Rumor has it, that fewer people are hunting. I know I've never wanted to go near the forest during hunting season because of the danger of being shot by accident. But if people aren't in the woods there's little chance of getting a glimpse of bigfoot. The following is a story you may enjoy. It's about two friends one believes in bigfoot and the other believes his friend saw a bigfoot. They are hunting pals and are good friends.
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Sam T. Best was embarrassed and angry. His workmate, Dan Vinn, had just laughed at him. And what made it so blasted galling was─it happened in front of the buffoons at lunch break. Best considered Vinn a friend. He’d known him seven of the ten years he’d worked for the Toka Park’s Department.
Best, neck and face reddening fast, simply stopped talking and chewed slowly and long on a piece of homemade bear jerky. He studied the jerky, turning it in his fingers. Vinn had been with him when he’d shot the bear the jerky was made from. “Not much of a friend,” he grumbled.
Vinn was still talking, still laughing. But he wasn’t laughing at Best anymore. He’d glanced at his friend and noticed the bear jerky and realized what he’d done. He had humiliated him in front of these clods that they both worked with. Vinn lobbed his soda can into the trash and stepped to Best’s side.
“Look guys,” he said to the three men still eating, “I believe Sam here saw the bigfoot. Okay?”
Best immediately felt better. He couldn’t believe it of himself, that is that he was so touchy about being laughed at when he said he’d seen a bigfoot.
A guy learns something about himself every day, he guessed. He was still smarting from Dan Vinn’s
laughing at him, but he knew he’d get over it. The conversation rallied for a few minutes. One of the guys told about a cousin seeing what he thought was a bigfoot, late one night. He’d been drinking a little, so only told a family member or two, this guy being one of them.
By the end of the workday both friends had forgotten the incident. It wasn’t difficult to do: Vinn and Best were good friends.
Saturday next, the two men were scouting for deer stands at their favorite hunting area, thirty or so miles from home. For the first time, they were planning to try bow hunting. They’d both had a little experience with bows as boys. They stood practicing now, shooting at a homemade target, propped against a Madrone about twenty feet away. Neither came anywhere close to hitting it. Vinn shot the last of the arrows. While they gathered them, they laughed nonstop at their ineptness with the bows.
The clouds were darkening; it was going to rain. A cool wind blew softly in fits and starts. When it blew, paper-dry leaves whirled between them and the target. A blue jay landed loudly in a tall, scraggly Douglas fir to their right. Another jay joined the first. The birds were angry about something: a clump of gray-green moss fell to the ground just under the birds, and one blue feather floated slowly down. Brush Creek rushing nearby and the dry leaves rustling on the ground and in the trees prevented the two men from noticing the sounds that were coming from a huge oak to their left.
When they finally heard the groaning and huffing, both men jerked their heads up to determine where it was coming from. Best, the father of three, flung out an arm as if preventing a child from stepping off a curb into traffic. Vinn, eyes on the tree, walked into the extended arm, abruptly aware that Best meant for him to stop. Vinn breathed out a string of expletives when he stepped into a hole. He fell, loudly, catching himself with his hands. Best, keeping eyes on the tree, awkwardly waved an arm around searching for one of his friend’s hands or arms to help him up, but failed. Not making contact, he glanced down. Vinn sat, rolling down a gray work sock to examine the ankle; he rubbed it a few seconds and then rolled the bulky, wool sock back up.
It now misted fine rain. The blue jays again sent up a ruckus. This time they dove for the animal in the tree where the noise was coming from. Evidently, the animal was near the jays’ nest. Crack! A limb broke. Thud. It hit the ground. The animal was quickly moving down the tree and almost to the ground.
Best shook Vinn’s shoulder to get his attention and get him to his feet. But first Vinn turned onto his side and searched frantically for the animal in the tree.
“Can you walk, Dan?”
“Sure. I’m okay. What is that anyway?” He scrambled, with Best’s help, to his feet.
“A bear, what else?” Best said, as he caught his friend’s red hunting cap just before it hit the forest floor.
“That’s no %#*! bear! Look!” Vinn said. It was now on the ground at the base of the tree. It resembled a large bear, but it wasn’t.
“%#*! … What is it? Sam?”
The men stood mute, frozen in place. They knew they shouldn’t run from a bear. The animal groped for the near tree with a huge hand, as he rose. The big male stood now slightly hunched.
“How’s the ankle?” Best asked Vinn again in shaky voice. “Can you run on it? Dan, it’s a bigfoot! Let’s go! Come on, run!”
The noisy blue jays dove at the animal, again and again.
“If it wants, it’ll get us.” Best slowed and offered an arm to his friend, knowing the ankle was weak.
Before turning in the direction of their rig, the men stopped and watched the massive being as it calmly, as if in slow motion, turn and step over the broken limb and lumber behind the fir, heading in the direction of a near blackberry thicket. He, from time to time, looked back, apparently to check if they were following him.
Once back in Toka, sitting in lawn chairs in Best’s cluttered garage, new tire smell heavy in the air and with icy beers in hand, they hashed over every detail of that amazing being. It was jointly decided that they wouldn’t make a report to anyone, but they did believe they’d return and try to find prints and maybe get one in plaster.
And most important of all, they decided not to talk about their sighting with the boys of the Toka Park’s Department, because they both agreed that, that thing they saw─was no laughing matter.
The End
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