of the tree line stood at least a foot taller than me. I saw this very clearly and will remember it to my dying day. It did not stop and did not even look in our direction. The creatures' hair was a dark reddish color, its arms seemed to me to be slightly oversize, it had a large upper body and very large muscular looking legs. It had the stongest musky odor of any animal I have ever been in close contact with. It smelled BAD. It was only a matter of a few seconds that it was visible to us, but as it was only about 50 feet at most from where we had stopped the car I saw it very clearly.
I have to add that neither my friend nor myself were frightened by this animal. It was not threatening in any way. To be honest I am not even positive that it even looked in our direction. I am sure however, that it knew that we were there. It must have, we were not very quiet.
We drove out, stopped at the mushroom buyer, and never returned to that area.
This story is entirely true.

Thanks for sharing that. Although I've never had an experience with bigfoot, I believe they exist. Did you ever submit a report to BFRO?

Years later I returned to the area with my wife when we were driving through on a vacation to the Oregon coast. I did not return to the area at the time because we felt that we had removed all of the mushrooms that were there and needed to move on to a different area to continue with our money making. The presence of the creatures was not a consideration anyway, if we felt there was more collecting to be done in that area we would have returned for sure. I must reiterate, they absolutely were not threatening or trying to intimidate, my impression was that they were "shy". If they wanted to do us harm they could have done so at any time, especially when we were sleeping in our tent at night. I feel that their presence there was as natural and normal as any other forest creature. There simply was no reason to feel threatened. Although I believe that the mushrooms we were picking could very well have been part of their diet, their attempts at keeping us from them were of a passive nature.

[edit on 16-8-2008 by spookjr]

[edit on 16-8-2008 by spookjr]

being an oregonian myself i can say that trees all over blocking roads is not uncommon up in the woods. i have never seen a sasquatch, but i know people that have. i have heard some strange sounds in the wilderness though.

skeptics will say bigfoot doesnt exist, but i say come to oregon, go into the wilderness, look around at all the trees, and tell me there cant possibly be anything unknown out there.

great story, thanks for sharing.

Cool.

Im glad you didnt make a big deal out of it so they can have their privacy.

Its just not appropriate for humankind to dominate everything and everybody else.

Thats my feeling anyway.


sarc

Where is the anon post that my ats shows guys? I wanted to know what it said.

Im from Salem, OR, and I find this quite interesting. I remember watching the news and hearing about Bigfoot sightings constantly in the State. I remeber growing up looking out the window as we would go camping hoping to catch a glimps of Bigfoot out my window.

Thank you, I can only swear that this is true. I would not be surprised if many people thought I was making it all up. I am planning a trip to that area on Labor Day weekend, so I will let everyone know how it goes.