Bigfoot Encounters


"Skunk Ape" Seen, Shots Fired in Lee County, Florida
By Susan Bennett, Staff writer for the News Press Serving Southwest Florida
"...a shooting"


A Buckingham resident reported spotting a skunk ape late Thursday night and said seven shots were fired at the animal failed to affect it.

Leon Woodard said the 12-year-old son of his neighbor, Jose Negrod, called him after the boy saw a man at the window of his home in a wooded area of East Fort Myers.

His father was away and the boy was alone at his home on Drawdy Road, Woodard said. Woodard said the same home was broken into Wednesday night, although he didn't think the break-in was related to the skunk-ape sighting.

Woodard said the animal stood about seven and one-half feet tall on two legs, making no noise. Then the animal ran away in the opposite direction, Woodard said.

Later, the men found the animal again, Woodard explained, and his neighbor fired seven shots from a .22 rifle at a distance of about twenty-five feet. "I know we hit him because you could hear the sound of the bullets landing," he said. Maybe it takes more than a .22 caliber round to penetrate their thick skin. Woodard said the animal started toward them and then fled in opposite direction.

"He walked on two legs and smelled like burning sulphur," he added.

Woodard called the Lee County Sheriff's Department twice, but deputies said nothing was found at the Buckingham home on either visit.

Woodard said Negrod was still searching the woods for the animal this morning.

Ramona Hibner, 1977
Florida Investigator

From my notes: During a three hour long distance telephone call to Ramona Hibner in 1997, she mentioned she has in her possession, another report of a 'sasquatch shooting' near Boston, in Thomas County, Georgia that occurred in 1951. In that account the informant was a woman. Ramona said that the woman and her husband had gone outside because her dogs were barking, they saw a giant of a man, upright and covered with hair, cornered by the dogs on the front porch. Her husband "shot at it" and it ran off. The woman also said that her stepfather had found 20-inch footprints outside his cabin in the morning after seeing what he thought was a black man seven feet tall looking in his window during the night. He also claims to have gone outside with a pistol and fired at the intruder, which ran into the nearby woods. My notes also indicate that at the time I spoke with Ramona, we both viewed her orignial interpretation of the 1951 Thomas County, Georgia situation with some skepticism. ... Bobbie Short

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