Travels & Stories

One afternoon in May of 1994 I received a call from a neighbor who was looking for people with ATV’s to help roundup a red wolf that had escaped from a local zoo. My son Evan and I took off on our 4-wheeler and went to our neighbors. The red wolf had been spotted close by and after twenty minutes it was shot with a tranquilizer gun. The medication failed and she seemed to run even faster. Eventually we got close to her and a neighbor bailed off his ATV and pinned her to the ground with his body. I took my belt and tied her legs together. We then waited for the zoo officials to get to the scene.

The following is the local newspapers take on the events.

May 15, 1994

Author: John O’Connor, Staff writer

State Journal-Register, The (Springfield, IL)

Swashbuckling volunteers cruising open fields in all-terrain vehicles popped off two tranquilizer darts Saturday to finally snag Scarlett, the Henson Robinson Zoo’s red wolf who has been on the loose since Monday.

Zoo officials and federal experts knocked the pregnant wolf down at 7:45 p.m. in a field near Lake Sanchrist, southeast of Springfield.

In the end, zoo director Mike Janis believes Scarlett wanted to come home.

“It was probably a rush to be free, but it was probably terrifying,” Janis said. “It had to be terrifying to be out there, exposed to cars and dogs and unfamiliar territory. I think she’s going to be very relieved, if that’s the right word, to be back” at the zoo.

At a holding pen at the zoo, Scarlett will be watched for 10 days to ensure she didn’t pick up parasites or hurt herself in any other way, Janis said.

“We want to cool her down a few days,” he said. “She’s been out theredoing work she isn’t used to and she needs a couple of days to settle down some.”

Scarlett, expected to give birth by week’s end, didn’t appear sick or injured. She was so healthy even two tranquilizer darts didn’t completely fell her.

Janis and zoo staff members learned Scarlett was in a resident’s yard at 5 p.m., eyeing guinea and peal fowl there. They arrived on the scene and followed the wolf for about an hour as they readied humane traps and tried to get close enough for a shot.

Unlike previous nights on her trail, she didn’t escape into any forested areas. Officials ringed her in two farmers’ fields.

“We had three all-terrain vehicles out there,” Janis said. “She broke, and we took off after here. Talon Thornton, the assistant zoo director, got the first dart into her, but she still ran a ways before we got the second shot into her.

“She never did go competely down,” he said. But the trackers threw a net over her, covered her face with a shirt and Thornton sacrificed his belt to hold her jaws while she was transferred to a mobile kennel.

Scarlett, who escaped briefly from previous homes — zoos in Victoria, Texas and Knoxville, Tenn. — will be separated from her mate, Blizter, for more than a week while she’s observed. Officials will test her waste material for parasites and await results of a blood test taken Saturday night.

They will watch for fever, that’s she’s drinking enough water and eating enough. Her diet for a week likely has been road kill.

“She’s an amazing animal and a real adversary,” Janis said. “She gave us all she was worth and we gave her all we were worth.”

Janis continued to praise the many people who called in with tips and sightings.

“I can’t thank the public enough,” Janis said. “It is unlikely just our group would have been able to find her without the calls from the public.”

Red wolf experts from the Tacoma, Wash. zoo and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, flown in to help find Scarlett, will leave town today, Janis said.

Copyright (c) 1994 The State Journal-Register (Springfield, IL)

I recently received this photo titled “Bill and Mongo” from my cousin Bill Courtney of Washington State. Obviously he has been reading my blog and has heard about Mongo!

Bill, his brothers and sister were raised in the Blue Mountains of Southeast Washington State. This part of Washington State is famous for sasquatch sightings and footprints because of the research of Paul Freeman of Walla Walla, now deceased.

My wife and I recently visited the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.  Loren Coleman, Curator and Owner, gave us a personally guided hour long tour of the many fascinating exhibits.

Needless to say what impressed me the most is the 8 foot tall bigfoot replica. Makes you really stop and contemplate what we are dealing with in sheer physical size of these animals.  If you get a chance you really should take the time to visit this interesting  museum.

My wife retired the end of May and now we are traveling in our motor home to different parts of the country. We have both been in all 50 states but now we have the ability to spend extended time in areas of interest. First trip, from Illinois to Maine with all states in-between. We will be enjoying the fall colors and I will be recording full-time and checking out a lot of spots with known squatch activity.

From our campsite in the Adirondacks of Upstate New York.

Near the end of summer I stopped at Krekel’s Custard & Hamburgers, the local hamburger joint, near our home in Pawnee, Illinois. As I was waiting for my order an officer from the IDNR, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, came in and placed an order also.

I briefly thought to myself whether I should keep my mouth shut or whether “just for fun” I should engage him in a conversation. I decided to charge ahead.

Here is our conversation –

Stan,  “Sir, I have a recording on my cellphone, would you mind listening to my ringtone and telling me what the sound is?”

The officer was very polite and responded , ” Sure, I would like to here it.”

I went through the four or five tabs required to play back my recording of the Illinois Howl.

The officer listened intently and then I asked, “What do you think is making that sound?”

He responded “Sounds like a bigfoot to me.”

I was very surprised and said “Really, why do you say that?’

He said “Oh, I listen to the documentaries on TV.”  He then said “Where did you get that?”

I said “I recorded it from my backyard north of town.”

He said “Really, north of town? What town?”

I came back with “I live north of town, along Horse Creek.”

He said “What town?”

I said “This town, Pawnee.”  I was starting to get confused.

He said “You mean north of Springfield, right?”

I restated “No Sir, I live here and I recorded that about a mile north of our location.”

The office didn’t say anything, he just stood there looking at me, thinking.

Then he exclaimed, “I’ll be damned!” and walked out the door and got in his vehicle and left.

I remember reading an article from the Peoria Star Journal dated Wednesday, February 15, 2006.

Illinois Department of Natural Resources spokesman Chris McCloud said there has never been a public demand to check possible sightings of a Bigfoot.

The IDNR deals with animals native to Illinois, and Bigfoot is not one of them, he said.

Now I don’t expect the IDNR to publicly acknowledge the existence of sasquatch in Illinois but I do find it interesting to talk with them.  We have also sold our home in Pawnee where we lived along that small creek for 23 years.  I wanted to move to a location where I could do my research that had more woods, more birds and yes, even more animals.

Belle, our 4 year old Karelian Bear Dog relaxing upside-down on the dashboard of our motor home on our way to a week of squatchin’ in gorgeous Colorado.

This is a request for researchers with similar photographs to share their photos and information. The Alabama Bigfoot Research Forums has a thread entitled Greasy Hand Prints within which they show a series of photographs taken of unusual hand prints on a dumpster in SW Oklahoma. You can read all the details here.

These photos were taken July 2, 2009.

It was brought to my attention by user Duke002 of the Alabama Bigfoot Research Forums that I should look at the photos myself. When I did I noticed a similarity to the photo I had taken in Montana of my side passenger care window on the 22nd of June 2009.

My blogpost can be read at The Botanist & The Elk

Join Bear, Shasta and the rest of the outlaws with guests Duke002 and Stan Courtney as we discuss these unusual prints on:

Bigfoot Outlaw Radio on Blog Talk Radio

this Sunday July 19th

7 PM central

call in #:347-324-5347

Mr. Bob Gimlin doing what he loves best, training  and riding horses.  I took this picture this morning at the ranch near Yakima, Washington while attending the “Yakima Bigfoot Round-up” celebrating Bob’s 78th birthday (edited – I was told later in the morning by one of the participants at the conference that Bob’s birthday is later in the year. ) It has been a distinct pleasure knowing Bob for the past 4 years and sharing a campfire with him.

On the 5th of March I was sitting in a truck stop in Caldwell, Idaho. I am not hesitant to talk about my interest in bigfoot / sasquatch research. It all depends on the situation. Some people couldn’t care less, and others are very interested. I don’t recall exactly how the subject came up but truck drivers are one group of people who see lots of wildlife. Some of the most interesting reports I have read were by travelers of the road.

This fellow told me that he did not exactly believe in bigfoot but he did know where some werewolves were seen. I ask him to explain. He said that there is a stretch of road in Eastern Nevada that has had lots of reports of werewolves running along side the big trucks. The speed of these animals is incredible, at least 50 miles per hour. He said that he never believed the stories until one day a fellow driver who had experienced a sighting showed him claw marks on the cab of his truck.

Then one night, the truck driver I was speaking with, said that he had pulled over along the edge of the road and was sleeping. He woke up to hear an unusual sound of something being dragged along the pavement. He said that there was almost no travel along this road and no other trucks were stopped. He was hesitant to get out and check it out and went back to sleep. The next morning he found a large logging chain laying along his truck. He assumed that the noise he heard was that chain being dragged up and down the road.

He asked me what I thought about this. I told him that I did not accept the existence of werewolves but that it was my opinion that stories of werewolves were probably misidentified bigfoot. There are several reports of bigfoot running along side vehicles. Although Eastern Nevada does not seem like habitat for bigfoot he assured me that this area had several year-round springs and trees in the draws and gullys.